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Most Americans think money comes before mission at U.S. news organizations

179 points by hhs 4y ago

arkis22 4y ago
I find apnews.com an excellent and mostly emotionless free news source
- Ptchd 4y ago
  same. just wish they had an RSS feed...
about_that 4y ago
throwawaysleep 4y ago
As a general rule, people aren’t willing to pay for the things considered public goods. Then they whine that said news chases views. Like Republican communities that underpay teachers and wonder why their kids have no futures because someone with a brain built a robot to do their repetitive trivial job.
- throwaway2275 4y ago
- PixyMisa 4y ago
  Also like Democratic communities that overpay teachers and wonder why their kids have no futures because someone with a brain built a robot to do their repetitive trivial job.
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    More like Democratic communities that ban building housing and then wonder why housing is expensive.
Yhippa 4y ago
I'd be willing to pay for news from organizations like the AP or Reuters. Trad newspapers like NYT/WSJ seem to just cater to their bases. Cable companies are more entertainment and are beholden to their advertisers. I felt things like PBS are a public good. Growing up I got educational programming from there and that should be available to the public as a last resort.
- RajT88 4y ago
  PBS is the best thing I get from the antenna on my roof.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    > I get from the antenna on my roof. These are just extra words :) I like PBS a lot
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  The AP is made up of CNN, USA Today, NBC, Washington Post, etc writers be them local or national branch. Reuters is slightly better but this isn’t a problem that can be solved with just throwing more money at someone. It’s a lack of integrity.
  - throwawaysleep 4y ago
    Integrity is what people complain about when they aren’t willing to pay up for aligned incentives. You need aligned incentives.
    - PixyMisa 4y ago
      No, just the facts.
      - kbenson 4y ago
        The current media gives you facts. They just present them in specific ways or downplay or omit other facts. Getting all the facts is as bad as getting no facts, because we aren't capable of paraing then all. Curation of facts is what these companies do, and how they curate them is how they express their bias. News companies aren't lying (even if some pundits do). They just present facts in ways to support the narrative they want. It is impossible to relay facts without doing so, but how objective they are and how much vias is injected is variable.
CivBase 4y ago
Well of course they do. The "mission" doesn't pay squat in the current environment. Fabricated outrage and tribal politics is far more lucrative and all the integrity in the world wont save you from operation expenses. People mostly just use news articles as justification for their existing political biases and the news organizations are happy to accommodate.
Natsu 4y ago
This is hardly surprising. More people are able to see things for themselves and coming to sharply divergent opinions than those of media outlets. So for example you'll watch actual trial coverage-all of it, not just any one day-and get to see clips like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hw0QSbDQNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hw0QSbDQNo And then you'll read stories like this which are only about one single part of the trial: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/20/darrell-brooks-trial-prosecution-rests-defendant-gives-opening-statement/10557608002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/20/darrel... The funny thing is that I don't think there's a single statement in the second article that's actually factually inaccurate with what USA Today said. They're just repeating what was said in court in that one part of the trial and just not mentioning that some of those statements are completely and utterly bogus for myriad reasons that anyone who watched the trial could tell you. But damn if it doesn't give you a different impression of how things are going in court than actually watching the thing itself with context.
- gsatic 4y ago
  Sometimes, when things don't make sense it's cause no one in the room has any idea what to do. They don't have the time, skills, resources or experience to produce a good outcome. And so whatever they do produces either no outcomes or creates more issues. There are only two know strategies for such scenarios 1. Find a simpler problem - refocus everyone on something simple, within their abilities to solve so that atleast outcomes are produced how ever simple they maybe. 2. Exit the room and disconnect from the people trapped in there (cuz they want to pull as many ppl into the trap hoping it will solve the prob)
- TexanFeller 4y ago
  The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was a great example of this. The media painted him as a white supremacist and all that, and one of Biden’s campaign ads implied he was those sort of things. I was buying into the mainstream news narrative at first, but then I watched most of the actual trial. In the evidence and testimony presented I didn’t see even a hint of racial bias, and my conclusion is he probably shouldn’t have even been charged since the video footage clearly shows what he did was lawful. I will never trust most news sources again.
bee_rider 4y ago
It is hard not to feel that way. I guess most of the staff at those organizations would say that the mission comes first, but they have to stay in business to do the mission.
bhk 4y ago
It's mission before money, but not the mission you think.
- encryptluks2 4y ago
  This. The main goal of news organizations may involve profit motivators, but ultimately they want to be able to influence the population.
  - jrmg 4y ago
    To what end do news organizations want to influence the population?
    - realce 4y ago
      to create dependence on their organizations from power structures that require public manipulation
    - umeshunni 4y ago
      To serve their owners interests
    - sojournerc 4y ago
      Seriously? Why does Besos own a media conglomerate? Why does Bill Gates "donate" to media organizations? For influence, to launder their reputation, for power... Look behind the curtain, see the emperor has no clothes.
robswc 4y ago
I mean, is that truly not the case?
bombcar 4y ago
Sometimes what isn’t reported can be as interesting as how what is reported is.
oceanplexian 4y ago
They’ve all become hyper polarized in the last ~10 years. Go find some footage of BBC or CNN or MSNBC from pre-2010. You might be a bit shocked how, well, boring it all is. I apologize for my American-centric view of politics, but something fundamentally changed about the world around the time Trump, Bernie, etc were making waves in 2015-2016 in US politics. It’s almost like we entered a parallel reality. Shortly after the media has gone extremist, not only in the US but globally.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  It's hardly just the media that's seen a change of tone; go look at a Presidential debate from 20-30 years ago. Look at how Bush and Reagan debated the issue of illegal immigration in 1980; it's a short clip, but it feels totally foreign these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixi9_cciy8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixi9_cciy8w
