15 ms·

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man [especially because I'm not...] but I'm increasingly discouraged by both (1) the media's willingness to abandon any sense

by glonq 4y ago

I hate to sound like a grumpy old man [especially because I'm not...] but I'm increasingly discouraged by both (1) the media's willingness to abandon any sense of ethics or integrity, and (2) the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces. We somehow crossed over an invisible line that separates "cheeky hyperbole" from "outright deceit and lies" and nobody noticed.

watwut 4y ago
There was never period in history in which there were no media lies. Not because media are uniquely evil, but because media people are kinda like everyone else. There might be more or less lies depending on various factors, but literally every single year in the past, including when we were little, there were some lies being widely read. That being said, there are whole lawsuits going on about lies in media right now. Pretty big ones and widely reported about ones. So, if you think that nobody noticed, it is just not true.
- P_I_Staker 4y ago
  Yeah, and it was way worse in the era of yellow journalism… but this is all beside the point. We’re on a backslide where journalists are far more shameless than eg. 10-30 years ago.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Have we checked old media for it's shamelessness now that we have hindsight? Easy to say that they weren't shameless back then, when we didn't have a global network feeding us updated information on what they were reporting.
  - watwut 4y ago
    This case is hardly an instance showing that. You could maybe argue by Alex Jones stuff for that. But the sort the the missing reasons like this did happened in 1990-2010 too.
waboremo 4y ago
That’s always been happening. Only real difference is now you can write a blog post calling it out and nobody cares (and you aren’t assassinated) because everyone is onto the latest hotness. I also don’t think the public unquestionably consumes everything, getting people to wear a mask has been unfashionably difficult. It’s just that while it’s easier to misinform now, it’s also harder to correctly inform people. There’s a general distrust now of everything, insular bubbles created by algorithms, and rising anti intellectualism to boot. All of this creates the perfect storm to post whatever whenever without much care even if the real world consequences are great.
ChickenNugger 4y ago
[flagged]
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  It's interesting that this particular CJR report is being cited when its editor has engaged in the very same conflict-riddled, shady practices being criticized at Rolling Stone. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, who was commissioned to write a precursor to the cited piece, has more details [1]. [1] https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/07/who-watches-the-watchdog-the-cjrs-russia-problem/?mibextid=Zxz2cZ https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/07/who-watches-the-watchdog-...
  - ChickenNugger 4y ago
    [flagged]
- romellem 4y ago
  > The whole entire "Russiagate" thing was straight up just a hoax Uhhh, what? The Select Committee on Intelligence in the U.S. Senate [published][1] a nearly 1,000 page report on this. Volume 5 begins with these findings: > The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. > The fifth and final volume focuses on the counterintelligence threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. I highly recommend you [read][2] this yourself, but including a few top-level items of the counter intelligence threats: > Taken as a whole, [Paul] Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat. > The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow's intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process. [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-rus... [2]: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele...
fullshark 4y ago
This is basically how the media has operated forever, in America during the debates on ratification of the constitution there were federalist and anti-federalist newspapers and they published outright lies and whatever accusation they could find about people on the other side every week in order to make their case.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  As far as I can tell, this idea of newspeople as morally pure monk-like defenders of the truth is isolated to a handful of decades in post-war America, mostly confined to a few personalities and outlets, and was far from universally-held even then (lots of people blamed, or still blame, the media for our losing the Vietnam War, for instance—Agnew and others were openly attacking them as corrupt and biased for those and related reasons, in the 70s). Their traditional depiction in fiction is, and long has been, as about one step up from pimps, con-men, and used car salesmen, as far as ethics and trustworthiness are concerned. I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed, really, though the perception of it may have, among some set of people, for a time—hell, you can find people today who think Fox News does great journalism, so the perception of that clearly doesn't require it to be a fact. I'm fairly sure it's exactly the same kind of longing for a past that never existed that one can see all around.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    > I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed Maybe that's because you haven't read any of it? I mean, it's hard to find on the Web these days. And easy to find counter-examples even from that period. Just like it's easy to find some Victorian-era pornography and leap to the conclusion that everything then was just like now.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      I've read good reporting, sure. Good reporting isn't mythical. People worried about modern journalism's lack of objectivity or reliability just strike me as folks learning for the first time what journalism's usually like, is all, and being surprised and thinking that it's a new development because they just learned about it. I'm not claiming there's no such thing as good reporting.
