7 ms·

Opinion: Remember reading the paper?

57 points by BostonFern 5y ago

gmiller123456 5y ago
I cannot physically force people to read or listen to real, accurate information. And rarely would a news outlet ever be referenced as an accurate, authoritative source.
Handytinge 5y ago
I read the news on a government funded news website a few times a week. They're great, as both "sides" of politics argue they're a biased source for the other side, so they're probably fairly neutral.
sleepingadmin 5y ago
It's food for thought that perhaps quality journalism is found behind paywalls but we all know how to get past the paywalls. Yet perhaps this has lowered competition? Needs more work at depth to discover here. Let's look at the facts: Fox news during the Hanity/oreilly era was pretty awful. They saw this criticism and worked at fixing their journalistic failures. Today on the otherhand you have people like Tucker carlsen who bring their guest on and basically shut their mouth(well not in tucker's case, kind of hangs open) but they dont talk over or cut anyone off. Look at that reddit antiwork stuff, they just let the idiot mod talk to their own grave. That's what journalists are supposed to do. You can have your monologues but if you bring a guest on, let the guest talk. Flipside, now you have CNN people like don lemon who cut the mic on people all the time. Don lemon is basically operating like Oreilly and it's pathetic. Overall just proving what we already know, those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It. Yet I use a few examples, but those don't explain the industry. We have clearly re-entered yellow journalism recently. Lots of clickbait and fake news was a thing but only recently did we really transition to yellow journalism. CNN and MSNBC used to have great reputations but not today. Which is a huge problem because journalism's only quality assurance is their reputation.
doodlebugging 5y ago
Title probably needs a tweak - "policial"?
asimpletune 5y ago
Honesty just paying for stuff would make so much of the internet better.
- dado3212 5y ago
  Isn’t this the opposite of what this article is saying?
  - asimpletune 5y ago
    I don’t think so? The article was saying there’re: traditional news behind a paywall, and free disinformation. It then goes on to argue: liberal leaning people pay for the news, while the rest read the free disinformation. I don’t think what I said is close to the opposite of that, which would be something like “liberal leaning people consume only free disinformation” (or, idk), but I do stand by what I said. If we were still reading newspapers, I think we might be less tolerant of poor editorializing, because we expect a high quality product for our money.
    - dado3212 5y ago
      The main point of higher-quality news being behind a paywall, and disinformation being more rampant in free sources implies that by having this split, it shapes the quality of people’s media diets. Pushing for more people paying for media seems to just ignore this split, don’t think that genie’s going back in the bag. It feels like without an incentive structure to encourage paid institutions release some of their content as free that the problem isn’t going to go away.
podiki 5y ago
Interestingly, this is on NPR, a publicly funded source. I think that would go a long way towards alleviating this problem (perhaps through taxes on those giant corporations that have locked down local and national media), though of course needing strict separation from the source. I don't think that would be the hard part so much as the will to do it, or more likely the will to overcome the lobbying and big money in this arena.
- jerkstate 5y ago
  I was trying to figure out how much public funding got and ran across this article about some reporting on npr’s reporting: https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-calls-defund-outlet-met-calls-donate-1529009 https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call... Which in retrospect makes NPR look petty, partisan and disinterested in actual investigative journalism. But the article also says that they receive “minimal” public funding (4% of their operating budget)
  - devindotcom 5y ago
    This article doesn't really report on the reporting, just says how some prominent Republicans didn't like one article. I don't see how a rather straightforward news post on the then President's comments makes NPR look petty and partisan, either.
    - bavell 5y ago
      Here is NPR reporting on made up news about the supreme court just two weeks ago: https://youtu.be/PQY7a0z7JqI https://youtu.be/PQY7a0z7JqI
      - devindotcom 5y ago
        This was addressed by NPR's public editor. It was not "made up." https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2022/01/20/1074540207/npr-reporting-on-supreme-court-mask-controversy-merits-clarification https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2022/01/20/1074540...
joshuaheard 5y ago
Any idea presented here is lost in their biased world view: Only the "rich" who are "left-leaning" can afford "accurate information". While the poor conservatives, who once were able to use their "pocket change" to buy tabloids, are now relegated to free "disinformation".
- evilpotatoes 5y ago
  Sneering is all they have left. Their credibility is in tatters with all but out of touch pmc types.
- ketzo 5y ago
  It seems like you disagree with all of the quoted sections, but it's unclear what you think the actual truth is. Would you elaborate?
  - joshuaheard 5y ago
    I don't know. As I stated, their idea is lost in their comically biased worldview; the fact is that studies show Republicans are richer than Democrats. Are paywalls creating a second-class of news readers? It's an idea worth exploring, but this article fails to do that.
