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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godi_media https://en.wikipedia.o

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godi_media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godi_media This is nothing new and in fact is a feature of having a for-profit 24 hour news media industry that thrives on advertising revenue and flourishes under emaciated regulation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_doctrine the repeal of the fairness doctrine in the United States means your television radio and internet news feeds are free to outright fabricate stories with impunity. commercial news means the product is tailored to the consumer, not congruent with the facts. Treating the news like fresh water and clean air and exposing it to an ultraviolet level of regulation and rigor is the cure. You can still have private news agencies, they just cannot market or sell "snake oil" in the service of the dollar. Another alternative is turning all news into something akin to NPR, or having news "co-ops" that provide the service to their listeners for a fee.

gottorf 2y ago
> turning all news into something akin to NPR Why do you see NPR as such a positive example of journalism? It seems to me that it's been skating on its previous good reputation for quite some time now.
- madrox 2y ago
  I don't think the OP was pointing to it as a example of positivity but an example of a business model (donation supported)
- paradox460 2y ago
  Likely because NPR has yet to tread on one of their beliefs with biased reporting. It will happen eventually, the rate at which it's happening is accelerating, and when they realize it happens they'll feel the same outage we all did our first time. The umbrage, the "you were supposed to be unbiased" cry I grew up on NPR. It was always on in the background. On the way to and from daycare, in the car on Sunday mornings on the way to the uu church, playing out of a small boom box on the back porch, or winding up the miles of a long road trip. Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, Schickelie mix, etc, all were the background music to my childhood. When I entered adult life, I tried to continue listening, but leading to, during, and after the 2016 election, the biases became too base, too visible to ignore
  - baseballdork 2y ago
    Is there no chance that instead of NPR all of a sudden being exposed as biased, it was your own biases that were exposed?
    - brewdad 2y ago
      My problem with NPR is that is the spirit of remaining unbiased, they allow both sides of the political spectrum to say their piece with little to no push back. Whichever side spews the best lines of BS wins regardless of the actual facts on the ground.
      - mulderc 2y ago
        Can’t speak for all of NPR but what I listen to regularly pushes back on claims from both sides. My local affiliate had an especially critical interview with the state governor and the interviewer and governor agreed that they should do these hour long interviews more often.
        dredmorbius 2y ago
        NPR has been pushing back harder, and will label untruths as "lies" where earlier (circa 2015/16) it was very reluctant to do so. Many news organisations in the US tried very hard through the 2016 campaign cycle to normalise what was a very-far-from-normal. I've recently been going through some Brookings Institution podcasts from ~2012--2016, and the degree to which the hard-right shift was normalised at the time is telling. NPR in particular avoided the word "lie" as late as 2017, see: "NPR And The Word 'Liar': Intent Is Key", January 25, 20175:00 AM ET <https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/25/511503605/npr-and-the-l-word-intent-is-key https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/25/511503605...> Contrast 2024 where this is no longer a problem: "162 lies and distortions in a news conference. NPR fact-checks former President Trump", August 11, 20247:00 AM ET <https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conference https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conf...> NPR also pressed the former president on lies in an interview in 2022. It didn't go well: "Pressed on his election lies, former President Trump cuts NPR interview short", January 12, 20225:01 AM ET <https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072204478/donald-trump-npr-interview-presidential-election-lies-vaccines https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072204478/donald-trump-npr-i...> My view is that NPR's stance change is a positive development.
- deleted 2y ago
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- calvinmorrison 2y ago
