5 ms·

> As a result journalism — sports or otherwise — is steadily being replaced by a parade of automated gibberish, clickbait, well-funded propaganda, and marketing

by tqi 3y ago

> As a result journalism — sports or otherwise — is steadily being replaced by a parade of automated gibberish, clickbait, well-funded propaganda, and marketing, and it’s getting increasingly difficult to find anybody with the ethics and resources interested in reversing — or even combating — the trajectory. Journalists love to paint themselves as noble victims of technology, as if they bear no responsibility for the polarization and resulting erosion of public trust in authority. Sports journalists where especially guilty of cultivating cozy relationships with their subjects (access journalism), pushing their own pre determined narratives, and blurring the lines between reporting and opinion. It's not hard to understand why people have turned to other sources.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sschueller 3y ago
It's also laziness and pressure to output more and more.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Lol, the print version barely had any content at all. SI and GQ have been sending me magazines every other month or so for two years between the two of them, trying to get me to subscribe. One upshot here is at least SI will stop spamming me via snail mail.
- infamouscow 3y ago
  Laziness and financial pressure don't explain why the SI swimsuit issue deviated away from their winning formula just to appease minority groups never interesting in SI to begin with. It doesn't take a genius to know alienating the majority of your audience is bad for business.
  - RickJWagner 3y ago
    Bud Light management has entered the chat.
justinzollars 3y ago
> Increasingly difficult to find anybody with the ethics and resources interested in reversing — or even combating — the trajectory. This is a pessimistic view. Media has never been richer. Facts can no longer be hidden.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Facts can no longer be hidden. Except by a firehose of falsehoods, which was cheap even before LLMs: https://xkcd.com/1019/ https://xkcd.com/1019/
  - justinzollars 3y ago
    > Except by a firehose of falsehoods The media is largely owned by a few conglomerates and rich families. When we turn on MSNBC we are watching Comcast. Read the Atlantic we are reading the opinions of Laurene Powell Jobs. I haven't found a lot of truth on any topic in the last 20 years.
cafard 3y ago
I doubt any of this matters compared to the loss of advertising. If the classified ads still were what they were in 1990, newspapers could source their news from National Enquirer and government press releases and still afford a large staff.
- tqi 3y ago
  That's a very good point
- zackmorris 3y ago
  Correct. The parent isn't wrong about the loss of objectivity in journalism, just the reason(s) behind it. What we perceive today as bias and censorship are symptoms of the loss of independently funded journalism, which is now captured by corporations due to how they direct ad dollars towards narratives which support their own public relations. This started with the loss of the Fairness Doctrine under the Reagan administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine Its loss was so important because it removed the payment stream which was previously provided by other programs on a media network. In other words, the news now had to pay its own way through ads shown during the broadcast, rather than from the network's general fund. Which gives guests leverage to remove those ad dollars when interviews don't go well. Then the Telecommunications Act under Clinton removed the barriers separating broadcast from print news, allowing one corporation to own all of the news in a city/region, which led to the rise of today's handful of wealthy multinational media conglomerates which mainly broadcast infotainment/propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 The fix is to do the opposite of the pieces of legislation that created this situation, mainly: 1) Bar advertisers from influencing journalism 2) Create independent funding sources for journalism by giving it special treatment as the Fourth Estate (branch) of our government of the people and by the people, for the preservation of the American way of life The main barrier to these is the political right in the US, which doesn't want any limitation on free speech, or any taxes supporting nonessential government programs. The political left also silently maintains the status quo by profiting from it. Which pushes both parties towards a one-party equivalent where corporations determine government policy by framing debates in ways that steer people towards voting against their own self-interest to relieve their cognitive dissonance. So the real problem is how to convince a disenfranchised, overworked and overtaxed population that the answer is more regulation and taxes. I feel that other solutions won't work, because they don't address the fundamental issues. Meaning that they would favor dogma over fact-based analysis and historical understanding. We also have to remember that news has always spread regardless of medium, so the existence of the internet is a red herring. Funding is the real issue.
the_snooze 3y ago
I think it's easy to have your view because of the dominance of nationalized news and the associated broad-brush political cheerleading those outlets like to engage in. Where there's been real damage to value is at the local level. Who's keeping track of businesses opening and closing? Or what the county board is spending taxpayer money on? Or why the police department has such low incident clearance rates? Alternative sources and AI won't put a dent in covering those less polarizing but important practical topics.
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Damage at the local level seems to be deliberate. There are a tiny handful of large news organizations that have been busy buying up local newspapers, then gutting them. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1046952430/the-consequences-of-when-a-hedge-fund-buys-newspapers https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1046952430/the-consequences-o...
  - ghaff 3y ago
    While technically they were "local"--like the vast majority of newspapers, people usually don't mean something like the Chicago Tribune when talking about local papers and local news.
- specialist 3y ago
  Yup. No truer words were said than the Washington Post's (unintentionally ironic) slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
- tqi 3y ago
  I would actually push back a bit on the importance of local news. I grew up in a midwest college town that had a fairly robust local newspaper, and my recollection of it was that it was a) poorly written and b) mostly focused on local sports and crime. While its mere presence may helped keep local officials accountable for their actions, I can't recall times where they broke local scandals. I have seen a few studies that have linked the decline in local news to things like polarization or increased municipal waste[1][2], but imo their ability to isolate cause and effect is very limited. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555
specialist 3y ago
That's like blaming the grunts flipping burgers for McDonald's terrible food. Policymakers, owners, publishers, and even editors are to blame for the enshittification of our Fourth Estate. For a primer: 1/2 of the "Fit To Print" documentary details how corporate raider Neuharth started the "infotainment" doom loop with USA Today in 1982. (The other 1/2 shows the hero's journey of one person still doing investigative journalism, at great personal expense and sacrifice.) TLDR: Neuharth guaranteed Wall St 15% returns, achieved by gutting newsrooms and labor. This forced the competition to follow suit, to appease their own investors. There are many other villains. Reagan Admin ended the Fairness Doctrine. Clinton Admin encouraged consolidation, thereby destroying local media. Etc, etc. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/fit-to-print https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/fit-to-print https://tubitv.com/movies/682467/fit-to-print https://tubitv.com/movies/682467/fit-to-print https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2721376/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2721376/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Neuharth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Neuharth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today