stusmall 4y ago
If it helps you feel better, this is in a thread about them getting caught and called out. There are some horrifically bad actors in our media landscape right now who are more than happy to lie or label opinion shows as "news" if makes their stock price goes up. It's good to see serious, well respected news outlets like NPR doing the hard work and calling others out on their BS.
- 93po 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - the_why_of_y 4y ago
    Here the media claim that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD had penetrated the network of the Russian "Cozy Bear" group for more than a year and caught them pretty much live on camera while they hacked the Democratic Party. https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~b4f8111b/ https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies-provide-... Wow, I wasn't aware how far the tentacles of the DNC establishment reach if they paid for that as you say!
    - 93po 4y ago
      Ah yes, the same Dutch intelligence agency that release from custody a person that stole nuclear weapons technology which enabled Pakistan to develop nuclear bombs. And did so at the behest of a foreign country. I wonder what else they'd do for a foreign country when asked? 1. All of the reporting on this in 2016 relied on the auditing I'm mentioning. Whether there was other evidence is beside the point - it wasn't something they used to influence their reporting 2. If it was known in 2014 that Cozy Bear was targeting the DNC and AIVD already had full access and knowledge of all of Cozy Bear's actions, why did they let them hack the DNC? 3. All sources say there were multiple people who had illicit access to DNC servers. There was clearly a vulnerability that multiple groups were able to exploit, and the exploiters were clearly doing nothing to prevent others from doing the same. Why are we so confident it was Cozy Bear? 4. Why did the DNC, after being told in summer 2015 that they were hacked, do nothing about this? Even the article points this out: "It is not clear why the hacks at the DNC could continue for so long despite the Dutch warnings." They continued to be allegedly hacked for more than a year since the leaked emails date as far as May 2016. 5. We're also completely ignoring that the journalist who published the emails explicitly said it was an insider who provided it, and there is no evidence that this journalist received information from Russian officials. Literally none of this adds up to anything remotely close to conclusive.
jjtheblunt 4y ago
You and I and a huge fraction of humanity noticed, but not a large enough fraction to make such unprofitable?
- vanattab 4y ago
  There is a huge difference between noticing abuses of the media and being able to immunize your self to the effects of such behavior. Many of use on this site like to think we are purely logical being but we are fooling ourselves. We are fuzzy logical beings full of emotions and complex human psychological traits. Just because we intellectually understand the problems around advertising and click bait does not make us immune.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    true!
jackmott42 4y ago
>(2) the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces. What? The predominate pattern today is nobody believing anything the media says. Nothing is true. The earth isn't even fucking round.
- mwint 4y ago
  The media became untrustworthy before people stopped trusting it.
  - myko 4y ago
    Not really. There was a concerted effort by media figures (Limbaugh, Fox, Beck, etc.) to push a false narrative that media is untrustworthy, in order to push their radical views. In a way it was self fulfilling prophecy as more and more folks listened to them it became apparent that media is failing, and other orgs have slid down that path as well.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  > The predominate pattern today is nobody believing anything the media says. perhaps in your social circles. plenty of people, especially older people, get 100% of their news nightly, out of habit, by watching cable television, and are aware of the existence of "bias" in the news they consume only insofar as, hey, if I watch CNN and MSNBC and FOX, then I'm getting a balanced news diet!
- juve1996 4y ago
  I disagree with that in general. Most people distrust some media, not all, and typically it's the "other side's" media. The fact is most people are stupid and woefully undereducated. That's why media gets away with this - the populace is dumb, and therefore so too is its media. It's just moral panics all the way down, on both sides.
mcguire 4y ago
You missed the third leg of that particular stool: the public's urge to deny the truth of anything because it comes from the media. Source: Do your own research. -- a grumpy old man. :-)
- AndyMcConachie 4y ago
  Do you know what the truth is? Because I sure don't. The problem with blaming 'the public' for being stupid is that we're both the public and we might be the stupid ones. Media outlets lie, they also tell the truth sometimes. I think the biggest mistake we can make is to think that the media we're paying attention to is the 'right' media. The simple fact of the matter is that we're being lied to almost constantly and the only amazing consequence of that is that any of us have any sanity left at all. And the main reason for that is because we all think that we're right and those other people are wrong. But what if we're wrong? What if I'm the stupid sucker that believes the lie. Or maybe I've just read one-too-many Philip K Dick novels :-)
