7 ms·

I see so much self-regard from journalists, so much concern about their own safety, their freedom, their economical well being, the competitive threats they fee

I see so much self-regard from journalists, so much concern about their own safety, their freedom, their economical well being, the competitive threats they feel from substack. I have yet to see a single article from any main stream journalist accept a shred of responsibility for their part in eroding public trust and inciting division and hatred. It is as of all the people who had integrity or any sense of duty left the profession. We live in a sea of mis-information, we desperately need help making sense of the deluge of nonsense coming our way every day and the societal organ responsible for that spends its time contributing to the chaos or flattering itself. As far as I am concerned main stream journalism has sold its sold and it cannot die fast enough.

secfirstmd 6y ago
This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India alone. Your "whatabboutism" based on Substack, a tool that few outside the US bubble even know or care about, is really missing the mark here. I've lost count on how many massively complex investigations I've helped journalists work on to expose everything from war crimes to Trump's finances. Sometimes dozens of people working on it at a time, multiple countries, a few different news outlets, skills ranging from investigation to IT, with centuries of experience between everyone involved, over months or years. No way in hell a glorified blog is going to replace that.
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  > This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. The parent’s point seems to be that the “brave journalist” has become supplanted by the sensationalist masquerading as journalist. No doubt there are some brave journalists or even journalists with integrity, but they’re a dying breed. Additionally your post seems condescending and snarky, which is always inappropriate and all the more so when you’re the one not following the plot.
  - smoe 6y ago
    It is not the journalists that are dying, but the system that supported their work. Journalism takes a lot of resources. If you starve it of it, you kill it's integrity and end up with a least effort / highest impact product. Firing the fact checkers, because in "digital" you can fix stuff after publishing; reduce correspondents networks because you can now just copy stuff from some random person on Twitter that is supposedly there; offer people money to send in pictures of events so you don't have to pay a photographer/agency; maximizing reuse of content; hire journalists based on their klout score to increase reach; racing which outlet is the first to send the push notification and follow up story after an event, etc. Independent journalists on blogs or Youtube, no matter how well their intentions, can not easily replace it. You don't have a legal department backing you up for critical stories; extensive network of sources and experts; you can't work extended periods of time on a single story because the algorithm overlords demand high frequency short form content. So they often end up doing not much more than summarizing what others have written. Which is valuable, but it is not where the heavy lifting is done. I do hope, new, better forms of journalism evolve from it, but I'm a bit skeptical, given that so far it seems, that to be successful monetarily, the key ingredients are being loud, controversial and highly opinionated.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      I agree with most of this. “Journalists (of integrity) are dying out” is a simplification. To your point, the whole of journalism is changing—as you mention, fact checkers are being fired and so on, but to my point, newsrooms are hiring and promoting the journalists (and editors, etc) who show a penchant for sensationalism and/or partisanship because that’s the new business model. And the journalists with integrity are increasingly relegated toward obscurity (although of course there are exceptions who prove the rule). That’s the sense in which I meant “journalists with integrity/bravery are a dying breed”. I also agree that Substack isn’t going to reinvent the Walter Cronkite era of journalism overnight if ever. Replacing sickly institutions (which evolved over many centuries) is hard, especially when those institutions’ illness is derived at least in part from the same cultural pathogens that the new platform is likewise subject to. On the other hand, it feels necessary to at least try something different than the mainstream toxicity. I doubt Substack will be the answer, but I think it could either be a first step toward a new media landscape or perhaps the threat that causes the established media to shape up.
- kodah 6y ago
