4 ms·

> News organizations have an obligation to report on what they believe to be true. They have an obligation to report facts and world events, regardless of what

by LocalH 6y ago

> News organizations have an obligation to report on what they believe to be true. They have an obligation to report facts and world events, regardless of what they believe to be true. At least in a US context, the infusion of opinion and bias into news that CNN jumpstarted is a cancer that I feel is directly responsible for the highly polarized state of the US.

ineedasername 6y ago
It's not a fact if it isn't true. Disinformation and misinformation both often take the form of something stated factually. So there must necessarily be some judgment and evaluation of the truth value of everything they report. There is also the judgment involved in deciding what to report: there is an infinity of things that happen every day. There is no avoiding the need for judgment in news reporting. Any process of judgement may be biased. An institution may itself have biases, and these will make there way in the judgments made there. The idea that news organizations can simply and objectively report on facts and world events is functionally impossible. What you want are honest judgements made with an awareness of potential bias, knowing it can never be completely removed. As consumers of news, we should look for the organizations that seek to do that, and preferably read/view a variety of they present to us a more complete picture despite the differences in the judgements they make.
AgentME 6y ago
I'm legitimately surprised someone could type this out but then make it about any news station other than Fox.
- lmickh 6y ago
  CNN and 24hr cable news has not been good for journalism. Opinion pundits responding to events before the facts can even be collected along with daily shows interweaving narratives pre-dates Fox News. Fox News played their game more blatantly ruthless than the others and beat them at their own game.
  - ineedasername 6y ago
    It seems to me that CNN accidentally stumbled on to this problem, while when Fox News came along they cynically embraced it as a revenue generator. For CNN it began as a bug, Fox made it a feature.
- LocalH 6y ago
  CNN first broadcast on June 1, 1980. Fox News Channel didn't exist until October 7, 1996. Many of the most pervasive problems with all cable news started with CNN. It's hard to fill 24 hours with pure news, so opinion got added to the mix, such that now primetime is all about the opinion. As a sibling comment stated, Fox just beat them at their own game in that sense. It seems like public discourse is by and large worse off due to the way news media is structured. In the drive for viewers and ratings, the media has become extremely polarizing. People make it a badge of pride that they don't watch X or Y network. You expose that a bit as well when you assume that the words I wrote should only apply to Fox. All cable news media is problematic in this day and age.
- dbcurtis 6y ago
  I think your statement says more about what you are prepared to believe, than about any notion of absolute truth. MSNBC is often a mirror of Fox in equally (un)believable proportion. When I was young, I got into short-wave listening. This was during the Viet Nam war. I used to listen to the English language news from Radio Moscow, then the news from Voice of America, just for the sheer, rollicking entertainment value of the ideological whiplash. I suggest a similar exercise using modern context -- it will sharpen your BS detector.

by LocalH 6y ago

ineedasername 6y ago

It's not a fact if it isn't true. Disinformation and misinformation both often take the form of something stated factually. So there must necessarily be some judgment and evaluation of the truth value of everything they report. There is also the judgment involved in deciding what to report: there is an infinity of things that happen every day. There is no avoiding the need for judgment in news reporting. Any process of judgement may be biased. An institution may itself have biases, and these will make there way in the judgments made there. The idea that news organizations can simply and objectively report on facts and world events is functionally impossible. What you want are honest judgements made with an awareness of potential bias, knowing it can never be completely removed. As consumers of news, we should look for the organizations that seek to do that, and preferably read/view a variety of they present to us a more complete picture despite the differences in the judgements they make.

AgentME 6y ago

I'm legitimately surprised someone could type this out but then make it about any news station other than Fox.

lmickh 6y ago
CNN and 24hr cable news has not been good for journalism. Opinion pundits responding to events before the facts can even be collected along with daily shows interweaving narratives pre-dates Fox News. Fox News played their game more blatantly ruthless than the others and beat them at their own game.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  It seems to me that CNN accidentally stumbled on to this problem, while when Fox News came along they cynically embraced it as a revenue generator. For CNN it began as a bug, Fox made it a feature.
LocalH 6y ago
CNN first broadcast on June 1, 1980. Fox News Channel didn't exist until October 7, 1996. Many of the most pervasive problems with all cable news started with CNN. It's hard to fill 24 hours with pure news, so opinion got added to the mix, such that now primetime is all about the opinion. As a sibling comment stated, Fox just beat them at their own game in that sense. It seems like public discourse is by and large worse off due to the way news media is structured. In the drive for viewers and ratings, the media has become extremely polarizing. People make it a badge of pride that they don't watch X or Y network. You expose that a bit as well when you assume that the words I wrote should only apply to Fox. All cable news media is problematic in this day and age.
dbcurtis 6y ago
I think your statement says more about what you are prepared to believe, than about any notion of absolute truth. MSNBC is often a mirror of Fox in equally (un)believable proportion. When I was young, I got into short-wave listening. This was during the Viet Nam war. I used to listen to the English language news from Radio Moscow, then the news from Voice of America, just for the sheer, rollicking entertainment value of the ideological whiplash. I suggest a similar exercise using modern context -- it will sharpen your BS detector.