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// The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. // But...(using Elon Musk's 6 levels of asking "why" methodology) Why do the news servic

by rhelz 3y ago

// The problem is that news services no longer care about the truth. // But...(using Elon Musk's 6 levels of asking "why" methodology) Why do the news services no longer care about the truth? Because they can't make money printing the truth. They can only make money by printing opinions. Why can't they make money printing the truth? Because their old business models have been nuked, and its just too expensive for them to hire those fact checkers and editors. Why do they switch to just printing opinions then?? Because if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. Its hella cheaper to just put "people are asking...." in front of something than checking to see if that something is actually true. Why can you make money printing opinions? Because people would rather watch a mammarily- and rhetorically-blessed person who is very articulately telling them what they already believe. Why do they prefer to hear what they already believe? That way they don't have to admit that those annoying self-righteous guys might have a point.... Why don't they want to admit that somebody else might have a good point? Because nobody likes to lose an argument. *that* is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you?

wkat4242 3y ago
> And if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. That's what I said next, in other words. It's not even about their old business model, it's that the new one nets them more money which is what their shareholders want. Shareholders always trump principles in strict neoliberal states. > that is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you? More state media in my opinion. But I'm more socialist than the US or Australia so mentioning this option is like cursing there. But here in West Europe we've always had those and even multiple for different ideological directions. The problem isn't really the news agencies themselves either. It's that they compete with social media that incite users to 'engage' them and they've come to actually like that. Which is why it worked in the first place. Europe is becoming a lot stricter on social media filtering algorithms and I think this is really hitting the root cause too. Though not directly (or timely) saving the news industry.
- rhelz 3y ago
  More state media is a good idea. If telling the truth is no longer profitable, then some kind of non-profit institution must step up, and the government is a good way to get funding. In the U.S., we have always had NPR as a publicly-funded alternative. It has become a lightning-rod, however, accused of being biased or being propaganda for the deep state, etc. And really, what would be a good proof that it is not biased? We don't really want to anoint a Minister of Truth. Who gets to say what is and what isn't biased?? Private competition is a way, and, when media companies competed on how credible they were, i.e. the most accurate news sources got the most money, it worked pretty good. But now they simply cannot compete on credibility, because its just too damn expensive to be accurate. What to do? I don't know, but I'm not willing to just dismiss Australia's laws out of hand as being axiomatically evil. At least they are trying to do something.
- ambichook 3y ago
  the ABC is ok, it at least provides a baseline for news reporting, although like any media it has its own blind spots. i personally am strongly opposed to forcing browsers and facebook to prop up independent media, though i dont have a better solution ready off the top of my head. my gut says that the solution that was chosen was a poor one and a better alternative should have been searched for
  - rhelz 3y ago
    // my gut says that the solution that was chosen was a poor one and a better alternative should have been searched for // Well, like anything which gets through a democratically-elected legislative body, its a compromise, which is to say, it makes everybody equally uncomfortable. I'm sure that many alternatives were proposed and debated. Since nobody seems to have a better suggestion, we can view this as an experiment. Perhaps looking at the various consequences of this will suggest better ways.
intended 3y ago
5 whys is an idea that has existed in lean methods for a while. Its from the Toyota hey days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys
intended 3y ago
Your second why is incorrect: > Why can't they make money printing the truth? > Because their old business models have been nuked, and its just too expensive for them to hire those fact checkers and editors. It looks like you have assumptions that Truth sells. Truth sells in the absence of entertainment, opinion and emotion. Does that change your conclusion?
- rhelz 3y ago
  // assumptions that Truth sells // Yeah, I can understand why you thought it must be an assumption; most people today have lived their whole lives without having any first-hand experience of how news used to work. But it's not an assumption at all--its direct observational evidence. I was there; I saw it with my own eyes. Until the mid 90's, news sources competed on credibility--because people would be willing to pay more to subscribe to a trustworthy newspaper, and they would watch the evening news from the newscaster which they considered to be the most accurate. Because of this, newspapers and tv news payed top-dollar to hire the best reporters, editors, and fact checkers they could. Every line, whether printed or spoken, was intensively scrutinized, and if it made a factual claim--even the most obscure or seemingly unimportant claim--that factual claim was noted, and the report could not be published until somebody had verified that all those claims were true. Remember a while back, when Anderson Cooper was put in the doghouse for a while, because he just made up a story about how he flew in a helicopter during combat? Well, in the 70s or 80s, if Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings had done any such thing, they wouldn't have gotten away with just a slap on the wrist: their career in journalism would be over. What more--and crucially--the TV networks which broadcast their shows would lose viewers, and they would have to spend years to rebuild the broken trust with their audiences to get those viewers back. So yeah, I'm an old fart, and I saw how this system worked, beautifully, with my own eyes. What killed it was the business model to support it got nuked. If you have to pay-out of pocket--a couple hundred dollars a year to read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, you care a lot more about whether you are buying horseshit or not. And if the video you watch is delivered to you by Tik Tok or YouTube, and not the TV networks directly, well, the lion's share of the ad revenue will not go to those who are creating the content, but just the middlemen who serve up the content, and whose business model does't depend on whether the content is true at all. If you don't have to pay anything--all you just have to do is doom-scroll-- well, who wins is whose content sucks you in and glues you to the screen the best.

