Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.

  • Minotaur@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    218
    ·
    8 months ago

    It’s actually crazy how low the percentage of people under like… forty is now that actually gets their news direct from a news site. Seriously, i don’t know a single person from like 20-35 who actually just goes on the NPR or C-SPAN app or whatever.

    It kind of sucks. So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now. And I just feel like there’s something bad about being able to see a comment section on Twitter or Reddit or even Lemmy now on every news event. Makes for a lot more group think rather than just reading the news and going “huh”

    • Shake747@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      91
      ·
      8 months ago

      Sometimes there’s good discussion though, and it’s good to hear different takes.

      Having comments also gives less power to the writer, like could you imagine if we all took Fox News or CNN headlines at face value and didn’t discuss them?

      • remotedev@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        43
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yea, you can’t just read the news and go huh. anymore, because the news is no longer “this is what happened.” Now it’s “OMG YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS YOU’RE GONNA HATE THAT this happened AND EVERYONE IS PISSED”

        • Minotaur@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          23
          ·
          8 months ago

          Actually it’s really not at all. You’re probably just thinking about Reddit/lemmy/twitter posts when you write that.

          Go on like NPR or C Span and actually read the news. It’s fine.

          • catloaf@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            28
            ·
            8 months ago

            The number of those news outlets is shrinking, though. It used to be that every city had a local paper with real news. Now they’re all part of a media conglomerate and do the bare minimum of actual journalism.

            • mojofrododojo@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              8 months ago

              support NPR and it’s journalism across the US. Support your local station. And support local papers (not ganett rags and conglomerates).

      • Minotaur@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        8 months ago

        You can literally just read news from less overtly biased news sources. There are scant few articles that I can think of where I really need a redditors interpretation of it

        • Shake747@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          8 months ago

          It’s not so much what their interpretation is of the specific article is, it’s more that you might find more information from someone who has info that was left out, or maybe another source that has conflicting information.

          Could you show us a few not so biased news sources? I suppose this will also vary wildly by topic. A news outlet might be narrative/propaganda driven on one topic, but not about another.

          It’s so much mess (through corporate ties or money) to sort through, it’s hard to trust any of them anymore

          • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            Check out the articles posted on !ImproveTheNews@fedinews.net . Every article is a summary of facts, followed by an explanation of the narrative being pushed by each side of the story.

            In a recent article about Sam Bankman-Fried being sentenced to 25 years for example, there is a “Pro-establishment narrative” and an “Establishment-critical narrative” given. In an article about the FCC and TikTok there’s a Pro-China and Anti-China narrative given. When necessary there will be more than two narratives given.

            As a bonus there’s usually a “Nerd Narrative” with a percent chance of occurrence of something related to the story. I don’t know what Metaculus is or who comprises their “prediction community”, but saying shit like this is a bit ridiculous:

            There’s a 50% chance that after a (weak) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is created, it will take at least 28.7 months for the first superintelligent AI to be created, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

            Thanks, that’s really helpful there lol. Sometimes they can be genuinely informative, but it’s the only thing I view with any real skepticism in any particular article.

          • FutileRecipe@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            8 months ago

            Could you show us a few not so biased news sources? I suppose this will also vary wildly by topic. A news outlet might be narrative/propaganda driven on one topic, but not about another.

            Have you heard of Ground News? It’s basically a news aggregator that shows multiple stories on the same event, but with a bias rating and a factuality score, as well as a ownership category. Also, a blindspot category which shows articles being shown predominantly by one side and not the other.

            The Ground News bias ratings are calculated using three independent news monitoring organizations: All SidesAd Fontes Media, and Media Bias Fact Check. This score does not measure the bias of specific news articles. It is an assessment of the political bias of the publication. The rating takes into consideration things like the wording, story choices and political affiliation of the outlet.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      46
      ·
      8 months ago

      So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now.

      Mexico’s new president: 3-year-old Alfredo Pequeño Lobo becomes nation’s youngest elected and first canine leader. But can he be rough on the cartels?

    • space@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      I’m guilty of doing this (just reading the headlines) as well. I usually do it for these reasons:

      • I don’t care enough to want to read more. For example, news about US politics. I don’t live in the US. I feel that reading the headlines is enough to keep me informed about what’s happening, but I really don’t care any more than that.

      • The details aren’t valuable to me. For example, the Apple anti-trust lawsuit… Is it important? Yes. I’m already well aware of the horrible anticonsumer practices of Apple. But do I need to know all the particular details about the lawsuit? Not really. In fact, the only thing that matters is the final verdict, which hasn’t happened yet.

