6 ms·
Key point: "The problem is that facts—at least today—are themselves subject to doubt, especially when they conflict with our political beliefs (21). In the pas
by UncleOxidant 6y ago
Key point:
"The problem is that facts—at least today—are themselves subject to doubt, especially when they conflict with our political beliefs (21). In the past decades, America has seen a decentralization of news and information (22) that has allowed people to gather their “own facts” (i.e., alternative facts; ref. 23). Most recently, claims of “fake news” allow people to distrust any information that fails to align with their political beliefs (24, 25) and to trust fake news that aligns with their beliefs (26)."
This is the epistemic crisis we're currently facing. Up until about the late 70s we had 3 news networks that were all pretty much middle of the road politically. Newspapers could have more of a discernible political leaning, but even there most of the mainstream ones we're pretty centrist. People who hewed to an extreme political position in either direction were ostracized and thus had a very small audience. We had more of a common narrative which is now gone.
- jariel 6y agoIn 1980 newspapers were where >50% of advertising dollars were spent, now it's going to nothing - and - they have to fight for every little click using click bait. You can see the natural progression towards hyper bifurcated viewpoints.
- iguy 6y agoIf they were just smaller that would be one thing, but the change in what they get paid for is bigger, I think. A paper supported by the big department store's ads is incentivised to be broad, because the store wants to sell to everyone. Likewise a paper supported classified and by sunday realtor adds -- nobody wants to sell their house exclusively to members of some fringe, they want the widest distribution. But a paper supported by its most outraged subscribers will cater to them, and importantly, to keeping them outraged.
- jariel 6y agoUnfortunately not, as the numbers are already on the table. People don't need to pay for news, so they generally won't. The smaller publications are all getting wiped out, NYT and a few others will remain paywalled in a smaller state of affairs, and that's it.
- orzig 6y agoAs long as we're talking about objective facts, I'll add that "Going to nothing" means going from $25B/y down to $5B/y, which is a huge drop - but also $5B/y. It's continuing to trend downward, so "going to nothing" is not a clearly false summary, but we might as well be specific Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/20244/estimated-print-advertising-revenue-in-the-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/chart/20244/estimated-print-adverti...
- jariel 6y agoYour chart literally shows a line over a decade 'going very quickly towards $0'.
- yters 6y agoIncluding the NYT communist shilling with Walter Durante? That doesn't seem so middle of the road.
- iguy 6y agoDifferent era. "Up until about the late 70s" makes it sound like this was the eternal state of affairs, but it wasn't. It was a few postwar decades.
- UncleOxidant 6y agoRight, if I could edit (too late now it seems) I would add "from post WWII till about the late 70s".
- yters 6y agoSo we went from heavily left to middle of the road for a few decades to back to left? Sounds like reversion to normal state of affairs.
- fallingfrog 6y agoThe New York Times is generally a liberal publication, but not a leftist one. An example of a leftist publication might be Jacobin https://www.jacobinmag.com/ https://www.jacobinmag.com/ for example.
- yters 6y agoCommunism is s not very liberal :D
- arduanika 6y agoNo true year before the late 70s saw newspapers making up lies
- dantheman 6y agoDon't forget the media lied throughout that time too; let us not forget the craziness of satanic ritual abuse, or the lies that led to the vietnam war, etc... The media and the government routinely mislead the public, look at in 2019 the intentional confusion of blackmarket thc vapes and tobacco vaping. Or more recently, the use of human trafficking. To claim there was sometime in the past where the news was good and reliable would require overlooking a huge amount of actual historic malfeasance.
- UncleOxidant 6y ago> Don't forget the media lied throughout that time too; let us not forget the craziness of satanic ritual abuse, or the lies that led to the vietnam war, etc... The satanic ritual abuse stuff was in the 80s early 90s. Lies that led to vietnam, sure. But also there were lies that led to the Iraq war in the more fractured Fox News/internet age so it seems like the more fractured, politicized news didn't help protect against that. > To claim there was sometime in the past where the news was good and reliable would require overlooking a huge amount of actual historic malfeasance. Sure, my point was there was a past where we had a more common narrative. That certainly has downsides, but now we're seeing that it had some advantages compared to our current fractured era.
- austincheney 6y ago> Don't forget the media lied The significance of that varies by person. If you need social reinforcement to validate your interpretation of information the media lying is certainly significant, but then if you are more reliant upon social reinforcement you aren't acting on original interpretations of the information anyways. In other words this argument is moot.
- ndiscussion 6y agoI think it's still an argument, because in the real world, over 90% of the population is absolute cattle that do as they are told. This upsets the 10% very much.
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
- cccc4all 6y agoGell-Mann Amnesia effect. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge... What Mass Media calls facts are more often wrong than right, even without any political bias. When political bias are factored in, so called "facts" are complete opposite of what they are.