uejfiweun 5y ago
For me, the problem isn't the paywalls, I can easily devtools my way around those. The problem is that the "accurate news" has gone completely off the deep end. Since around 2013, the traditional news sources, NPR included, have decided to adopt a highly race-based viewpoint, obsessively injecting race into every conceivable topic. Feel free to take a look at the charts, it's indisputable fact: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/the-nytimes-is-woke.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th... It wasn't always like this - I remember a time when the internet was a far more peaceful place, before all this crap started getting shoveled in peoples faces. The polarization since 2013, and Trump, is a direct result of this change in my view. Only god knows what the hell happened to these organizations, but until they hold back on the ridiculous race bait, the political divide will only get worse and worse.
- kelseyfrog 5y ago
  As long as the incentives to push racially(generally identity) framed politics remain the same, I don't expect the results to change. A media system financialized by ads will remain aligned to drive impressions. Proposals which rely on asking businesses and people to change behaviors without changing incentives are destined to fail. Until then, asking media to stop driving outrage is tantamount to asking them to stop making money.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
The title "Restricted access to accurate news accountable for political divide" is utterly misleading. First, it's not the title of the linked article, which is an opinion piece. There is zero research or data in the linked piece to support the conclusion in the title, and I highly doubt that if the NY Times or Washington Post did away with their pay walls that the political divide would go away.
- devindotcom 5y ago
  It cites a professor who recently wrote a book on the topic: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/news-for-the-rich-white-and-blue-new-book-argues-that-chasing-subscription-dollars-is-bad-for-journalism/ar-AALYEWK https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/news-for-the-rich-white-an...
- rdiddly 5y ago
  The title and the article itself also both seem to take as a presupposition the notion that the truth is what's behind those paywalls, while what's out here for free is inherently "disinformation." (There is plenty of truth in free independent news outlets, and plenty of disinformation being disseminated by corporate ones.)
  - pklausler 5y ago
    Ironically, NPR is free. (Unless you support your local public broadcaster, which I do, since mine is pretty good.)
    - rdiddly 5y ago
      Yeah the article also seems like a little bit of a dig from a government-supported news source against corporate ones that charge money. Meant to come back & add that, but got distracted!
      - cudgy 5y ago
        This document does not support this statement that NPR is government supported in any significant way. NPR is mostly supported by private corporate donations (about 40%) and dues and fees paid by local stations (about 30%). The remaining funding is from cash contributions from private citizens and a few other miscellaneous sources. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...
11thEarlOfMar 5y ago
There was always a political divide. What’s new is Americans killing each other over it. The polarization is extreme in part because news sources now need clicks to survive, and Outrage gets more clicks than reason. End result is some Americans become so outraged they loot and burn cities and in some cases, kill. And seemingly, their peer pole finds the mayhem understandable. That’s what’s new.
- wffurr 5y ago
  How is that new? 1860? Shea's rebellion?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- harshreality 5y ago
  Not new. See: McVeigh, Kaczynski, 1960s race riots, etc. What's new is the media being able to saturate everyone's attention with these events. In the past, there would have been some TV and radio news, and articles in each newspaper, but those didn't occupy people's attention like internet news and regurgitated social media news does now.
wffurr 5y ago
What really kills me about the news paywalls is that there's still ads behind them! I subscribe to the Boston Globe and every article has unrelated low rent scam ads for junk on them. Just let pay the extra 50¢ or whatever those ads are worth.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  It’s little known that, in the bad old days, subscriptions subsidized the ads in newspapers and magazines and not the other way around. The subscription also qualifies the viewer as someone who has money and is committed and is a better prospect to advertise to.
  - pklausler 5y ago
    Weren't classified ads a real moneymaker for newspapers in the pre-web era? I don't know how that revenue compared to display ads, but losing it all to the web must have really hurt.
    - PaulHoule 5y ago
      They were but I'm talking about the display ads. (Brings me back to that time in high school when I was being harassed by another student and phoned in a free want ad to the paper claiming he had a little of Chihuahua puppies with his home phone number...)
- jeffbee 5y ago
  I really like the model of Talking Points Memo, an independent news site covering American politics. I subscribe to their "Prime AF" plan which 1) has a great name and 2) just doesn't have any ads, ever. It's really jarring to read it when logged out though, because their regular ad-supported site has so many ads it will cripple your web browser.
vmception 5y ago
