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> It teaches about how to tell journalism apart from other kinds of information, like entertainment and opinion; the hallmarks of good reporting, like transpare

> It teaches about how to tell journalism apart from other kinds of information, like entertainment and opinion; the hallmarks of good reporting, like transparency; discerning assertion from verification, and evidence from inference; the idea of seeking out multiple sources and how to reconcile them, etc. It's more a toolbox of how to inform oneself, regardless of any specific source. Provided it can stick to that, I'm all for it. But the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years, particularly at universities, so I understand why people are skeptical/concerned. One also wonders what's going on in journalism programs around the country that is allowing for so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"?

wolverine876 5y ago
> But the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years, particularly at universities, so I understand why people are skeptical/concerned. What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. They do delegitimize one institution after another: Journalism, education, government, etc. - these are the big ones. > so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? If you are talking about opinion columns/segments, I agree it's there. But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME.
- slibhb 5y ago
  > What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. They do delegitimize one institution after another: Journalism, education, government, etc. - these are the big ones. > But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME. Your attitude is exactly why so many posters here are skeptical of the idea of "News Literacy". Whatever right-wingers are saying, there are good reasons to distrust institutions, including journalistic ones. Any genuine "News Literacy" course will end up teaching radical skepticism. It certainly won't teach fealty to the noble and honorable professional journalists, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    Can we think subtly enough to find ground between "fealty" and deligitimization?
    - slibhb 5y ago
      You don't seem to be able to: > Most straight news from major sources is impressively straight
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I am totally adopting "radical skepticism" as a summary of my personal beliefs. Good phrase!
- hn8788 5y ago
  You don't have to "what if" it, people have already looked into it. In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been.
  - tstrimple 5y ago
    What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if global warming is real and a real threat and being caused by human activity? What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? What if abstinence only education really does lead to more pregnancies and abortions? What if LGBT people really should be able to get married? What if running around encouraging other people not to get vaccinated and take basic precautions to prevent the spread of a pandemic really does lead to more infections and deaths? There's not a both sides to every story. Sometimes people and groups are simply wrong. That or there really is a global conspiracy between doctors, professors, journalists and corporate PR departments specifically to spread lies about conservatives...
    - janeroe 5y ago
      > What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if it's not? > What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? If only we had some kind of experiments in the 20th century that showed what systems lead to impoverishment and hunger. Or better yet two centuries of scientific inquiries and refutations of crank economics on logical grounds. Like you know, Marxism, whose incoherency is shown by left, right, and center authors alike. Or imagine, we knew MMT is neither a theory nor modern but a reincarnation of some disproved ideas of old.
      - tstrimple 5y ago
        Here's study analyzing 20 years of tax cuts and is pretty conclusive in that they never pay for themselves. https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves I guess this is part of the "Marxist" academia that can't be trusted because they just have it out for conservative thought?
- fallingknife 5y ago
  I don't need propagandists to delegitimize those institutions. My personal experiences dealing with them will do just fine.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- forz877 5y ago
  The propagandists ARE portraying it that way. ignore your doctors, they're paid by big pharma, don't get vaccinated. ignore the historians, the holocaust never happened. ignore climatologists, physicists, chemists, global warming isn't real, keep buying expensive items, it's FREEDOM.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I think there is far-right-wing propaganda like you're describing, but that doesn't explain why moderate liberals feel like the media is strongly biased in favor of the progressive left. Of course, many on the progressive left think that moderate liberals are holocaust/climate-change deniers, so this may not be very compelling to them.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > moderate liberals feel like the media is strongly biased in favor of the progressive left I haven't heard that. Do you know any research on it (edit: I understand if not)? IME moderate liberals just adopt a position between the left and right, regardless of the positions. It's navigation, not opinion. The progressive left thinks the NYT, for example, is conservative and corporate.
- JamesBarney 5y ago