Balgair 4y ago
> We somehow crossed over an invisible line that separates "cheeky hyperbole" from "outright deceit and lies" and nobody noticed It's been around forever. As good recent-ish example is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: " Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. — Michael Crichton"
- Smoosh 4y ago
  I agree about this with Michael Crichton, author of the novel State of Fear, and famous Climate Change denier.
falcrist 4y ago
Regarding point #2, How have you vetted the NPR article? Is there some ultimate source for this information that would reveal gross negligence or omissions by the author of the article? I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. It's just that it's incredibly hard to properly fact-check anything you can't look up in an encyclopedia. It feels like this has been a major issue since time immemorial.
- SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  > It's just that it's incredibly hard to properly fact-check anything you can't look up in an encyclopedia. You can't even use that. Encyclopedias only put the facts they think are important and have space for in the book - it's possible they omit or obfuscate information that would change how one views a person, place, thing, or event.
dfxm12 4y ago
I looked back on Google news and Twitter in Oct 2022 to see contemporary news stories and tweets related to James Gordon Meek to confirm this. While the Daily Beast and the Independent ran stories in this timeframe saying he wasn't raided by the FBI for his work, nearly everyone on Twitter was just tweeting the same clips from Fox News or parroting Tucker Carlson verbatim. It really goes to show how that aspect of the media just takes over the thinking for their viewers. I wonder how many of these viewers eventually connected the dots that they were so outraged over someone getting arrested for CP.
genewitch 4y ago
Is it possible that this has seen an uptick after 2013, when the "Domestic Dissemination Ban" was removed from Smith-Mundt, because, well, "the internet, and stuff"? over the last 10 years, i've found myself reading and watching news next to 0 minutes a day. I listen to a news analysis podcast (mostly for the jokes), and i see excerpts on places like reddit, my personal fediverse server (with 1500 journalists followed), and HN. I also currently am possibly hallucinating from food poisoning. The wikipedia article for smith mundt doesn't decry in large letters that one of the more important rules it set out doesn't apply anymore. in fact it says "the smith-mundt act has been used to show that Voice of America doesn't have to reply to FOIA transcript requests"
- glonq 4y ago
  Congrats on 10 years. I stopped routinely reading/watching the news in 2016, and have been much happier because of it. I still remain reasonably informed and aware, but on my own terms. Is there an accurate, honest, reliable news source for "tell me what happened but don't tell me how to think or feel or react" anymore?
  - genewitch 4y ago
    The only issue with "tell me what happened and that's it" is what if it's not in your wheelhouse? For example, do I personally care about a children's tylenol shortage? Is there an issue with precursors, demand, shipping, bottling? Just reading the headline and the "data and statistics" wouldn't really make me care one way or the other, and again, perhaps that's fine. Perhaps it's useful to just know there's a shortage or whatever the news du jour is. I find reddit and fediverse good for getting the extremely polarized opinions out in the open on topics i have very little idea about. Don't get me wrong, i realize that i'm getting a lot of bad inputs, here. But the flip side is i am not seeing advertisements constantly, and since i know where the extreme edges are i can actually have a conversation where someone more knowledgeable than me can correct my understanding - or attempt to. RE: 10 years, i actually got rid of televisions in my house shortly after "mission accomplished" back in 2002 or 2003. I told myself that recording and going through news about the 9/11 attacks wasn't doing me any favors. So i'm technically 20 years without a "TV" connected to OTA or any other service. I mostly watch youtube reviews and my personal copies of TV shows and whatnot. I tried around the start of the pandemic to get an OTA setup on my projector. I ended up just using it to record me.tv or whatever it's called, the "oldies" station. Wasn't worth the disk i was using for it. Anything "national" or international, i got a friend that will set up an RTMP stream off their cable box and send me a link. This has worked fine for 5 years.
JeremyNT 4y ago
> the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces. Is this part true? I thought the public's faith in journalism was at historic lows.
- Wolfenstein98k 4y ago
  The difference between "what I answer to a pollster with a clear mind" and "what I consume and allow to influence my opinions and emotions throughout the day". I also suspect people answer the trust stuff while thinking of the opposition's news sources.
drewcoo 4y ago
> willingness to abandon any sense of ethics or integrity Doing that without punishment is what American Constitutional freedom of speech is all about. We have freedom of speech and incredibly lax libel laws specifically to protect press fabrications.
RickJWagner 4y ago
People have noticed. It's a bit ironic that it's NPR calling out Rolling Stone. NPR willingly suppressed damaging news about political families just before an election.