I started paying for New York Times and Bloomberg - using devtools to circumvent paywalls doesn't work when using phones - I really enjoy the quality and depth of reporting. But I am sad that they're "likely" left-only views on all topics, which means its not that useful for many topics to be shared with many people. Even trying to share non-political topics that I simply enjoyed can have an issue when the publication is New York Times. Its the same reaction I would likely have to someone sharing a random no-name conservative blog or even Fox News. So I wish there were more news sources with a history of being reputable that also didn't accumulate partisan baggage when they got afraid that the other side would get power. It seems irreconcilable since New York publications and capital have such a long head start on reach and growth and relationships. ESH
rossdavidh 5y ago
Setting aside all of the other issues with this opinion piece's thesis, it is odd that it is coming from NPR, one of several news sources funded by public donation that are free to listen to/browse to/watch. Are they saying NPR doesn't count as accurate news?
Glyptodon 5y ago
A perceived decline of quality in Newsweek certainly intersected with my grandparents' turn towards Fox News in the late '90s. But there's a lot more to it. I spent years on the tail end of that shift trying to convince them that NPR was relatively even-handed only for NPR to doom that effort right when it started to take hold with goofy scandals and a stream of new programming that embraced being perspective-centric. (Inability to report with an objective and even hand about guns didn't help NPR, either. They say news stories about things you're familiar with always seem atrocious. I've definitely witnessed it with tech stories in mainstream news. But it tends to be extra atrocious with guns, I guess because a lot of folks find the topic rather visceral.) I also have found that otherwise relatively interesting writing in all kinds of sources has become less family shareable over the years as edginess and expletives have penetrated more and more quarters. I wish people would write more opinion pieces to be shareable with grandma instead of raising hackles for the sake of it.
- clairity 5y ago
  i personally have no dog in the gun debate (i don't like guns but generally support 2nd amendment rights), but this story is propaganda for npr, which has taken a steep nosedive in quality and objectivity over the past few years. they want to claim the moral high ground but have no leg to stand on. i can't even listen to more than 5 minutes of npr before having to shut it off in disgust. their coverage of recent geopolitical events is decidedly tribal and partisan: for instance, making russians and the chinese out to be cartoon villians for easy dunking on. that's not to say that either regime is saintly, but it's done to pander to the basest tribal instincts only, nuance and discernment be damned. it's truly awful.
  - Glyptodon 5y ago
    In my view there are some situations with guns laws that should be seen by most anyone as crazy in an apolitical way. For example, section 922r import rules are silly to begin with (basically certain imported weapons must have 10 or fewer foreign manufactured parts, said parts coming from a specific list, or are illegal), but the list is extra bad because it includes magazines (rather like labeling the cargo as a component of a cargo plane). So if you have a foreign made "non-sporting" gun, if the magazines were not one of the 922r compliance parts, using a non-US manufactured magazine in the gun makes you some sort of criminal. Imagine if importing a Toyota car not only required a certain specific number of US made parts, but that list included tires, so if it was delivered with US made tires, putting tires manufactured in Europe on your car would make you a criminal (unless you replaced other foreign made parts with US made parts, so maybe you need to replace the engine to legally use foreign made tires)... You'd probably think it's a law almost designed to make Toyota owners commit crimes by doing normal car maintenance. I don't think you need to be a 2nd Amendment debate person or like guns to think various of the rules and laws around guns are at best questionable.
mikewarot 5y ago
This posted by an organization that restricts access to facts in order to make its news match a desired narrative. How delightfully ironic.
- freen 5y ago
  Ahh yes, failure to publish every possible fact is clearly a liberal conspiracy. Maybe we should make it illegal to teach kids about slavery, that’d really help. Tribalism is a hell of a drug.
  - TimTheTinker 5y ago
    > Tribalism is a hell of a drug. It's also extremely frustrating to people who are personally committed to pursue what is true (to the best of their ability), regardless of the consequences. Every fact seems to have an attached political value or leaning. So various journalistic outlets intentionally omit facts that don't agree with their narrative -- which is lying by omission. That combined with falsely associating certain events with certain groups to smear their reputation makes the modern news indistinguishable from oppressive propaganda -- and that on both sides of the aisle. Such suppression of truth ought to be unheard of in what used to be known as the "free" world. What happened to impartiality? Truth above all is what creates freedom, not any particular narrative or agenda.
    - freen 5y ago
      That’s clearly why the GOP is making it illegal to teach kids about slavery and it’s repercussions.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    >Tribalism is a hell of a drug. Try to read that comment and again and see how much effect tribalism has had on you.
