10 ms·

Media trust hits new low

• egberts1 5y ago
  That includes Axios as well.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• web-cowboy 5y ago
  Anyone know of efforts to fix this space? Looking for a good excuse to quit my well paid corporate job and make a difference. News today is: - Infotainment - Tribal reinforcement - Irrelevant - Not actionable (and thus, depressing) - Making people think the world is getting worse - Immediate and not well thought out or nuanced In some ways it's their fault, but on the other hand, the modern reader won't pay for news. Maybe it's largely a business model problem? It's literally killing people and needs to be disrupted, fixed.
  • 30kppldievryday 5y ago
    Is this satire?
  • llacb47 5y ago
    Your impression of "news today" lacks nuance and does not give me confidence in your ability to "make a difference" in the journalism industry.
    • zepto 5y ago
      Seems pretty accurate to me. What part did you disagree with?
  • fragileone 5y ago
    Exploiting psychology on a mass scale like this means that the only solution will be government regulation.
  • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    I don't have an answer but these two YouTube channels look like what I hope the answer looks like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_42LVirfNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_42LVirfNI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXIxhF21qO4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXIxhF21qO4
  • jari_mustonen 5y ago
    I think is up to personal choices: • Quit subscribing corporate media and subscribe to single reporters that are doing real reporting. • Have zero tolerance for news that mislead you. ”Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.” • Try to find reporters that are willing to give you the honest cotext even if it goes against what you expect and does not affirm your believes. If enough people do this, those lying and misleading for profit will go out of business.
    • chrisseaton 5y ago
      But single reporters seem even more aggressively partisan than corporate. They're often at least fairly explicit about this though - billing themselves as a journalist of the left or of the right or whatever spectrum you want - but there's still no balance.
      • ur-whale 5y ago
        Corporate news aren't partisan. Unless you count chasing the bottom line as an ideology, that is. Fox, to take an extreme examples, isn't really partisan. They have just found a juicy business model where they've learnt to titillate the sensitivities of a certain segment of the population to maximize revenue. I don't have problem with a biased news source, as long as I have enough news sources to dig from and can average out the bias from multiple sources.
        • MattGaiser 5y ago
          >Fox, to take an extreme examples, isn't really partisan. They have just found a juicy business model where they've learnt to titillate the sensitivities of a certain segment of the population to maximize revenue. That just describes their motivations as not being partisan. Their product is still highly partisan.
          • ur-whale 5y ago
            > Their product is still highly partisan. Fair enough, but they're not really a news source.
  • GCA10 5y ago
    I've been impressed with what News Literacy Project is doing, particularly in terms of helping high school students recognize the hallmarks of carefully researched material vs. the opposite. https://newslit.org/ https://newslit.org/
  • hguant 5y ago
    I think one of the foremost solutions to this problem set is Substack. There are a non-trivial number of journalists on there who's pitch is "hey, I don't want to be part of an institution that has bias/that I don't believe in, give me money and I'll deliver long form 'pure' essays to you." The potential pitfall is that one can end up only subscribing to journalists that agree with ones point of view. I personally think this is offset by the kinds of view points that are attracted to or do well on a space like Substack, but that might just be me.
  • telesilla 5y ago
    Some very important work happening at the centre for investigative journalism, there are opportunities to help for example developing programs to teach digital safety to journalists and sources. https://tcij.org https://tcij.org
  • andyxor 5y ago
    create a better alternative to Parler, more robust against de-platforming by Bigtech, half the country will thank you
• chrisseaton 5y ago
  This article doesn't even remotely go where you think it would if you're going off the headline and your preconceptions. Ends up as > CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure. Who's trusting most CEOs? Being charitable, I guess people are trusting people who are actually able to put money into their hands and food on their table, rather than people who make promises or give abstract benefits or who take money from them?
  • zepto 5y ago
    Even if people do trust CEOs, there is no actionable request here. There is no explanation given for why trust is diminishing or what CEOs are supposed to do to fix it. As far as I can see the problem is that media really has always been ideologically biased, but the advent of social media and the ease of getting news online has made this obvious. We can’t ‘fix’ the problem because it’s not broken. The only solution is a kind of upgrade that current media organizations simply aren’t built to deliver.
  • GCA10 5y ago
    Bear in mind this article's primary source (data, interpretation, calls to action, etc.) is Edelman, a global PR firm. Quoting from the tagline on Edelman's own website, its mission is to "partner with businesses and organizations to evolve, promote and protect their brands and reputations. " The survey data itself sounds plausible, and I've got no immediate reason to question the numbers. But when it comes to interpretation and next steps, Edelman very much has a point of view that predates whatever the data has found.
    • binarray2000 5y ago
      Food catch. In other words: This article itself contributes more to increase mistrust in the media than it increases the trust in the media. Especially considering this quote from the article: Axios has a stated mission to "help restore trust in fact-based news".
  • 5y ago
• wyager 5y ago
  > Faith in society's central institutions, especially in government and the media, is the glue that holds society together. Perhaps people are starting to think that having media as a “central institution” is not actually good for society.
  • BuyMyBitcoins 5y ago
    “Journalism is essential to Democracy! Trust us, we tell you the truth and you need us. ” -Journalists. Even George Washington had trouble with the press and lamented how often he was maligned and misrepresented in the papers. “He regarded the press as a disuniting, "diabolical" force of falsehoods, sentiments that he expressed in his Farewell Address.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington and the citation is from a book.
