Long but good.

  • thoro@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    If that’s the summary, then the video is overly simplistic and doesn’t understand the actual concept of media bias. The news was biased then too, especially foreign coverage, and it was biased before then. I mean, this goes all the way back to the USS Maine at the very least.

    Anyone who wants to talk about media bias and hasn’t read Manufacturing Consent or other similar work needs to be banned from the topic. Learn about the propaganda model. Maybe also read about the Committee on Public Information and Edward Bernays while you’re at it.

    I can’t take anyone seriously who really thinks the overall news landscape was less biased when there were only a handful of networks determining news on TV and less alternatives in the print media as well.

    Edit: Longer, but better

    • xor
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      4 months ago

      Name a more iconic combo than lemmy.ml and criticising something they haven’t even read (watched in this case)

      • thoro@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        Yeah, some people work. Have you read Manufacturing Consent?

        Either way, the summary is pretty accurate after watching. He devoted 30 seconds to recognizing that anti communism was a major pillar of the news media back then, at least. But that is a major reflection of exactly how they weren’t “unbiased” and basically shows how the regulations and fairness doctrine did very little to expose Americans to ideas outside those accepted by the elites who owned and ran NBC, CBS, ABC, and NYT/WaPo. So to claim that it’s mostly true that they were “unbiased” back then is still a bit ridiculous after such an acknowledgement. “They were mostly unbiased unless you count mainstream, elite American opinion of the 50s/60s as a type of bias”…

        Again, no look at the structure of the news media and how they treated the US government’s and major corporations’ words as a major form of sourcing, the importance and influence of advertising, etc.

        He has a handful of chosen examples. Manufacturing Consent has case studies documenting coverage of specific events from these media sources.

        The populace wasn’t more educated when everyone got their news from the same 5 sources (and a more educated populace is what we should want from our news media.)

        They just all mostly agreed and said the same things. There was still bias, it just wasn’t as partisan and people were less likely to disagree because there wasn’t anyone saying otherwise. The faux neutrality was a facade.

        • xor
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          4 months ago

          Not yet, it’s on my list, but my local library doesn’t have a lot of Chomsky