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// 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 havi

by 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factual claim--even the most obscure or seemingly unimportant claim--that factual claim was noted, and the report could not be published until somebody had verified that all those claims were true.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.

intended 3y ago
Alas, I too have a grey beard. I too, was there. I saw the birth of Fox News and various other Murdoch Successes. It seems two things are being conflated: - That newspapers needed money to succeed - That Truth sells Matter of fact Fox’s success, and the Fox News Effect, challenged my assumptions on how Facts sell and what the information markets operate. Market economics and consolidation has been a larger factor in how information flows than Truth or facts itself. From a purely economic view - as the economy and firm profits grow, media firms become takeover targets. You get firms which own newspapers, or Media empires that have soft/political power. This results in compromised editorial boards. How something is shared, its appeals to emotions or identity. These matter more. Regional newspapers were the ones left to do important work, but they cant compete with the conglomerates and eventually get bought. That said - Independent media firms are carving a niche out on YouTube, where they can pursue editorial independence. So journalists are still fighting the fight. Do note - people who care about facts today, still get them. They just pay for research reports, market reports and studies.
- rhelz 3y ago
  // grey beard // nice to talk to somebody who gets it on a visceral level. // birth of Fox news // Well, what you've got to explain is not just why Fox news, etc, emerged--but why they didn't emerge earlier? If it's somehow axiomatically true that selling falsehood is more profitable than selling truth, Fox news, etc should have appeared a long time ago. In fact, truth-selling journalism shouldn't even have gotten started in the first place. Something changed. It was profitable to compete on credibility before c. 1995, and it was not profitable after c. 1995. // people who care about truth pay for it // This is a good point--and also, it's important to observe that viewers of Fox news, or MSNBC, or Rachael Maddow, don't think they are consuming bullshit. They care as much about getting the truth as anybody else, they just think that the only place they will get it is from their favorite feed. This point needs to be emphasized....if you talk with people who are, e.g. vaccine deniers, they not anti-science. They will be happy to point you to any number of studies (mostly meta-studies), which prove their point. They want the truth, they want their kids to be healthy. Its just that you can give $20,000 to any assistant professor (who wants tenure and publications badly) who will run a "meta-study" of the results of previous studies, which will, surprise, surprise prove what the generous donor wanted to be proved. It's not that people don't value truth over opinion, but they really can't tell which is which. And it's not just because they are dumb--we all are going be in this situation very soon, if we aren't already. I can't just trust any paper written by psychologists, because of the rampant scientific fraud. Its gotten so bad that you can get a Ph.D. in the field (e.g. Jordan Peterson) and think you are doing valid science, but in fact the field is so screwed up that they don't even realize they are not doing science. We are all rank amateurs in almost every field of human endeavor--we have to rely on experts to give us the straight scoop. For almost any claim which is made, virtually none of us are qualified to tell whether it's true or false--what's more, we are not even qualified to tell whether the guy making the claim is qualified either. Nevertheless, it use to work, because the experts and the media were incentivized to give us the truth. Now they are not, which makes all of us vulnerable, because it really won't be obvious where the truth is, if anywhere. And its not at all obvious what to do about it :-(
  - intended 3y ago
    yes, its fundamentally down to incentives. I suspect that some of our intuitions on how a market place of idea works, are ill suited to the environment we have been building up. This links back to our discussion, because American laws on free speech (and most laws on Free speech), do not build out for complex eventualities. Eventualities such as a media conglomerate being created, or the proliferation of emotional journalism to grab eyeballs and thus winning advertising revenue. The current situation isnt ideal for a market place of ideas - or for the kind of high minded ideas we want to see prevail (I admit a bias). The current situation is completely legal though. I think the lesson is that after some point, either economic growth or information growth, market forces that sell junk food, dominate the market place. Here’s my conundrum. it may be, that at some point, you cannot avoid a big brother scenario. You just need someone to ensure that you can’t sell cigarettes to kids. But this is the path that leads to every thought police debacle ever seen. Ideally there would be some way to ensure that there is a free and frank exchange of ideas, without the network being overwhelmed by spam, fraud, or emotional manipulation. Hmm, You know what - I think there is something that can be done. Break up major networks. Fund regional newspapers through private and public support. Essentially, we are trying to reduce the power of a single network gaining leverage over other players, and ensuring that smaller players have a way of existing in this market place. … I feel like I have reinvented the wheel. This is anti-monopoly or cartel 101.