  driving get bored remember I have a radio turn on NPR in this episode we're going to investigate the relationship between consensual undocumented migrant men and underage boys who want to seem older, on this hour of the Latino story hour click repeat every 4-6 months
  - foobarian 2y ago
    Or, repeat never having done the above with a carful of 8 year olds
  - r2_pilot 2y ago
    I'm just wondering, is this a true episode that happened to you or are you being hyperbolic and fabricating this so-called experience, because frankly I don't think this story is based in reality, where I like to operate. Sources, if you have them though.
    - gottorf 2y ago
      I'm sure GP is being facetious, though perhaps with an allusion to stories like "How climate change is hitting vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers"[0]. It's neither from NPR nor about Latinos as in GP's (unlikely to be real) example, but nevertheless emblematic of what one may come across frequently in left-leaning media sources: combine as many subject matters as possible that are currently in vogue in the progressive thought landscape, without much relevance to the broader public. [0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/indonesian-transgender-climate-change-bandung-b2522422.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/indonesian...
- EasyMark 2y ago
  NPR does a fabulous job not sounding like CNN or Fox News with their breathlessness. Sure like 1 in 100 stories from them would be meh, but I use them and APNews as my primary source and it doesn’t feel like a panic attack when I go to their pages as compared to most mainstream news.
  - standyro 2y ago
    They lack the alarmism of CNN, but the way that outlets like NPR were so comfortable to tow obvious political lines during the pandemic (such as even entertaining the possibility of a “lab leak” hypothesis, painting it to be insanely conspiratorial and/or racist, despite the Wuhan lab being supported by NIH grants) — the most clear and dangerous version of manufactured consent I’ve seen in American media this generation. Most media outlets (including NPR) begrudgingly accepted this as a strong likelihood for the initial source of the virus only a year or two later, once they had political approval. Journalists and editors in these larger institutions no longer have any courage to actually be a “fourth estate” or think independently of government.
    - aredox 2y ago
      The Wuhan lab is still not the likely source for the SARS-CoV-2, despite what you want to believe.
      - TimedToasts 2y ago
        They didn't write that it was likely, just that NPR willingly participated in the Establishment campaign to suppress and distort the lab leak hypothesis.
      - gottorf 2y ago
        My understanding is that expert opinion in recent months have been converging towards the lab leak theory. Consider this opinion piece[0], which points out some notable differences between the previous outbreaks of coronaviruses that had natural origins to Covid. I'm not sure whether GP really wants to believe that Covid has man-made origins like you claim, but I think by now with all the evidence that has been released into the behind-the-scenes workings of Dr. Fauci et al[1] we can all agree that in the early days, a consensus was deliberately manufactured away from the lab leak theory. Moreover, there is clear public interest in discovering the true origin as well as preventing this type of politicization of the scientific process in the future. What is your theory as to the most likely source? [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid... [1]: https://www.public.news/p/fauci-diverted-us-government-away https://www.public.news/p/fauci-diverted-us-government-away
AlbertCory 2y ago
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- AlbertCory 2y ago
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- x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
  The Hunter Biden laptop story was a giant nothing-burger and no one had any real information about it before the election. It took time to responsibly analyze the contents are accurately report on it, and none of that happened until well after the election. Reporting on it at all before the facts were available would have clearly been inflammatory for no good reason.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    > no one had any real information about it before the election The information was out there and the 50+ "former intelligence experts" have admitted that they had no idea what they were talking about, and what's more, they're still proud of it. https://archive.ph/uvS8v https://archive.ph/uvS8v https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/3058708/ex-intelligence-officials-hunter-biden-laptop-story-active-cia-contractors/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/3058708/ex-int... The media just didn't do their jobs. A real reporter would have said, "This is fishy. I wonder what the facts are." A real reporter would have called the Post and said, "Show me what you've got."
- PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
  As someone who grew up quite a while ago with the BBC, there's some serious delusion going on here about the historical and present day nature of that institution. Whether or not it is true that the BBC has (or has not) been "captured by wokeness", the objections to this tend to hinge on its reputation for objectivity and dispassion in the past. But the BBC has never been objective or dispassionate. It has been a steadfast supporter of the status quo. If it didn't treat socialism and communism with the idiocy that modern day Fox News does, it certainly offered them no serious coverage outside of a few intellectual "talk shows", even then only as a curiosity set against "what we all know is the truth". The fact that someone might be upset that the BBC or other similar organizations choose not to give "full coverage" to conservatism should not obscure that the same organizations have never provided much to any "radical" cultural or political phenomenon. The cherry-picking was always real, and it is generally only Americans who live under the ridiculous idea that there can be "objective" journalism. There isn't, and there never has been, and there never will be (in the context of broadcast or daily media, anyway).
nomel 2y ago
> Treating the news like fresh water and clean air and exposing it to an ultraviolet level of regulation and rigor is the cure. I think it would be very difficult to set rigor (truth?) standards. There's a long history of truths that directly conflict with the "facts" provided, especially those from governments, which could probably not be reported under such scrutiny. I'm also curious how lying by omissions, which is the biggest problem I perceive, would be handled.
- deepsun 2y ago
  What if we start prosecuting for knowingly spreading misinformation? It already works, but only in licensed areas like healthcare and legal advice (although I think we could do more on health advice side). We could make more areas like that. And fines to be small, similar to copyrighted media content sharing -- those who did initial leak would get large fines, those who just re-shared -- slap on the hand.
  - Mountain_Skies 2y ago
    Medical history, even recent, is full of cases where the accepted truth turned out to be false and those who spoke out against it to have the truth be known would have been persecuted by the believers in the incumbent truth.
    - lesuorac 2y ago
      My favorite example being germ theory [1]. Granted, he went over the top (claiming all infant mortality was from cadaverous particles) a bit like some who claim Covid was a lab-leak from a Chinese bio-weapon; if you just stop at the lab-leak part you have a decent claim, the bio-weapon is what tanks your argument. But it's not like doctors started washing their hands despite his evidence of mortality dropping from 18% to 2%. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease#Ignaz_Semmelweis,_Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease#Ignaz_S...
      - ThunderSizzle 2y ago
tacticalturtle 2y ago
The fairness doctrine only applied to broadcast license holders, so it would have never affected internet or cable news companies.
dredmorbius 2y ago
I'm quite familiar with the background literature, and include a "short reading list" on media for that reason: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230610061138/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_advertising_sustainability_externalities/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230610061138/https://old.reddi...> I'd especially point out Hamilton Holt's excellent, fact-filled, and highly readable Commercialism and Journalism (1909), 124 large-print pages. Yes, it's dated, but precisely for that reason it both pressages virtually all present discussion and gives an excellent and valuable view of how things stood and had evolved just as the phenomenon of advertising-supported media was emerging. <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt/page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt/page/n7/m...> There are far more academic, recent, detailed, and lengthy works. But if you want the maximum bang for your reading buck, start with this one.
dredmorbius 2y ago