    • p1necone 5y ago
      I'm not sure how you can have a healthy democracy without an informed populace (i.e. journalism).
      • LAC-Tech 5y ago
        I'm struggling to draw a link between journalism and the population being informed.
        • p1necone 5y ago
          Edgy. What's your alternative?
          • LAC-Tech 5y ago
            A well balanced diet. A knowledge of history, unedited video footage of actual events, common sense, scepticism (of everyone, not just the 'enemy'). I've talked to reasonably intelligent programmers who got upset at a politicians speech they'd never heard. All they did was read a paraphrase of it from their favourite media outlet (who happened to be ill-disposed towards said politician). A lot of the `events` of 2020-2021 were captured on unedited video. Few people I've talked to bothered to watch it. They relied on journalists. Didn't stop them forming a strong opinion though. And without a knowledge of history (and mine is admittedly basic), you have zero context.
• frogpelt 5y ago
  At the bottom of this rundown there is a "Bottom line: CEOs have long put themselves forward as the people able to upgrade America's physical infrastructure. Now it's time for them to use the trust they've built up to help rebuild our civic infrastructure." It's just one line but they've spent the whole post talking about how media is not trusted and then end it with a clearly opinionated bottom line. How does this help?
• zepto 5y ago
  > How it works: Media outlets can continue to report reliable facts, but that won't turn the trend around on its own. What's needed is for trusted institutions to visibly embrace the news media. This is an extremely weird and disturbing conclusion. Orwellian even. What’s needed is for news organizations to not only report facts, but stop telling stories in ways that only benefit their own ideological systems. That’s unlikely to happen with existing brands that have effectively now chosen a side, because they have cultivated an audience that now expects them to keep delivering. It might happen with something new.
  • i5heu 5y ago
    It is not Orwellian. It is a net of trust.
    • zepto 5y ago
      It seems Orwellian to me to have CEOs in general in some arrangement to lend trust to the media. The incentives for any kind of accountability would seem to be even worse than they are today. What do you mean by a ‘net of trust’?
      • Natsu 5y ago
        I know how to fix this. Whenever you get a survey on this, tell them you completely trust them to tell you the truth no matter what. Then the graphs will look great. Problem solved!
      • foerbert 5y ago
        I suspect they are just referring to the basic social fabric, so to speak. If everybody has a variety of mostly trustworthy sources that act as implicit or explicit verifiers of each other, then everybody has a fairly robust ability to gather information about the world - including the trustworthiness of the various parts of their 'net'. This sort of thing seems to have, however, somewhat broken down in recently years. At a minimum I think most people would say these networks are at least smaller and more insular than they were in the past. If it's all in good faith, this might not be so terrible. If the aforementioned trusted CEOs faithfully and accurately are able to point out media they believe is trustworthy and keep an eye on those outlets, it could potentially work as a way to kick start the rejuvenation of these networks. Now, this relies on these CEOs being both trusted and trustworthy. That is a fairly substantial assumption in my opinion. But if it's all in good faith it's possible to read this as not Orwellian at all, but rather more informing a section of the community that there is something they can do for the community, and then asking them to do it.
• citrus1330 5y ago
  So their solution to the declining trust in government and media is to leverage the trust that employees still have in their CEOs. If they can convince CEOs to push their false narratives, then trust will evaporate there as well. How about instead: be more trustworthy.
  • polynomial 5y ago
    TIL people trust their CEOs.
  • beej71 5y ago
    "Be more trustworthy" isn't a particularly simple notion. What could CNN or Fox do to do that?
    • hef19898 5y ago
      Stopping to treat politics like entertainment and actively spreading false facts would be a good start, IMHO. Not that I expect any of that so. Same goes for other countries, maybe a tad less extreme.
      • beej71 5y ago
        I agree with you on the entertainment aspect. What's an example of a false fact that's been reported? All the major news players are really careful on this front. They'll report accurately that someone said something that was false, for example.
• e67f70028a46fba 5y ago
  People have lost trust in the media. Let’s trick them by having completely out of touch CEOs talk it up. Perfection.
  • pope_meat 5y ago
    I audibly exclaimed "what the actual fuck?!" when I reached that part of the article. We're in quite a pickle, and I don't know what to do, but I now know to be extremely suspect of axios.
• anovikov 5y ago
  Why should MASS media be trusted? They exist to make money and they are free to use. How in the world they can be anything but a manipulation (which includes but not limited to, just simply a distraction)? If you need real news, use Bloomberg, AP, Reuters... Yeah that's $1500 per month, and even more importantly, they are too boring to read for an average person, so they wouldn't be popular even if they were free. People who make actual decisions based on news, read them, for rest, there is this "newstainment" industry and it's no problem at all if it's not trustworthy.
  • foepys 5y ago
    Your comment makes no sense. On the one hand you blame "MASS media" (whatever that is to you) and on the other you advocate to use AP and Reuters, where most media outlets get large chunks of their news from. AP and Reuters exist so others, often smaller, media companies don't have to do intensive research into everyday news. If something is a target for manipulation, it's AP, Reuters, and similar.
  • robotresearcher 5y ago
    NPR, PBS, BBC, AustralianBC, CanadianBC, etc are not for profit and exist in the public interest. These are an important subset of the mass media in English. We need to make sure these organs hold to the public interest principle, and also that they can maintain reliable funding.
    • BoHerfIIIJrEsq 5y ago
      Well, they're supposed to exist in the public interest, but it seems like it could be true that they're vehemently opposed by at least half of the populations they're supposed to be serving.