  > whatabboutism First, Substack isn't even mentioned, but I'll assume the author removed it, which likely means it wasn't core to their argument and you missed the forest for the trees. Second, whatabboutism implies a certain level of intent to derail a conversation in my eyes, it's not about simply saying "what about". One of the problems I've noticed with modern discourse is that everybody has this narrative in their mind that the "others" are here in bad faith and have some box of psychological trickery at their disposal. In this way, maybe it's more expedient to people to attack the presenter instead of the idea, but it's impact on discourse is palpable.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  Policeman, fireman, soldiers, all get killed doing what they do. Your average journalist, trolling for outrage porn on Twitter is not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence. The fact that Substack is a threat to "journalism" and the defensiveness of your post is another indicator it indeed is, should give you a clue as to how badly the journalistic class has fallen. Their best people, the ones that have any integrity and independence are leaving in troves to places like substack, despite the lack of resources you correctly point out. All that will be left in a few years are a bunch of middle-aged, navel gazing pseudo-activists, writing for each other, all wallowing on their own special brand of poison.
ceilingcorner 6y ago
Agreed. Circa 2016, I was hoping that institutions like the NY Times would be a bulwark against the coming wave of misinformation and propaganda. Instead, the Times realized that propaganda was profitable, Brooklynites or wannabe-Brooklynites were wealthy enough to fleece, and that "real news" was boring. And here we are: hoping that some random Silicon Valley startup can save the Truth for civilization.
- scrozart 6y ago
  Can you provide an example of NYT misinformation or propaganda?
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I have no truck with MAGA folks, but NYT joined the rest of the media in maligning a group of teenagers wearing MAGA hats as initiating a conflict with a Native American “Elder” when the source video shows a more bizarre (and frankly more newsworthy) story: the boys were waiting for their busses during a school trip and they were accosted by some Black Hebrew Israelites (including racist and homophobic slurs) after which the Native American man, Nathan Phillips (who was initially falsely reported to be a veteran, although I don’t recall if the Times also propagated this particular falsehood), tried to match his group through the group of kids in a very odd and confrontational style (by his own admission he didn’t think he ought to have to go around the group because he was tired of being made to yield to whites or some such). Hardly the “Boys with MAGA hats surround Native American Elder” headline that NYT and others ran.
    - austincheney 6y ago
      I agree that event wasn’t news worthy, but those boys were criminally intimidating due to intent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimidation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimidation I suspect if this wasn’t some viral social media nonsense established publishers wouldn’t wasted any effort on this. When you are funded by advertising you go where the eyeballs are.
austincheney 6y ago
> We live in a sea of mis-information, we desperately need help making sense of the deluge of nonsense coming our way every day and the societal organ responsible for that spends its time contributing to the chaos or flattering itself. The easiest way to start is by not confusing mainstream journalism for its editorialists. Due to that I have completely written off FoxNews and anything that refers to itself as liberal or conservative news. An ever better way to avoid nonsense and misinformation is not use social media as a news source. If you aren’t willing to do, or incapable of, just those two things it’s hard to take you seriously. Lately, I have really fallen into favor with France24 and Al Jazeera for news.
- ceilingcorner 6y ago
  Al Jazeera may cover world news more objectively than CNN or The Wall Street Journal, but they are literally an extension of the Qatari government.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    The same can be said of the BBC. That is actually how journalism is funded in much of the world, state-sponsor or state official news. That is potentially but not necessarily problematic.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      BBC has also trended sharply away from neutrality and objectivity in its pursuit of clicks, so I’m not sure this is the best example to make your point.
      - Pyramus 6y ago
        > trended sharply away This is not my perception at all, do you have any evidence or anecdata for that claim? The BBC has always produced a varied mix of palatable mainstream entertainment, niche entertainment, independent news and investigative reporting. Criticism of the BBC for being too mainstream or not mainstream enough is as old as the BBC. In any case, compared to the US it's a completely different world.
wdn 6y ago