    - freen 5y ago
      So I take it you are in favor of banning critical race theory in schools? In favor of violent insurrection in an attempt to overthrow a free and fair election? I don’t disagree that I am a member of a tribe. That’s not the problem. The problem is when tribes see their own behavior as default good because it is their own tribe and don’t hold themselves to standards that exist beyond any individual tribe. Which is precisely what the practice of democracy is: an agreed upon set of principles that extend beyond any individual tribe and to which all tribes agree to hold themselves accountable. One tribe, though, doesn’t anymore. That’s terrifying.
jimmyjazz14 5y ago
I feel like the real problem is that the lines between editorials (opinion pieces) and hard news has been blurred to such a significant enough degree that I think many people fail to even realize the difference anymore.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I feel like part of the problem is that people are so stupid that they need to be told what is opinion.
thrown_22 5y ago
A lack of lived experience is the reason for the divide. Journalists are all upper class and largely clueless what it takes to survive as a blue collar worker. You don't trust people who get the basics wrong constantly to get anything else right.
- devindotcom 5y ago
  What a strange assertion! As a journalist myself, and having met many in my profession, I can tell you this is not at all true.
  - thrown_22 5y ago
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Journalists are all upper class Almost no journalists are upper (haut bourgeois) class, they are almost entirely (like, all but a small fraction of a percent) working or middle class (proletarian or petit bourgeois intelligentsia.)
- alar44 5y ago
  You can't possibly be serious. Or maybe you don't know the difference between a journalist and a TV news reporter. They are not the same.
pklausler 5y ago
This was an opinion piece, not really hard news, and it begs the question as it were by assuming that some news sources are "accurate" and other are not. I think that a more easily verified test of quality -- or perhaps worthiness of my attention, anyway -- is this: Does a purported news organization have a journalistic code of ethics (don't pay sources, &c.), a history of enforcing that code, and an easy-to-find corrections page on the Web? I want my media diet coming from those sources that admit error, publish corrections, and hold their reporters accountable to a standard. And from those that do appear to do these things, I can make selections that seem to support an empirical approach to the truth and an abhorrence of patent nonsense. (Do they have a science denier on their op-ed page, like the NYT? Do they sponsor events featuring Deepak Chopra, like the Atlantic? No thanks.) It is also amusing that NPR is not behind a paywall.
bArray 5y ago
My measure for a "good source" has changed over time: 1. No news outlet is without bias, but the very least I expect is for them to address other popular points of view (irrespective of what I or others think about them). 2. At least the text version can be accessed without a pay wall. A pay wall is not the proper model for monetization, it prevent discoverability and organic growth. 3. They do original investigative journalism, and not just read tweets. If the news article is reporting on social media, they should make the effort to reach out for comment. 4. Does not use standard pieces of news that are mass published without transformation. I should not be able to search for the headline and find 20+ identical articles - it shows zero effort went into processing the material. 5. Does not have a conflict of interest between their investors and the news they report on. You cannot trust the news companies owned by Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, etc, to report on the people that fund them. 6. Does not politicize individuals who are not publicly known. A random person who makes a bad tweet does not deserve to be mobbed on the national/international scale. 7. Does not defame or add framing further than what is obvious (or at least minimizes it). Maybe there are some others I forget. Some smaller non-mainstream news sources that come close (in my opinion) are Spiked [1] and Quillette [2]. They generally tend to be critical of all positions and range somewhere around the centralist position on most topics. [1] https://www.spiked-online.com/ https://www.spiked-online.com/ [2] https://quillette.com/ https://quillette.com/
- alar44 5y ago
  LOL. They range around libertarian on most topics and spiked is backed by the Koch brothers.
  - bArray 5y ago
    > They range around libertarian on most topics [..] Isn't Libertarian roughly centralist? > [..] spiked is backed by the Koch brothers. I wasn't aware of this relationship [1], it's worth keeping an eye on. More generally (in my opinion) Spiked tend to criticise all perspectives. E.g. an example of an anti-Boris (right-wing Conservative party) article [2] and an anti-Starmer (left-wing Labour party) article [3]. The Dorset Eye for example themselves seem to have a left-wing bias. [1] https://dorseteye.com/the-koch-brothers-are-helping-to-fund-spiked-magazine/ https://dorseteye.com/the-koch-brothers-are-helping-to-fund-... [2] https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/04/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-boris-johnsons-premiership/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/04/the-hole-at-the-hea... [3] https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/05/the-problem-with-starmers-centrist-dad-patriotism/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/05/the-problem-with-st...