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    That clip should be quite the wake-up call for those who are ignorant of how far the Republican party has veered right today. Those two candidates, Bush and Reagan, would be Democrats today. Reagan [wrt Mexico]: "rather than talking about putting up a fence... and open the border both ways by understanding their problems"
    - juve1996 4y ago
      Listening to old speeches or interviews (like radio interviews before TV) is also eye opening. The thing is, everyone wants to blame politicians. But we as people have deteriorated. These people are who we choose. We're so concerned about winning at all costs that we don't even care about the abhorrent behavior of our candidates, on both sides. It's a race to the bottom now. Hopefully our experiment survives.
- bink 4y ago
  Media consolidation in the 90s took decades to degrade our public discourse. I fear for what things will look like in another 10 years.
ricardobeat 4y ago
The mindset in the report seems well-represented here in the comments.
fsociety999 4y ago
I don’t think there is much doubt that traditional media companies put profits over reporting and facts. It is difficult to critique war when defense contractors buy up much of your ad space. Likewise, it is difficult to critique big pharma when pharmaceutical companies buy up many of your ads, etc. The problem with the proposal to make the news publicly funded is that that just replaces one set of incentives with another. If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government. This same kind of thing has started to creep into other parts of society like the public education system where standardized test scores are often considered more important than a well-rounded education. Personally, this is why I like the business model of places like Substack where you can find specific journalists you trust to actually hold people in power accountable and can support them directly. Finding truly unbiased information these days is not easy. Speaking of Substack, I highly recommend this three part series about conflicts of interest and media companies: - https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts-of-interest https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts... - https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mind-part-2 https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi... - https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mind-part-3 https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...
- cocacola1 4y ago
  Then it's a question of holding those specific journalists on Substack accountable.
  - refurb 4y ago
    You hold them accountable by not paying them if you don't like their reporting.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      So "money comes before mission" again?
theknocker 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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pyuser583 4y ago
Lots of papers are in death spirals regardless. The long-term strategy for many is becoming non-profits.
thrown_22 4y ago
dzink 4y ago
Nationalizing the most watched news sources leads to horrible political consequences. Politicians quickly figure out that whomever gets more airtime wins and elections so the news becomes a visual diary of the activities of whoever is in power + whomever owns non-government media. In Eastern Europe the mafia bought most media in small countries, and now they cannot be dislodged.
- MBCook 4y ago
  That’s the argument to kill live C-SPAN coverage. We know politicians play to the cameras constantly. It’s obvious. Politicians have made their entire careers by becoming famous for their speeches on the floor. Do they really make a lot of those ridiculous charts and pictures for other politicians? I remember hearing from reporters and maybe even ex-representatives that things changed once the cameras came in. Things got worse. You couldn’t look weak by talking to/compromising with the other side. Bombast worked. It made polarization worse. It wasn’t a big club anymore, it was “us” and “them”. It won’t fix the rest of the media, but maybe C-SPAN is a failed experiment. The observer effect took over and changed the outcome.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    In Seattle it's even worse. There's a law that says that no discussion among city councilmembers can take place in private. So, all discussion is in the council chamber, with cameras recording it. You can guess where that leads. Nothing but grandstanding to the cameras. No horse-trading. No compromise. It's awful.
thr0wawayf00 4y ago
It's so crazy to me how many people are OK with ad-supported news while complaining about the objectivity of news generally. IMO (having worked for news organizations), this one of the biggest problems with the industry. I worked for a non-profit news org in 2016 and we spent a lot of time and energy covering the presidential race. One of the biggest ethical challenges we constantly faced as an organization was the reality that a certain candidate for president drew astronomical traffic to our site when his name was in a headline compared to everyone else, which meant more revenue for us. It wasn't even close. We hated this because we wanted to apply coverage to candidates equally, but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore. And so every time we ran another story about this candidate, we had to ask ourselves if it was appropriate or not since he was not local to our state or region. The news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived and it's not easy to leave money on the table with any sort of regularity. And when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that". It's a no-win situation. Here's the bottom line: ad-based news models rely heavily on traffic metrics to generate ad revenue, which is derived from serving ads. I believe this is the single most poisonous aspect of making news today because those who make news can quite easily see what kind of news sells and what doesn't. As long as news organizations are focused on driving traffic to their site to generate ad revenue, this will be a problem. But people don't want to pay for news, so where does that leave our system? We're not willing as a society to give up the convenience that this deeply corrupt system gives us.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- drewcoo 4y ago
  > It's so crazy to me how many people So shaming consumers will solve the problem? Is that what people who've worked for news orgs think? The things I pay for and point my friends toward don't treat people that way. > news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived Well I go to Substack and Rumble, among others. The news industry is dying because it can't handle competition. R.I.P., "The News." Now let's imagine a world a little more informative than three television networks telling us all the same stories the same ways . . .
ck2 4y ago
