4 ms·
This is why I cringe a bit at those bemoaning the horrible, awful, traumatic fate of journalism. Journalism is stupid. It always was stupid. It always will be s
by DubiousPusher 4y ago
This is why I cringe a bit at those bemoaning the horrible, awful, traumatic fate of journalism. Journalism is stupid. It always was stupid. It always will be stupid. That's not to say it has no value. But the reader has always been and always will be responsible to sift through the heaping mounds of dumb and find that value. I'm not exaggerating when I say, the New York Times, our paper of record has published some of the stupidest things you may ever read. Papers schilled for business, hacked for parties and confabulated for themselves since always.
On the other hand, the decline of local journalism is a serious crisis. Particularly the death of local investigative journalism. I would be very surprised if in 30 years or so we don't look back and see a noticable increase in local corruption correlated with the decline in local journalistic accountability.
- anonporridge 4y ago"I miss the time when we could trust the news to just give us the simple truth!" Dude, that's a time that never existed. The news has always been at least as much propaganda as it is simple information sharing. Perhaps the only reason we think it's especially bad now is that we're all aware of competing propaganda organizations pushing conflicting narratives. In the past, you might only have one local newspaper, so it was easier to believe that the local propaganda organization that controls your mind is telling the simple truth. But the modern world forces all of us to face the reality that the news has never been something we can naively trust.
- brandnewaccount 4y agoWho are you quoting?
- jedberg 4y agoI used to read articles about areas where I knew a lot and say to myself, "man, every detail in this article is wrong!". Then I would read the other articles in the same paper assuming they got everything right about those subjects I knew nothing about!
- chihuahua 4y agoThis is known as Gell-Mann amnesia: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/ https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
- fellowniusmonk 4y agoSome of Mark Twain's funniest stories/articles mock and lambast newsmen, more people would be aware of this if they had read literature instead of biking around like a bunch of marriage and furniture hating communists.
- _carbyau_ 4y agoI would have smiled at your comment. But I have an acute case of Bike Face.
- epigramx 4y agoLet alone they are not even written by THEMSELVES half of the time. A lot of articles are literally paid ads disguised as news. Other "news" are forced by the management because it comes from their further higher ups.