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One nice perk of journalists doing much of their research on Google nowadays is that a layman can too -- there is little moat around journalism anymore. So a co

by dmpk2k 6y ago

One nice perk of journalists doing much of their research on Google nowadays is that a layman can too -- there is little moat around journalism anymore. So a couple years back I decided to take an informal random sampling of news articles from respectable US newspapers, and dig up the source material associated with those events. I found that when you looked at the sources, about 3/4 of the claims made about Trump were either deeply misleading, or outright false. The WMD debacle killed my trust in media, but this was beyond my expectations. I can only hope the sample was not representative.

covidthrow 6y ago
I can say with unscientific specificity that for 6 months following the start of COVID, I was buried in media on both sides of the spectrum and researched as much as I could. Right wing media was largely... not "wrong", I guess? But they didn't say a whole lot that went beyond adjective-laden editorial that was neither true nor false. (How does one quantify "a lot" or "promising", exactly?) On the other hand, left wing media was (obviously) hugely anti-Trump, but made claims that were often entirely disingenuous and dishonest. (And in some cases, outright false.) In both cases, neither side did a good job "reporting" the news. The right was flush with fluff, and the left chock full of half truths. In both, they simply left stuff out that was relevant. It's hard to judge which was "worse", because both weren't honest. I'm inclined to lean on saying the left may have been worse because they engaged in an unending assault that was unquestionably more "active" at being dishonest..? But then, as Orwell said, "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist." So... it's just a bad look all around right now. Thank goodness for beacons like Greenwald and Taibbi. (And Catherine Herridge. And I'm sure some others I'm missing.)

by dmpk2k 6y ago

covidthrow 6y ago

I can say with unscientific specificity that for 6 months following the start of COVID, I was buried in media on both sides of the spectrum and researched as much as I could. Right wing media was largely... not "wrong", I guess? But they didn't say a whole lot that went beyond adjective-laden editorial that was neither true nor false. (How does one quantify "a lot" or "promising", exactly?) On the other hand, left wing media was (obviously) hugely anti-Trump, but made claims that were often entirely disingenuous and dishonest. (And in some cases, outright false.) In both cases, neither side did a good job "reporting" the news. The right was flush with fluff, and the left chock full of half truths. In both, they simply left stuff out that was relevant. It's hard to judge which was "worse", because both weren't honest. I'm inclined to lean on saying the left may have been worse because they engaged in an unending assault that was unquestionably more "active" at being dishonest..? But then, as Orwell said, "Pacifism is objectively pro-fascist." So... it's just a bad look all around right now. Thank goodness for beacons like Greenwald and Taibbi. (And Catherine Herridge. And I'm sure some others I'm missing.)