by rhelz 3y ago

intended 3y ago

Alas, I too have a grey beard. I too, was there. I saw the birth of Fox News and various other Murdoch Successes. It seems two things are being conflated: - That newspapers needed money to succeed - That Truth sells Matter of fact Fox’s success, and the Fox News Effect, challenged my assumptions on how Facts sell and what the information markets operate. Market economics and consolidation has been a larger factor in how information flows than Truth or facts itself. From a purely economic view - as the economy and firm profits grow, media firms become takeover targets. You get firms which own newspapers, or Media empires that have soft/political power. This results in compromised editorial boards. How something is shared, its appeals to emotions or identity. These matter more. Regional newspapers were the ones left to do important work, but they cant compete with the conglomerates and eventually get bought. That said - Independent media firms are carving a niche out on YouTube, where they can pursue editorial independence. So journalists are still fighting the fight. Do note - people who care about facts today, still get them. They just pay for research reports, market reports and studies.

rhelz 3y ago
// grey beard // nice to talk to somebody who gets it on a visceral level. // birth of Fox news // Well, what you've got to explain is not just why Fox news, etc, emerged--but why they didn't emerge earlier? If it's somehow axiomatically true that selling falsehood is more profitable than selling truth, Fox news, etc should have appeared a long time ago. In fact, truth-selling journalism shouldn't even have gotten started in the first place. Something changed. It was profitable to compete on credibility before c. 1995, and it was not profitable after c. 1995. // people who care about truth pay for it // This is a good point--and also, it's important to observe that viewers of Fox news, or MSNBC, or Rachael Maddow, don't think they are consuming bullshit. They care as much about getting the truth as anybody else, they just think that the only place they will get it is from their favorite feed. This point needs to be emphasized....if you talk with people who are, e.g. vaccine deniers, they not anti-science. They will be happy to point you to any number of studies (mostly meta-studies), which prove their point. They want the truth, they want their kids to be healthy. Its just that you can give $20,000 to any assistant professor (who wants tenure and publications badly) who will run a "meta-study" of the results of previous studies, which will, surprise, surprise prove what the generous donor wanted to be proved. It's not that people don't value truth over opinion, but they really can't tell which is which. And it's not just because they are dumb--we all are going be in this situation very soon, if we aren't already. I can't just trust any paper written by psychologists, because of the rampant scientific fraud. Its gotten so bad that you can get a Ph.D. in the field (e.g. Jordan Peterson) and think you are doing valid science, but in fact the field is so screwed up that they don't even realize they are not doing science. We are all rank amateurs in almost every field of human endeavor--we have to rely on experts to give us the straight scoop. For almost any claim which is made, virtually none of us are qualified to tell whether it's true or false--what's more, we are not even qualified to tell whether the guy making the claim is qualified either. Nevertheless, it use to work, because the experts and the media were incentivized to give us the truth. Now they are not, which makes all of us vulnerable, because it really won't be obvious where the truth is, if anywhere. And its not at all obvious what to do about it :-(
- intended 3y ago
  yes, its fundamentally down to incentives. I suspect that some of our intuitions on how a market place of idea works, are ill suited to the environment we have been building up. This links back to our discussion, because American laws on free speech (and most laws on Free speech), do not build out for complex eventualities. Eventualities such as a media conglomerate being created, or the proliferation of emotional journalism to grab eyeballs and thus winning advertising revenue. The current situation isnt ideal for a market place of ideas - or for the kind of high minded ideas we want to see prevail (I admit a bias). The current situation is completely legal though. I think the lesson is that after some point, either economic growth or information growth, market forces that sell junk food, dominate the market place. Here’s my conundrum. it may be, that at some point, you cannot avoid a big brother scenario. You just need someone to ensure that you can’t sell cigarettes to kids. But this is the path that leads to every thought police debacle ever seen. Ideally there would be some way to ensure that there is a free and frank exchange of ideas, without the network being overwhelmed by spam, fraud, or emotional manipulation. Hmm, You know what - I think there is something that can be done. Break up major networks. Fund regional newspapers through private and public support. Essentially, we are trying to reduce the power of a single network gaining leverage over other players, and ensuring that smaller players have a way of existing in this market place. … I feel like I have reinvented the wheel. This is anti-monopoly or cartel 101.