      • robotresearcher 5y ago
        So are the COVID vaccines[1]. Lack of universal popularity doesn't make something bad, wrong or unworthy of enthusiastic support. [1] I exaggerate the proportion, but maybe you did too.
• boyadjian 5y ago
  The media’s handling of the Covid crisis has been dismal, no wonder, the public is turning away
• tbrownaw 5y ago
  Um, no. You gain people's trust by being consistently worthy of trust. This article seems to think that trust is it's own fungible but inconvertible substance (the media has lost theirs, so someone else needs to give them some), rather than something that derives from an objective reality.
  • julianapostate 5y ago
    Why don’t people trust the media? Exactly this type of consistent ham fisted reasoning that any intelligent person can see right through which obviously demonstrates an agenda.
    • systemvoltage 5y ago
      Intellectuals already see how news corporations are too busy serving their echo-chambers. Thus, the trust got eroded over the years and it has just gotten worse. In order to be effective news source, you need to separate truth and opinion. Reporting stories even if they're uncomfortable for their own customer base goes directly against their business interest (revenue, clickrate, etc.). So echo chambers get louder. Trust is earned by consistently confronting difficult facts.
  • watwut 5y ago
    > You gain people's trust by being consistently worthy of trust. People trust repeated liers all the time. And truth telling institutions are rarely most trusted popular ones.
    • MattGaiser 5y ago
      Indeed. It seems like the path to getting a lot of people to trust you is to tell lies so big that many can't believe someone would come up with a lie like that.
      • Rerarom 5y ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_lie
• hhs 5y ago
  Pew research breaks it down sharply from 2016 to 2021 by social media, local news, and national news: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/30/partisan-divides-in-media-trust-widen-driven-by-a-decline-among-republicans/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/08/30/partisan-di...
  • LAC-Tech 5y ago
    The last 5 years is a very short time horizon, I'd love to see a longer one.
    • vxNsr 5y ago
      Until 2016 it seems it was assumed and the question wasn’t asked. It was only when the term “fake news” was coined that anyone thought to gauge people’s trust in media.
      • LAC-Tech 5y ago
        I would contend that 2016 was just the first time it manifested itself in a big way, and the sentiment had been building for a long time.
• busymom0 5y ago
  I stopped following corporate news 2 years ago and started paying for independent creators and journalists instead on Substack and Locals. I follow substack, locals and other communities of of Glenn Greenwald, Viva Frei and Robert Barnes, Kim Iverson, Steven Crowder mug club, Jimmy Dore, Matt Taibbi, Aaron Mate, Michael Tracey, Alison Morrow, Sharyl Attkinson.
  • ErikVandeWater 5y ago
    I'll add Stossel to a list of good-to-follows for independent takes. Here's a video of him directly asking politicians at a city council meeting about corruption with a local developer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99IeGqIIHj4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99IeGqIIHj4 They have since approved a project that was competing with the corrupt developer and the corrupt developer is facing federal charges: https://apnews.com/article/f7a7fdb3057548009072601729a2dc2c https://apnews.com/article/f7a7fdb3057548009072601729a2dc2c
    • ur-whale 5y ago
      Thanks for posting this, I had forgotten this video, it's great (he has others that are really worth watching, go watch if you want "my racist bake sale" [1]) Yeah, agree, Stossel is great, and even if heavily biased, he's what journalism should be about: exposing malfeasance. He used to be part of the media establishment, but I guess got cast out when he decided to be an actual journalist. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDVnzQD_FVU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDVnzQD_FVU
  • Cipater 5y ago
    Seems like you have a preference for a particular type of news source. I don't know whether it is better to lean into our political biases or to just not play the game at all.
    • busterarm 5y ago
      Huh? There's clearly content on both the left and the right here. Glenn Greenwald, Aaron Maté, Jimmy Dore, Michael Tracey and Matt Taibbi might not be _your_ left but they are certainly and firmly on the left.
• LAC-Tech 5y ago
  Trust in government is even lower - hovering at around 24%. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust-in-government-1958-2021/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/05/17/public-trust...
  • ur-whale 5y ago
    Not surprising: unlike the press, whose main sin is misleading their audience the US govt as it functions today is both misleading their audience, actively plundering them and mostly wasting the proceeds of said plunder.
  • jay_kyburz 5y ago
    This is the biggest problem of all, and it needs to be tackled before we can build trust in anything else. People need to first take responsibility for the governments they elect. Then they need feel like "We the people" are in charge. Not some nefarious organization that we have no power over. We need smaller, more local, more connected, more transparent governments.
    • luckylion 5y ago
      > We need smaller, more local, more connected, more transparent governments. I couldn't agree more. Unfortunately it seems that power only ever gets more concentrated at a higher level, there's rarely a decentralization of power, so local governments have less and less influence over people's lives and matter less and less.
• oroul 5y ago
  > Reversing the decline is a monster task — and one that some journalists and news organizations have taken upon themselves. They're going to need help — perhaps from America's CEOs. Is this a bad joke? Distrust of media is largely brought about because it is (mostly) in the private sector and therefore always puts the sustainability of its business model above objective reporting. We've known for a while now that negative news sells, clickbait sells, and media organizations are all too happy to push it out there if it helps their struggling bottom line.