Addressing your other points: Especially in the 19th century, many newspapers were explicitly partisan, often organs of various political parties, e.g., the Arizona Republican (GOP) or American Federationist (labour / AFL/CIO). Emergence of a (nominally) unbiased, nonpartisan press largely followed publication of Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann (1922), and probably came to a fore during WWII, which in many ways was the high-water mark of American journalism as a near-universally-purchased service. I.F. Stone's 1974? interview on public broadcasting's Day at Night is an excellent insight into the state of US media at that time. It had reached another high-water mark with the Watergate scandal, in which two reporters ultimately brought down the President of the United States. Still, Stone saw many faults in the US media landscape, most of which have grown since then: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g> Edward Jay Epstein's News from Nowhere: Television and the News (1973) also affords strong insights to video news and how it is constituted. Again, technology has progressed but many of the fundamental issues, particularly around audience development and narrative-fitting, remain: <https://archive.org/details/newsfromnowheret0000epst https://archive.org/details/newsfromnowheret0000epst>
jimjimjim 2y ago
I really do believe there should be negative repercussions for bullshitting. I would pay for a news source that fact checked anything said by a politician and stated it in the news article. And also, during interviews, called out obvious bullshittery to their face.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  >And also, during interviews, called out obvious bullshittery to their face. The problem here is that politicians simply won't do interviews with these journalists. I think we saw exactly this during the Trump administration. This idea would probably only work if all the journalists adopted this policy (prisoner's dilemma).
  - noirbot 2y ago
    And even the times that Trump or his people did do interviews with actually combative people, did anyone remember or care? Did anything change? Did it cause anyone to re-evaluate their views? I remember multiple times people interviewing the then-president literally handed him transcripts of his own speeches that contradicted his denials about saying things and he just refused to acknowledge anything was wrong and kept going. It's not to say there's not ways the media can be better, but people have this "why, if I was a journalist, I'd fix everything with this one weird trick" and that's just not how any of it actually works in reality.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >And even the times that Trump or his people did do interviews with actually combative people, did anyone remember or care? Did anything change? Did it cause anyone to re-evaluate their views? Well, to be fair, Trump did lose his re-election campaign. It's impossible to say how much effect combative journalists had on this, but for whatever reasons, the American voters did turn out in higher numbers in 2020 and voted for Biden.
      - noirbot 2y ago
listenallyall 2y ago
If "news" was highly regulated then likely nobody would produce it. Everything would simply become "opinion" or discussion of topics. Honestly you already see that at all the host-personality shows on CNN/Fox/MSNBC, every hour starts with a monologue then 50 minutes of panel discussions.
- autoexec 2y ago
  > If "news" was highly regulated then likely nobody would produce it. Everything would simply become "opinion" or discussion of topics. That doesn't really seem much different from what we have now though. It seems like there's more commentary than content.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    Yes, because it's cheaper and easier and has a longer tail (the press conference may be 20 minutes, the discussion about it can last all day) and is likely more entertaining (because the host can inject some personality) - so if you added more regulation to the "news" side, it would tip the balance to "opinion"/entertainment even further.
cebert 2y ago
> Treating the news like fresh water and clean air and exposing it to an ultraviolet level of regulation and rigor is the cure. Politicians and parties with a majority can change. How can we trust that those regulating the news and determining what is truth or misinformation?
NullPrefix 2y ago
Why are you mentioning NPR? NPR isn't a news source, NPR is just another political tool. >Truth is less important >Truth gets on the way of consensus and getting big things done. NPR CEO https://x.com/realCarola2Hope/status/1823746926279582115 https://x.com/realCarola2Hope/status/1823746926279582115
- jonquark 2y ago
  This seems to be a mischaractisation of what she was saying: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/05/08/npr-ceo-katherine-maher-congress-media-bias-uri-berliner/73597888007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/05/08/n...
  - NullPrefix 2y ago
    So the argument is based on the fact, that her talk was given before she became CEO, so her truthfulness values as a CEO are actually OK?
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gottorf 2y ago