by tqi 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sschueller 3y ago

It's also laziness and pressure to output more and more.

zdragnar 3y ago
Lol, the print version barely had any content at all. SI and GQ have been sending me magazines every other month or so for two years between the two of them, trying to get me to subscribe. One upshot here is at least SI will stop spamming me via snail mail.
infamouscow 3y ago
Laziness and financial pressure don't explain why the SI swimsuit issue deviated away from their winning formula just to appease minority groups never interesting in SI to begin with. It doesn't take a genius to know alienating the majority of your audience is bad for business.
- RickJWagner 3y ago
  Bud Light management has entered the chat.

justinzollars 3y ago

> Increasingly difficult to find anybody with the ethics and resources interested in reversing — or even combating — the trajectory. This is a pessimistic view. Media has never been richer. Facts can no longer be hidden.

ben_w 3y ago
> Facts can no longer be hidden. Except by a firehose of falsehoods, which was cheap even before LLMs: https://xkcd.com/1019/ https://xkcd.com/1019/
- justinzollars 3y ago
  > Except by a firehose of falsehoods The media is largely owned by a few conglomerates and rich families. When we turn on MSNBC we are watching Comcast. Read the Atlantic we are reading the opinions of Laurene Powell Jobs. I haven't found a lot of truth on any topic in the last 20 years.

cafard 3y ago

I doubt any of this matters compared to the loss of advertising. If the classified ads still were what they were in 1990, newspapers could source their news from National Enquirer and government press releases and still afford a large staff.