Journalists don't even write their own article titles, which then become click-bait by "editors". That basically sums up the state of "reporting". Payout is view-driven which means anything goes to survive. Media today is the equivalent of going to work sick "whatever it takes to not become homeless, frack everyone else".
InTheArena 4y ago
I've never thought it was about money. But I am sure that modern media is about power and the ability to influence people to one's point of view. This is why you see Bezos, Musk, Soros, Iger and Murdoch investing. This is why you see people willing to go into the media despite the ability to be significantly better compensated in other fields. The demand that the media be generally truthful has disappeared since the abolition of the fairness doctrine. This is a reflection of the growing cultural battle not between left and right but rather between authoritarianism and Liberalism (big L liberalism). If you control what speech is amplified, you don't need to control what speech is uttered in the first place. China, in particular, has learned this lesson well. Meanwhile, the lessons that western culture has learned from WWI and WWII about the dangers of no separation of government and media is resulting in Millennials and gen-z being willing further to expand the role of the government in media.
- foverzar 4y ago
  > the fairness doctrine Wow, that is so cool. TIL. I only wish my country would copy things like this, instead of things like "Foreign Agents Registration Act" :\
squokko 4y ago
They're for-profit organizations, for mission to come before money would be highly aberrant.
- Aperocky 4y ago
  for profit organization's mission is primarily make money.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Fortunately, they can only make money by pleasing their customers.
    - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
      Pleasing their customers != Telling them the truth You also forget about the role of shareholders.
      - WalterBright 4y ago
        Defrauding customers is against the law in free market economies.
        pastacacioepepe 4y ago
        Curious how it still happens all the time, on every degree of free market from lasseiz-faire to state capitalism.
    - squokko 4y ago
      This is not even remotely true. Making your customers angry is a much more profitable media strategy than "pleasing" them. All studies have replicated the consumption of more news with more negative emotions because "if it bleeds, it leads." People make poor rational choices with alcohol, drugs, junk food, media, and pretty much everything else.
jimbob45 4y ago
I’ll happily call bullshit. It’s not money - money in news organizations is drying up and everyone knows it. It’s the CYA mentality that comes before the product these days. With so little money to go around, no one wants to be the one to have screwed up in their organization for management to blame their money woes on.
bilsbie 4y ago
It’s funny. I actually worry about the opposite.
adolph 4y ago
It’s weird that Americans don’t realize that money is the mission. Why do they not think holistically about these things?
aaron695 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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shortformblog 4y ago
When I got into journalism a little less than two decades ago it was common to see “firewalls” between different departments at major publications like newspapers and magazines, which protected the coverage. That is, the advertiser had no influence on the editorial coverage, and opinion doesn’t bleed into the content. I think in the digital age, the complicating factor is that the decision-makers have winnowed down this work so much that the firewalls just don’t hold up as well as they used to. Owners with an agenda may not care about church-state arguments. In the case of small publications, the writer or the editor is also the ad-seller. And in publications that lean more ideological, opinion-oriented content can prove deeply influential on the editorial coverage. (See what’s happened to cable TV over the last quarter-century.) All of which is to say that the reason this point of view is prevalent is because we haven’t done enough to invest in these institutions to ensure that firewall exists in the first place. To do it right, you need: - An owner that actually cares about having a firewall - Strong ethical rules for the journalists - Advertising standards that help ad-buyers understand where the wall is For newspapers, a key element of show a limit of ad influence is the front page. If there’s a deeply integrated ad of some kind, that reflects a negative influence on the coverage. But in the online world, we have native ads and tracking, and both of these can be deeply integrated into the experience. I think what we’re seeing is that there aren’t strong enough firewalls—and if I were to blame anyone, I would blame the ad department. They allowed their standards to lower to the point where publications simply gave advertisers too much. We need to get back to more magazine-style advertising in publications where a single sponsor buys a premium spot and it pays for a good chunk of the coverage.
- mjevans 4y ago
  How about, ban ads on news networks. At least anywhere near the news. The money's the root of the evil here.
  - jeofken 4y ago
    If you pay 0 you get 0. If it’s free, you are the product.
    - 4y ago
MBCook 4y ago
This wasn’t supposed to be a problem because to get airwaves from the FCC broadcasters had to agree to broadcast a certain amount of public interest programming, which they do with news. The problem is basically everyone seems to be trying to see how far they can push the line on “good enough” without ending up getting fined. And the FCC knows how dangerous it is to try to rein that in. And media consolidation means you can produce crappy news and not fail because you only compete with yourself or one other corporation that also happens to try to send as little possible on news. All incentives to do a good job (as a corporation) are gone. And as long as the slide wasn’t too fast they wouldn’t get called on it. So here we are. Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else. "TV networks not wanting to air a prime time presidential address because of ratings" is one way of framing it. The other is "TV networks giving what their viewers want and not shoving a presidential address down their throats". In the era of cable TV and c-span.org, people who want politics can get it. The person tuning in at prime time to watch NCIS or whatever doesn't care for the president's speech, and I'm not sure what good can come from trying to force people to watch it.
  - paulryanrogers 4y ago
    It's in the public interest to hear from the president during significant events. With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another.
    - gruez 4y ago