by glonq 4y ago

watwut 4y ago

There was never period in history in which there were no media lies. Not because media are uniquely evil, but because media people are kinda like everyone else. There might be more or less lies depending on various factors, but literally every single year in the past, including when we were little, there were some lies being widely read. That being said, there are whole lawsuits going on about lies in media right now. Pretty big ones and widely reported about ones. So, if you think that nobody noticed, it is just not true.

P_I_Staker 4y ago
Yeah, and it was way worse in the era of yellow journalism… but this is all beside the point. We’re on a backslide where journalists are far more shameless than eg. 10-30 years ago.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Have we checked old media for it's shamelessness now that we have hindsight? Easy to say that they weren't shameless back then, when we didn't have a global network feeding us updated information on what they were reporting.
- watwut 4y ago
  This case is hardly an instance showing that. You could maybe argue by Alex Jones stuff for that. But the sort the the missing reasons like this did happened in 1990-2010 too.

waboremo 4y ago

That’s always been happening. Only real difference is now you can write a blog post calling it out and nobody cares (and you aren’t assassinated) because everyone is onto the latest hotness. I also don’t think the public unquestionably consumes everything, getting people to wear a mask has been unfashionably difficult. It’s just that while it’s easier to misinform now, it’s also harder to correctly inform people. There’s a general distrust now of everything, insular bubbles created by algorithms, and rising anti intellectualism to boot. All of this creates the perfect storm to post whatever whenever without much care even if the real world consequences are great.

ChickenNugger 4y ago

[flagged]

