2 ms·

There are two points of view on the cause of the 20th century media trust. One: The media aspired towards neutrality Two: The media was consolidated and Overt

There are two points of view on the cause of the 20th century media trust. One: The media aspired towards neutrality Two: The media was consolidated and Overton window kept so tight average people couldn't find contradictions.

throwaway894345 5y ago
I can't bring myself to subscribe to (2) for a variety of reasons. 1. The post-2010 media has been as consolidated as it ever has been--around coastal elite / woke left ideologies and Democratic activism (I say this having only ever voted Democrat in POTUS elections for whatever that's worth). Granted, social media provides a diversity of opinions--even still, there are other factors. 2. The post-2010 media unanimously and widely publishes high-profile, objective, and trivially verifiable falsehoods (a few from memory): characterizing the Google Memo as an "anti-diversity screed", the coverage of the Nicolas Sandman still photo, the coverage of the Rittenhouse saga, the coverage of the Michael Brown shooting, etc. Note that all of these errors support the same woke left viewpoints (as opposed to random errors). There's also a long tail of more subjective issues ("why does the media keep bringing up racial disparities in police shootings without exploring obvious follow-on questions?"). 3. The post-2010 media landscape includes reporters and entire publications who rather proudly consider themselves activists, who insert themselves into their stories, and who loudly broadcast their biases (typically woke-left biases) on social media. This is a stark departure from the 20th century journalistic ethos. 4. The academic fields which became openly activist have similarly experienced a degradation in public trust, while the more objective fields have retained much more trust. This mirrors what we're seeing in the media. All of this seems to boil down to a failure to pursue neutrality in my view. I suspect the tight 20th century Overton window was a result of 20th century epistemological institutions' pursuit of neutrality. The institutions were much more fact-based and opinions began to converge around facts.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I would love to see what folks in the 90s would've made of this, for example: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1078977416/race-chat-emoji-skin-tone-colors https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1078977416/race-chat-emoji-sk...

throwaway894345 5y ago

I can't bring myself to subscribe to (2) for a variety of reasons. 1. The post-2010 media has been as consolidated as it ever has been--around coastal elite / woke left ideologies and Democratic activism (I say this having only ever voted Democrat in POTUS elections for whatever that's worth). Granted, social media provides a diversity of opinions--even still, there are other factors. 2. The post-2010 media unanimously and widely publishes high-profile, objective, and trivially verifiable falsehoods (a few from memory): characterizing the Google Memo as an "anti-diversity screed", the coverage of the Nicolas Sandman still photo, the coverage of the Rittenhouse saga, the coverage of the Michael Brown shooting, etc. Note that all of these errors support the same woke left viewpoints (as opposed to random errors). There's also a long tail of more subjective issues ("why does the media keep bringing up racial disparities in police shootings without exploring obvious follow-on questions?"). 3. The post-2010 media landscape includes reporters and entire publications who rather proudly consider themselves activists, who insert themselves into their stories, and who loudly broadcast their biases (typically woke-left biases) on social media. This is a stark departure from the 20th century journalistic ethos. 4. The academic fields which became openly activist have similarly experienced a degradation in public trust, while the more objective fields have retained much more trust. This mirrors what we're seeing in the media. All of this seems to boil down to a failure to pursue neutrality in my view. I suspect the tight 20th century Overton window was a result of 20th century epistemological institutions' pursuit of neutrality. The institutions were much more fact-based and opinions began to converge around facts.

throwaway894345 5y ago
I would love to see what folks in the 90s would've made of this, for example: https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1078977416/race-chat-emoji-skin-tone-colors https://www.npr.org/2022/02/09/1078977416/race-chat-emoji-sk...