      >It's in the public interest to hear from the president during significant events. for the purpose of argument, let's assume this premise is true. It's not hard to imagine that a biden supporter would be amendable to the idea there's a "public interest" to hear from him. However, how would this work if it's a president you oppose? Would you support allowing trump in 2020 to hijack prime time TV so he could rant about how "biden and ANTIFA democrats are mounting a dangerous attack on the country’s values, and Americans must fight back"[1]? Absent a principled way of determining what counts as "public interest", what you're saying just boils down to "people should be forced to hear the speech that I like". [1] quote adapted from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/01/biden-slams-attacks-on-democracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/01/biden-sla... >With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another. I haven't had cable for a while, but I'm pretty sure that "on demand streaming and syndication" doesn't allow you to watch episodes as they're being aired. Moreover, not everyone knows how to operate a streaming service. In contrast if you wanted to hear biden's speech you could easily tune into CNN or c-span. Therefore it's pretty clear that canceling prime time TV has more of an impact on people's options than not airing biden's speech does.
deleted 4y ago
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borderprepper 4y ago
borderprepper 4y ago
johnp314 4y ago
What is the 'mission' of a news organization? There are facts, e.g. a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was discovered with lots of unfavorable emails, an unruly group of people broke into the US Capitol on Jan 6 and wreaked all sorts of havoc, George Floyd died while in police custody, Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, etc, etc. But quickly after reporting these 'facts' nuance enters the discussion, why, what does it mean, what is the impact, who cause it, etc, etc. Why should we expect reporters to not view and report the nuance through their own personal filters? A reporter also lives in the country and/or community in which he/she is reporting and has their own biases and beliefs and, yes, political leanings. Why should they then report a nuance that might reflect poorly on the things they personally believe to be correct or their personal world view? It's silly to compare money to mission of a news organization (or any other entity for that matter). It's like asking what influences a human being more, food to air? You need both. For a news organization to have impact it needs money. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't even NPR solicit money on a regular basis - don't they have to cater to the supplier of that money to some extent to continue their service? I hear their fund raising and they often read comments from contributors which all more or less say "you give me what I want". So their money comes from those with whom their style and nuance of reporting resonates and it's reasonable to assume that NPR reporting then continues in that direction.
dinvlad 4y ago
Most of what we call “news” these days are not really news, but reporting on an endless stream of negative events, because negativity and sensationalism attracts more viewership (and thus, money). Real news should be mostly local, about all of the good and bad things around us that actually matter in our lives. Otherwise, there’s really no sense in following the “news”, it’s just a meaningless waste of our lives.
FrontierPsych 4y ago
Most Americans think that? Try most Americans know that. Everything is biased, too. Like people on the right think Fox is unbiased and fair, and on the left, they think NPR is unbiased and fair. Not only does money come before mission, so does policital agenda. Both sides.
jesuscript 4y ago
It’s difficult to accept the amorality of something you are interacting with, particularly if you are reacting to it. It forces accountability onto oneself which one often tries to avoid. Think of it like a drug. It’s totally amoral, but it will take you to the end if you let it. Blaming the drug shifts accountability. Once you realize the drug is amoral and it is you who must stop, that’s when you take accountability. The institution of the Media is amoral. If we sit here and say they do things for money is the same as saying such and such drug is addictive, or even more ridiculous, such and such drug has nicotine in it. Okay? It’s amoral. Facing something amoral within yourself or outside of yourself is often unbelievable. You will always try to describe it or comprehend it, but the answer is simple and frightening. The media actually hasn’t shifted from its virtues. We want them to be divorced from what they report and who they report it to. The amoral quality is of the essence to do it right. They should not care about right or wrong, just do, report. That same underlying trait is manifesting in another way, is all.
WalterBright 4y ago
Most news organizations say their mission is to inform people, but their actual mission is to tell people what to think, regardless of what the facts are. Their political agenda shines through their "reporting" on just about everything but the weather report. Strike that, even the weather report has become politicized. It makes me wonder, has it always been this way, or do I just notice it more as I grow older? As for government funding of news media, we all know where that leads - all you'll read in it is the government's political agenda. Do you really want to get your news from the White House press secretary?
foverzar 4y ago
"Mission", huh? Do people in America (or anywhere else) actually believe that news organizations actually follow some kind of "mission"? Why? How does being a news organization suddenly puts you apart from any other organization/corporation with all the corruption factors? I don't really get this mythos of journalists being white knights in shining armor or wise sages with a holy "mission". From where I stand, it seems like an over-glorification of people who are essentially just experts on writing texts, and not much else. And just as all the other people and organizations, they will have their own agenda, their own biases and their own ways of corruption. Personally, I don't really see much point of modern journalism, other than maybe political signaling. Narrative writing style became a weird norm and it just feels like you are being treated like cattle. I want facts, references, comparisons, critical analysis. Instead I get a story-time and have to do all the analysis myself - most of the times the story ends up being a misrepresentative or omitting crucial facts. And you just sit there wondering, whether it was a deliberate "control the narrative" kind of manipulation, or maybe it's just the author being an idiot, or maybe today it's this post-truth thing of not addressing the parts of truth that may be beneficial to adversaries.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Credulity, noun: a tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true. "moneylenders prey upon their credulity and inexperience"
bobiny 4y ago
Serious question: what is the benefit for a journalist to work for a news org vs working solo?
- conviencefee999 4y ago
  Stable pay. No one pays journalists or writers besides a select few.
- hairofadog 4y ago
  Same as any other line of work: they only have to focus on writing, not on all the other aspects of running a sole proprietorship (health insurance, taxes, etc.) There’s also a built-in, base audience. In some cases, there’s prestige that comes with working for certain publications.
ElfinTrousers 4y ago
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...
poopnugget 4y ago