  • laurent92 5y ago
    France has a public agency, AFP, being the news arbiter (it’s the Reuters competitor). Yet, information is bullshit. They choose to report on some topics and not others, and they choose to publish extremely biased news without quoting the opposing side to interview their defense. Happens with the wage gap, happens with the Traoré, happens with Sarkozysm, happens with Fillion... It sways elections. Owned 56% by the state.
    • garbagetime 5y ago
      That doesn't rule out public ownership as a necessary condition - only as a sufficient one.
    • tsimionescu 5y ago
      State ownership is just one small step above private ownership. A far more interesting organization would be a news co-op, preferably one not backed by ads. Unfortunately there are massive hurdles in front of such an organization existing. Not least of which, they might actually report things that it does not do to worry the public over.
    • sofixa 5y ago
      > happens with Sarkozysm, happens with Fillion... It sways elections. In which sense did it happen? They didn't report on it or they did without "quoting the opposing side"? Specifically in the case of Fillon, the guy was caught stealing from the state in a pretty obvious manner ( his wife was receiving a salary for being his parliamentary assistant for like 15 years, while never having received a pass to actually get in the parliament). There was little of substance he could say, and when he did say it, it was obviously complete bullshit. Yes, it swayed the elections ( he was the favourite to win) and thankfully, that's not the type of person anyone should want running the country.
• ggm 5y ago
  English language media is dominated by a remarkably small number of organisations.
• mikewarot 5y ago
  Pushing narratives instead of reporting the truth has a corrosive effect on reputation, who knew? ;-) There are many small teams on YouTube and other places that are building up a community of patrons to sponsor their efforts, both in news and other areas. It is through these efforts that I see a replacement for the mass media emerging. Their dedicated non-advertiser driven source of support allows them to take risks that are simply not possible otherwise. They can tell the truth without worry of offending corporate overlords, or other institutions.
  • tgv 5y ago
    At the same time, YouTube has been detrimental to trust, like facebook. It takes paying customers away and at the same time pushes “counter narratives.” I don't see how a bunch of small teams with very limited investigation resources can buck that trend. Even if they’d cooperate, trust in them would depend on the weakest link. Edit: mobile typos
  • t-3 5y ago
    I agree, but I'm concerned that any internet news reporter can be easily shut down or marginalized with little to no recourse. Payment processers are also able blacklist with impunity. A large organization with multiple channels to get their story out would be much more resistant to such attacks.
  • lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    Do you have examples of these teams please?
    • mikewarot 5y ago
      Wow this list got long... sorry Beau of the Fifth Column has a pretty interesting take on events, a strong interest in community networks, and deep insight into what holds society together - https://www.youtube.com/c/BeauoftheFifthColumn https://www.youtube.com/c/BeauoftheFifthColumn Breaking Points - Krystal Ball is a liberal, Saagar Enjeti is a conservative, and together they seek to cover the important stories that would otherwise go unnoticed - https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints https://www.youtube.com/c/breakingpoints Knowing Better is an ex soldier who offers long insightful views on a variety of topics - https://www.youtube.com/c/KnowingBetter https://www.youtube.com/c/KnowingBetter Lex Fridman was born in the Soviet Union, worked at MIT in AI, and does interesting interviews with a wide variety of people - https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman https://www.youtube.com/c/lexfridman MKBHD reviews technology in a fairly credible way - https://www.youtube.com/c/mkbhd https://www.youtube.com/c/mkbhd MrPete222 is the shop teacher you never had - fascinating lessons and stories about machining - https://www.youtube.com/c/mrpete222 https://www.youtube.com/c/mrpete222 Phil DeDranco does a daily rundown of the stories that you might get in the media, with a fairly balanced view - https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilipDeFranco https://www.youtube.com/c/PhilipDeFranco Practical Engineering is an explainer channel about most things infrastructure - https://www.youtube.com/c/PracticalEngineeringChannel https://www.youtube.com/c/PracticalEngineeringChannel Rebecca Watson provides a welcome skeptical view and calls out quite a lot of BS related to science - https://www.youtube.com/skepchicks https://www.youtube.com/skepchicks Rebel Wisdom is a project that is actively trying to figure out collective sense making in the modern era - https://www.youtube.com/c/RebelWisdom https://www.youtube.com/c/RebelWisdom Sabine Hossenfelder is a commenter on all things physics - https://www.youtube.com/c/SabineHossenfelder https://www.youtube.com/c/SabineHossenfelder Scott Manley provides commentary on all things space and rocket related - https://www.youtube.com/c/szyzyg https://www.youtube.com/c/szyzyg Smarter Every Day is an engineer who provides interesting explainers about various subjects. He got permission to film and interview inside an active US nuclear attack sub... pretty cool - https://www.youtube.com/c/smartereveryday https://www.youtube.com/c/smartereveryday Technology connections does in depth explainers of everyday stuff you didn't realize you wanted to know more about, like how heat pumps or lanterns work. - https://www.youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections https://www.youtube.com/c/TechnologyConnections Veritasium was founded by Derek Muller, who was looking for more effective ways of teaching, when he found that traditional education has almost zero effect at removing misconceptions - https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasium https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasium ZDogg is an MD who gives strong personal opinions on all things medical - https://www.youtube.com/c/ZDoggMD https://www.youtube.com/c/ZDoggMD Update: I've made public my list of channels I subscribe to on Youtube, for better or worse https://www.youtube.com/user/ka9dgx/channels https://www.youtube.com/user/ka9dgx/channels
• pope_meat 5y ago
  ...who are these people that trust CEOs? How often do you even hear something that comes across as genuine, and not some fluff non-committal bs that says nothing?
