5 ms·

> Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones. You just throw this out there as a statement of fact without backing it up

> Regulated media doesn't produce perfect outcomes, but it does produce better ones. You just throw this out there as a statement of fact without backing it up beyond citing one hypothetical failure mode of a free market for media. Here's a dueling hypothetical: what happens if the state that is in charge of regulating the media gets taken over by someone who doesn't believe that media should hold elected officials accountable and they prevent the media from covering their actions negatively? Now that we've evened out the "what happens if"s: On what basis do you say that regulated media produces better outcomes? Because you say so? Is there evidence in favor that you can cite?

freejazz 2y ago
All the other circumstances. Your hypothetical is the exception proving the rule.
- lolinder 2y ago
  And again I ask: why is my hypothetical the exception proving the rule while their hypothetical is sufficient to prove that they're right? Make an argument in favor of regulated media producing better outcomes or don't, but all I've seen here so far is you and OP asserting a dogma.
  - freejazz 2y ago
    You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. I'm speaking colloquially here, if you want a robust argument, you're not going to find it from me right now. This is just a conversation, not a dissertation. If you don't want to engage in it, that's fine. But let's not overdramatize what is happening here right now, which is a basic conversation about intuitions and principles. You attacked the other poster's claim with a hypothetical. I rebutted yours the same way. Begging for "proof" is beyond the scope of this conversation.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - lolinder 2y ago
      > You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. Correct. I provided a dueling hypothetical precisely to illustrate that they had not provided an actual argument. I didn't intend to argue the other way—I honestly haven't formed an opinion on the topic—I just intended to point out that confidently asserting dogma isn't useful or meaningful. What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match.
      - freejazz 2y ago
        >What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match. Well, you were the one who came to the conversation and basically did the 'shouting down' thing rather than substantively engage in anything. All you did was express your disbelief in the lowest form possible, so I'm not sure what you're really complaining about besides your own contributions here. Be the change you want to see!
redeux 2y ago
Not OP but, the political polarization, governmental dysfunction, and eventually the rise of an extremist right wing government can be at least partially attributed to the deregulation of media - specifically the repeal of the fairness doctrine which requires that public broadcasters air both sides on controversial topics of public importance. This was done in the vain of deregulation, but if we want a “free market” for media, why not deregulate the air waves? May the most powerful transmitter win … https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/ https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/
- lolinder 2y ago
  Thanks for providing an actual argument! That said, correlation does not imply causation, and I'm unconvinced that the polarization we're seeing now traces back that far. Pew's research [0] shows that in '94 only 21% (Rep) and 17% (Dem) of each party held a "very unfavorable" opinion of the other party. That number had barely shifted by '02, with both parties still well under 25%, but then steadily started growing from '02 on. The timing of that is more suggestive of the internet being a cause (if we're going to try to pin it down to one media-oriented cause, which is probably a bad exercise to begin with) than it does of the fairness doctrine, which was repealed back in '87. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
    Yeah, it's clearly the formation of the Tea Party that was the trigger for severe change. But the mechanism through which the Tea Party ideology was disseminated was.. Fox News and conservative radio, which could not have existed in the same state before the Reagan era.
femiagbabiaka 2y ago
Pretty simple: the quality of news media in the U.S. was better prior to the Reagan admin which deregulated it. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-... Since the Fairness Doctrine was struck down, we've had nothing but bad media outcomes. If you want to know more, Noam Chomsky wrote the book on this, called Manufacturing Consent.
- fallingknife 2y ago
  I disagree. The quality of news media is massively better today. I have access to much more and higher quality information than I would have in the 80s. E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I have access to peer reviewed research just with the click of a button. I can discuss the news with other people right here on HN. A highly regulated media oligopoly with massive barriers to entry is a terrible system compared to what we have today.
  - femiagbabiaka 2y ago
    > E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I agree that this was interesting to do, but Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media. Some people with high levels of media literacy can distill the information gained through such channels to understand the world, but a lot of people cannot. Most people still use legacy media (even if it is through digital channels) as primary sources. And those legacy media sources are worse than ever. On top of that the digital channels are massively astroturfed, especially those whose consumer base are in the west. For example, the state of the war as described by Western-targetted media vs. Ukrainian-targetted sources differs greatly. Same applies for the Hamas-Israel conflict. We need high quality and impartial (for some definition of impartial) sources to complement the raw feed for people with lower media literacy. Substack is great but not enough when Fox News and MSNBC exist.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      > Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media... Says who? Back in the day people made a big deal about how Wikipedia was a low quality source of information until it turned out to be by far the best public repository of information humanity has ever seen and one of the best institutions ever built for neutral and informative coverage of various issues. Reddit is a fantastic resource too. It sometimes gets long-form discussion involving domain experts and is much better at representing multiple viewpoints than any pre-internet media channel (which, given the bias of the major subreddits, is pretty amazing).