179 points by hhs 4y ago

arkis22 4y ago

I find apnews.com an excellent and mostly emotionless free news source

Ptchd 4y ago
same. just wish they had an RSS feed...

about_that 4y ago

throwawaysleep 4y ago

As a general rule, people aren’t willing to pay for the things considered public goods. Then they whine that said news chases views. Like Republican communities that underpay teachers and wonder why their kids have no futures because someone with a brain built a robot to do their repetitive trivial job.

throwaway2275 4y ago
PixyMisa 4y ago
Also like Democratic communities that overpay teachers and wonder why their kids have no futures because someone with a brain built a robot to do their repetitive trivial job.
- umeshunni 4y ago
  More like Democratic communities that ban building housing and then wonder why housing is expensive.

Yhippa 4y ago

I'd be willing to pay for news from organizations like the AP or Reuters. Trad newspapers like NYT/WSJ seem to just cater to their bases. Cable companies are more entertainment and are beholden to their advertisers. I felt things like PBS are a public good. Growing up I got educational programming from there and that should be available to the public as a last resort.

RajT88 4y ago
PBS is the best thing I get from the antenna on my roof.
- aliqot 4y ago
  > I get from the antenna on my roof. These are just extra words :) I like PBS a lot
SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
The AP is made up of CNN, USA Today, NBC, Washington Post, etc writers be them local or national branch. Reuters is slightly better but this isn’t a problem that can be solved with just throwing more money at someone. It’s a lack of integrity.
- throwawaysleep 4y ago
  Integrity is what people complain about when they aren’t willing to pay up for aligned incentives. You need aligned incentives.
  - PixyMisa 4y ago
    No, just the facts.
    - kbenson 4y ago
      The current media gives you facts. They just present them in specific ways or downplay or omit other facts. Getting all the facts is as bad as getting no facts, because we aren't capable of paraing then all. Curation of facts is what these companies do, and how they curate them is how they express their bias. News companies aren't lying (even if some pundits do). They just present facts in ways to support the narrative they want. It is impossible to relay facts without doing so, but how objective they are and how much vias is injected is variable.

CivBase 4y ago

Well of course they do. The "mission" doesn't pay squat in the current environment. Fabricated outrage and tribal politics is far more lucrative and all the integrity in the world wont save you from operation expenses. People mostly just use news articles as justification for their existing political biases and the news organizations are happy to accommodate.

Natsu 4y ago

This is hardly surprising. More people are able to see things for themselves and coming to sharply divergent opinions than those of media outlets. So for example you'll watch actual trial coverage-all of it, not just any one day-and get to see clips like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hw0QSbDQNo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hw0QSbDQNo And then you'll read stories like this which are only about one single part of the trial: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/20/darrell-brooks-trial-prosecution-rests-defendant-gives-opening-statement/10557608002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/10/20/darrel... The funny thing is that I don't think there's a single statement in the second article that's actually factually inaccurate with what USA Today said. They're just repeating what was said in court in that one part of the trial and just not mentioning that some of those statements are completely and utterly bogus for myriad reasons that anyone who watched the trial could tell you. But damn if it doesn't give you a different impression of how things are going in court than actually watching the thing itself with context.

gsatic 4y ago
Sometimes, when things don't make sense it's cause no one in the room has any idea what to do. They don't have the time, skills, resources or experience to produce a good outcome. And so whatever they do produces either no outcomes or creates more issues. There are only two know strategies for such scenarios 1. Find a simpler problem - refocus everyone on something simple, within their abilities to solve so that atleast outcomes are produced how ever simple they maybe. 2. Exit the room and disconnect from the people trapped in there (cuz they want to pull as many ppl into the trap hoping it will solve the prob)
TexanFeller 4y ago
The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was a great example of this. The media painted him as a white supremacist and all that, and one of Biden’s campaign ads implied he was those sort of things. I was buying into the mainstream news narrative at first, but then I watched most of the actual trial. In the evidence and testimony presented I didn’t see even a hint of racial bias, and my conclusion is he probably shouldn’t have even been charged since the video footage clearly shows what he did was lawful. I will never trust most news sources again.

bee_rider 4y ago

It is hard not to feel that way. I guess most of the staff at those organizations would say that the mission comes first, but they have to stay in business to do the mission.

bhk 4y ago

It's mission before money, but not the mission you think.

encryptluks2 4y ago
This. The main goal of news organizations may involve profit motivators, but ultimately they want to be able to influence the population.
- jrmg 4y ago
  To what end do news organizations want to influence the population?
  - realce 4y ago
    to create dependence on their organizations from power structures that require public manipulation
  - umeshunni 4y ago
    To serve their owners interests
  - sojournerc 4y ago
    Seriously? Why does Besos own a media conglomerate? Why does Bill Gates "donate" to media organizations? For influence, to launder their reputation, for power... Look behind the curtain, see the emperor has no clothes.

robswc 4y ago

I mean, is that truly not the case?

bombcar 4y ago

Sometimes what isn’t reported can be as interesting as how what is reported is.

oceanplexian 4y ago

They’ve all become hyper polarized in the last ~10 years. Go find some footage of BBC or CNN or MSNBC from pre-2010. You might be a bit shocked how, well, boring it all is. I apologize for my American-centric view of politics, but something fundamentally changed about the world around the time Trump, Bernie, etc were making waves in 2015-2016 in US politics. It’s almost like we entered a parallel reality. Shortly after the media has gone extremist, not only in the US but globally.