57 points by BostonFern 5y ago

I cannot physically force people to read or listen to real, accurate information. And rarely would a news outlet ever be referenced as an accurate, authoritative source.

Handytinge 5y ago

I read the news on a government funded news website a few times a week. They're great, as both "sides" of politics argue they're a biased source for the other side, so they're probably fairly neutral.

sleepingadmin 5y ago

It's food for thought that perhaps quality journalism is found behind paywalls but we all know how to get past the paywalls. Yet perhaps this has lowered competition? Needs more work at depth to discover here. Let's look at the facts: Fox news during the Hanity/oreilly era was pretty awful. They saw this criticism and worked at fixing their journalistic failures. Today on the otherhand you have people like Tucker carlsen who bring their guest on and basically shut their mouth(well not in tucker's case, kind of hangs open) but they dont talk over or cut anyone off. Look at that reddit antiwork stuff, they just let the idiot mod talk to their own grave. That's what journalists are supposed to do. You can have your monologues but if you bring a guest on, let the guest talk. Flipside, now you have CNN people like don lemon who cut the mic on people all the time. Don lemon is basically operating like Oreilly and it's pathetic. Overall just proving what we already know, those Who Do Not Learn History Are Doomed To Repeat It. Yet I use a few examples, but those don't explain the industry. We have clearly re-entered yellow journalism recently. Lots of clickbait and fake news was a thing but only recently did we really transition to yellow journalism. CNN and MSNBC used to have great reputations but not today. Which is a huge problem because journalism's only quality assurance is their reputation.

doodlebugging 5y ago

Title probably needs a tweak - "policial"?

asimpletune 5y ago

Honesty just paying for stuff would make so much of the internet better.

dado3212 5y ago
Isn’t this the opposite of what this article is saying?
- asimpletune 5y ago
  I don’t think so? The article was saying there’re: traditional news behind a paywall, and free disinformation. It then goes on to argue: liberal leaning people pay for the news, while the rest read the free disinformation. I don’t think what I said is close to the opposite of that, which would be something like “liberal leaning people consume only free disinformation” (or, idk), but I do stand by what I said. If we were still reading newspapers, I think we might be less tolerant of poor editorializing, because we expect a high quality product for our money.
  - dado3212 5y ago
    The main point of higher-quality news being behind a paywall, and disinformation being more rampant in free sources implies that by having this split, it shapes the quality of people’s media diets. Pushing for more people paying for media seems to just ignore this split, don’t think that genie’s going back in the bag. It feels like without an incentive structure to encourage paid institutions release some of their content as free that the problem isn’t going to go away.

podiki 5y ago

Interestingly, this is on NPR, a publicly funded source. I think that would go a long way towards alleviating this problem (perhaps through taxes on those giant corporations that have locked down local and national media), though of course needing strict separation from the source. I don't think that would be the hard part so much as the will to do it, or more likely the will to overcome the lobbying and big money in this arena.

jerkstate 5y ago
I was trying to figure out how much public funding got and ran across this article about some reporting on npr’s reporting: https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-calls-defund-outlet-met-calls-donate-1529009 https://www.newsweek.com/where-does-npr-get-its-funding-call... Which in retrospect makes NPR look petty, partisan and disinterested in actual investigative journalism. But the article also says that they receive “minimal” public funding (4% of their operating budget)
- devindotcom 5y ago
  This article doesn't really report on the reporting, just says how some prominent Republicans didn't like one article. I don't see how a rather straightforward news post on the then President's comments makes NPR look petty and partisan, either.
  - bavell 5y ago
    Here is NPR reporting on made up news about the supreme court just two weeks ago: https://youtu.be/PQY7a0z7JqI https://youtu.be/PQY7a0z7JqI
    - devindotcom 5y ago
      This was addressed by NPR's public editor. It was not "made up." https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2022/01/20/1074540207/npr-reporting-on-supreme-court-mask-controversy-merits-clarification https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2022/01/20/1074540...

joshuaheard 5y ago

Any idea presented here is lost in their biased world view: Only the "rich" who are "left-leaning" can afford "accurate information". While the poor conservatives, who once were able to use their "pocket change" to buy tabloids, are now relegated to free "disinformation".

evilpotatoes 5y ago
Sneering is all they have left. Their credibility is in tatters with all but out of touch pmc types.
ketzo 5y ago
It seems like you disagree with all of the quoted sections, but it's unclear what you think the actual truth is. Would you elaborate?
- joshuaheard 5y ago
  I don't know. As I stated, their idea is lost in their comically biased worldview; the fact is that studies show Republicans are richer than Democrats. Are paywalls creating a second-class of news readers? It's an idea worth exploring, but this article fails to do that.

