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Politicians lie even more and people have had no problem believing and supporting that lately. It’s not like journalists are collectively agreeing to lie to th

Politicians lie even more and people have had no problem believing and supporting that lately. It’s not like journalists are collectively agreeing to lie to the public.

xoxxala 2y ago
Public trust in politicians and the government is near all-time lows: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust... People are supporting politicians because there is literally nothing else to do but not vote. Also, personally, I expect a politician to lie while holding a journalist to a higher standard. We need proper journalism to hold the government accountable.
- righthand 2y ago
  We do have that but there is strong bias towards not trusting journalism. Everything in the US is capital based and no one wants to pay for journalism. So journalism relies on ad-tactics to get eyeballs looking at their stuff. This in turn causes low trust because if one type of article is manipulative then the other types must be right? If people weren’t so anti-capitalism then the journalism would have incentive to be less manipulative across the board. Furthermore the politicians want manipulative journalism, there is no incentive on either side to do the right thing. If there was we wouldn’t have the political candidates we do today. Instead we invest in the weakness because be uneducated means you don’t actually have to understand just vote emotionally.
  - quickslowdown 2y ago
    > If people weren’t so anti-capitalism then the journalism would have incentive to be less manipulative across the board I'm struggling to put into words the thoughts this sentence triggered. We're on HN, not reddit, so I'm going to assume good faith. What reasons over the past 30-50 years have capitalists given the population to root for them? When your business model is to fuck over everyone in your path in a race to the bottom for the gain of a select few at the top, why would anyone expect anything else from the people capitalism stomps all over?
    - righthand 2y ago
      Because regardless of how hard you get stomped, the system is still capitalism. There’s no need to take revenge on journalism which could work well. The average American maintains finances by putting their money in a bank where it rots with inflation, of course they get stomped by capitalism.
marcuskane2 2y ago
Supporting sure, but I don't know about believing. The most fascinating part of Trump's success is that his supporters know he's lying, exaggerating and making stuff up on the spot and are ok with it. They believe he supports the things they support in a general sense and they believe all politicians lie and cheat, so they don't care even about his most egregious stuff. I think there's a Dunning-Kruger effect, where people think they're being savvy about a corrupt system. The belief is that the whole edifice of American institutions is really just a facade on top of a corrupt system controlled by elites, and that Trump is being honest in a sense by exposing the corruption, but that his own obvious corruption is just a requirement to succeed in the way the game is played. And of course Trump makes great use of this. The more he can get people to believe that the other side are liars and crooks, the more they'll tolerate his corruption and lies.
- righthand 2y ago
  Oh it’s definitely a one way street. I realized all the talk coming out of the Trump camp isn’t really about the other side but about themselves. A common repeated phrase is “the other side doesn’t listen to me” which really means “I don’t listen to the other side”.
some_random 2y ago
"Politicians" and "Journalists" aren't specific enough to discuss this problem, people haven't been suddenly believing politicians in general they've latched onto specific politicians in specific political parties and believe them. Similarly, you can have people who say they think journalists are all liars but believe specific journalists or specific news outlets. It's like how congresspeople are re-elected pretty consistently despite the national approval of congress as a whole being in the dirt, people like what _their_ guy is up to but not what everyone else is doing.

Politicians lie even more and people have had no problem believing and supporting that lately. It’s not like journalists are collectively agreeing to lie to the public.

xoxxala 2y ago

Public trust in politicians and the government is near all-time lows: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust-in-government-1958-2024/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/06/24/public-trust... People are supporting politicians because there is literally nothing else to do but not vote. Also, personally, I expect a politician to lie while holding a journalist to a higher standard. We need proper journalism to hold the government accountable.

righthand 2y ago
We do have that but there is strong bias towards not trusting journalism. Everything in the US is capital based and no one wants to pay for journalism. So journalism relies on ad-tactics to get eyeballs looking at their stuff. This in turn causes low trust because if one type of article is manipulative then the other types must be right? If people weren’t so anti-capitalism then the journalism would have incentive to be less manipulative across the board. Furthermore the politicians want manipulative journalism, there is no incentive on either side to do the right thing. If there was we wouldn’t have the political candidates we do today. Instead we invest in the weakness because be uneducated means you don’t actually have to understand just vote emotionally.
- quickslowdown 2y ago
  > If people weren’t so anti-capitalism then the journalism would have incentive to be less manipulative across the board I'm struggling to put into words the thoughts this sentence triggered. We're on HN, not reddit, so I'm going to assume good faith. What reasons over the past 30-50 years have capitalists given the population to root for them? When your business model is to fuck over everyone in your path in a race to the bottom for the gain of a select few at the top, why would anyone expect anything else from the people capitalism stomps all over?
  - righthand 2y ago
    Because regardless of how hard you get stomped, the system is still capitalism. There’s no need to take revenge on journalism which could work well. The average American maintains finances by putting their money in a bank where it rots with inflation, of course they get stomped by capitalism.

marcuskane2 2y ago

Supporting sure, but I don't know about believing. The most fascinating part of Trump's success is that his supporters know he's lying, exaggerating and making stuff up on the spot and are ok with it. They believe he supports the things they support in a general sense and they believe all politicians lie and cheat, so they don't care even about his most egregious stuff. I think there's a Dunning-Kruger effect, where people think they're being savvy about a corrupt system. The belief is that the whole edifice of American institutions is really just a facade on top of a corrupt system controlled by elites, and that Trump is being honest in a sense by exposing the corruption, but that his own obvious corruption is just a requirement to succeed in the way the game is played. And of course Trump makes great use of this. The more he can get people to believe that the other side are liars and crooks, the more they'll tolerate his corruption and lies.

righthand 2y ago
Oh it’s definitely a one way street. I realized all the talk coming out of the Trump camp isn’t really about the other side but about themselves. A common repeated phrase is “the other side doesn’t listen to me” which really means “I don’t listen to the other side”.

some_random 2y ago

"Politicians" and "Journalists" aren't specific enough to discuss this problem, people haven't been suddenly believing politicians in general they've latched onto specific politicians in specific political parties and believe them. Similarly, you can have people who say they think journalists are all liars but believe specific journalists or specific news outlets. It's like how congresspeople are re-elected pretty consistently despite the national approval of congress as a whole being in the dirt, people like what _their_ guy is up to but not what everyone else is doing.