tqi 3y ago
That's a very good point
zackmorris 3y ago
Correct. The parent isn't wrong about the loss of objectivity in journalism, just the reason(s) behind it. What we perceive today as bias and censorship are symptoms of the loss of independently funded journalism, which is now captured by corporations due to how they direct ad dollars towards narratives which support their own public relations. This started with the loss of the Fairness Doctrine under the Reagan administration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine Its loss was so important because it removed the payment stream which was previously provided by other programs on a media network. In other words, the news now had to pay its own way through ads shown during the broadcast, rather than from the network's general fund. Which gives guests leverage to remove those ad dollars when interviews don't go well. Then the Telecommunications Act under Clinton removed the barriers separating broadcast from print news, allowing one corporation to own all of the news in a city/region, which led to the rise of today's handful of wealthy multinational media conglomerates which mainly broadcast infotainment/propaganda: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996 The fix is to do the opposite of the pieces of legislation that created this situation, mainly: 1) Bar advertisers from influencing journalism 2) Create independent funding sources for journalism by giving it special treatment as the Fourth Estate (branch) of our government of the people and by the people, for the preservation of the American way of life The main barrier to these is the political right in the US, which doesn't want any limitation on free speech, or any taxes supporting nonessential government programs. The political left also silently maintains the status quo by profiting from it. Which pushes both parties towards a one-party equivalent where corporations determine government policy by framing debates in ways that steer people towards voting against their own self-interest to relieve their cognitive dissonance. So the real problem is how to convince a disenfranchised, overworked and overtaxed population that the answer is more regulation and taxes. I feel that other solutions won't work, because they don't address the fundamental issues. Meaning that they would favor dogma over fact-based analysis and historical understanding. We also have to remember that news has always spread regardless of medium, so the existence of the internet is a red herring. Funding is the real issue.

the_snooze 3y ago

I think it's easy to have your view because of the dominance of nationalized news and the associated broad-brush political cheerleading those outlets like to engage in. Where there's been real damage to value is at the local level. Who's keeping track of businesses opening and closing? Or what the county board is spending taxpayer money on? Or why the police department has such low incident clearance rates? Alternative sources and AI won't put a dent in covering those less polarizing but important practical topics.

slowmovintarget 3y ago
Damage at the local level seems to be deliberate. There are a tiny handful of large news organizations that have been busy buying up local newspapers, then gutting them. https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1046952430/the-consequences-of-when-a-hedge-fund-buys-newspapers https://www.npr.org/2021/10/18/1046952430/the-consequences-o...
- ghaff 3y ago
  While technically they were "local"--like the vast majority of newspapers, people usually don't mean something like the Chicago Tribune when talking about local papers and local news.
specialist 3y ago
Yup. No truer words were said than the Washington Post's (unintentionally ironic) slogan "Democracy Dies in Darkness."
tqi 3y ago
I would actually push back a bit on the importance of local news. I grew up in a midwest college town that had a fairly robust local newspaper, and my recollection of it was that it was a) poorly written and b) mostly focused on local sports and crime. While its mere presence may helped keep local officials accountable for their actions, I can't recall times where they broke local scandals. I have seen a few studies that have linked the decline in local news to things like polarization or increased municipal waste[1][2], but imo their ability to isolate cause and effect is very limited. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers [2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3175555

specialist 3y ago

That's like blaming the grunts flipping burgers for McDonald's terrible food. Policymakers, owners, publishers, and even editors are to blame for the enshittification of our Fourth Estate. For a primer: 1/2 of the "Fit To Print" documentary details how corporate raider Neuharth started the "infotainment" doom loop with USA Today in 1982. (The other 1/2 shows the hero's journey of one person still doing investigative journalism, at great personal expense and sacrifice.) TLDR: Neuharth guaranteed Wall St 15% returns, achieved by gutting newsrooms and labor. This forced the competition to follow suit, to appease their own investors. There are many other villains. Reagan Admin ended the Fairness Doctrine. Clinton Admin encouraged consolidation, thereby destroying local media. Etc, etc. https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/fit-to-print https://www.justwatch.com/us/movie/fit-to-print https://tubitv.com/movies/682467/fit-to-print https://tubitv.com/movies/682467/fit-to-print https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2721376/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2721376/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Neuharth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Neuharth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Today