• p1necone 5y ago
  Simple solution - look at all the other western democracies that don't have this problem (I really mean have this problem less, obviously there is going to be biased tabloid rags in every country). Coincidentally, this seems to align pretty well with countries that don't have a bunch of media outlets owned by the Murdoch empire... curious.
  • ur-whale 5y ago
    > look at all the other western democracies that don't have this problem Which one is that exactly? The couple of western democracies I am familiar with all have similar problems with their mainstream medias.
    • alkonaut 5y ago
      There are obviously levels of this problem. On the worst level (I hope it's the worst) you have people consuming a completely different reality. I'd argue the US has arrived there. The test for having the problem at this level would be if you could ask a population a question with an objective easily known factual answer and have a significant fraction disagree with the answer because of their news diet. The UK has the problem at a smaller scale. Other western countries have problems with trust in media but I'd argue they don't have the same level of invented reality as the US.
• ur-whale 5y ago
  After decades of mainstream media abusing their position instead of being an actual balancing fourth power, the chicken are coming home to roost. For me the realization that the mainstream media was not fulfilling their role anymore was: - following 9/11, when *none* of the mainstream outlets had the guts to question the decisions to go into Iraq and all aligned to sing 'hail to the chief' in base fear of being called anti-american. - in 2005, when the danish mohamed cartoons crisis came and went and most the American main media cowardly caved in to pressure and refused to publish the cartoons [1] [2] [3] I don't believe there is anything they can do to reverse the trend. And to be honest, I really won't be sad to see them die the horrible death they deserve. What worries me is that we do indeed need some social apparatus than can speak truth to power, and there isn't anything yet that I can see that will provide that: the internet style wannabe replacement (blogs, YT pundits, etc...) are just too diluted for that. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_that_reprinted_Jyllands-Posten%27s_Muhammad_cartoons#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_that_reprin... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cartoons_that_Shook_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cartoons_that_Shook_the_Wo... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_OR3b-97Ds https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_OR3b-97Ds
• msravi 5y ago
  > Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan writes that "our goal should go beyond merely putting truthful information in front of the public. We should also do our best to make sure it’s widely accepted." This attitude here, is a source of the problem by itself. If traditional media outlets would just put truthful information out without trying to get it "accepted," that would go a long way in rebuilding trust. When you are aware of the ground situation and see articles in the Washington Post that are clearly completely false, misleading, and spinning facts with a clear purpose of advancing a narrative, (and trying to be "accepted"? by whom?) that completely destroys any remaining trust that you might have built up over the years.
  • hoffs 5y ago
    No it wouldn't lol, majority of people when given the facts simply refuse them. You have facts about vaccines working yet how many are still refusing them?
    • w-ll 5y ago
      Could that might be caused by one major network gaslighting their viewers for the last 4 years?
      • zo1 5y ago
        Along with the opposing major network for reacting and obviously being biased in order to re-inforce the views that the other network questioned?
• nitwit005 5y ago
  A bizarre take on the media, that somehow transitions into a barely related conclusion about infrastructure. Just seems poorly thought out.
• frankydp 5y ago
  They might start with cutting the opinion section, and go from their.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• peter_retief 5y ago
  I find it strange that anyone still trusts the media.
• hoaidv 5y ago
  Gaining social media trust is the job of media platforms. And what people can do is educating themselves about news literacy, to better get the git out of the opinionated-purposeful-news (and sometime misleading).
• zz865 5y ago
  Misinformation aside, I suspect the media lies and spins things just as much as in the past, its largely through social media that real facts come out to show how the main media is often wrong or misleading. Of course there is way to much rumor and plain wrong stuff on SM too.
• moneytide1 5y ago
  "The natural bodies of administration which are traditionally either elected by people at large or appointed by elected leaders of society are being actively substituted by artificial bodies. Groups of people that nobody elected. As a matter of fact most of the people do not like them at all, yet they exist. One such group is media - who elected them? How come they have so much monopolistic power over your mind? How come they have the nerve to decide what is good or bad for the elected president and his administration? Who are they?... ... Power structure slowly is eroded by groups of people who do not have neither qualifications nor will of people to keep them in power. Yet they do have power." -Yuri Bezmenov, describing how to slowly infiltrate the culture of a targeted society [0] [0] https://youtu.be/Y9TviIuXPSE?t=1003 https://youtu.be/Y9TviIuXPSE?t=1003
  • zo1 5y ago
    What's the story with "Yuri Bezmenov" in general? I'd really like to get a take on him from the HN crowd.
  • sofixa 5y ago
    That's a very naive look. The term Fourth Estate / Power ( after the three executive, judiciary and legislative) traces its origins from 1787: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate Media, since it's mass existence, has always had an outsized, unelected influence. And it has never been a monopoly ( baring wartime censorship and control) because there have always been more than one institutions, which have an interest in competing, at least to some extent.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• acidburnNSA 5y ago
  I have been trying to imagine a kind of template for news commentary that could attempt to award productive discourse. I don't think there's an easy way around it being gamed but it's fun to think about. Something like: * Here are several basic facts * Here is our best interpretation of the facts given the context. * here are interpretations that the other side(s) are putting forth, stated in their strongest form such that they would agree with it as stated * here is our analysis of why those other interpretations are not as strong as our own. You could maybe rank or sort these based on how many 'other siders' agree with (upvote) their presentation of the other side mixed with how much you agree with the basis of their analysis to choose your favorite sources of commentary.