  Journalism is changing. And to pretend like it's not is adding fuel to the fire. Younger journalists are less likely to see their job as being a neutral arbiter of truth and more likely to see themselves as part of the culture war. I'm a liberal but just as the ACLU is not the same organization it was 20 years ago, neither is The Gray Lady.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I think we're also increasingly seeing journalistic "power" consolidating on the coasts, in the bluest of blue districts (of course the most prestigious newspapers have always been coastal, but they've grown in prevalence while regional newspapers have fallen). This means that journalists for the largest publications are overwhelmingly far more left-wing than the rest of the country.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      > I think we're also increasingly seeing journalistic "power" consolidating on the coasts It's just the Northeast of the US: NYT, WSJ, Washington Post; and of course NY is the center of journalism (as with many things), and Washington and NY are the leading centers of power and therefore news. There are no equivalent west coast or southeast news sources. However, don't forget that the largest 'publication', or publisher, is Murdoch: Fox, Wall Street Journal, etc. And that is right-wing and the most biased. The influence of the coasts has been remarked on for a long time, but I think with the Internet it's actually a much improved situation: People easily get news from all over the country and the world. Everyone can read the BBC and much more (including Russian sources, without even knowing it! :) ), and they also get their news, for good or ill, from random people worldwide! :P > journalists for the largest publications are overwhelmingly far more left-wing than the rest of the country That assumes the personal political beliefs have a large effect on their jobs.
    - elliekelly 5y ago
      Have you read the WSJ lately? They’re a prestigious paper in a “blue” coastal city and they’re definitely not what I would call left wing.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  > What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. I'm sure some are, but in many cases they aren't. First of all, it's obvious to anyone observing from the outside, even absent propaganda. But it doesn't suffice to trust our intuition, so we can look to organizations like Heterodox Academy whose members are ideologically diverse academics that support their positions with empirical research. Beyond that, we can do our own homework--look at the ideological composition of the media, academy, etc. If they're growing more ideologically homogeneous over time (they are) it supports the idea that these institutions really are becoming more partisan rather than "it's just Fox News making you believe they are more partisan" (as though moderate liberals put much stock in Fox News). > But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME. Perhaps insofar as "most straight news" isn't political, but IME most political coverage is highly partisan (I don't know how anyone can argue the contrary with a straight face following last year's BLM coverage). To be clear, I'm a moderate liberal and I find the media coverage to be very biased as do many other liberals that I know, and of course the conservatives--really the only people who think the media is on the right course are the left-most ~10% IME. Note also that a supermajority of national journalists live in the left-most of left-wing strongholds, so I really don't think it's a case of "90% are wrong about media bias".
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > Perhaps insofar as "most straight news" isn't political, but IME most political coverage is highly partisan (I don't know how anyone can argue the contrary with a straight face following last year's BLM coverage). To be clear, I'm a moderate liberal and I find the media coverage to be very biased as do many other liberals that I know A quick point: You'll recall Trump got incredible amounts of coverage from the major news outlets. But here is my hypothesis from a former 'moderate liberal', but not a partisan: * The neo-reactionaries (the extreme reactionary conservatism that now dominates the GOP and right wing) politicize everything, especially anything having to do with racism. * 'Moderate liberals' are defined most by 'moderate', not belief: They chose their positions by looking for a spot between current left and right, regardless of where those two are, where they can sound reasonable to all. It isn't dependent on values or beliefs, so as the conservatives shift far to the right, they moderates navigate to the right to some degree, to stay between their shoals (moderates of the 1990s, I think, would nearly be progressives now in many ways). Why? In MLK's 'Letter from a Birmingham jail', he says his biggest obstacle is white moderates who want peace over justice. Absolutely read it - it says it far better than I do - and I believe he has it exactly right. They hate progressives because progressives bring what moderates hate most - tension, conflict. These days, where the conservatives have adopted a hyper-aggressive position, the 'safe' response is to not support it, but to not confront it and provoke them - that brings conflict. It's like telling people not to stand up to the bully because it might provoke them - just keep your head down, about racism, about climate change, etc. I used to be a moderate. Then I realized: How could I keep head down about racism, about climate change, etc? Why was I doing it? I knew speaking up would alienate many people I know, I would be beyond the pale, which happened - I think that corroborates my hypothesis. More important than their relationship with me, than the truth of these issues, was their moderation; I violated their norms. But once you shake loose from the moderate mental shackles it's actually quite clear. There's not much question of the issues. I'm not really progressive; I don't read the dogma or follow a cause; but you can't really argue with their positions.
- rayiner 5y ago
