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Journalistic institutions have been requiring so much fact-checking, cross referencing and research lately it's a full time job to get informed. Whenever I rea

Journalistic institutions have been requiring so much fact-checking, cross referencing and research lately it's a full time job to get informed. Whenever I read or hear anything from the medias now, I'm now always asking myself "what are their political inclinations? who is owning them ? what do they want me to believe? how much of a blind spot do they got ? how lazy or ignorant they are in that context ? etc." They killed the trust I had in them so many times I can't get any the benefit of the doubt anymore. It's exhausting.

beepbooptheory 2y ago
What I was taught is this is just the labor of being critical, or just "having a critical mind about things." I can maybe see how it is exhausting, but I am not sure I understand the implication that it could be better or different. If it is particularly exhausting to you, it is perfectly fine to suspend your judgement about certain things!
- BiteCode_dev 2y ago
  If running a marathon is not exhausting to you, I don't think expecting the rest of the world to feel fresh after it is the right way to see the world. Except given the noise/signal ratio and the sheer mass of information we have today, the workload is much higher than training for a 42 km run.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  It could be better and different - trust. Being critical is not the same thing as not trusting anyone at all. Media has by and large become not worthy of trusting at all. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The economics of just giving the news with little bias just aren't there anymore.
tonyedgecombe 2y ago
That's not new, it's always been the case.
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  Newspapers and other media have always had a political slant. But the more respected media have maintained rough factual accuracy because it enhances their impact and so their political slant. What's happened is that the income of media outlets has declined to the point that most can't get factual accuracy even if they want it.
  - LeroyRaz 2y ago
    Your claim that media outlets are no longer factual because they can't afford paying to be factual seems specious. They often make egregious errors that take a 5 minute Google to correct. Instead of facts being unaffordable, it seems that lies and bias simply pay more (or at least the media outlets seem to think so).
  - ranger207 2y ago
    I'm not sure that's true. I think that media has always had some inevitable inaccuracy, but it's only been in the past 20-30 years that people have had enough information to see that inaccuracy. Back when there were a dozen newspapers on the newsstand and 3 TV channels, there simply wasn't anywhere to see any information outside the mainstream media. This wasn't necessarily malicious or intentional; it was simply a reflection of culture and the type of people who worked in newsrooms. With the invention of the Internet anyone could easily find alternative sources of information. Sometimes those sources were more accurate than the mainstream, sometimes less. Nowadays there isn't a "mainstream" of media because there's so many sources, and the group labelled as "the mainstream media" is simply a group with similar biases. Or to put it another way, the media's accuracy rate has stayed consistent at some value less than 100%, but if all three TV channels reported the same information then it looked like they had 100% accuracy. Once there were more sources of information then it became apparent that the media's accuracy was less than 100% despite their protests to the contrary. The result is that the media landscape is fractured. A person can live in a bubble where all of their news sources (eg NYT, WaPo, and Bluesky for one bubble; Fox, Newsmax, and Truth Social for another bubble) all report the same information, making their accuracy appear to be 100%, while any single source of information outside the bubble that disagrees with the bubble is disagreeing with a bunch of apparently 100% accurate sources and so can safely be discarded. The solution is to realize that no source is 100% accurate or unbiased even despite genuine efforts to be. That isn't to say that some sources aren't more accurate or unbiased than others, but you should apply some base level of skepticism to any and every source
deleted 2y ago
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beepbooptheory 2y ago

What I was taught is this is just the labor of being critical, or just "having a critical mind about things." I can maybe see how it is exhausting, but I am not sure I understand the implication that it could be better or different. If it is particularly exhausting to you, it is perfectly fine to suspend your judgement about certain things!

BiteCode_dev 2y ago
If running a marathon is not exhausting to you, I don't think expecting the rest of the world to feel fresh after it is the right way to see the world. Except given the noise/signal ratio and the sheer mass of information we have today, the workload is much higher than training for a 42 km run.
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
It could be better and different - trust. Being critical is not the same thing as not trusting anyone at all. Media has by and large become not worthy of trusting at all. There are exceptions, but they are few and far between. The economics of just giving the news with little bias just aren't there anymore.

tonyedgecombe 2y ago

That's not new, it's always been the case.

joe_the_user 2y ago
Newspapers and other media have always had a political slant. But the more respected media have maintained rough factual accuracy because it enhances their impact and so their political slant. What's happened is that the income of media outlets has declined to the point that most can't get factual accuracy even if they want it.
- LeroyRaz 2y ago
  Your claim that media outlets are no longer factual because they can't afford paying to be factual seems specious. They often make egregious errors that take a 5 minute Google to correct. Instead of facts being unaffordable, it seems that lies and bias simply pay more (or at least the media outlets seem to think so).
- ranger207 2y ago
  I'm not sure that's true. I think that media has always had some inevitable inaccuracy, but it's only been in the past 20-30 years that people have had enough information to see that inaccuracy. Back when there were a dozen newspapers on the newsstand and 3 TV channels, there simply wasn't anywhere to see any information outside the mainstream media. This wasn't necessarily malicious or intentional; it was simply a reflection of culture and the type of people who worked in newsrooms. With the invention of the Internet anyone could easily find alternative sources of information. Sometimes those sources were more accurate than the mainstream, sometimes less. Nowadays there isn't a "mainstream" of media because there's so many sources, and the group labelled as "the mainstream media" is simply a group with similar biases. Or to put it another way, the media's accuracy rate has stayed consistent at some value less than 100%, but if all three TV channels reported the same information then it looked like they had 100% accuracy. Once there were more sources of information then it became apparent that the media's accuracy was less than 100% despite their protests to the contrary. The result is that the media landscape is fractured. A person can live in a bubble where all of their news sources (eg NYT, WaPo, and Bluesky for one bubble; Fox, Newsmax, and Truth Social for another bubble) all report the same information, making their accuracy appear to be 100%, while any single source of information outside the bubble that disagrees with the bubble is disagreeing with a bunch of apparently 100% accurate sources and so can safely be discarded. The solution is to realize that no source is 100% accurate or unbiased even despite genuine efforts to be. That isn't to say that some sources aren't more accurate or unbiased than others, but you should apply some base level of skepticism to any and every source

deleted 2y ago

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