4 ms·
We desperately need longitudinal news media. Current news works like this: 1. Something looks bad 2. Generate outrage 3. Forget all about it 4. Go to 1, on a
by jl6 5y ago
We desperately need longitudinal news media.
Current news works like this:
1. Something looks bad
2. Generate outrage
3. Forget all about it
4. Go to 1, on another topic.
Can you imagine a form of journalism that picks its topics for the year, then relentlessly follows up on them every day, not getting distracted by passing outrage, but actually digging deeply?
Sites like this could be a start, to help us stop forgetting.
- qsort 5y agoDigging deeply into anything requires time and focus most people won't put in if they have any choice at all. We have far greater means to temporally cross-reference media now than at any other point in history, and yet most news outlets outright abitually lie about publicly available information. We vastly overestimate how much people care whether things are true or false.
- crtasm 5y agohttps://private-eye.co.uk/ https://private-eye.co.uk/ do some excellent investigations and special reports, I think mostly only available in the print copy though.
- rTX5CMRXIfFG 5y agoIn many ways, the news that we get is the news that consumers of news generally care about—so if an issue gets buried under much more current ones, it’s just a consequence of people caring about the current ones. We’re pretty much asking for human nature to change here. You also can’t reasonably expect journalism to report on something where there is nothing new or significant to report, which happens a lot in long legal cases.
- mjklin 5y agoThat’s one reason I appreciate podcasts like “You’re Wrong About” that revisit past news stories and tell them properly.