8 ms·

Problems that people have with journalism are always misplaced IMO. It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and wha

Problems that people have with journalism are always misplaced IMO. It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. Quite to the contrary, most journalists I've met and talked to (largely in print media) have journalistic standards and generally want to do the right thing by their readers. But in a sense, media companies are held captive by their readers. It seems like many people believe that if somehow big corporate media (let's say Fox, CNN, NBC), swapped into a mode of "more facts, less editorialization" then it would have positive downstream effects on society. (Let's set aside that facts and data are completely meaningless without context, and context is political.) I'm not sure that's actually the case. I think it would have largely no effect. People in our society want the Rachel Maddow's and the Tucker Carlson's, the Joe Rogan's and the Russell Brand's. Until society shifts out of that mode, our media will continue to look this way.

nerdponx 5y ago
I have come to believe that people don't want it as much as they are just generally susceptible to it. The "news" has figured out how to become a supernormal stimulus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
- darawk 5y ago
  I think this point is sort of the fundamental contradiction of modernity, and it underlies many of our disagreements and problems. Succinctly, it's the non-unitary nature of preference. I want to eat the cookie and I want to be thin. The fact that I eat the cookie does not actually mean that I want the cookie "more" than I want to be thin. It just means that preference functions are not consistent over time. My preference over the next 5 minutes is not the same as my preference for what to do with the collection of all of my 5 minutes over the course of my life. You can prove this with a simple thought experiment. Almost everyone on earth has some vice or bad habit that they'd like to break if they could, or some better behavior they'd like to do if they could. What that means is that for those people, if they could take a side-effect free pill to change their brain to behave in that way, they would. If that's true, it's clear that the consistency of preferences is falsified. Once you accept this, I think it recasts how we ought to think about technology, and social architecture. The implications of this are that, probably in general, we want to allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones. Notably this does not mean imposing this environment on them. If people want to read clickbait they should be allowed to. But I think most people, if they had a "filter clickbait bullshit journalism from my life" button, they would press that button. Those same people (myself included), will also happily click on a perfectly tailored to my hot buttons headline. This is not a contradiction, and people shouldn't be shamed for it. The promise of technology in this domain is to engage executive preferences by providing intentional, tailored environments for people. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to click bait, i'll take it. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to sugary snacks, i'll take that too. I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement.
  - carapace 5y ago
    You make a good point. But isn't the ability to comprehend and work towards long(er)-term goals over more immediate gratification kind of the essence of being human (as distinguished from animal?) If we "allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones.", isn't that kind of the definition of civilization?
  - femiagbabiaka 5y ago
    You should take this, expand on it if you want, and publish it as a blog.
  - mleonhard 5y ago
    > I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement. I see technology moving in the opposite direction. Companies consistently choose profit over user quality-of-life. Some people are talking about the problem. When I read their posts talking about the problem, I have hope that things may improve someday.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. Hard to believe that someone could be this naive. Even 50 [ EDIT: more like 40 ] years ago, Paul Weller of the Jam sang, in relation to this precise issue: Does the public want what the public gets? Or does the public get what the public wants? It's not easy to answer this question definitively, and seems unwise to pretend that this is a settled matter.
debacle 5y ago
I advocate on grassroots political issues locally. There is a special interest group that has much more sway than the general public is aware over local policy decisions (to the extent that they head two local, theoretically competing political parties). In the last 12 months, I have brought this up at least a dozen times in media interviews, letters to the editor, etc. It has gotten nearly no media attention. Eventually I just asked one of the interviewers why this aspect of our advocacy was getting no coverage, and she plainly stated that her editors would not publish this information, because they are part of this special interest group. Take this and scale it nationally. Our news media does not serve its stated purpose. It is simply another mechanism for control. There has never been a time in history where the news media has been a bastion of unbiased, informed reporting.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  Chomsky explained this very thoroughly in the book Manufacturing Consent.
- GauntletWizard 5y ago
  I just don't understand why we're all so afraid to make noise about the small grift. I have a neighbor who consistently causes environmental issues and is constantly complaining whenever anyone in the neighborhood actually... Lives. Parties in our backyards get the cops called, and I'm not talking about loud college parties; I'm talking about 50-somethings with wine and cheese. She's the campaign manager for some obnoxious local political entity. Nobody will even talk about it, we're all so cowed. I just don't get why we're afraid to talk about it. Even far away; I guess it's too easy to link back and retaliation is too easy and impactful.
shannifin 5y ago
> the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. I think it's more likely a feedback loop and they're both downstream from each other. And, in that sense, there's "blame" on both sides, and certain patterns continually reinforce themselves through such loops.
tsimionescu 5y ago
> It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising. Not to mention, everyone in power knows how much the public is influenced by media, and takes care to cultivate their relationship with media through all means possible - donations, access journalism (you publish something bad about me? See if anyone in your whole paper gets one more "leak" from us), friendships with the editors and managers and so on. Not to mention, you're making an assumption that the media has a responsibility of extracting the maximum possible engagement, which is definitely not a given. Even if Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson get the maximum possible engagement, that doesn't make it ethical to put such partisan and deceptive voices front and center. This is essentially a way of manipulating emotion, just like advertising, it's not a democratic style of "listening to your consumer". Finally, there is a difference between the style that media chooses to employ, which the public has some influence on; and the content they actually publish, which is much more controlled by management and special interests groups. Just look at stories that don't get published - for example, when Ruth Badger Ginsburg was interviewed, she noted that she didn't agree with athletes kneeling; but, the interviewers decided that this will hurt her image among the left, so they just cut out this part of her interview.
- craftinator 5y ago
  > This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising. I agree that the advertising is where the money comes from for most media... But that supports the parent comment, in that it incentivises the media companies to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear (or, more correctly, exactly what will keep them coming back and watching more advertisements).
- femiagbabiaka 5y ago
  I think what you've said here, while well reasoned, is pretty much the kind of magical thinking about the power of the media and its influences that I think is a part of the paralysis around the subject. Media, in your words, is simultaneously purely driven by capital and Machiavellian self-interest, "not working for the public" and _also_ is an entity that should be concerned about the ethics of putting "such partisan and deceptive voices front and center". In this world, there exists a cabal of people, all moving in concert to suppress the truth (which truths? don't know) and release propaganda, all of which, of course, everyone in society cleanly falls for. The problem, of course, is that you're taking the actions of a loosely defined group of hundreds or thousands (or more) of publications, and importantly, _individuals_ working at those publications in the U.S. and around the world and pushing them together into a grand narrative. I don't really think I'm being naive. We've all gotten to see the rise of independent media and the new gigantic wave of disinformation networks that came along with it. The democratization of content creation was a shift of power from "elites" to the common people. And yet, independent media tends to reproduce the same kinds of narratives of traditional media (and often even more nefarious ones), just with a different face. It's precisely because of the relationship between people and the media that there are no easy answers.