  Go back and compare CNN reporting from today to the 1980s. And even the straight news is extremely partisan in story selection: compare the coverage of De Santis to Cuomo in 2020.[1] Plus, fully half the content on CNN (and 80% on MSNBC) is opinion. I’m not a partisan. I spent most of my life as a registered Democrat and read the NYT every day as recently as 2012-2013. But wokeness has definitely taken over and the pretense of objectivity has been abandoned entirely. [1] Other good examples: the “Asian hate crime” stuff. It was wall-to-wall “cultural studies” professors blaming “white supremacy” on CNN for weeks. As a card carrying asian it actually caused me to have a bit of an episode where I was questioning my own grip with reality. I literally reached out to Asians I know in NYC to be like “wait, you think this is mainly about homeless people and you want more police, right?” Like if you had just watched CNN coverage you wouldn’t even understand the forces (crime) that led to Eric Adams overwhelmingly winning the democratic nomination in NYC.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    There was a quip that the key innovation of Fox News was to blur distinction between its news and opinion segments. Fox News news was traditionally (and still is, from what I can tell) actual news. What's not declared is the transition from a "news" segment to an "opinion" segment. People who weren't around forget than CNN up until ~1995 was literally just news, 24/7. Here's what's happening in the world. Once Fox News launched and trends became clear, all 24/7 news channels switched to a blend of news and commentary. Because that's what the market preferred.
    - betwixthewires 5y ago
      I don't think it's simply about what the market wants. If it were, you wouldn't have the majority of opinion-masquerading-as-news channels with a similar politic bent, you'd have it about down the middle, just like the consumers in the market itself. I think the move to opinion is more about influencing decisions of the viewership than giving them what they want. Fox started it right around 9/11 as an approach to drum up support for war, and it worked, and the rest saw how effective that was and adopted it cautiously, of course the common thread and my implication is that there are agendas that they all have that this approach helps them achieve better than just delivering information would.
platz 5y ago
whats your solution
IIAOPSW 5y ago
>what's going on in journalism programs around the country that is allowing for so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? It takes two to tango. People get propagandist content because they willingly consume propagandist content. They like it. If people really wanted to be informed, they would watch C-Span all the time and the usual networks would be relegated to niche interest.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  C-Span makes my brain cry. In the words of Obama (paraphrased from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee), when asked about how smart people in Congress are: 'You've got good people on both sides. You've got a lot of foolish people, but you've got some smart folks too.' ... Unfortunately, everyone gets equal time to speak.
- acituan 5y ago
  > People get propagandist content because they willingly consume propagandist content. They like it. More like that content creates engagement and ad money, and people respond to it even though they feel worse. (Not exclusive to news, social media too) By the way people also like hyper-palatable processed food and that doesn’t mean we get to ignore the material consequences of the obesity epidemic.
pm90 5y ago
To not trust in the objectivity of most US universities is a huge mistake. While the staff may have political inclinations, the majority of US universities are operated professionally.
heresie-dabord 5y ago
> the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years To an outside observer of US discourse, the phenomenon appears to be market segmentation and control, not really "ideology". As former president Trump (a person who says whatever he pleases, without consistent principles) said when Fox failed him, "you have forgotten the golden goose." https://nationalpost.com/news/world/they-forgot-the-golden-goose-trump-attacks-fox-news-for-election-betrayal https://nationalpost.com/news/world/they-forgot-the-golden-g...
WhompingWindows 5y ago
There's always been propagandistic journalism, since colonial times there were multiple newspapers and pamphlets with highly biased information. The question is, do we throw up our hands and say education is politicized, we can't do anything? Or do we try our best to teach news literacy, knowing like English or History class, it'll be infused with the personal views of the teacher. In my view, you see 20-30% of Americans won't take the vaccine that is patently obviously far better than catching COVID. This is a massive self-inflicted wound due to the misinformation and disinformation of bad actors, charlatans, and Russian agents. Even with a non-objective teacher, we NEED to give space for debate and discussion on news sources, otherwise we will continue to allow our "freedom" to consume garbage content to overpower our education to process that content. I'm all for freedom of speech, but we should pair that with robust education on information diets, biases, logical fallacies, lying, etc. The fact that still, 60% are educated on vaccines and trust doctors, that is a hopeful sign, that in future generations we can banish this ridiculous anti-expertise narrative rampant on the political extremes.
BeFlatXIII 5y ago
> One also wonders what's going on in journalism programs around the country that is allowing for so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? Is it coming from the universities directly or is it reality shock on the j-school graduate’s first job where they learn that pushin leg narratives is the only way to earn a salary?