uejfiweun 5y ago

For me, the problem isn't the paywalls, I can easily devtools my way around those. The problem is that the "accurate news" has gone completely off the deep end. Since around 2013, the traditional news sources, NPR included, have decided to adopt a highly race-based viewpoint, obsessively injecting race into every conceivable topic. Feel free to take a look at the charts, it's indisputable fact: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/the-nytimes-is-woke.html https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/th... It wasn't always like this - I remember a time when the internet was a far more peaceful place, before all this crap started getting shoveled in peoples faces. The polarization since 2013, and Trump, is a direct result of this change in my view. Only god knows what the hell happened to these organizations, but until they hold back on the ridiculous race bait, the political divide will only get worse and worse.

kelseyfrog 5y ago
As long as the incentives to push racially(generally identity) framed politics remain the same, I don't expect the results to change. A media system financialized by ads will remain aligned to drive impressions. Proposals which rely on asking businesses and people to change behaviors without changing incentives are destined to fail. Until then, asking media to stop driving outrage is tantamount to asking them to stop making money.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

The title "Restricted access to accurate news accountable for political divide" is utterly misleading. First, it's not the title of the linked article, which is an opinion piece. There is zero research or data in the linked piece to support the conclusion in the title, and I highly doubt that if the NY Times or Washington Post did away with their pay walls that the political divide would go away.

devindotcom 5y ago
It cites a professor who recently wrote a book on the topic: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/news-for-the-rich-white-and-blue-new-book-argues-that-chasing-subscription-dollars-is-bad-for-journalism/ar-AALYEWK https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/news-for-the-rich-white-an...
rdiddly 5y ago
The title and the article itself also both seem to take as a presupposition the notion that the truth is what's behind those paywalls, while what's out here for free is inherently "disinformation." (There is plenty of truth in free independent news outlets, and plenty of disinformation being disseminated by corporate ones.)
- pklausler 5y ago
  Ironically, NPR is free. (Unless you support your local public broadcaster, which I do, since mine is pretty good.)
  - rdiddly 5y ago
    Yeah the article also seems like a little bit of a dig from a government-supported news source against corporate ones that charge money. Meant to come back & add that, but got distracted!
    - cudgy 5y ago
      This document does not support this statement that NPR is government supported in any significant way. NPR is mostly supported by private corporate donations (about 40%) and dues and fees paid by local stations (about 30%). The remaining funding is from cash contributions from private citizens and a few other miscellaneous sources. https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finance...

11thEarlOfMar 5y ago

There was always a political divide. What’s new is Americans killing each other over it. The polarization is extreme in part because news sources now need clicks to survive, and Outrage gets more clicks than reason. End result is some Americans become so outraged they loot and burn cities and in some cases, kill. And seemingly, their peer pole finds the mayhem understandable. That’s what’s new.

wffurr 5y ago
How is that new? 1860? Shea's rebellion?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
harshreality 5y ago
Not new. See: McVeigh, Kaczynski, 1960s race riots, etc. What's new is the media being able to saturate everyone's attention with these events. In the past, there would have been some TV and radio news, and articles in each newspaper, but those didn't occupy people's attention like internet news and regurgitated social media news does now.

wffurr 5y ago

What really kills me about the news paywalls is that there's still ads behind them! I subscribe to the Boston Globe and every article has unrelated low rent scam ads for junk on them. Just let pay the extra 50¢ or whatever those ads are worth.

PaulHoule 5y ago
It’s little known that, in the bad old days, subscriptions subsidized the ads in newspapers and magazines and not the other way around. The subscription also qualifies the viewer as someone who has money and is committed and is a better prospect to advertise to.
- pklausler 5y ago
  Weren't classified ads a real moneymaker for newspapers in the pre-web era? I don't know how that revenue compared to display ads, but losing it all to the web must have really hurt.
  - PaulHoule 5y ago
    They were but I'm talking about the display ads. (Brings me back to that time in high school when I was being harassed by another student and phoned in a free want ad to the paper claiming he had a little of Chihuahua puppies with his home phone number...)
jeffbee 5y ago
I really like the model of Talking Points Memo, an independent news site covering American politics. I subscribe to their "Prime AF" plan which 1) has a great name and 2) just doesn't have any ads, ever. It's really jarring to read it when logged out though, because their regular ad-supported site has so many ads it will cripple your web browser.