nerdponx 5y ago

I have come to believe that people don't want it as much as they are just generally susceptible to it. The "news" has figured out how to become a supernormal stimulus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

darawk 5y ago
I think this point is sort of the fundamental contradiction of modernity, and it underlies many of our disagreements and problems. Succinctly, it's the non-unitary nature of preference. I want to eat the cookie and I want to be thin. The fact that I eat the cookie does not actually mean that I want the cookie "more" than I want to be thin. It just means that preference functions are not consistent over time. My preference over the next 5 minutes is not the same as my preference for what to do with the collection of all of my 5 minutes over the course of my life. You can prove this with a simple thought experiment. Almost everyone on earth has some vice or bad habit that they'd like to break if they could, or some better behavior they'd like to do if they could. What that means is that for those people, if they could take a side-effect free pill to change their brain to behave in that way, they would. If that's true, it's clear that the consistency of preferences is falsified. Once you accept this, I think it recasts how we ought to think about technology, and social architecture. The implications of this are that, probably in general, we want to allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones. Notably this does not mean imposing this environment on them. If people want to read clickbait they should be allowed to. But I think most people, if they had a "filter clickbait bullshit journalism from my life" button, they would press that button. Those same people (myself included), will also happily click on a perfectly tailored to my hot buttons headline. This is not a contradiction, and people shouldn't be shamed for it. The promise of technology in this domain is to engage executive preferences by providing intentional, tailored environments for people. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to click bait, i'll take it. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to sugary snacks, i'll take that too. I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement.
- carapace 5y ago
  You make a good point. But isn't the ability to comprehend and work towards long(er)-term goals over more immediate gratification kind of the essence of being human (as distinguished from animal?) If we "allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones.", isn't that kind of the definition of civilization?
- femiagbabiaka 5y ago
  You should take this, expand on it if you want, and publish it as a blog.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  > I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement. I see technology moving in the opposite direction. Companies consistently choose profit over user quality-of-life. Some people are talking about the problem. When I read their posts talking about the problem, I have hope that things may improve someday.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago

> It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. Hard to believe that someone could be this naive. Even 50 [ EDIT: more like 40 ] years ago, Paul Weller of the Jam sang, in relation to this precise issue: Does the public want what the public gets? Or does the public get what the public wants? It's not easy to answer this question definitively, and seems unwise to pretend that this is a settled matter.

debacle 5y ago

I advocate on grassroots political issues locally. There is a special interest group that has much more sway than the general public is aware over local policy decisions (to the extent that they head two local, theoretically competing political parties). In the last 12 months, I have brought this up at least a dozen times in media interviews, letters to the editor, etc. It has gotten nearly no media attention. Eventually I just asked one of the interviewers why this aspect of our advocacy was getting no coverage, and she plainly stated that her editors would not publish this information, because they are part of this special interest group. Take this and scale it nationally. Our news media does not serve its stated purpose. It is simply another mechanism for control. There has never been a time in history where the news media has been a bastion of unbiased, informed reporting.

mleonhard 5y ago
Chomsky explained this very thoroughly in the book Manufacturing Consent.
GauntletWizard 5y ago
I just don't understand why we're all so afraid to make noise about the small grift. I have a neighbor who consistently causes environmental issues and is constantly complaining whenever anyone in the neighborhood actually... Lives. Parties in our backyards get the cops called, and I'm not talking about loud college parties; I'm talking about 50-somethings with wine and cheese. She's the campaign manager for some obnoxious local political entity. Nobody will even talk about it, we're all so cowed. I just don't get why we're afraid to talk about it. Even far away; I guess it's too easy to link back and retaliation is too easy and impactful.

shannifin 5y ago

> the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. I think it's more likely a feedback loop and they're both downstream from each other. And, in that sense, there's "blame" on both sides, and certain patterns continually reinforce themselves through such loops.

tsimionescu 5y ago

> It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising. Not to mention, everyone in power knows how much the public is influenced by media, and takes care to cultivate their relationship with media through all means possible - donations, access journalism (you publish something bad about me? See if anyone in your whole paper gets one more "leak" from us), friendships with the editors and managers and so on. Not to mention, you're making an assumption that the media has a responsibility of extracting the maximum possible engagement, which is definitely not a given. Even if Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson get the maximum possible engagement, that doesn't make it ethical to put such partisan and deceptive voices front and center. This is essentially a way of manipulating emotion, just like advertising, it's not a democratic style of "listening to your consumer". Finally, there is a difference between the style that media chooses to employ, which the public has some influence on; and the content they actually publish, which is much more controlled by management and special interests groups. Just look at stories that don't get published - for example, when Ruth Badger Ginsburg was interviewed, she noted that she didn't agree with athletes kneeling; but, the interviewers decided that this will hurt her image among the left, so they just cut out this part of her interview.

craftinator 5y ago
> This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising. I agree that the advertising is where the money comes from for most media... But that supports the parent comment, in that it incentivises the media companies to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear (or, more correctly, exactly what will keep them coming back and watching more advertisements).
femiagbabiaka 5y ago
I think what you've said here, while well reasoned, is pretty much the kind of magical thinking about the power of the media and its influences that I think is a part of the paralysis around the subject. Media, in your words, is simultaneously purely driven by capital and Machiavellian self-interest, "not working for the public" and _also_ is an entity that should be concerned about the ethics of putting "such partisan and deceptive voices front and center". In this world, there exists a cabal of people, all moving in concert to suppress the truth (which truths? don't know) and release propaganda, all of which, of course, everyone in society cleanly falls for. The problem, of course, is that you're taking the actions of a loosely defined group of hundreds or thousands (or more) of publications, and importantly, _individuals_ working at those publications in the U.S. and around the world and pushing them together into a grand narrative. I don't really think I'm being naive. We've all gotten to see the rise of independent media and the new gigantic wave of disinformation networks that came along with it. The democratization of content creation was a shift of power from "elites" to the common people. And yet, independent media tends to reproduce the same kinds of narratives of traditional media (and often even more nefarious ones), just with a different face. It's precisely because of the relationship between people and the media that there are no easy answers.