There was a speech given by Sharyl Attkisson explaining the issue with today’s “journalism”. In short, the slanted media is what is being taught in school and writing slanted articles that please the corporate owner will get rewarded. Truth has no place under the current environment. However, there is hope. Link to the speech: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxI803q6i8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxI803q6i8
- mtberatwork 6y ago
  Her Wikipedia entry states that she formerly worked for an outfit funded by the Heritage Foundation, and now Sinclair. She also is involved in anti-vaccine reporting and tries to link autism to vaccines. So sounds more like the pot calling the kettle black.
  - SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
    You’ve kinda conveniently skipped over her 21 year stint at CBS. Maybe she did just go off the deep end, I can’t vouch for her credibility myself, but I think you’ve gotta consider the possibility that she’s speaking about problems she saw from personal experience.
    - SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
      I think it’s fair to wonder who is monetarily behind her stating as such when the entire problem is that moneyed interests are creating slanted pieces. It could entirely be that this itself is a moneyed interest creating a slanted piece. However I still think it’s quite useful, just that I’d want a second opinion that might also be being paid to be slanted in another way. Somewhere in between is truth maybe.
    - mtberatwork 6y ago
      Not really, the entry states she left CBS because they weren't pushing Benghazi enough in her opinion ... following which she moved to stints with a Heritage funded outfit and Sinclair. Both clearly partisan organizations and both instances of "rewarding the corporate funders" while pushing misinformation. So yes, pot meet kettle.
sanp 6y ago
Can u cite a source for the level of disinformation from MSM?
realradicalwash 6y ago
> As far as I am concerned main stream journalism has sold its sold and it cannot die fast enough. To be replaced by what though? How will one get the right input that is needed to create and inform one's opinion?
- zarkov99 6y ago
  I don't know yet. Perhaps a bitcoin backed reputation market for pundits. Maybe independent, direct to market writers. Maybe a 4th branch of government. We need to try new things.
Pyramus 6y ago
I agree with your general point that journalists have contributed to the decline of journalism, yet your rant is an unconstructive mix of sweeping generalisation and disregard for underlying systemic issues. At the end of the day society as a whole agrees how much they value independent journalism and if no consensus is found (or an existing consensus erodes), independent journalism will slowly separate from the main stream. And while you can observe this progression in most Western democracies, the US sticks out. So the question becomes: Does the US have particularly bad journalists - or - are there US specific factors that fuel the decline of independent journalism in the US?
- luckylion 6y ago
  > And while you can observe this progression in most Western democracies, the US sticks out. So the question becomes: Does the US have particularly bad journalists - or - are there US specific factors that fuel the decline of independent journalism in the US? On most things post WWII, the US has lead the Western World by 5-15 years. And they also have a culture of very public, very loud debates.
- zarkov99 6y ago
  Well, yes, I agree the rant is not constructive, but its at least pointing out a problem that does not seem to be universally seen as such and I like to think there is some use in that.
echoradio 6y ago
I’ve worked in journalism for 25+ years and been employed by three of the four major media companies. Mainstream media is not necessarily left or right; it is corporate. Media bends to the demographics that can bring in revenue. If it wasn’t apparent before 2016, that election stripped any façade of journalism being separated from the business of media companies. Everyone benefitted from Trump’s antics and they rode stories about them all the way to the bank.* You would think only “right-wing” media would have benefitted from the Trump campaigns and presidency, but the death of the fairness doctrine made it easier for these media companies to target siloed demographics — left and right — and feed off them. There was also a seismic shift in newsroom mentality when media companies downsized and went with cheaper, inexperienced journalists and editors. A great deal of the industrial knowledge accumulated by veterans was never appropriately passed on to the new generation. Also: Too many journalist see themselves as personalities and brands because of the potential financial benefit outside of the newsroom. This has been exacerbated by social media influencer culture. It is hard to be impartial when you insert yourself into the story. That said, there are good journalists out there who are not looking to do anything other than report on interesting and important matters. Unfortunately in the current media landscape, it can be very tough to filter signal from all the noise. * not a political statement; simply an observation on how, regardless of leanings, media corporations exploited high ratings.