  • laurent92 5y ago
    I remember reading a Singapore newspaper and thinking it was the epitome of a one-sided one-party dictatorsh… democracy. After several articles, I noticed what was wrong with it. Every article was made of the 4 exact parts you quoted, but used in bad faith. Especially “the opposing side, in their strongest argument” all relies on subjective interpretation. Words can always be twisted.
    • acidburnNSA 5y ago
      that why I want the oppositions approval/upvote of the description of their position to be a key part of this.
• chriscjcj 5y ago
  So this is from a very right-wing perspective, but it's a pretty compelling explainer as to why many people have no trust in media... https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1422181544161128450.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1422181544161128450.html
  • lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    I read that (worth it sort of) and there are a few takeaways, but for me the big one is realising that the author seems to think that there is "an answer" out there, that "everyone else" knows it and that he (the author) ought to be told it upfront. And any indication that people change their minds, get things wrong or otherwise screw up is an indication that people are not just lying but hiding the truth. It took a while to realise this. Am glad I read it.
    • endominus 5y ago
      That's not the impression that I got from the thread. Rather, the problem seems to be the aggression and utter certainty that the media assumes when it conveys it's narratives. There is no room for nuance or doubt, no impression of the other side except as racists or impressionable fools. The author's point isn't that the media shouldn't be allowed to change their minds, it's that the media should exhibit even a modicum of accountability, honesty, and humility in it's reporting.
      • lifeisstillgood 5y ago
        And two people take different views from the same source ... that's the problem in a nutshell :-) But yes, I find certainty puts me off. Its the big axiom for every superhero movie out there. (IF we are certain that that guy there is a bad evil person about to do bad evil things then, hell, yes, Hulk can smash, or shoot him with an arrow / laser / Hammer). All good. Any possibility that he is not evil ... or that he has a valid agenda. Well we are back in the real world again.
• ouid 5y ago
  Ban advertising, which is paid lying, and then the trust problems that result from everyone being paid to lie and exclusively being paid to lie will go away.
  • lifeisstillgood 5y ago
    That's quite an interesting idea. I wonder what a social media landscape would look like if we managed to implement UBI. Effectively we would have any number of financially independent news sources and aggregators. This is of course the same thing as "subsidies" but without professional ethics etc. It's going to be interesting looking for a new news model for the coming decades.
  • zepto 5y ago
    The problem will get worse if you ban advertising. The money that went to advertising will just shift to “influencers”, which is even less authentic.
    • ouid 5y ago
      What are you talking about? Influencers are advertising, and are likewise banned.
      • zepto 5y ago
        How would you ban influencers? They are just content creators. Anyone can sponsor their work. I can sponsor an open source project whose work I like. Likewise I can (and have) sponsored musicians. Why couldn’t a corporation sponsor someone who for example makes youtube videos about fashion, or a tech blogger for that matter?
        • ouid 5y ago
          I don't think I would need to work very hard to show that this was paid endorsement.
• beckman466 5y ago
  So you're saying we don't trust the for-profit news companies that spew out 24/7 bullshit onto the working class?
• RedComet 5y ago
  "Qui?!"
• nverno 5y ago
  For me, I 'trust' a news source if it is reporting relevant, interesting or useful information - not a bunch of hyped up garbage. I expect every legitimate news source to be factually correct about events- that doesn't make them trustworthy, however. This article lacks any self-reflection at all. Summary: media good, public bad, trust your ruling elite.
• helsinkiandrew 5y ago
  Edelman, which creates the Trust Barometer, is a public relations firm which has a particular view of the world. It would be interesting to see the full list of questions they asked people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelman_(firm)#Controversies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edelman_(firm)#Controversies I would argue that it's the divisive political environment and style of reporting that Axios does (see below) that creates an "uninformed public" which creates that distrust. Note in places like Finland (where there is more consensus politics and more people read newspapers) media trust has increased https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finland_has_highest_trust_in_news_media_global_study_finds/11994928 https://yle.fi/uutiset/osasto/news/finland_has_highest_trust.... "VandeHei said he wanted Axios to be a "mix between The Economist and Twitter"..."Axios's articles are typically brief and matter-of-fact: most are shorter than 300 words and use bullet points so they are easier to scan" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axios_(website) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axios_(website)
• robotresearcher 5y ago
  We have large businesses professing to be news but utterly lacking in commitment to the truth. Channels prepared to lie knowingly, while insisting everyone else is lying. Even a world where, say, 90% of media is impeccable, but 10% is bullshit, is like a poker game where 10% of the players are shamelessly cheating while loudly telling you the game is rigged. They are correct: they broke the game. It's really, really hard to compete against shameless cheats and liars.
• SnowProblem 5y ago
  For a long time my model of the world assumed a certain level of corruption to exist in the West, but I assumed it was generally local, and that any large-scale corruption would become a national scandal, like the Church Committee, or Watergate. Basically I had expected an equal balance of justice to match the crime. I no longer hold that. There is deep corruption everywhere - through the media, to government, academia, tech, and finance, and seemingly nobody to hold institutions and individuals accountable. Were we expected to just forget Jeffrey Epstein, for example, and all the relationships and lack of investigation? It seems so. You either close your eyes to it, or you're forced down some dark rabbit holes just to form a cohesive worldview. The few beacons of light today are now all brave individuals - podcasters, twitter accounts, leakers, writers - and their very existence feels fragile. So this article strikes me as extremely shallow. We're not operating in business-as-usual, where just a few tweaks and the metrics will look good again.