      • I care, but I already know enough details.

      • I don’t feel like the article would bring a lot of value, especially if the title is click-baity. I’ve encountered too many articles that are void of content, just the title repeated in 10x more words.

      I don’t like visiting news sites because, in addition to all of them being obnoxious and ad riddled, I feel like I’m wasting a lot of time reading long articles that could be rewritten as 3 bullet points. On platforms like lemmy, users will highlight the important bits in the comments which saves a lot of time.

      • VeganCheesecake
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        8 months ago

        Great for seeing a headline and then finding an article yourself. Less great for finding articles. Half of you people here have a penchant for linking super weird news sources.

      • T156@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        8 months ago

        Even Lemmy does that, though. You’re still influenced by the headline, the community/moderation and the users.

        Assuming that everyone clicks through to the article, and doesn’t comment before reading the headline, anyhow.

        • stoly@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          And at the news organization, you are influenced by the editors and framing by authors.

    • BoscoBear@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      12
      ·
      8 months ago

      You can find out the event from the news, but then get the facts from industry experts. It’s much better these days.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      8 months ago

      I think the bigger issue is how bad news sites have gotten. I’m sure part of the reason for that is people getting news online from alternative sources, but mainstream sources are significantly worse than they once were which just pushes things further in that direction.

      That said, I don’t know which caused more group-think. Was it having a few mainstream sources and that’s it or having many worse quality but more diverse sources? People relate to the new version more probably, which encourages them to follow along and not think for themselves, but I don’t know if that’s better or worse than not really having any dissenting opinion available at all.

      • Jourei@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 months ago

        Yeah, bad news sites is the reason I didn’t follow any news for years, I got burnt out verifying just about every article. Most bended the story one way or another, headlines usually not quite what the article read…

    • LifeOfChance@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      8 months ago

      Honestly I think a big part of people looking at headlines and pictures is closely related to people’s attention span. Why read many words when less is better. Those same people can’t hold conversations for more than a minute or two on the subject then it spirals into speculations which is where the misinformation starts to take place. Society is bombarded with so much information hour by hour people don’t want to miss anything so they skim through an immense amount of partial information. It’s wild and I’m guilty of it myself so I’m in no place to speak ill of anyone.

        • Veraxus@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          8 months ago

          Try explaining that to a rightist, though. It’s not right-wing propaganda, therefore it is left-wing propaganda. 😔

        • lud@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          Reuters is also good and less USA Centric (at least for their notifications) which is a good thing for me because I am not from the USA, but AP is excellent too). I don’t think you can even disable USA news in your “interests” with AP.

          Both Reuters and AP are news agencies that sell news (and stuff like photos) to other news companies. So it’s very likely that everyone here has read at least some content from them.

          Both are also often regarded as among the most reliable and least biased news sources available. AFP is also in that group.

    • Wahots@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      8 months ago

      I get my news from a paper and it is a decent blend of good and bad news. Quality journalism. I gift articles often just to kinda fight back against the whole title-and-picture-only news.

    • Branch_Ranch@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      8 months ago

      A few months back, i subscribed to the news aggregator Ground News. Although there are more expensive options, i pay about $6/year and I love it. You get news stories from lots of different sites and gives you a good idea of biases. I highly recommend it!

    • realitista@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      8 months ago

      For me it’s RSS, Lemmy, and suprisingly YouTube as I can get the major news sources( eg BBC, CNN, FT, DT, MSNBC) chunked up into specific topics so I don’t have to sit through a bunch of garbage to get to the topics I care about. And I get it from more sources.

        • (des)mosthenes@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          8 months ago

          yea definitel! - working on a site for that with docs etc, prolly a week or two - currently rebuilding the user settings / models - just a preview till then ^^

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      8 months ago

      Watching CSPAN is weird now. It used to be more boring but some the more recent ones have felt I was watching a behind the scenes show where each person was saying things so perfectly crafted for sound bites they seem incongruent with what someone else would say.

    • ashar@infosec.pub
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      8 months ago

      I used to use news sites (BBC, Guardian mainly), but the coverage is seriously limited and quite biased.

    • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      I highly prefer getting my news from independent journalists/investigators. You think everyone reading the same news sites is going to be better for groupthink?!

      • Minotaur@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 months ago

        None of your independent journalists / investigators are independent.

          • Minotaur@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            8 months ago

            You’re going to have to tell me what oligarchs own NPR, C-span, and the associated press

                • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.works
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  8 months ago

                  Wow you get backed into a corner and resort to middle school name calling. Like, maybe you need to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you need to put on your big boy pants and accept that your original premise is incoherent