ceejayoz 4y ago
It's hardly just the media that's seen a change of tone; go look at a Presidential debate from 20-30 years ago. Look at how Bush and Reagan debated the issue of illegal immigration in 1980; it's a short clip, but it feels totally foreign these days: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixi9_cciy8w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ixi9_cciy8w
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  That clip should be quite the wake-up call for those who are ignorant of how far the Republican party has veered right today. Those two candidates, Bush and Reagan, would be Democrats today. Reagan [wrt Mexico]: "rather than talking about putting up a fence... and open the border both ways by understanding their problems"
  - juve1996 4y ago
    Listening to old speeches or interviews (like radio interviews before TV) is also eye opening. The thing is, everyone wants to blame politicians. But we as people have deteriorated. These people are who we choose. We're so concerned about winning at all costs that we don't even care about the abhorrent behavior of our candidates, on both sides. It's a race to the bottom now. Hopefully our experiment survives.
bink 4y ago
Media consolidation in the 90s took decades to degrade our public discourse. I fear for what things will look like in another 10 years.

ricardobeat 4y ago

The mindset in the report seems well-represented here in the comments.

fsociety999 4y ago

I don’t think there is much doubt that traditional media companies put profits over reporting and facts. It is difficult to critique war when defense contractors buy up much of your ad space. Likewise, it is difficult to critique big pharma when pharmaceutical companies buy up many of your ads, etc. The problem with the proposal to make the news publicly funded is that that just replaces one set of incentives with another. If governments dictate when media outlets receive funding and how much, then it is unlikely that said media companies will be overly critical of the government. This same kind of thing has started to creep into other parts of society like the public education system where standardized test scores are often considered more important than a well-rounded education. Personally, this is why I like the business model of places like Substack where you can find specific journalists you trust to actually hold people in power accountable and can support them directly. Finding truly unbiased information these days is not easy. Speaking of Substack, I highly recommend this three part series about conflicts of interest and media companies: - https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts-of-interest https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/big-media-big-conflicts... - https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mind-part-2 https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi... - https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mind-part-3 https://rebeccastrong.substack.com/p/the-monopoly-on-your-mi...

cocacola1 4y ago
Then it's a question of holding those specific journalists on Substack accountable.
- refurb 4y ago
  You hold them accountable by not paying them if you don't like their reporting.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    So "money comes before mission" again?

theknocker 4y ago

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pyuser583 4y ago

Lots of papers are in death spirals regardless. The long-term strategy for many is becoming non-profits.

thrown_22 4y ago

dzink 4y ago

Nationalizing the most watched news sources leads to horrible political consequences. Politicians quickly figure out that whomever gets more airtime wins and elections so the news becomes a visual diary of the activities of whoever is in power + whomever owns non-government media. In Eastern Europe the mafia bought most media in small countries, and now they cannot be dislodged.

MBCook 4y ago
That’s the argument to kill live C-SPAN coverage. We know politicians play to the cameras constantly. It’s obvious. Politicians have made their entire careers by becoming famous for their speeches on the floor. Do they really make a lot of those ridiculous charts and pictures for other politicians? I remember hearing from reporters and maybe even ex-representatives that things changed once the cameras came in. Things got worse. You couldn’t look weak by talking to/compromising with the other side. Bombast worked. It made polarization worse. It wasn’t a big club anymore, it was “us” and “them”. It won’t fix the rest of the media, but maybe C-SPAN is a failed experiment. The observer effect took over and changed the outcome.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  In Seattle it's even worse. There's a law that says that no discussion among city councilmembers can take place in private. So, all discussion is in the council chamber, with cameras recording it. You can guess where that leads. Nothing but grandstanding to the cameras. No horse-trading. No compromise. It's awful.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago

It's so crazy to me how many people are OK with ad-supported news while complaining about the objectivity of news generally. IMO (having worked for news organizations), this one of the biggest problems with the industry. I worked for a non-profit news org in 2016 and we spent a lot of time and energy covering the presidential race. One of the biggest ethical challenges we constantly faced as an organization was the reality that a certain candidate for president drew astronomical traffic to our site when his name was in a headline compared to everyone else, which meant more revenue for us. It wasn't even close. We hated this because we wanted to apply coverage to candidates equally, but the discrepancies in traffic were impossible to ignore. And so every time we ran another story about this candidate, we had to ask ourselves if it was appropriate or not since he was not local to our state or region. The news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived and it's not easy to leave money on the table with any sort of regularity. And when news organizations do choose to leave the money on the table, they are never recognized for it because nobody will come out and say "we really wanted to run another story about X, but we chose not to because we didn't feel it was right to keep doing that". It's a no-win situation. Here's the bottom line: ad-based news models rely heavily on traffic metrics to generate ad revenue, which is derived from serving ads. I believe this is the single most poisonous aspect of making news today because those who make news can quite easily see what kind of news sells and what doesn't. As long as news organizations are focused on driving traffic to their site to generate ad revenue, this will be a problem. But people don't want to pay for news, so where does that leave our system? We're not willing as a society to give up the convenience that this deeply corrupt system gives us.

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drewcoo 4y ago
> It's so crazy to me how many people So shaming consumers will solve the problem? Is that what people who've worked for news orgs think? The things I pay for and point my friends toward don't treat people that way. > news industry has been dying a painfully slow death ever since the internet arrived Well I go to Substack and Rumble, among others. The news industry is dying because it can't handle competition. R.I.P., "The News." Now let's imagine a world a little more informative than three television networks telling us all the same stories the same ways . . .

ck2 4y ago

Journalists don't even write their own article titles, which then become click-bait by "editors". That basically sums up the state of "reporting". Payout is view-driven which means anything goes to survive. Media today is the equivalent of going to work sick "whatever it takes to not become homeless, frack everyone else".