vmception 5y ago

I started paying for New York Times and Bloomberg - using devtools to circumvent paywalls doesn't work when using phones - I really enjoy the quality and depth of reporting. But I am sad that they're "likely" left-only views on all topics, which means its not that useful for many topics to be shared with many people. Even trying to share non-political topics that I simply enjoyed can have an issue when the publication is New York Times. Its the same reaction I would likely have to someone sharing a random no-name conservative blog or even Fox News. So I wish there were more news sources with a history of being reputable that also didn't accumulate partisan baggage when they got afraid that the other side would get power. It seems irreconcilable since New York publications and capital have such a long head start on reach and growth and relationships. ESH

rossdavidh 5y ago

Setting aside all of the other issues with this opinion piece's thesis, it is odd that it is coming from NPR, one of several news sources funded by public donation that are free to listen to/browse to/watch. Are they saying NPR doesn't count as accurate news?

Glyptodon 5y ago

A perceived decline of quality in Newsweek certainly intersected with my grandparents' turn towards Fox News in the late '90s. But there's a lot more to it. I spent years on the tail end of that shift trying to convince them that NPR was relatively even-handed only for NPR to doom that effort right when it started to take hold with goofy scandals and a stream of new programming that embraced being perspective-centric. (Inability to report with an objective and even hand about guns didn't help NPR, either. They say news stories about things you're familiar with always seem atrocious. I've definitely witnessed it with tech stories in mainstream news. But it tends to be extra atrocious with guns, I guess because a lot of folks find the topic rather visceral.) I also have found that otherwise relatively interesting writing in all kinds of sources has become less family shareable over the years as edginess and expletives have penetrated more and more quarters. I wish people would write more opinion pieces to be shareable with grandma instead of raising hackles for the sake of it.

clairity 5y ago
i personally have no dog in the gun debate (i don't like guns but generally support 2nd amendment rights), but this story is propaganda for npr, which has taken a steep nosedive in quality and objectivity over the past few years. they want to claim the moral high ground but have no leg to stand on. i can't even listen to more than 5 minutes of npr before having to shut it off in disgust. their coverage of recent geopolitical events is decidedly tribal and partisan: for instance, making russians and the chinese out to be cartoon villians for easy dunking on. that's not to say that either regime is saintly, but it's done to pander to the basest tribal instincts only, nuance and discernment be damned. it's truly awful.
- Glyptodon 5y ago
  In my view there are some situations with guns laws that should be seen by most anyone as crazy in an apolitical way. For example, section 922r import rules are silly to begin with (basically certain imported weapons must have 10 or fewer foreign manufactured parts, said parts coming from a specific list, or are illegal), but the list is extra bad because it includes magazines (rather like labeling the cargo as a component of a cargo plane). So if you have a foreign made "non-sporting" gun, if the magazines were not one of the 922r compliance parts, using a non-US manufactured magazine in the gun makes you some sort of criminal. Imagine if importing a Toyota car not only required a certain specific number of US made parts, but that list included tires, so if it was delivered with US made tires, putting tires manufactured in Europe on your car would make you a criminal (unless you replaced other foreign made parts with US made parts, so maybe you need to replace the engine to legally use foreign made tires)... You'd probably think it's a law almost designed to make Toyota owners commit crimes by doing normal car maintenance. I don't think you need to be a 2nd Amendment debate person or like guns to think various of the rules and laws around guns are at best questionable.

mikewarot 5y ago

This posted by an organization that restricts access to facts in order to make its news match a desired narrative. How delightfully ironic.

freen 5y ago
Ahh yes, failure to publish every possible fact is clearly a liberal conspiracy. Maybe we should make it illegal to teach kids about slavery, that’d really help. Tribalism is a hell of a drug.
- TimTheTinker 5y ago
  > Tribalism is a hell of a drug. It's also extremely frustrating to people who are personally committed to pursue what is true (to the best of their ability), regardless of the consequences. Every fact seems to have an attached political value or leaning. So various journalistic outlets intentionally omit facts that don't agree with their narrative -- which is lying by omission. That combined with falsely associating certain events with certain groups to smear their reputation makes the modern news indistinguishable from oppressive propaganda -- and that on both sides of the aisle. Such suppression of truth ought to be unheard of in what used to be known as the "free" world. What happened to impartiality? Truth above all is what creates freedom, not any particular narrative or agenda.
  - freen 5y ago
    That’s clearly why the GOP is making it illegal to teach kids about slavery and it’s repercussions.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  >Tribalism is a hell of a drug. Try to read that comment and again and see how much effect tribalism has had on you.
  - freen 5y ago
    So I take it you are in favor of banning critical race theory in schools? In favor of violent insurrection in an attempt to overthrow a free and fair election? I don’t disagree that I am a member of a tribe. That’s not the problem. The problem is when tribes see their own behavior as default good because it is their own tribe and don’t hold themselves to standards that exist beyond any individual tribe. Which is precisely what the practice of democracy is: an agreed upon set of principles that extend beyond any individual tribe and to which all tribes agree to hold themselves accountable. One tribe, though, doesn’t anymore. That’s terrifying.