  • mikedilger 5y ago
    Well said. Deep corruption everywhere and it is spreading. I think empires in decline are unavoidably this way. I think this Ivermectin debate has nothing to do with Ivermectin, but about big pharma attempting to usurp power via several government agencies who also want power as they are now being put in charge of things they were never designed for and are not well constituted to handle (things your doctor should be in charge of). I think this Afghanistan withdrawal was intentionally botched in order to try to get American support for going back in, by sick-minded money-hungry monsters. You have to listen to many people and then figure out who you trust and on what topics. The most trustworthy and intelligent voices are podcasters. But each has their failings and none should be held up on a pedestal. I trust Glenn Greenwald, but not on topics regarding Socialism. I trust Bret Weinstein, but I don't trust his judgement of other people (he seems far too forgiving and trusting of others) [I took the vaccine and don't take Ivermectin]. Those are just examples.
• kristopolous 5y ago
  There's been a 30 year propaganda campaign to slander everything that isn't far right propaganda as untrustworthy. Are we all surprised this well funded relentless assault to lionize the rich and endlessly attack journalists has had this effect? This is exactly the goals of their strategy
• crateless 5y ago
  Here is one of those CEO's we should trust. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDcvPf78g1k
• mikedilger 5y ago
  Very good they are thinking about addressing this, but they are still labouring under a few bits of their own misinformation. Claiming it is a central part of someone's identity, and article of faith, and that they can't be argued out of it, is dead wrong. It is the result of misinformation being spread by the news media, refusal to retract incorrect articles, clear bias and manipulation. If that behavior stopped, over a long period of time trust would be regained. They are correct that it isn't just the US, it is all across the Anglosphere. Just today: 1. In NZ at newshub an article claimed not that the evidence supporting use of Ivermectin in cases of COVID-19 wasn't compelling but that there "is no evidence that supports the use of [Ivermectin] in the treatment of COVID-19." I know that's a lie because I have a folder of scores of research papers on this topic. 2. Fake news about a Hospital in Oklahoma backed up by Ivermectin overdose patients. Not retracted. Amplified by Rachel Maddow. 3. Same newshub (and other outlets) posted about a backlash against David Seymour. That's true, but they took an ideological position against David Seymour. They could have taken an inverse ideological position arguing that David was fighting against institutional racism on behalf of underrepresented people in need that happen to not be Maori... or better yet remained neutral. My stomach turns every time I see this government use race as the determining factor in who gets special treatment, instead of "poverty" or "low vaccine uptake" or any other property... I don't argue this point for myself (I'm highly privileged) but for countless underprivileged of other races like Indonesian or Malaysian or Palestinean who need help but get turned away because they aren't Maori. That's just today. This shit has been going on for years now. At this point, most people will never again trust the media for the rest of their lives.
• freebuju 5y ago
  Maybe the title should read: The average media consumer becomes more news literate. In the advent of social media being a megaphone and a news source nowadays, media organizations ceased to own the monopoly of news. It doesn't help matters that old media is busy cannibalizing the very thing that built its brand: quality journalism. Very common to see media organizations these days report government speech as facts. Investigative journalism is nothing but an old fable now.
• GeekyBear 5y ago
  Today's example of the media pushing a false story without bothering to do the least bit of fact checking first: https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1434591443855753220 https://twitter.com/DrewHolden360/status/1434591443855753220
• tsimionescu 5y ago
  I see most takes here discussing the growing distrust in media as a problem to fix. Instead, I see it as a welcome change, a necessary but not sufficient condition to a more free society. The media has always been extremely biased, selling a particular elite consensus view of the world. Sure, some real reporting made it though once in a while, especially when it was orthogonal to the overarching narrative or when it directly served it. But major news organizations have always been run and edited by the same academic elite and political elite who make policy. For some examples, you will not find any high-level media people (senior editors, senior reporters) at any US institution who believe the Vietnam war was an act of aggression, who believe George Bush Jr was a war criminal, who believe consumerism and economic growth are not a net good in the world, who believe the USA is most responsible for the state of the Middle East, who believe Cuba has often been a force for good in the world and the illegal embargo against it should be lifted, who believe Israel is an apartheid state performing daily acts of aggression against Palestine, who believe that its fair and good for people who don't work to be poor and miserable, and so on. You don't have to accept these views as true, but you should still note that CNN and The New York Times and Fox News and Breitbart all agree on the bedrock narrative of the USA's fundamentally noble role in the world, its fairness to its citizens, its desire to do good, even if they disagree on a few specifics and may or may not think there were some mistakes along the way. To me it seems that having people distrust this media is like having people distrust Pravda in the USSR: absolutely crucial if they are to think of a better world. Now of course, some people stop trusting the NYT and move to trusting flat earth groups on FB, which is worse. But I believe that the great good that comes from realizing you shouldn't trust those in authority simply because you've been taught to will see a slow but fundamental shift in society. One that news organizations and PR firms and other propaganda machines will fight tooth and nail, as this article shows.
  • ur-whale 5y ago
    Very well put, agree a 100%.