by rhelz 3y ago

wkat4242 3y ago

> And if you can make money printing opinions, you don't need fact checkers anyways. That's what I said next, in other words. It's not even about their old business model, it's that the new one nets them more money which is what their shareholders want. Shareholders always trump principles in strict neoliberal states. > that is the problem which Australia's laws are trying to fix....no doubt there is a better way, but I can't think of any.....can you? More state media in my opinion. But I'm more socialist than the US or Australia so mentioning this option is like cursing there. But here in West Europe we've always had those and even multiple for different ideological directions. The problem isn't really the news agencies themselves either. It's that they compete with social media that incite users to 'engage' them and they've come to actually like that. Which is why it worked in the first place. Europe is becoming a lot stricter on social media filtering algorithms and I think this is really hitting the root cause too. Though not directly (or timely) saving the news industry.

rhelz 3y ago
More state media is a good idea. If telling the truth is no longer profitable, then some kind of non-profit institution must step up, and the government is a good way to get funding. In the U.S., we have always had NPR as a publicly-funded alternative. It has become a lightning-rod, however, accused of being biased or being propaganda for the deep state, etc. And really, what would be a good proof that it is not biased? We don't really want to anoint a Minister of Truth. Who gets to say what is and what isn't biased?? Private competition is a way, and, when media companies competed on how credible they were, i.e. the most accurate news sources got the most money, it worked pretty good. But now they simply cannot compete on credibility, because its just too damn expensive to be accurate. What to do? I don't know, but I'm not willing to just dismiss Australia's laws out of hand as being axiomatically evil. At least they are trying to do something.
ambichook 3y ago
the ABC is ok, it at least provides a baseline for news reporting, although like any media it has its own blind spots. i personally am strongly opposed to forcing browsers and facebook to prop up independent media, though i dont have a better solution ready off the top of my head. my gut says that the solution that was chosen was a poor one and a better alternative should have been searched for
- rhelz 3y ago
  // my gut says that the solution that was chosen was a poor one and a better alternative should have been searched for // Well, like anything which gets through a democratically-elected legislative body, its a compromise, which is to say, it makes everybody equally uncomfortable. I'm sure that many alternatives were proposed and debated. Since nobody seems to have a better suggestion, we can view this as an experiment. Perhaps looking at the various consequences of this will suggest better ways.

intended 3y ago

5 whys is an idea that has existed in lean methods for a while. Its from the Toyota hey days: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_whys

intended 3y ago

Your second why is incorrect: > Why can't they make money printing the truth? > Because their old business models have been nuked, and its just too expensive for them to hire those fact checkers and editors. It looks like you have assumptions that Truth sells. Truth sells in the absence of entertainment, opinion and emotion. Does that change your conclusion?

rhelz 3y ago
// assumptions that Truth sells // Yeah, I can understand why you thought it must be an assumption; most people today have lived their whole lives without having any first-hand experience of how news used to work. But it's not an assumption at all--its direct observational evidence. I was there; I saw it with my own eyes. Until the mid 90's, news sources competed on credibility--because people would be willing to pay more to subscribe to a trustworthy newspaper, and they would watch the evening news from the newscaster which they considered to be the most accurate. Because of this, newspapers and tv news payed top-dollar to hire the best reporters, editors, and fact checkers they could. Every line, whether printed or spoken, was intensively scrutinized, and if it made a factual claim--even the most obscure or seemingly unimportant claim--that factual claim was noted, and the report could not be published until somebody had verified that all those claims were true. Remember a while back, when Anderson Cooper was put in the doghouse for a while, because he just made up a story about how he flew in a helicopter during combat? Well, in the 70s or 80s, if Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings had done any such thing, they wouldn't have gotten away with just a slap on the wrist: their career in journalism would be over. What more--and crucially--the TV networks which broadcast their shows would lose viewers, and they would have to spend years to rebuild the broken trust with their audiences to get those viewers back. So yeah, I'm an old fart, and I saw how this system worked, beautifully, with my own eyes. What killed it was the business model to support it got nuked. If you have to pay-out of pocket--a couple hundred dollars a year to read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, you care a lot more about whether you are buying horseshit or not. And if the video you watch is delivered to you by Tik Tok or YouTube, and not the TV networks directly, well, the lion's share of the ad revenue will not go to those who are creating the content, but just the middlemen who serve up the content, and whose business model does't depend on whether the content is true at all. If you don't have to pay anything--all you just have to do is doom-scroll-- well, who wins is whose content sucks you in and glues you to the screen the best.