> turning all news into something akin to NPR Why do you see NPR as such a positive example of journalism? It seems to me that it's been skating on its previous good reputation for quite some time now.

madrox 2y ago
I don't think the OP was pointing to it as a example of positivity but an example of a business model (donation supported)
paradox460 2y ago
Likely because NPR has yet to tread on one of their beliefs with biased reporting. It will happen eventually, the rate at which it's happening is accelerating, and when they realize it happens they'll feel the same outage we all did our first time. The umbrage, the "you were supposed to be unbiased" cry I grew up on NPR. It was always on in the background. On the way to and from daycare, in the car on Sunday mornings on the way to the uu church, playing out of a small boom box on the back porch, or winding up the miles of a long road trip. Prairie Home Companion, Car Talk, Schickelie mix, etc, all were the background music to my childhood. When I entered adult life, I tried to continue listening, but leading to, during, and after the 2016 election, the biases became too base, too visible to ignore
- baseballdork 2y ago
  Is there no chance that instead of NPR all of a sudden being exposed as biased, it was your own biases that were exposed?
  - brewdad 2y ago
    My problem with NPR is that is the spirit of remaining unbiased, they allow both sides of the political spectrum to say their piece with little to no push back. Whichever side spews the best lines of BS wins regardless of the actual facts on the ground.
    - mulderc 2y ago
      Can’t speak for all of NPR but what I listen to regularly pushes back on claims from both sides. My local affiliate had an especially critical interview with the state governor and the interviewer and governor agreed that they should do these hour long interviews more often.
      - dredmorbius 2y ago
        NPR has been pushing back harder, and will label untruths as "lies" where earlier (circa 2015/16) it was very reluctant to do so. Many news organisations in the US tried very hard through the 2016 campaign cycle to normalise what was a very-far-from-normal. I've recently been going through some Brookings Institution podcasts from ~2012--2016, and the degree to which the hard-right shift was normalised at the time is telling. NPR in particular avoided the word "lie" as late as 2017, see: "NPR And The Word 'Liar': Intent Is Key", January 25, 20175:00 AM ET <https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/25/511503605/npr-and-the-l-word-intent-is-key https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/01/25/511503605...> Contrast 2024 where this is no longer a problem: "162 lies and distortions in a news conference. NPR fact-checks former President Trump", August 11, 20247:00 AM ET <https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conference https://www.npr.org/2024/08/11/nx-s1-5070566/trump-news-conf...> NPR also pressed the former president on lies in an interview in 2022. It didn't go well: "Pressed on his election lies, former President Trump cuts NPR interview short", January 12, 20225:01 AM ET <https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072204478/donald-trump-npr-interview-presidential-election-lies-vaccines https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072204478/donald-trump-npr-i...> My view is that NPR's stance change is a positive development.
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calvinmorrison 2y ago
driving get bored remember I have a radio turn on NPR in this episode we're going to investigate the relationship between consensual undocumented migrant men and underage boys who want to seem older, on this hour of the Latino story hour click repeat every 4-6 months
- foobarian 2y ago
  Or, repeat never having done the above with a carful of 8 year olds
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  I'm just wondering, is this a true episode that happened to you or are you being hyperbolic and fabricating this so-called experience, because frankly I don't think this story is based in reality, where I like to operate. Sources, if you have them though.
  - gottorf 2y ago
    I'm sure GP is being facetious, though perhaps with an allusion to stories like "How climate change is hitting vulnerable Indonesian trans sex workers"[0]. It's neither from NPR nor about Latinos as in GP's (unlikely to be real) example, but nevertheless emblematic of what one may come across frequently in left-leaning media sources: combine as many subject matters as possible that are currently in vogue in the progressive thought landscape, without much relevance to the broader public. [0]: https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/indonesian-transgender-climate-change-bandung-b2522422.html https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/indonesian...
EasyMark 2y ago
NPR does a fabulous job not sounding like CNN or Fox News with their breathlessness. Sure like 1 in 100 stories from them would be meh, but I use them and APNews as my primary source and it doesn’t feel like a panic attack when I go to their pages as compared to most mainstream news.
- standyro 2y ago
  They lack the alarmism of CNN, but the way that outlets like NPR were so comfortable to tow obvious political lines during the pandemic (such as even entertaining the possibility of a “lab leak” hypothesis, painting it to be insanely conspiratorial and/or racist, despite the Wuhan lab being supported by NIH grants) — the most clear and dangerous version of manufactured consent I’ve seen in American media this generation. Most media outlets (including NPR) begrudgingly accepted this as a strong likelihood for the initial source of the virus only a year or two later, once they had political approval. Journalists and editors in these larger institutions no longer have any courage to actually be a “fourth estate” or think independently of government.
  - aredox 2y ago
    The Wuhan lab is still not the likely source for the SARS-CoV-2, despite what you want to believe.
    - TimedToasts 2y ago
      They didn't write that it was likely, just that NPR willingly participated in the Establishment campaign to suppress and distort the lab leak hypothesis.
    - gottorf 2y ago
      My understanding is that expert opinion in recent months have been converging towards the lab leak theory. Consider this opinion piece[0], which points out some notable differences between the previous outbreaks of coronaviruses that had natural origins to Covid. I'm not sure whether GP really wants to believe that Covid has man-made origins like you claim, but I think by now with all the evidence that has been released into the behind-the-scenes workings of Dr. Fauci et al[1] we can all agree that in the early days, a consensus was deliberately manufactured away from the lab leak theory. Moreover, there is clear public interest in discovering the true origin as well as preventing this type of politicization of the scientific process in the future. What is your theory as to the most likely source? [0]: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid-lab-leak.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/03/opinion/covid... [1]: https://www.public.news/p/fauci-diverted-us-government-away https://www.public.news/p/fauci-diverted-us-government-away