timmytokyo 4y ago
It's interesting that this particular CJR report is being cited when its editor has engaged in the very same conflict-riddled, shady practices being criticized at Rolling Stone. Investigative journalist Duncan Campbell, who was commissioned to write a precursor to the cited piece, has more details [1]. [1] https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/07/who-watches-the-watchdog-the-cjrs-russia-problem/?mibextid=Zxz2cZ https://bylinetimes.com/2023/02/07/who-watches-the-watchdog-...
- ChickenNugger 4y ago
  [flagged]
romellem 4y ago
> The whole entire "Russiagate" thing was straight up just a hoax Uhhh, what? The Select Committee on Intelligence in the U.S. Senate [published][1] a nearly 1,000 page report on this. Volume 5 begins with these findings: > The Committee found that the Russian government engaged in an aggressive, multi-faceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. > The fifth and final volume focuses on the counterintelligence threat, outlining a wide range of Russian efforts to influence the Trump Campaign and the 2016 election. I highly recommend you [read][2] this yourself, but including a few top-level items of the counter intelligence threats: > Taken as a whole, [Paul] Manafort's high-level access and willingness to share information with individuals closely affiliated with the Russian intelligence services, particularly Kilimnik and associates of Oleg Deripaska, represented a grave counterintelligence threat. > The Committee found that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the Russian effort to hack computer networks and accounts affiliated with the Democratic Party and leak information damaging to Hillary Clinton and her campaign for president. Moscow's intent was to harm the Clinton Campaign, tarnish an expected Clinton presidential administration, help the Trump Campaign after Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee, and undermine the U.S. democratic process. [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-russia-interfered-in-the-2016-us-election https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/senate-panel-finds-rus... [2]: https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-select-committee-intelligence-united-states-senate-russian-active-measures https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/publications/report-sele...

fullshark 4y ago

This is basically how the media has operated forever, in America during the debates on ratification of the constitution there were federalist and anti-federalist newspapers and they published outright lies and whatever accusation they could find about people on the other side every week in order to make their case.

yamtaddle 4y ago
As far as I can tell, this idea of newspeople as morally pure monk-like defenders of the truth is isolated to a handful of decades in post-war America, mostly confined to a few personalities and outlets, and was far from universally-held even then (lots of people blamed, or still blame, the media for our losing the Vietnam War, for instance—Agnew and others were openly attacking them as corrupt and biased for those and related reasons, in the 70s). Their traditional depiction in fiction is, and long has been, as about one step up from pimps, con-men, and used car salesmen, as far as ethics and trustworthiness are concerned. I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed, really, though the perception of it may have, among some set of people, for a time—hell, you can find people today who think Fox News does great journalism, so the perception of that clearly doesn't require it to be a fact. I'm fairly sure it's exactly the same kind of longing for a past that never existed that one can see all around.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  > I doubt some Golden Age of news objectivity ever existed Maybe that's because you haven't read any of it? I mean, it's hard to find on the Web these days. And easy to find counter-examples even from that period. Just like it's easy to find some Victorian-era pornography and leap to the conclusion that everything then was just like now.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I've read good reporting, sure. Good reporting isn't mythical. People worried about modern journalism's lack of objectivity or reliability just strike me as folks learning for the first time what journalism's usually like, is all, and being surprised and thinking that it's a new development because they just learned about it. I'm not claiming there's no such thing as good reporting.

stusmall 4y ago

If it helps you feel better, this is in a thread about them getting caught and called out. There are some horrifically bad actors in our media landscape right now who are more than happy to lie or label opinion shows as "news" if makes their stock price goes up. It's good to see serious, well respected news outlets like NPR doing the hard work and calling others out on their BS.

93po 4y ago
[flagged]
- the_why_of_y 4y ago
  Here the media claim that the Dutch intelligence agency AIVD had penetrated the network of the Russian "Cozy Bear" group for more than a year and caught them pretty much live on camera while they hacked the Democratic Party. https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies-provide-crucial-intel-about-russia-s-interference-in-us-elections~b4f8111b/ https://www.volkskrant.nl/wetenschap/dutch-agencies-provide-... Wow, I wasn't aware how far the tentacles of the DNC establishment reach if they paid for that as you say!
  - 93po 4y ago
    Ah yes, the same Dutch intelligence agency that release from custody a person that stole nuclear weapons technology which enabled Pakistan to develop nuclear bombs. And did so at the behest of a foreign country. I wonder what else they'd do for a foreign country when asked? 1. All of the reporting on this in 2016 relied on the auditing I'm mentioning. Whether there was other evidence is beside the point - it wasn't something they used to influence their reporting 2. If it was known in 2014 that Cozy Bear was targeting the DNC and AIVD already had full access and knowledge of all of Cozy Bear's actions, why did they let them hack the DNC? 3. All sources say there were multiple people who had illicit access to DNC servers. There was clearly a vulnerability that multiple groups were able to exploit, and the exploiters were clearly doing nothing to prevent others from doing the same. Why are we so confident it was Cozy Bear? 4. Why did the DNC, after being told in summer 2015 that they were hacked, do nothing about this? Even the article points this out: "It is not clear why the hacks at the DNC could continue for so long despite the Dutch warnings." They continued to be allegedly hacked for more than a year since the leaked emails date as far as May 2016. 5. We're also completely ignoring that the journalist who published the emails explicitly said it was an insider who provided it, and there is no evidence that this journalist received information from Russian officials. Literally none of this adds up to anything remotely close to conclusive.