wolverine876 5y ago

> But the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years, particularly at universities, so I understand why people are skeptical/concerned. What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. They do delegitimize one institution after another: Journalism, education, government, etc. - these are the big ones. > so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? If you are talking about opinion columns/segments, I agree it's there. But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME.

slibhb 5y ago
> What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. They do delegitimize one institution after another: Journalism, education, government, etc. - these are the big ones. > But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME. Your attitude is exactly why so many posters here are skeptical of the idea of "News Literacy". Whatever right-wingers are saying, there are good reasons to distrust institutions, including journalistic ones. Any genuine "News Literacy" course will end up teaching radical skepticism. It certainly won't teach fealty to the noble and honorable professional journalists, which is what you seem to be suggesting.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Can we think subtly enough to find ground between "fealty" and deligitimization?
  - slibhb 5y ago
    You don't seem to be able to: > Most straight news from major sources is impressively straight
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I am totally adopting "radical skepticism" as a summary of my personal beliefs. Good phrase!
hn8788 5y ago
You don't have to "what if" it, people have already looked into it. In "The Coddling of the American Mind" they cite studies showing that universities are more left-leaning than they've ever been.
- tstrimple 5y ago
  What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if global warming is real and a real threat and being caused by human activity? What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? What if abstinence only education really does lead to more pregnancies and abortions? What if LGBT people really should be able to get married? What if running around encouraging other people not to get vaccinated and take basic precautions to prevent the spread of a pandemic really does lead to more infections and deaths? There's not a both sides to every story. Sometimes people and groups are simply wrong. That or there really is a global conspiracy between doctors, professors, journalists and corporate PR departments specifically to spread lies about conservatives...
  - janeroe 5y ago
    > What if that's because "right-leaning" information is truly wrong? What if it's not? > What if cutting taxes doesn't pay for itself? If only we had some kind of experiments in the 20th century that showed what systems lead to impoverishment and hunger. Or better yet two centuries of scientific inquiries and refutations of crank economics on logical grounds. Like you know, Marxism, whose incoherency is shown by left, right, and center authors alike. Or imagine, we knew MMT is neither a theory nor modern but a reincarnation of some disproved ideas of old.
    - tstrimple 5y ago
      Here's study analyzing 20 years of tax cuts and is pretty conclusive in that they never pay for themselves. https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves https://www.crfb.org/papers/tax-cuts-dont-pay-themselves I guess this is part of the "Marxist" academia that can't be trusted because they just have it out for conservative thought?
fallingknife 5y ago
I don't need propagandists to delegitimize those institutions. My personal experiences dealing with them will do just fine.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
forz877 5y ago
The propagandists ARE portraying it that way. ignore your doctors, they're paid by big pharma, don't get vaccinated. ignore the historians, the holocaust never happened. ignore climatologists, physicists, chemists, global warming isn't real, keep buying expensive items, it's FREEDOM.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I think there is far-right-wing propaganda like you're describing, but that doesn't explain why moderate liberals feel like the media is strongly biased in favor of the progressive left. Of course, many on the progressive left think that moderate liberals are holocaust/climate-change deniers, so this may not be very compelling to them.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > moderate liberals feel like the media is strongly biased in favor of the progressive left I haven't heard that. Do you know any research on it (edit: I understand if not)? IME moderate liberals just adopt a position between the left and right, regardless of the positions. It's navigation, not opinion. The progressive left thinks the NYT, for example, is conservative and corporate.
JamesBarney 5y ago
Journalism is changing. And to pretend like it's not is adding fuel to the fire. Younger journalists are less likely to see their job as being a neutral arbiter of truth and more likely to see themselves as part of the culture war. I'm a liberal but just as the ACLU is not the same organization it was 20 years ago, neither is The Gray Lady.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I think we're also increasingly seeing journalistic "power" consolidating on the coasts, in the bluest of blue districts (of course the most prestigious newspapers have always been coastal, but they've grown in prevalence while regional newspapers have fallen). This means that journalists for the largest publications are overwhelmingly far more left-wing than the rest of the country.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    > I think we're also increasingly seeing journalistic "power" consolidating on the coasts It's just the Northeast of the US: NYT, WSJ, Washington Post; and of course NY is the center of journalism (as with many things), and Washington and NY are the leading centers of power and therefore news. There are no equivalent west coast or southeast news sources. However, don't forget that the largest 'publication', or publisher, is Murdoch: Fox, Wall Street Journal, etc. And that is right-wing and the most biased. The influence of the coasts has been remarked on for a long time, but I think with the Internet it's actually a much improved situation: People easily get news from all over the country and the world. Everyone can read the BBC and much more (including Russian sources, without even knowing it! :) ), and they also get their news, for good or ill, from random people worldwide! :P > journalists for the largest publications are overwhelmingly far more left-wing than the rest of the country That assumes the personal political beliefs have a large effect on their jobs.