jimmyjazz14 5y ago

I feel like the real problem is that the lines between editorials (opinion pieces) and hard news has been blurred to such a significant enough degree that I think many people fail to even realize the difference anymore.

2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
I feel like part of the problem is that people are so stupid that they need to be told what is opinion.

thrown_22 5y ago

A lack of lived experience is the reason for the divide. Journalists are all upper class and largely clueless what it takes to survive as a blue collar worker. You don't trust people who get the basics wrong constantly to get anything else right.

devindotcom 5y ago
What a strange assertion! As a journalist myself, and having met many in my profession, I can tell you this is not at all true.
- thrown_22 5y ago
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Journalists are all upper class Almost no journalists are upper (haut bourgeois) class, they are almost entirely (like, all but a small fraction of a percent) working or middle class (proletarian or petit bourgeois intelligentsia.)
alar44 5y ago
You can't possibly be serious. Or maybe you don't know the difference between a journalist and a TV news reporter. They are not the same.

pklausler 5y ago

This was an opinion piece, not really hard news, and it begs the question as it were by assuming that some news sources are "accurate" and other are not. I think that a more easily verified test of quality -- or perhaps worthiness of my attention, anyway -- is this: Does a purported news organization have a journalistic code of ethics (don't pay sources, &c.), a history of enforcing that code, and an easy-to-find corrections page on the Web? I want my media diet coming from those sources that admit error, publish corrections, and hold their reporters accountable to a standard. And from those that do appear to do these things, I can make selections that seem to support an empirical approach to the truth and an abhorrence of patent nonsense. (Do they have a science denier on their op-ed page, like the NYT? Do they sponsor events featuring Deepak Chopra, like the Atlantic? No thanks.) It is also amusing that NPR is not behind a paywall.

bArray 5y ago

My measure for a "good source" has changed over time: 1. No news outlet is without bias, but the very least I expect is for them to address other popular points of view (irrespective of what I or others think about them). 2. At least the text version can be accessed without a pay wall. A pay wall is not the proper model for monetization, it prevent discoverability and organic growth. 3. They do original investigative journalism, and not just read tweets. If the news article is reporting on social media, they should make the effort to reach out for comment. 4. Does not use standard pieces of news that are mass published without transformation. I should not be able to search for the headline and find 20+ identical articles - it shows zero effort went into processing the material. 5. Does not have a conflict of interest between their investors and the news they report on. You cannot trust the news companies owned by Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, etc, to report on the people that fund them. 6. Does not politicize individuals who are not publicly known. A random person who makes a bad tweet does not deserve to be mobbed on the national/international scale. 7. Does not defame or add framing further than what is obvious (or at least minimizes it). Maybe there are some others I forget. Some smaller non-mainstream news sources that come close (in my opinion) are Spiked [1] and Quillette [2]. They generally tend to be critical of all positions and range somewhere around the centralist position on most topics. [1] https://www.spiked-online.com/ https://www.spiked-online.com/ [2] https://quillette.com/ https://quillette.com/

alar44 5y ago
LOL. They range around libertarian on most topics and spiked is backed by the Koch brothers.
- bArray 5y ago
  > They range around libertarian on most topics [..] Isn't Libertarian roughly centralist? > [..] spiked is backed by the Koch brothers. I wasn't aware of this relationship [1], it's worth keeping an eye on. More generally (in my opinion) Spiked tend to criticise all perspectives. E.g. an example of an anti-Boris (right-wing Conservative party) article [2] and an anti-Starmer (left-wing Labour party) article [3]. The Dorset Eye for example themselves seem to have a left-wing bias. [1] https://dorseteye.com/the-koch-brothers-are-helping-to-fund-spiked-magazine/ https://dorseteye.com/the-koch-brothers-are-helping-to-fund-... [2] https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/04/the-hole-at-the-heart-of-boris-johnsons-premiership/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/04/the-hole-at-the-hea... [3] https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/05/the-problem-with-starmers-centrist-dad-patriotism/ https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/05/the-problem-with-st...