4 ms·

The "fourth estate" is traditionally the press. Unfortunately most of the press does a shit job in keeping the various elites accountable. Imagine if reporters

The "fourth estate" is traditionally the press. Unfortunately most of the press does a shit job in keeping the various elites accountable. Imagine if reporters could ask the kinds of questions we want them to ask: "Mr. President, should James Clapper be prosecuted for lying to congress, which is a felony?", "Mr. President, did you authorize waterboarding at Guantanamo Bay?", "Did the USA incite a coup in the Ukraine?" Unfortunately nowadays if someone asks questions like these, their access to these people will be promptly removed, and they're likely to get fired from their news outlet for pissing off news sources.

aspensmonster 13y ago
Well, the fourth estate is owned by the elites.
- Crito 13y ago
  Not all of it, but certainly the bits that are permitted to have access to people like the president are; and those are the parts that really count.
mixmax 13y ago
While I agree with your sentiment the real world isn't so simple. The primary qualification of a good reporter is access. Access to sources, access to documents, access to hints from people in power and access to confront and interview people in power. For a reporter there's a fine line between gaining and keeping access and using it to do reporting. Access relies on trust, reporting often relies on breaking it. Since people in power have the ability to cut you out of the loop you need to be very careful about what you write else you'll find that your calls aren't being returned, you aren't being invited to press conferences and can't get interviews. Which makes you useless as a reporter. Source: A lot of my friends work in media, and quite a few of them have relations to the political game, have interviewed heads of state, etc. Most of them are truly troubled by this state of affairs, but what can they do?
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  Has there ever been a time when seeking news was the most important priority?
  - mixmax 13y ago
    [edit] - sillysaurus edited his comment slightly - I hope this rely still makes sense... I think your'e giving good reporters too little credit (note the good, which is unfortunately a minority). My experience is that these people are aggressive in their search for truth and the uncovering of corruption. Their problem is that to do their job they often need inside knowledge, secret sources and the ability to confront the potential perpetrators. So they need friends in the very places they are trying to dig up dirt. It's a very fine line. To some degree I think media has always been like this, but it's gotten worse over the last 10 years. I see 2 obvious reasons for this: 1) The political game has moved, and there is much more emphasis on controlling the agenda than there was before. In the modern media world there is no way you'll get access to a high-standing official before having been vetted by media consultants, spindoctors and aides of all sorts. An impenetrable layer of spin between the reporter and the official has sprung up, and without some cooperation on the reporters side he won't get the interview/tip/story. This is a huge problem for truth and democracy. It also shows itself in how the news is being reported, since this layer of spin consumes so much attention. Note how the news is less and less about the story and more and more about the process. It's not "Why did Putin invade Crimea", but "Is Obama weak because Putin invaded Crimea". The layer of spin uses their power to throw dirt at the other side of the aisle. 2) Traditional media is in decline. This has some fairly serious consequences for the news landscape. Less and less time (money...) is allocated to producing more and more stories, and as an obvious result the quality suffers. Ironically this also means that often reporters know they are being fed a story by the spin machine, but they don't have the time to disassenble it or be critical of it if they are to meet their daily qouta of X articles. The editors also require more and more sensational stories, based on less and less research to keep readership and clickrates high. The recent story in Newsweek where they claim to have found the founder of Bitcoin is a good example. Note that I'm from Europe, and the dynamics here are a bit different - namely that we often have public radio and TV (like PBS) that don't have a political agenda or affiliation, and that we often don't have the media conglomerates that you do in the UIS that try to push a political agenda. This is a very serious problem b.t.w.

aspensmonster 13y ago

Well, the fourth estate is owned by the elites.

Crito 13y ago
Not all of it, but certainly the bits that are permitted to have access to people like the president are; and those are the parts that really count.

mixmax 13y ago

While I agree with your sentiment the real world isn't so simple. The primary qualification of a good reporter is access. Access to sources, access to documents, access to hints from people in power and access to confront and interview people in power. For a reporter there's a fine line between gaining and keeping access and using it to do reporting. Access relies on trust, reporting often relies on breaking it. Since people in power have the ability to cut you out of the loop you need to be very careful about what you write else you'll find that your calls aren't being returned, you aren't being invited to press conferences and can't get interviews. Which makes you useless as a reporter. Source: A lot of my friends work in media, and quite a few of them have relations to the political game, have interviewed heads of state, etc. Most of them are truly troubled by this state of affairs, but what can they do?

sillysaurus3 13y ago
Has there ever been a time when seeking news was the most important priority?
- mixmax 13y ago
  [edit] - sillysaurus edited his comment slightly - I hope this rely still makes sense... I think your'e giving good reporters too little credit (note the good, which is unfortunately a minority). My experience is that these people are aggressive in their search for truth and the uncovering of corruption. Their problem is that to do their job they often need inside knowledge, secret sources and the ability to confront the potential perpetrators. So they need friends in the very places they are trying to dig up dirt. It's a very fine line. To some degree I think media has always been like this, but it's gotten worse over the last 10 years. I see 2 obvious reasons for this: 1) The political game has moved, and there is much more emphasis on controlling the agenda than there was before. In the modern media world there is no way you'll get access to a high-standing official before having been vetted by media consultants, spindoctors and aides of all sorts. An impenetrable layer of spin between the reporter and the official has sprung up, and without some cooperation on the reporters side he won't get the interview/tip/story. This is a huge problem for truth and democracy. It also shows itself in how the news is being reported, since this layer of spin consumes so much attention. Note how the news is less and less about the story and more and more about the process. It's not "Why did Putin invade Crimea", but "Is Obama weak because Putin invaded Crimea". The layer of spin uses their power to throw dirt at the other side of the aisle. 2) Traditional media is in decline. This has some fairly serious consequences for the news landscape. Less and less time (money...) is allocated to producing more and more stories, and as an obvious result the quality suffers. Ironically this also means that often reporters know they are being fed a story by the spin machine, but they don't have the time to disassenble it or be critical of it if they are to meet their daily qouta of X articles. The editors also require more and more sensational stories, based on less and less research to keep readership and clickrates high. The recent story in Newsweek where they claim to have found the founder of Bitcoin is a good example. Note that I'm from Europe, and the dynamics here are a bit different - namely that we often have public radio and TV (like PBS) that don't have a political agenda or affiliation, and that we often don't have the media conglomerates that you do in the UIS that try to push a political agenda. This is a very serious problem b.t.w.