  - elliekelly 5y ago
    Have you read the WSJ lately? They’re a prestigious paper in a “blue” coastal city and they’re definitely not what I would call left wing.
throwaway894345 5y ago
> What if the propagandists are portraying it that way, in order to create that skepticism/concern. I'm sure some are, but in many cases they aren't. First of all, it's obvious to anyone observing from the outside, even absent propaganda. But it doesn't suffice to trust our intuition, so we can look to organizations like Heterodox Academy whose members are ideologically diverse academics that support their positions with empirical research. Beyond that, we can do our own homework--look at the ideological composition of the media, academy, etc. If they're growing more ideologically homogeneous over time (they are) it supports the idea that these institutions really are becoming more partisan rather than "it's just Fox News making you believe they are more partisan" (as though moderate liberals put much stock in Fox News). > But most straight news from major sources is impressively straight, IME. Perhaps insofar as "most straight news" isn't political, but IME most political coverage is highly partisan (I don't know how anyone can argue the contrary with a straight face following last year's BLM coverage). To be clear, I'm a moderate liberal and I find the media coverage to be very biased as do many other liberals that I know, and of course the conservatives--really the only people who think the media is on the right course are the left-most ~10% IME. Note also that a supermajority of national journalists live in the left-most of left-wing strongholds, so I really don't think it's a case of "90% are wrong about media bias".
- wolverine876 5y ago
  > Perhaps insofar as "most straight news" isn't political, but IME most political coverage is highly partisan (I don't know how anyone can argue the contrary with a straight face following last year's BLM coverage). To be clear, I'm a moderate liberal and I find the media coverage to be very biased as do many other liberals that I know A quick point: You'll recall Trump got incredible amounts of coverage from the major news outlets. But here is my hypothesis from a former 'moderate liberal', but not a partisan: * The neo-reactionaries (the extreme reactionary conservatism that now dominates the GOP and right wing) politicize everything, especially anything having to do with racism. * 'Moderate liberals' are defined most by 'moderate', not belief: They chose their positions by looking for a spot between current left and right, regardless of where those two are, where they can sound reasonable to all. It isn't dependent on values or beliefs, so as the conservatives shift far to the right, they moderates navigate to the right to some degree, to stay between their shoals (moderates of the 1990s, I think, would nearly be progressives now in many ways). Why? In MLK's 'Letter from a Birmingham jail', he says his biggest obstacle is white moderates who want peace over justice. Absolutely read it - it says it far better than I do - and I believe he has it exactly right. They hate progressives because progressives bring what moderates hate most - tension, conflict. These days, where the conservatives have adopted a hyper-aggressive position, the 'safe' response is to not support it, but to not confront it and provoke them - that brings conflict. It's like telling people not to stand up to the bully because it might provoke them - just keep your head down, about racism, about climate change, etc. I used to be a moderate. Then I realized: How could I keep head down about racism, about climate change, etc? Why was I doing it? I knew speaking up would alienate many people I know, I would be beyond the pale, which happened - I think that corroborates my hypothesis. More important than their relationship with me, than the truth of these issues, was their moderation; I violated their norms. But once you shake loose from the moderate mental shackles it's actually quite clear. There's not much question of the issues. I'm not really progressive; I don't read the dogma or follow a cause; but you can't really argue with their positions.
rayiner 5y ago
Go back and compare CNN reporting from today to the 1980s. And even the straight news is extremely partisan in story selection: compare the coverage of De Santis to Cuomo in 2020.[1] Plus, fully half the content on CNN (and 80% on MSNBC) is opinion. I’m not a partisan. I spent most of my life as a registered Democrat and read the NYT every day as recently as 2012-2013. But wokeness has definitely taken over and the pretense of objectivity has been abandoned entirely. [1] Other good examples: the “Asian hate crime” stuff. It was wall-to-wall “cultural studies” professors blaming “white supremacy” on CNN for weeks. As a card carrying asian it actually caused me to have a bit of an episode where I was questioning my own grip with reality. I literally reached out to Asians I know in NYC to be like “wait, you think this is mainly about homeless people and you want more police, right?” Like if you had just watched CNN coverage you wouldn’t even understand the forces (crime) that led to Eric Adams overwhelmingly winning the democratic nomination in NYC.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  There was a quip that the key innovation of Fox News was to blur distinction between its news and opinion segments. Fox News news was traditionally (and still is, from what I can tell) actual news. What's not declared is the transition from a "news" segment to an "opinion" segment. People who weren't around forget than CNN up until ~1995 was literally just news, 24/7. Here's what's happening in the world. Once Fox News launched and trends became clear, all 24/7 news channels switched to a blend of news and commentary. Because that's what the market preferred.
  - betwixthewires 5y ago
    I don't think it's simply about what the market wants. If it were, you wouldn't have the majority of opinion-masquerading-as-news channels with a similar politic bent, you'd have it about down the middle, just like the consumers in the market itself. I think the move to opinion is more about influencing decisions of the viewership than giving them what they want. Fox started it right around 9/11 as an approach to drum up support for war, and it worked, and the rest saw how effective that was and adopted it cautiously, of course the common thread and my implication is that there are agendas that they all have that this approach helps them achieve better than just delivering information would.

