6 ms·

Not in the US, but I usually see a lot of people saying don't trust the news but it's also not as if they are doing any rational thinking about it. And a lot of

Not in the US, but I usually see a lot of people saying don't trust the news but it's also not as if they are doing any rational thinking about it. And a lot of the times is just because news are not validating their own beliefs so I think it's even worse than just having bad news.

dotnet00 4y ago
I don't think it takes much rational thought to realize that the news are incompetent at worst and intentionally misleading at best. Even without validating beliefs, there are so many cases of news organizations publishing incorrect or misleading information in a rush to cover a story, only to then issue a silent correction weeks later when the damage has been done. This weakens trust in two ways, first is just people who pay enough attention to notice the correction and gradually lose trust as they see how often that happens. The other is the more damaging, more common way, where someone has read the incorrect/misleading article and internalized the information only to find out much later that the information they internalized was incorrect (without ever seeing the original correction). One example that comes to mind is regarding the supposed sudden Starlink outages in Ukraine back in October around when Musk was tweeting dumb stuff about appeasing Russia. CNN was quick to report the outage implying that it was unexpected by Ukraine and they were shutdown to blackmail the West into paying. This article was all over the news. Then weeks later they put out an article stating that it was just 1300 terminals which were being provided by the UK which were shut-off due to the UK deciding not to pay for the subscription anymore, with Ukraine having been fully aware and having swapped them out beforehand with the other ~18000 still operating terminals. But this one got nowhere near the same traction and was still misleadingly headlined.
- soco 4y ago
  Data set of one, but the people I met claiming they don't trust the news, all take their news from youtube and random taxi drivers. This doesn't say anything about the news outlets, just about those people and their peculiar ways to "think for themselves".
  - pjc50 4y ago
    Indeed. People are replacing mainstream news with something that's often far less accurate.
    - registeredcorn 4y ago
      This can only be true if we assume that news is accurate. It simply isn't.
      - bryanlarsen 4y ago
        Accuracy isn't a binary.
        registeredcorn 4y ago
        Is that an accurate statement?
        ben_w 4y ago
        Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, depending on the domain.
      - goatlover 4y ago
        There's a range between 0% and 100%. Saying news is either would be false. Giving it a percentage would just depend on what news and what situation.
      - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
        It might be accurate, but that's not the priority. Think about it: broadcasting information costs something. Nobody is going to pay that cost unless they're getting a return for it. Nobody is going out of their way to provide you with information out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it so that you buy what they're selling (e.g. pharmaceuticals, gold) or vote for their party, etc. A lot of times that information will be technically not wrong, but that's not the goal.
goalieca 4y ago
> validating their own beliefs There can be a huge discrepancy between what your experience is and what is being reported. Most people will tend believe what they see and know.
lesuorac 4y ago
I would say its hard to do any rational thinking about come to the conclusion that the 24/h news orgs are meant to inform you. The easy angle is product placement [1]. Literally fork over a small sum of money and you get the news org to rave about your product without doing any verification. There's also how a headline is not written by the author so it won't always reflect the contents of the article. > And a lot of the times is just because news are not validating their own beliefs IMO, the news orgs have a symbiotic relation with their viewers. The viewers want their viewpoint reinforced and the news org wants views. So the news org put out a biased product so that their viewers will selectively watch that news org. However, this still means that news org aren't actually trying to inform. My biggest gripe is how often they'll refuse to link to actual legal documents when talking about filed lawsuits and the like and in general I don't find some of their claims in the article to be as supported by the actual filings. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM
- IIAOPSW 4y ago
  Lawfare blog my dude. They don't shy away from the raw legal source code. https://www.lawfareblog.com/ https://www.lawfareblog.com/
Workaccount2 4y ago
I've had the same experience where it seems people who "don't trust the media" get all their news from some random facebook page or a website along the lines of realtruth-nolies-chronicle.blogspot.com.
throwaway894345 4y ago
In the US we used to feel like the news was more trustworthy even if it didn’t support our views because it maintained some pretense of neutrality and objectivity; however, that broke down as the media became increasingly politicized and sensationalized—a lot of people felt that if the media isn’t going to tell THE truth, they would find a media that would tell THEIR truth (hence your bit about “validating their own beliefs”). So we get fragmented and relative epistemology, in large part because the traditional media decided to be activist even if it meant overtly and obviously lying about things that were trivially verifiable. This is why we need to roll back to a media that aspired toward neutrality and objectivity rather than an a la carte model.