InTheArena 4y ago

I've never thought it was about money. But I am sure that modern media is about power and the ability to influence people to one's point of view. This is why you see Bezos, Musk, Soros, Iger and Murdoch investing. This is why you see people willing to go into the media despite the ability to be significantly better compensated in other fields. The demand that the media be generally truthful has disappeared since the abolition of the fairness doctrine. This is a reflection of the growing cultural battle not between left and right but rather between authoritarianism and Liberalism (big L liberalism). If you control what speech is amplified, you don't need to control what speech is uttered in the first place. China, in particular, has learned this lesson well. Meanwhile, the lessons that western culture has learned from WWI and WWII about the dangers of no separation of government and media is resulting in Millennials and gen-z being willing further to expand the role of the government in media.

foverzar 4y ago
> the fairness doctrine Wow, that is so cool. TIL. I only wish my country would copy things like this, instead of things like "Foreign Agents Registration Act" :\

squokko 4y ago

They're for-profit organizations, for mission to come before money would be highly aberrant.

Aperocky 4y ago
for profit organization's mission is primarily make money.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Fortunately, they can only make money by pleasing their customers.
  - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
    Pleasing their customers != Telling them the truth You also forget about the role of shareholders.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Defrauding customers is against the law in free market economies.
      - pastacacioepepe 4y ago
        Curious how it still happens all the time, on every degree of free market from lasseiz-faire to state capitalism.
  - squokko 4y ago
    This is not even remotely true. Making your customers angry is a much more profitable media strategy than "pleasing" them. All studies have replicated the consumption of more news with more negative emotions because "if it bleeds, it leads." People make poor rational choices with alcohol, drugs, junk food, media, and pretty much everything else.

jimbob45 4y ago

I’ll happily call bullshit. It’s not money - money in news organizations is drying up and everyone knows it. It’s the CYA mentality that comes before the product these days. With so little money to go around, no one wants to be the one to have screwed up in their organization for management to blame their money woes on.

bilsbie 4y ago

It’s funny. I actually worry about the opposite.

adolph 4y ago

It’s weird that Americans don’t realize that money is the mission. Why do they not think holistically about these things?

aaron695 4y ago

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shortformblog 4y ago

When I got into journalism a little less than two decades ago it was common to see “firewalls” between different departments at major publications like newspapers and magazines, which protected the coverage. That is, the advertiser had no influence on the editorial coverage, and opinion doesn’t bleed into the content. I think in the digital age, the complicating factor is that the decision-makers have winnowed down this work so much that the firewalls just don’t hold up as well as they used to. Owners with an agenda may not care about church-state arguments. In the case of small publications, the writer or the editor is also the ad-seller. And in publications that lean more ideological, opinion-oriented content can prove deeply influential on the editorial coverage. (See what’s happened to cable TV over the last quarter-century.) All of which is to say that the reason this point of view is prevalent is because we haven’t done enough to invest in these institutions to ensure that firewall exists in the first place. To do it right, you need: - An owner that actually cares about having a firewall - Strong ethical rules for the journalists - Advertising standards that help ad-buyers understand where the wall is For newspapers, a key element of show a limit of ad influence is the front page. If there’s a deeply integrated ad of some kind, that reflects a negative influence on the coverage. But in the online world, we have native ads and tracking, and both of these can be deeply integrated into the experience. I think what we’re seeing is that there aren’t strong enough firewalls—and if I were to blame anyone, I would blame the ad department. They allowed their standards to lower to the point where publications simply gave advertisers too much. We need to get back to more magazine-style advertising in publications where a single sponsor buys a premium spot and it pays for a good chunk of the coverage.

mjevans 4y ago
How about, ban ads on news networks. At least anywhere near the news. The money's the root of the evil here.
- jeofken 4y ago
  If you pay 0 you get 0. If it’s free, you are the product.
  - 4y ago

MBCook 4y ago

This wasn’t supposed to be a problem because to get airwaves from the FCC broadcasters had to agree to broadcast a certain amount of public interest programming, which they do with news. The problem is basically everyone seems to be trying to see how far they can push the line on “good enough” without ending up getting fined. And the FCC knows how dangerous it is to try to rein that in. And media consolidation means you can produce crappy news and not fail because you only compete with yourself or one other corporation that also happens to try to send as little possible on news. All incentives to do a good job (as a corporation) are gone. And as long as the slide wasn’t too fast they wouldn’t get called on it. So here we are. Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else.

gruez 4y ago
>Edit: and oh yeah, not airing a prime time presidential address to the nation because your ratings would go down. I’m sure the public interest rule was designed to protect your ratings above all else. "TV networks not wanting to air a prime time presidential address because of ratings" is one way of framing it. The other is "TV networks giving what their viewers want and not shoving a presidential address down their throats". In the era of cable TV and c-span.org, people who want politics can get it. The person tuning in at prime time to watch NCIS or whatever doesn't care for the president's speech, and I'm not sure what good can come from trying to force people to watch it.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago
  It's in the public interest to hear from the president during significant events. With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >It's in the public interest to hear from the president during significant events. for the purpose of argument, let's assume this premise is true. It's not hard to imagine that a biden supporter would be amendable to the idea there's a "public interest" to hear from him. However, how would this work if it's a president you oppose? Would you support allowing trump in 2020 to hijack prime time TV so he could rant about how "biden and ANTIFA democrats are mounting a dangerous attack on the country’s values, and Americans must fight back"[1]? Absent a principled way of determining what counts as "public interest", what you're saying just boils down to "people should be forced to hear the speech that I like". [1] quote adapted from https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/01/biden-slams-attacks-on-democracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/01/biden-sla... >With on demand streaming and syndication folks with get their NCIS fix one way or another. I haven't had cable for a while, but I'm pretty sure that "on demand streaming and syndication" doesn't allow you to watch episodes as they're being aired. Moreover, not everyone knows how to operate a streaming service. In contrast if you wanted to hear biden's speech you could easily tune into CNN or c-span. Therefore it's pretty clear that canceling prime time TV has more of an impact on people's options than not airing biden's speech does.