AlbertCory 2y ago

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AlbertCory 2y ago
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x3n0ph3n3 2y ago
The Hunter Biden laptop story was a giant nothing-burger and no one had any real information about it before the election. It took time to responsibly analyze the contents are accurately report on it, and none of that happened until well after the election. Reporting on it at all before the facts were available would have clearly been inflammatory for no good reason.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  > no one had any real information about it before the election The information was out there and the 50+ "former intelligence experts" have admitted that they had no idea what they were talking about, and what's more, they're still proud of it. https://archive.ph/uvS8v https://archive.ph/uvS8v https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/3058708/ex-intelligence-officials-hunter-biden-laptop-story-active-cia-contractors/ https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house/3058708/ex-int... The media just didn't do their jobs. A real reporter would have said, "This is fishy. I wonder what the facts are." A real reporter would have called the Post and said, "Show me what you've got."
PaulDavisThe1st 2y ago
As someone who grew up quite a while ago with the BBC, there's some serious delusion going on here about the historical and present day nature of that institution. Whether or not it is true that the BBC has (or has not) been "captured by wokeness", the objections to this tend to hinge on its reputation for objectivity and dispassion in the past. But the BBC has never been objective or dispassionate. It has been a steadfast supporter of the status quo. If it didn't treat socialism and communism with the idiocy that modern day Fox News does, it certainly offered them no serious coverage outside of a few intellectual "talk shows", even then only as a curiosity set against "what we all know is the truth". The fact that someone might be upset that the BBC or other similar organizations choose not to give "full coverage" to conservatism should not obscure that the same organizations have never provided much to any "radical" cultural or political phenomenon. The cherry-picking was always real, and it is generally only Americans who live under the ridiculous idea that there can be "objective" journalism. There isn't, and there never has been, and there never will be (in the context of broadcast or daily media, anyway).

nomel 2y ago

> Treating the news like fresh water and clean air and exposing it to an ultraviolet level of regulation and rigor is the cure. I think it would be very difficult to set rigor (truth?) standards. There's a long history of truths that directly conflict with the "facts" provided, especially those from governments, which could probably not be reported under such scrutiny. I'm also curious how lying by omissions, which is the biggest problem I perceive, would be handled.

deepsun 2y ago
What if we start prosecuting for knowingly spreading misinformation? It already works, but only in licensed areas like healthcare and legal advice (although I think we could do more on health advice side). We could make more areas like that. And fines to be small, similar to copyrighted media content sharing -- those who did initial leak would get large fines, those who just re-shared -- slap on the hand.
- Mountain_Skies 2y ago
  Medical history, even recent, is full of cases where the accepted truth turned out to be false and those who spoke out against it to have the truth be known would have been persecuted by the believers in the incumbent truth.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    My favorite example being germ theory [1]. Granted, he went over the top (claiming all infant mortality was from cadaverous particles) a bit like some who claim Covid was a lab-leak from a Chinese bio-weapon; if you just stop at the lab-leak part you have a decent claim, the bio-weapon is what tanks your argument. But it's not like doctors started washing their hands despite his evidence of mortality dropping from 18% to 2%. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease#Ignaz_Semmelweis,_Austria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germ_theory_of_disease#Ignaz_S...
    - ThunderSizzle 2y ago

tacticalturtle 2y ago

The fairness doctrine only applied to broadcast license holders, so it would have never affected internet or cable news companies.

dredmorbius 2y ago

I'm quite familiar with the background literature, and include a "short reading list" on media for that reason: <https://web.archive.org/web/20230610061138/https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_advertising_sustainability_externalities/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230610061138/https://old.reddi...> I'd especially point out Hamilton Holt's excellent, fact-filled, and highly readable Commercialism and Journalism (1909), 124 large-print pages. Yes, it's dated, but precisely for that reason it both pressages virtually all present discussion and gives an excellent and valuable view of how things stood and had evolved just as the phenomenon of advertising-supported media was emerging. <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt/page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holt/page/n7/m...> There are far more academic, recent, detailed, and lengthy works. But if you want the maximum bang for your reading buck, start with this one.