freejazz 2y ago

All the other circumstances. Your hypothetical is the exception proving the rule.

lolinder 2y ago
And again I ask: why is my hypothetical the exception proving the rule while their hypothetical is sufficient to prove that they're right? Make an argument in favor of regulated media producing better outcomes or don't, but all I've seen here so far is you and OP asserting a dogma.
- freejazz 2y ago
  You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. I'm speaking colloquially here, if you want a robust argument, you're not going to find it from me right now. This is just a conversation, not a dissertation. If you don't want to engage in it, that's fine. But let's not overdramatize what is happening here right now, which is a basic conversation about intuitions and principles. You attacked the other poster's claim with a hypothetical. I rebutted yours the same way. Begging for "proof" is beyond the scope of this conversation.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lolinder 2y ago
    > You haven't argued anything more substantive the other way. Correct. I provided a dueling hypothetical precisely to illustrate that they had not provided an actual argument. I didn't intend to argue the other way—I honestly haven't formed an opinion on the topic—I just intended to point out that confidently asserting dogma isn't useful or meaningful. What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match.
    - freejazz 2y ago
      >What you call intuitions and principles I call dogmatic beliefs, and dogma is uninteresting to discuss in a mixed-dogma forum like this: it just devolves into a shouting match. Well, you were the one who came to the conversation and basically did the 'shouting down' thing rather than substantively engage in anything. All you did was express your disbelief in the lowest form possible, so I'm not sure what you're really complaining about besides your own contributions here. Be the change you want to see!

redeux 2y ago

Not OP but, the political polarization, governmental dysfunction, and eventually the rise of an extremist right wing government can be at least partially attributed to the deregulation of media - specifically the repeal of the fairness doctrine which requires that public broadcasters air both sides on controversial topics of public importance. This was done in the vain of deregulation, but if we want a “free market” for media, why not deregulate the air waves? May the most powerful transmitter win … https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/ https://fair.org/extra/the-fairness-doctrine/

lolinder 2y ago
Thanks for providing an actual argument! That said, correlation does not imply causation, and I'm unconvinced that the polarization we're seeing now traces back that far. Pew's research [0] shows that in '94 only 21% (Rep) and 17% (Dem) of each party held a "very unfavorable" opinion of the other party. That number had barely shifted by '02, with both parties still well under 25%, but then steadily started growing from '02 on. The timing of that is more suggestive of the internet being a cause (if we're going to try to pin it down to one media-oriented cause, which is probably a bad exercise to begin with) than it does of the fairness doctrine, which was repealed back in '87. [0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-hostility-grows-signs-of-frustration-with-the-two-party-system/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/08/09/as-partisan-...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- femiagbabiaka 2y ago
  Yeah, it's clearly the formation of the Tea Party that was the trigger for severe change. But the mechanism through which the Tea Party ideology was disseminated was.. Fox News and conservative radio, which could not have existed in the same state before the Reagan era.

femiagbabiaka 2y ago

Pretty simple: the quality of news media in the U.S. was better prior to the Reagan admin which deregulated it. https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-doctrine https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/fairness-... Since the Fairness Doctrine was struck down, we've had nothing but bad media outcomes. If you want to know more, Noam Chomsky wrote the book on this, called Manufacturing Consent.

fallingknife 2y ago
I disagree. The quality of news media is massively better today. I have access to much more and higher quality information than I would have in the 80s. E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I have access to peer reviewed research just with the click of a button. I can discuss the news with other people right here on HN. A highly regulated media oligopoly with massive barriers to entry is a terrible system compared to what we have today.
- femiagbabiaka 2y ago
  > E.g. I was able to watch live combat footage of the war in Ukraine right as it happened. I agree that this was interesting to do, but Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media. Some people with high levels of media literacy can distill the information gained through such channels to understand the world, but a lot of people cannot. Most people still use legacy media (even if it is through digital channels) as primary sources. And those legacy media sources are worse than ever. On top of that the digital channels are massively astroturfed, especially those whose consumer base are in the west. For example, the state of the war as described by Western-targetted media vs. Ukrainian-targetted sources differs greatly. Same applies for the Hamas-Israel conflict. We need high quality and impartial (for some definition of impartial) sources to complement the raw feed for people with lower media literacy. Substack is great but not enough when Fox News and MSNBC exist.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > Telegram and Reddit are not high quality media... Says who? Back in the day people made a big deal about how Wikipedia was a low quality source of information until it turned out to be by far the best public repository of information humanity has ever seen and one of the best institutions ever built for neutral and informative coverage of various issues. Reddit is a fantastic resource too. It sometimes gets long-form discussion involving domain experts and is much better at representing multiple viewpoints than any pre-internet media channel (which, given the bias of the major subreddits, is pretty amazing).