dotnet00 4y ago

I don't think it takes much rational thought to realize that the news are incompetent at worst and intentionally misleading at best. Even without validating beliefs, there are so many cases of news organizations publishing incorrect or misleading information in a rush to cover a story, only to then issue a silent correction weeks later when the damage has been done. This weakens trust in two ways, first is just people who pay enough attention to notice the correction and gradually lose trust as they see how often that happens. The other is the more damaging, more common way, where someone has read the incorrect/misleading article and internalized the information only to find out much later that the information they internalized was incorrect (without ever seeing the original correction). One example that comes to mind is regarding the supposed sudden Starlink outages in Ukraine back in October around when Musk was tweeting dumb stuff about appeasing Russia. CNN was quick to report the outage implying that it was unexpected by Ukraine and they were shutdown to blackmail the West into paying. This article was all over the news. Then weeks later they put out an article stating that it was just 1300 terminals which were being provided by the UK which were shut-off due to the UK deciding not to pay for the subscription anymore, with Ukraine having been fully aware and having swapped them out beforehand with the other ~18000 still operating terminals. But this one got nowhere near the same traction and was still misleadingly headlined.

soco 4y ago
Data set of one, but the people I met claiming they don't trust the news, all take their news from youtube and random taxi drivers. This doesn't say anything about the news outlets, just about those people and their peculiar ways to "think for themselves".
- pjc50 4y ago
  Indeed. People are replacing mainstream news with something that's often far less accurate.
  - registeredcorn 4y ago
    This can only be true if we assume that news is accurate. It simply isn't.
    - bryanlarsen 4y ago
      Accuracy isn't a binary.
      - registeredcorn 4y ago
        Is that an accurate statement?
        ben_w 4y ago
        Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, depending on the domain.
    - goatlover 4y ago
      There's a range between 0% and 100%. Saying news is either would be false. Giving it a percentage would just depend on what news and what situation.
    - ifyoubuildit 4y ago
      It might be accurate, but that's not the priority. Think about it: broadcasting information costs something. Nobody is going to pay that cost unless they're getting a return for it. Nobody is going out of their way to provide you with information out of the goodness of their heart. They're doing it so that you buy what they're selling (e.g. pharmaceuticals, gold) or vote for their party, etc. A lot of times that information will be technically not wrong, but that's not the goal.

goalieca 4y ago

> validating their own beliefs There can be a huge discrepancy between what your experience is and what is being reported. Most people will tend believe what they see and know.

lesuorac 4y ago

I would say its hard to do any rational thinking about come to the conclusion that the 24/h news orgs are meant to inform you. The easy angle is product placement [1]. Literally fork over a small sum of money and you get the news org to rave about your product without doing any verification. There's also how a headline is not written by the author so it won't always reflect the contents of the article. > And a lot of the times is just because news are not validating their own beliefs IMO, the news orgs have a symbiotic relation with their viewers. The viewers want their viewpoint reinforced and the news org wants views. So the news org put out a biased product so that their viewers will selectively watch that news org. However, this still means that news org aren't actually trying to inform. My biggest gripe is how often they'll refuse to link to actual legal documents when talking about filed lawsuits and the like and in general I don't find some of their claims in the article to be as supported by the actual filings. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIi_QS1tdFM

IIAOPSW 4y ago
Lawfare blog my dude. They don't shy away from the raw legal source code. https://www.lawfareblog.com/ https://www.lawfareblog.com/

Workaccount2 4y ago

I've had the same experience where it seems people who "don't trust the media" get all their news from some random facebook page or a website along the lines of realtruth-nolies-chronicle.blogspot.com.

throwaway894345 4y ago

In the US we used to feel like the news was more trustworthy even if it didn’t support our views because it maintained some pretense of neutrality and objectivity; however, that broke down as the media became increasingly politicized and sensationalized—a lot of people felt that if the media isn’t going to tell THE truth, they would find a media that would tell THEIR truth (hence your bit about “validating their own beliefs”). So we get fragmented and relative epistemology, in large part because the traditional media decided to be activist even if it meant overtly and obviously lying about things that were trivially verifiable. This is why we need to roll back to a media that aspired toward neutrality and objectivity rather than an a la carte model.