secfirstmd 6y ago

This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. 150 million people read a newspaper every day in India alone. Your "whatabboutism" based on Substack, a tool that few outside the US bubble even know or care about, is really missing the mark here. I've lost count on how many massively complex investigations I've helped journalists work on to expose everything from war crimes to Trump's finances. Sometimes dozens of people working on it at a time, multiple countries, a few different news outlets, skills ranging from investigation to IT, with centuries of experience between everyone involved, over months or years. No way in hell a glorified blog is going to replace that.

throwaway894345 6y ago
> This year, last year and many years before that, brave journalists got up in the morning to report the news, to inform the public. They never made it home. They were arrested and killed because of the work they do. The parent’s point seems to be that the “brave journalist” has become supplanted by the sensationalist masquerading as journalist. No doubt there are some brave journalists or even journalists with integrity, but they’re a dying breed. Additionally your post seems condescending and snarky, which is always inappropriate and all the more so when you’re the one not following the plot.
- smoe 6y ago
  It is not the journalists that are dying, but the system that supported their work. Journalism takes a lot of resources. If you starve it of it, you kill it's integrity and end up with a least effort / highest impact product. Firing the fact checkers, because in "digital" you can fix stuff after publishing; reduce correspondents networks because you can now just copy stuff from some random person on Twitter that is supposedly there; offer people money to send in pictures of events so you don't have to pay a photographer/agency; maximizing reuse of content; hire journalists based on their klout score to increase reach; racing which outlet is the first to send the push notification and follow up story after an event, etc. Independent journalists on blogs or Youtube, no matter how well their intentions, can not easily replace it. You don't have a legal department backing you up for critical stories; extensive network of sources and experts; you can't work extended periods of time on a single story because the algorithm overlords demand high frequency short form content. So they often end up doing not much more than summarizing what others have written. Which is valuable, but it is not where the heavy lifting is done. I do hope, new, better forms of journalism evolve from it, but I'm a bit skeptical, given that so far it seems, that to be successful monetarily, the key ingredients are being loud, controversial and highly opinionated.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I agree with most of this. “Journalists (of integrity) are dying out” is a simplification. To your point, the whole of journalism is changing—as you mention, fact checkers are being fired and so on, but to my point, newsrooms are hiring and promoting the journalists (and editors, etc) who show a penchant for sensationalism and/or partisanship because that’s the new business model. And the journalists with integrity are increasingly relegated toward obscurity (although of course there are exceptions who prove the rule). That’s the sense in which I meant “journalists with integrity/bravery are a dying breed”. I also agree that Substack isn’t going to reinvent the Walter Cronkite era of journalism overnight if ever. Replacing sickly institutions (which evolved over many centuries) is hard, especially when those institutions’ illness is derived at least in part from the same cultural pathogens that the new platform is likewise subject to. On the other hand, it feels necessary to at least try something different than the mainstream toxicity. I doubt Substack will be the answer, but I think it could either be a first step toward a new media landscape or perhaps the threat that causes the established media to shape up.
kodah 6y ago
> whatabboutism First, Substack isn't even mentioned, but I'll assume the author removed it, which likely means it wasn't core to their argument and you missed the forest for the trees. Second, whatabboutism implies a certain level of intent to derail a conversation in my eyes, it's not about simply saying "what about". One of the problems I've noticed with modern discourse is that everybody has this narrative in their mind that the "others" are here in bad faith and have some box of psychological trickery at their disposal. In this way, maybe it's more expedient to people to attack the presenter instead of the idea, but it's impact on discourse is palpable.
zarkov99 6y ago
Policeman, fireman, soldiers, all get killed doing what they do. Your average journalist, trolling for outrage porn on Twitter is not fit to be mentioned in the same sentence. The fact that Substack is a threat to "journalism" and the defensiveness of your post is another indicator it indeed is, should give you a clue as to how badly the journalistic class has fallen. Their best people, the ones that have any integrity and independence are leaving in troves to places like substack, despite the lack of resources you correctly point out. All that will be left in a few years are a bunch of middle-aged, navel gazing pseudo-activists, writing for each other, all wallowing on their own special brand of poison.

ceilingcorner 6y ago

Agreed. Circa 2016, I was hoping that institutions like the NY Times would be a bulwark against the coming wave of misinformation and propaganda. Instead, the Times realized that propaganda was profitable, Brooklynites or wannabe-Brooklynites were wealthy enough to fleece, and that "real news" was boring. And here we are: hoping that some random Silicon Valley startup can save the Truth for civilization.

scrozart 6y ago
Can you provide an example of NYT misinformation or propaganda?
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I have no truck with MAGA folks, but NYT joined the rest of the media in maligning a group of teenagers wearing MAGA hats as initiating a conflict with a Native American “Elder” when the source video shows a more bizarre (and frankly more newsworthy) story: the boys were waiting for their busses during a school trip and they were accosted by some Black Hebrew Israelites (including racist and homophobic slurs) after which the Native American man, Nathan Phillips (who was initially falsely reported to be a veteran, although I don’t recall if the Times also propagated this particular falsehood), tried to match his group through the group of kids in a very odd and confrontational style (by his own admission he didn’t think he ought to have to go around the group because he was tired of being made to yield to whites or some such). Hardly the “Boys with MAGA hats surround Native American Elder” headline that NYT and others ran.
  - austincheney 6y ago
    I agree that event wasn’t news worthy, but those boys were criminally intimidating due to intent. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimidation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intimidation I suspect if this wasn’t some viral social media nonsense established publishers wouldn’t wasted any effort on this. When you are funded by advertising you go where the eyeballs are.

austincheney 6y ago

> We live in a sea of mis-information, we desperately need help making sense of the deluge of nonsense coming our way every day and the societal organ responsible for that spends its time contributing to the chaos or flattering itself. The easiest way to start is by not confusing mainstream journalism for its editorialists. Due to that I have completely written off FoxNews and anything that refers to itself as liberal or conservative news. An ever better way to avoid nonsense and misinformation is not use social media as a news source. If you aren’t willing to do, or incapable of, just those two things it’s hard to take you seriously. Lately, I have really fallen into favor with France24 and Al Jazeera for news.

