4 ms·

This is basically how the media has operated forever, in America during the debates on ratification of the constitution there were federalist and anti-federalis

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.
  - adamrezich 4y ago
    when was this Golden Age of News Objectivity, then? because from where I'm standing, it sure seems like it was more of a Golden Age of There Only Being A Few Accessible Sources of News, Most If Not All of Whom Were On The Same Page When It Comes To Major Stories, i.e., The Time Before Smartphones. case in point: the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. the entire United States media apparatus united to gaslight the populace into consenting to an foreign-soil military invasion on incredibly shaky grounds, that were later proven to be completely false. they even gaslit us into disapproving of our own allies choosing to not join us in the invasion—remember "freedom fries"? yet the only lesson the majority of the public seemed to learn from this is "George W. Bush is a bad guy", which is also true, but misses the point entirely—plus, in recent years, now that's not even entirely true, because look, he's bffs with Michele Obama, see, he's not that bad of a guy, right? the cycle continues unabated.
    - yamtaddle 4y ago
      I usually see it associated with Cronkite's era on TV, about '60-'80. Such strong association with him is part of why it smells like nostalgia and selective memory, to me. And, again, you'd find plenty of people who think he was biased and doing slanted anti-American reporting in the second of those two decades. I would hope most people wouldn't regard the '90s and '00s as part of any kind of even-imaginary golden era of reporting. I've got some half-formed notion of this sentiment coming from a kind of hang-over from WWII propaganda and tight media control involving much more direct action by US government through media, but haven't exactly researched it and wouldn't stand behind that firmly. Just a hunch. Broadly, my suspicion, if that does indeed have anything to do with it, is that the fallout of that propaganda effort coupled with a crushing victory for the US resulted in a durable credibility for sufficiently official-looking news personalities, that took some time (and the loss of a war in Vietnam, and a huge shift in politics that really took shape starting with Nixon's campaigns) to erode, but was never especially real, as in, wasn't strongly related to some actual difference in circumstances and quality in news media in postwar America compared with the first half of the century.
      - adamrezich 4y ago
  - drewcoo 4y ago
    Or maybe it's because that wasn't real. Major mass media sifted through a few government- and corporate-ad-constrained bottlenecks during what people call "the golden age." It was the golden age of censorship. People get upset about censorship much more easily now because they got used to the wild west mentality ushered in by the Internet and relaxation of the fairness doctrine. So returning to government- and corporate-ad-based censorship feels constraining.

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.
- adamrezich 4y ago
  when was this Golden Age of News Objectivity, then? because from where I'm standing, it sure seems like it was more of a Golden Age of There Only Being A Few Accessible Sources of News, Most If Not All of Whom Were On The Same Page When It Comes To Major Stories, i.e., The Time Before Smartphones. case in point: the post-9/11 invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq. the entire United States media apparatus united to gaslight the populace into consenting to an foreign-soil military invasion on incredibly shaky grounds, that were later proven to be completely false. they even gaslit us into disapproving of our own allies choosing to not join us in the invasion—remember "freedom fries"? yet the only lesson the majority of the public seemed to learn from this is "George W. Bush is a bad guy", which is also true, but misses the point entirely—plus, in recent years, now that's not even entirely true, because look, he's bffs with Michele Obama, see, he's not that bad of a guy, right? the cycle continues unabated.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I usually see it associated with Cronkite's era on TV, about '60-'80. Such strong association with him is part of why it smells like nostalgia and selective memory, to me. And, again, you'd find plenty of people who think he was biased and doing slanted anti-American reporting in the second of those two decades. I would hope most people wouldn't regard the '90s and '00s as part of any kind of even-imaginary golden era of reporting. I've got some half-formed notion of this sentiment coming from a kind of hang-over from WWII propaganda and tight media control involving much more direct action by US government through media, but haven't exactly researched it and wouldn't stand behind that firmly. Just a hunch. Broadly, my suspicion, if that does indeed have anything to do with it, is that the fallout of that propaganda effort coupled with a crushing victory for the US resulted in a durable credibility for sufficiently official-looking news personalities, that took some time (and the loss of a war in Vietnam, and a huge shift in politics that really took shape starting with Nixon's campaigns) to erode, but was never especially real, as in, wasn't strongly related to some actual difference in circumstances and quality in news media in postwar America compared with the first half of the century.
    - adamrezich 4y ago
- drewcoo 4y ago
  Or maybe it's because that wasn't real. Major mass media sifted through a few government- and corporate-ad-constrained bottlenecks during what people call "the golden age." It was the golden age of censorship. People get upset about censorship much more easily now because they got used to the wild west mentality ushered in by the Internet and relaxation of the fairness doctrine. So returning to government- and corporate-ad-based censorship feels constraining.