• pentagrama 5y ago
  That zoomed graph that shows the y axis only from 45% to 60%[1] is an oximoron that proves itself why has hit a new low. [1]https://imgur.com/jaFyxxj https://imgur.com/jaFyxxj
• cwp 5y ago
  > As vaccine rumor hunter Heidi Larson puts it, "we don’t have a misinformation problem, we have a trust problem.” That about sums it up. The lies are fine, the problem is that nobody believes them. But let's imagine that the media wanted to regain the trust of the public by being more trustworthy. Here is some advice: Acknowledge bias. Too many in the media try to portray themselves as truth-tellers, and everyone else has hopelessly biased propagandists. Just own it. Be clear about ideological positions and points of agreement and disagreement with other political actors. Acknowledge uncertainty. The truth is out there, but we often don't know what it is. Be willing to delay judgement until the facts are in, update conclusions when new evidence surfaces, and treat some "facts" as tentative when they're based on weak or the balance of contradictory evidence. Criticize allies. If somebody is lying to support a conclusion you agree with, call them out. The ends do not justify the means. Praise opponents. When "the other side" says something you agree with, say so, without any caveats about the other stuff you still disagree with. When they tell the truth, acknowledge the honesty. If they argue in good faith, engage with the ideas in good faith. In the end, this stuff is not that hard for people that actually care about the truth. It doesn't seem like the media does anymore. Instead, they're mostly engaged in tribalism: signaling loyalty to the tribe, disseminating dogma and asserting the moral superiority of the tribe. No wonder trust is so low.
• Markoff 5y ago
  8 months old article, should be tagged as (2020) at least, I'd like to know how they collected and analyzed data for 2021 in those first 3 weeks of 2021... maybe I'd have trust in media, if they provided balanced view from various sides and not push their agenda, also hiring any kid which can type sentence with autocorrect, but make basic logical errors doesn't fill me with trust in such media
• gypsyharlot 5y ago
  https://ground.news https://ground.news tries to solve this problem in an interesting way. It has a bunch of articles, where it shows how many left- and right-wing sources it was compiled from.
• techdragon 5y ago
  We need a Howard Beale… except in this day and age I’m pretty sure they would be silently cut off by the station manager from the production booth and such a speech never heard by the public but here for anyone who hasn’t heard it is the speech by the character Howard Beale (a newscaster) from the 1975 movie “Network”…. ———————————— “I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We know things are bad – worse than bad. They’re crazy. It’s like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don’t go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is: ‘Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won’t say anything. Just leave us alone.’ Well, I’m not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get MAD! I don’t want you to protest. I don’t want you to riot – I don’t want you to write to your congressman, because I wouldn’t know what to tell you to write. I don’t know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. (shouting) You’ve got to say: ‘I’m a human being, god-dammit! My life has value!’ So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ I want you to get up right now. Sit up. Go to your windows. Open them and stick your head out and yell – ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Things have got to change. But first, you’ve gotta get mad!…You’ve got to say, ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ Then we’ll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first, get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: ‘I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not gonna take this anymore!’ ———————————— When was the last time you saw someone interviewed on TV who didn’t have a book to sell? At this point they could stop mentioning the books at all and I’d assume they were advertising them in the lower third or on the website and I hadn’t noticed it or perhaps that they have just started to expect viewers will search for the person online and find their book like some kind of Pavlovian response. The only way I see people regaining trust in established media organisations is if they were “watching them burn”. The distrust is so built in now that to be trustworthy they have to be actively engaged in blatant self sabotage before we can overcome our collective cynicism. For us to trust them they must believe the “truth” they wish to tell us so much they are willing to self-immolate in-front of their audience otherwise how can we possibly tell it isn’t yet another marketing campaign for someone pulling the strings we haven’t seen yet.
• giuliomagnifico 5y ago
  I don’t think this is related to the media directly but is more related to the information during the pandemic. Unfortunately science has said a lot of controversial things, not because it has failed but because it’s a new “thing” and must be studied and examined. So media have reported correct everything but the infos, at the beginning, were a bit misleading, like for the UNHCR with “no mask, then yes mask” or the story with AstraZeneca vaccine or the third shot etc… Plus the “Afghanistan gate” where all media were reporting “Kabul can resists 3 months” and 7 days after it was in the Taliban’s hands. And don’t forget all the infos on Facebook and other media, people are getting their infos on socials unfortunately, not because they’re more reliable but because they can confirm they’re theories. I mean a no-vax on FB will receive more no-vax infos due to the algorithm biases, so he will keep getting infos and trust in FB. That’s not good by the way, we need more great journalists and newspapers!
• loftyal 5y ago
  Let's be honest, the media is just giving the people what they want, people subconsciously want bias news, its not pleasent to read news that disagrees with your own views. Why do you think facebook modified their algorithms for this? This applies to both on the left and the right politically.
• ajay-b 5y ago
  Journalists have evolved into an enemy of the people as they promote their personal, and corporate political beliefs on the rest of us, while passing it off as “just the facts.” I think journalism lost its “inform the public” mantle many years ago as journalists saw the power they had. As another commentor said, burn it to the ground, the media and journalism in general is forever poisoned against the people.
  • finfinfin 5y ago
    Wow, can’t believe that this is the top comment on HN. Rhetoric like that is poison. Journalists are not “an enemy of the people”, never were, never will be. Journalists are a very diverse group of people, some of whom care more about unbiased reporting, some less. However, aggression against journalism is the primary reason we are were we are right now. A very dangerous place.
• RickJWagner 5y ago
  Of course trust in media is low. Look at this thread describing all the politically-motivated media spinners caught in a blatant lie. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1434591443855753220.html https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1434591443855753220.html