ceilingcorner 6y ago
Al Jazeera may cover world news more objectively than CNN or The Wall Street Journal, but they are literally an extension of the Qatari government.
- austincheney 6y ago
  The same can be said of the BBC. That is actually how journalism is funded in much of the world, state-sponsor or state official news. That is potentially but not necessarily problematic.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    BBC has also trended sharply away from neutrality and objectivity in its pursuit of clicks, so I’m not sure this is the best example to make your point.
    - Pyramus 6y ago
      > trended sharply away This is not my perception at all, do you have any evidence or anecdata for that claim? The BBC has always produced a varied mix of palatable mainstream entertainment, niche entertainment, independent news and investigative reporting. Criticism of the BBC for being too mainstream or not mainstream enough is as old as the BBC. In any case, compared to the US it's a completely different world.

wdn 6y ago

There was a speech given by Sharyl Attkisson explaining the issue with today’s “journalism”. In short, the slanted media is what is being taught in school and writing slanted articles that please the corporate owner will get rewarded. Truth has no place under the current environment. However, there is hope. Link to the speech: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxI803q6i8 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4bxI803q6i8

mtberatwork 6y ago
Her Wikipedia entry states that she formerly worked for an outfit funded by the Heritage Foundation, and now Sinclair. She also is involved in anti-vaccine reporting and tries to link autism to vaccines. So sounds more like the pot calling the kettle black.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  You’ve kinda conveniently skipped over her 21 year stint at CBS. Maybe she did just go off the deep end, I can’t vouch for her credibility myself, but I think you’ve gotta consider the possibility that she’s speaking about problems she saw from personal experience.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 6y ago
    I think it’s fair to wonder who is monetarily behind her stating as such when the entire problem is that moneyed interests are creating slanted pieces. It could entirely be that this itself is a moneyed interest creating a slanted piece. However I still think it’s quite useful, just that I’d want a second opinion that might also be being paid to be slanted in another way. Somewhere in between is truth maybe.
  - mtberatwork 6y ago
    Not really, the entry states she left CBS because they weren't pushing Benghazi enough in her opinion ... following which she moved to stints with a Heritage funded outfit and Sinclair. Both clearly partisan organizations and both instances of "rewarding the corporate funders" while pushing misinformation. So yes, pot meet kettle.

sanp 6y ago

Can u cite a source for the level of disinformation from MSM?

realradicalwash 6y ago

> As far as I am concerned main stream journalism has sold its sold and it cannot die fast enough. To be replaced by what though? How will one get the right input that is needed to create and inform one's opinion?

zarkov99 6y ago
I don't know yet. Perhaps a bitcoin backed reputation market for pundits. Maybe independent, direct to market writers. Maybe a 4th branch of government. We need to try new things.

Pyramus 6y ago

I agree with your general point that journalists have contributed to the decline of journalism, yet your rant is an unconstructive mix of sweeping generalisation and disregard for underlying systemic issues. At the end of the day society as a whole agrees how much they value independent journalism and if no consensus is found (or an existing consensus erodes), independent journalism will slowly separate from the main stream. And while you can observe this progression in most Western democracies, the US sticks out. So the question becomes: Does the US have particularly bad journalists - or - are there US specific factors that fuel the decline of independent journalism in the US?

luckylion 6y ago
> And while you can observe this progression in most Western democracies, the US sticks out. So the question becomes: Does the US have particularly bad journalists - or - are there US specific factors that fuel the decline of independent journalism in the US? On most things post WWII, the US has lead the Western World by 5-15 years. And they also have a culture of very public, very loud debates.
zarkov99 6y ago
Well, yes, I agree the rant is not constructive, but its at least pointing out a problem that does not seem to be universally seen as such and I like to think there is some use in that.

echoradio 6y ago

I’ve worked in journalism for 25+ years and been employed by three of the four major media companies. Mainstream media is not necessarily left or right; it is corporate. Media bends to the demographics that can bring in revenue. If it wasn’t apparent before 2016, that election stripped any façade of journalism being separated from the business of media companies. Everyone benefitted from Trump’s antics and they rode stories about them all the way to the bank.* You would think only “right-wing” media would have benefitted from the Trump campaigns and presidency, but the death of the fairness doctrine made it easier for these media companies to target siloed demographics — left and right — and feed off them. There was also a seismic shift in newsroom mentality when media companies downsized and went with cheaper, inexperienced journalists and editors. A great deal of the industrial knowledge accumulated by veterans was never appropriately passed on to the new generation. Also: Too many journalist see themselves as personalities and brands because of the potential financial benefit outside of the newsroom. This has been exacerbated by social media influencer culture. It is hard to be impartial when you insert yourself into the story. That said, there are good journalists out there who are not looking to do anything other than report on interesting and important matters. Unfortunately in the current media landscape, it can be very tough to filter signal from all the noise. * not a political statement; simply an observation on how, regardless of leanings, media corporations exploited high ratings.