jjtheblunt 4y ago

You and I and a huge fraction of humanity noticed, but not a large enough fraction to make such unprofitable?

vanattab 4y ago
There is a huge difference between noticing abuses of the media and being able to immunize your self to the effects of such behavior. Many of use on this site like to think we are purely logical being but we are fooling ourselves. We are fuzzy logical beings full of emotions and complex human psychological traits. Just because we intellectually understand the problems around advertising and click bait does not make us immune.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  true!

jackmott42 4y ago

>(2) the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces. What? The predominate pattern today is nobody believing anything the media says. Nothing is true. The earth isn't even fucking round.

mwint 4y ago
The media became untrustworthy before people stopped trusting it.
- myko 4y ago
  Not really. There was a concerted effort by media figures (Limbaugh, Fox, Beck, etc.) to push a false narrative that media is untrustworthy, in order to push their radical views. In a way it was self fulfilling prophecy as more and more folks listened to them it became apparent that media is failing, and other orgs have slid down that path as well.
adamrezich 4y ago
> The predominate pattern today is nobody believing anything the media says. perhaps in your social circles. plenty of people, especially older people, get 100% of their news nightly, out of habit, by watching cable television, and are aware of the existence of "bias" in the news they consume only insofar as, hey, if I watch CNN and MSNBC and FOX, then I'm getting a balanced news diet!
juve1996 4y ago
I disagree with that in general. Most people distrust some media, not all, and typically it's the "other side's" media. The fact is most people are stupid and woefully undereducated. That's why media gets away with this - the populace is dumb, and therefore so too is its media. It's just moral panics all the way down, on both sides.

mcguire 4y ago

You missed the third leg of that particular stool: the public's urge to deny the truth of anything because it comes from the media. Source: Do your own research. -- a grumpy old man. :-)

AndyMcConachie 4y ago
Do you know what the truth is? Because I sure don't. The problem with blaming 'the public' for being stupid is that we're both the public and we might be the stupid ones. Media outlets lie, they also tell the truth sometimes. I think the biggest mistake we can make is to think that the media we're paying attention to is the 'right' media. The simple fact of the matter is that we're being lied to almost constantly and the only amazing consequence of that is that any of us have any sanity left at all. And the main reason for that is because we all think that we're right and those other people are wrong. But what if we're wrong? What if I'm the stupid sucker that believes the lie. Or maybe I've just read one-too-many Philip K Dick novels :-)

Balgair 4y ago

> We somehow crossed over an invisible line that separates "cheeky hyperbole" from "outright deceit and lies" and nobody noticed It's been around forever. As good recent-ish example is the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect: " Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. — Michael Crichton"

Smoosh 4y ago
I agree about this with Michael Crichton, author of the novel State of Fear, and famous Climate Change denier.

falcrist 4y ago

Regarding point #2, How have you vetted the NPR article? Is there some ultimate source for this information that would reveal gross negligence or omissions by the author of the article? I'm not trying to be a jerk about it. It's just that it's incredibly hard to properly fact-check anything you can't look up in an encyclopedia. It feels like this has been a major issue since time immemorial.

SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
> It's just that it's incredibly hard to properly fact-check anything you can't look up in an encyclopedia. You can't even use that. Encyclopedias only put the facts they think are important and have space for in the book - it's possible they omit or obfuscate information that would change how one views a person, place, thing, or event.

dfxm12 4y ago

I looked back on Google news and Twitter in Oct 2022 to see contemporary news stories and tweets related to James Gordon Meek to confirm this. While the Daily Beast and the Independent ran stories in this timeframe saying he wasn't raided by the FBI for his work, nearly everyone on Twitter was just tweeting the same clips from Fox News or parroting Tucker Carlson verbatim. It really goes to show how that aspect of the media just takes over the thinking for their viewers. I wonder how many of these viewers eventually connected the dots that they were so outraged over someone getting arrested for CP.

genewitch 4y ago

Is it possible that this has seen an uptick after 2013, when the "Domestic Dissemination Ban" was removed from Smith-Mundt, because, well, "the internet, and stuff"? over the last 10 years, i've found myself reading and watching news next to 0 minutes a day. I listen to a news analysis podcast (mostly for the jokes), and i see excerpts on places like reddit, my personal fediverse server (with 1500 journalists followed), and HN. I also currently am possibly hallucinating from food poisoning. The wikipedia article for smith mundt doesn't decry in large letters that one of the more important rules it set out doesn't apply anymore. in fact it says "the smith-mundt act has been used to show that Voice of America doesn't have to reply to FOIA transcript requests"

glonq 4y ago
Congrats on 10 years. I stopped routinely reading/watching the news in 2016, and have been much happier because of it. I still remain reasonably informed and aware, but on my own terms. Is there an accurate, honest, reliable news source for "tell me what happened but don't tell me how to think or feel or react" anymore?
- genewitch 4y ago
  The only issue with "tell me what happened and that's it" is what if it's not in your wheelhouse? For example, do I personally care about a children's tylenol shortage? Is there an issue with precursors, demand, shipping, bottling? Just reading the headline and the "data and statistics" wouldn't really make me care one way or the other, and again, perhaps that's fine. Perhaps it's useful to just know there's a shortage or whatever the news du jour is. I find reddit and fediverse good for getting the extremely polarized opinions out in the open on topics i have very little idea about. Don't get me wrong, i realize that i'm getting a lot of bad inputs, here. But the flip side is i am not seeing advertisements constantly, and since i know where the extreme edges are i can actually have a conversation where someone more knowledgeable than me can correct my understanding - or attempt to. RE: 10 years, i actually got rid of televisions in my house shortly after "mission accomplished" back in 2002 or 2003. I told myself that recording and going through news about the 9/11 attacks wasn't doing me any favors. So i'm technically 20 years without a "TV" connected to OTA or any other service. I mostly watch youtube reviews and my personal copies of TV shows and whatnot. I tried around the start of the pandemic to get an OTA setup on my projector. I ended up just using it to record me.tv or whatever it's called, the "oldies" station. Wasn't worth the disk i was using for it. Anything "national" or international, i got a friend that will set up an RTMP stream off their cable box and send me a link. This has worked fine for 5 years.

JeremyNT 4y ago

> the public's willingness to unquestioningly consume everything that such media produces. Is this part true? I thought the public's faith in journalism was at historic lows.

Wolfenstein98k 4y ago
The difference between "what I answer to a pollster with a clear mind" and "what I consume and allow to influence my opinions and emotions throughout the day". I also suspect people answer the trust stuff while thinking of the opposition's news sources.

drewcoo 4y ago

> willingness to abandon any sense of ethics or integrity Doing that without punishment is what American Constitutional freedom of speech is all about. We have freedom of speech and incredibly lax libel laws specifically to protect press fabrications.

RickJWagner 4y ago

People have noticed. It's a bit ironic that it's NPR calling out Rolling Stone. NPR willingly suppressed damaging news about political families just before an election.