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borderprepper 4y ago

johnp314 4y ago

What is the 'mission' of a news organization? There are facts, e.g. a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden was discovered with lots of unfavorable emails, an unruly group of people broke into the US Capitol on Jan 6 and wreaked all sorts of havoc, George Floyd died while in police custody, Russian troops crossed the border into Ukraine, etc, etc. But quickly after reporting these 'facts' nuance enters the discussion, why, what does it mean, what is the impact, who cause it, etc, etc. Why should we expect reporters to not view and report the nuance through their own personal filters? A reporter also lives in the country and/or community in which he/she is reporting and has their own biases and beliefs and, yes, political leanings. Why should they then report a nuance that might reflect poorly on the things they personally believe to be correct or their personal world view? It's silly to compare money to mission of a news organization (or any other entity for that matter). It's like asking what influences a human being more, food to air? You need both. For a news organization to have impact it needs money. Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't even NPR solicit money on a regular basis - don't they have to cater to the supplier of that money to some extent to continue their service? I hear their fund raising and they often read comments from contributors which all more or less say "you give me what I want". So their money comes from those with whom their style and nuance of reporting resonates and it's reasonable to assume that NPR reporting then continues in that direction.

dinvlad 4y ago

Most of what we call “news” these days are not really news, but reporting on an endless stream of negative events, because negativity and sensationalism attracts more viewership (and thus, money). Real news should be mostly local, about all of the good and bad things around us that actually matter in our lives. Otherwise, there’s really no sense in following the “news”, it’s just a meaningless waste of our lives.

FrontierPsych 4y ago

Most Americans think that? Try most Americans know that. Everything is biased, too. Like people on the right think Fox is unbiased and fair, and on the left, they think NPR is unbiased and fair. Not only does money come before mission, so does policital agenda. Both sides.

jesuscript 4y ago

It’s difficult to accept the amorality of something you are interacting with, particularly if you are reacting to it. It forces accountability onto oneself which one often tries to avoid. Think of it like a drug. It’s totally amoral, but it will take you to the end if you let it. Blaming the drug shifts accountability. Once you realize the drug is amoral and it is you who must stop, that’s when you take accountability. The institution of the Media is amoral. If we sit here and say they do things for money is the same as saying such and such drug is addictive, or even more ridiculous, such and such drug has nicotine in it. Okay? It’s amoral. Facing something amoral within yourself or outside of yourself is often unbelievable. You will always try to describe it or comprehend it, but the answer is simple and frightening. The media actually hasn’t shifted from its virtues. We want them to be divorced from what they report and who they report it to. The amoral quality is of the essence to do it right. They should not care about right or wrong, just do, report. That same underlying trait is manifesting in another way, is all.

WalterBright 4y ago

Most news organizations say their mission is to inform people, but their actual mission is to tell people what to think, regardless of what the facts are. Their political agenda shines through their "reporting" on just about everything but the weather report. Strike that, even the weather report has become politicized. It makes me wonder, has it always been this way, or do I just notice it more as I grow older? As for government funding of news media, we all know where that leads - all you'll read in it is the government's political agenda. Do you really want to get your news from the White House press secretary?

foverzar 4y ago

"Mission", huh? Do people in America (or anywhere else) actually believe that news organizations actually follow some kind of "mission"? Why? How does being a news organization suddenly puts you apart from any other organization/corporation with all the corruption factors? I don't really get this mythos of journalists being white knights in shining armor or wise sages with a holy "mission". From where I stand, it seems like an over-glorification of people who are essentially just experts on writing texts, and not much else. And just as all the other people and organizations, they will have their own agenda, their own biases and their own ways of corruption. Personally, I don't really see much point of modern journalism, other than maybe political signaling. Narrative writing style became a weird norm and it just feels like you are being treated like cattle. I want facts, references, comparisons, critical analysis. Instead I get a story-time and have to do all the analysis myself - most of the times the story ends up being a misrepresentative or omitting crucial facts. And you just sit there wondering, whether it was a deliberate "control the narrative" kind of manipulation, or maybe it's just the author being an idiot, or maybe today it's this post-truth thing of not addressing the parts of truth that may be beneficial to adversaries.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Credulity, noun: a tendency to be too ready to believe that something is real or true. "moneylenders prey upon their credulity and inexperience"

bobiny 4y ago

Serious question: what is the benefit for a journalist to work for a news org vs working solo?

conviencefee999 4y ago
Stable pay. No one pays journalists or writers besides a select few.
hairofadog 4y ago
Same as any other line of work: they only have to focus on writing, not on all the other aspects of running a sole proprietorship (health insurance, taxes, etc.) There’s also a built-in, base audience. In some cases, there’s prestige that comes with working for certain publications.

ElfinTrousers 4y ago

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

poopnugget 4y ago