platz 5y ago

whats your solution

IIAOPSW 5y ago

>what's going on in journalism programs around the country that is allowing for so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? It takes two to tango. People get propagandist content because they willingly consume propagandist content. They like it. If people really wanted to be informed, they would watch C-Span all the time and the usual networks would be relegated to niche interest.

ethbr0 5y ago
C-Span makes my brain cry. In the words of Obama (paraphrased from Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee), when asked about how smart people in Congress are: 'You've got good people on both sides. You've got a lot of foolish people, but you've got some smart folks too.' ... Unfortunately, everyone gets equal time to speak.
acituan 5y ago
> People get propagandist content because they willingly consume propagandist content. They like it. More like that content creates engagement and ad money, and people respond to it even though they feel worse. (Not exclusive to news, social media too) By the way people also like hyper-palatable processed food and that doesn’t mean we get to ignore the material consequences of the obesity epidemic.

pm90 5y ago

To not trust in the objectivity of most US universities is a huge mistake. While the staff may have political inclinations, the majority of US universities are operated professionally.

heresie-dabord 5y ago

> the landscape has become a lot more partisan/ideological in the last 10 years To an outside observer of US discourse, the phenomenon appears to be market segmentation and control, not really "ideology". As former president Trump (a person who says whatever he pleases, without consistent principles) said when Fox failed him, "you have forgotten the golden goose." https://nationalpost.com/news/world/they-forgot-the-golden-goose-trump-attacks-fox-news-for-election-betrayal https://nationalpost.com/news/world/they-forgot-the-golden-g...

WhompingWindows 5y ago

There's always been propagandistic journalism, since colonial times there were multiple newspapers and pamphlets with highly biased information. The question is, do we throw up our hands and say education is politicized, we can't do anything? Or do we try our best to teach news literacy, knowing like English or History class, it'll be infused with the personal views of the teacher. In my view, you see 20-30% of Americans won't take the vaccine that is patently obviously far better than catching COVID. This is a massive self-inflicted wound due to the misinformation and disinformation of bad actors, charlatans, and Russian agents. Even with a non-objective teacher, we NEED to give space for debate and discussion on news sources, otherwise we will continue to allow our "freedom" to consume garbage content to overpower our education to process that content. I'm all for freedom of speech, but we should pair that with robust education on information diets, biases, logical fallacies, lying, etc. The fact that still, 60% are educated on vaccines and trust doctors, that is a hopeful sign, that in future generations we can banish this ridiculous anti-expertise narrative rampant on the political extremes.

BeFlatXIII 5y ago

> One also wonders what's going on in journalism programs around the country that is allowing for so much unabashedly propagandist content to be pushed out under the guise of "journalism"? Is it coming from the universities directly or is it reality shock on the j-school graduate’s first job where they learn that pushin leg narratives is the only way to earn a salary?