dredmorbius 2y ago

Addressing your other points: Especially in the 19th century, many newspapers were explicitly partisan, often organs of various political parties, e.g., the Arizona Republican (GOP) or American Federationist (labour / AFL/CIO). Emergence of a (nominally) unbiased, nonpartisan press largely followed publication of Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann (1922), and probably came to a fore during WWII, which in many ways was the high-water mark of American journalism as a near-universally-purchased service. I.F. Stone's 1974? interview on public broadcasting's Day at Night is an excellent insight into the state of US media at that time. It had reached another high-water mark with the Watergate scandal, in which two reporters ultimately brought down the President of the United States. Still, Stone saw many faults in the US media landscape, most of which have grown since then: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g> Edward Jay Epstein's News from Nowhere: Television and the News (1973) also affords strong insights to video news and how it is constituted. Again, technology has progressed but many of the fundamental issues, particularly around audience development and narrative-fitting, remain: <https://archive.org/details/newsfromnowheret0000epst https://archive.org/details/newsfromnowheret0000epst>

jimjimjim 2y ago

I really do believe there should be negative repercussions for bullshitting. I would pay for a news source that fact checked anything said by a politician and stated it in the news article. And also, during interviews, called out obvious bullshittery to their face.

shiroiushi 2y ago
>And also, during interviews, called out obvious bullshittery to their face. The problem here is that politicians simply won't do interviews with these journalists. I think we saw exactly this during the Trump administration. This idea would probably only work if all the journalists adopted this policy (prisoner's dilemma).
- noirbot 2y ago
  And even the times that Trump or his people did do interviews with actually combative people, did anyone remember or care? Did anything change? Did it cause anyone to re-evaluate their views? I remember multiple times people interviewing the then-president literally handed him transcripts of his own speeches that contradicted his denials about saying things and he just refused to acknowledge anything was wrong and kept going. It's not to say there's not ways the media can be better, but people have this "why, if I was a journalist, I'd fix everything with this one weird trick" and that's just not how any of it actually works in reality.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >And even the times that Trump or his people did do interviews with actually combative people, did anyone remember or care? Did anything change? Did it cause anyone to re-evaluate their views? Well, to be fair, Trump did lose his re-election campaign. It's impossible to say how much effect combative journalists had on this, but for whatever reasons, the American voters did turn out in higher numbers in 2020 and voted for Biden.
    - noirbot 2y ago

listenallyall 2y ago

If "news" was highly regulated then likely nobody would produce it. Everything would simply become "opinion" or discussion of topics. Honestly you already see that at all the host-personality shows on CNN/Fox/MSNBC, every hour starts with a monologue then 50 minutes of panel discussions.

autoexec 2y ago
> If "news" was highly regulated then likely nobody would produce it. Everything would simply become "opinion" or discussion of topics. That doesn't really seem much different from what we have now though. It seems like there's more commentary than content.
- listenallyall 2y ago
  Yes, because it's cheaper and easier and has a longer tail (the press conference may be 20 minutes, the discussion about it can last all day) and is likely more entertaining (because the host can inject some personality) - so if you added more regulation to the "news" side, it would tip the balance to "opinion"/entertainment even further.

cebert 2y ago

> Treating the news like fresh water and clean air and exposing it to an ultraviolet level of regulation and rigor is the cure. Politicians and parties with a majority can change. How can we trust that those regulating the news and determining what is truth or misinformation?

NullPrefix 2y ago

Why are you mentioning NPR? NPR isn't a news source, NPR is just another political tool. >Truth is less important >Truth gets on the way of consensus and getting big things done. NPR CEO https://x.com/realCarola2Hope/status/1823746926279582115 https://x.com/realCarola2Hope/status/1823746926279582115

jonquark 2y ago
This seems to be a mischaractisation of what she was saying: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/05/08/npr-ceo-katherine-maher-congress-media-bias-uri-berliner/73597888007/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2024/05/08/n...
- NullPrefix 2y ago
  So the argument is based on the fact, that her talk was given before she became CEO, so her truthfulness values as a CEO are actually OK?

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