Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election, but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst-covered election in U.S. history, it might also be the last.
Incredibly captivating article, but when you reach this final paragraph, you know with absolute and agonizing certainty that none of this will come to fruition. The mainstream media isn’t going to fix itself and this election will be covered, same as all the rest, as a horserace.
The mainstream media are corporations first and press/media second. They will only do the things that make them more money and 99.9% of the time that’s in direct opposition of what is good for any given situation.
I 110% do not expect the behavior to change. It’s money we’re discussing and shitty gossip trash talking/ political sports casting is what makes media money so it’s what they’ll keep doing. :(
deleted by creator
The issue is there is a belief that the problems we are facing are because we can’t accept each other’s opinions and we all need to buckle down and compromise with one another.
Which is deliciously naive in a world where Nazism has gone from “So universally reviled that they are a punchline at best” to “Just an opinion from a guy asking questions.”
Do not serve Bar Nazis
The problem of the “Punch a Nazi” line of thought is not particularly that Nazis are subject to violence : most people (centrists included) couldn’t care less about what happens to them specifically.
No, the real issue here is that people don’t trust the perception of others. You don’t attack a fascist, you attack someone who you think is a fascist. And polarization of the political discourse mean that you can be easily accused of crypto-fascism for pretty much anything (see Hexbear for example). And some people will take it at face value, and hence feel justified to attack you.
That’s… actually a good point. I consider myself being pretty against Cancel Culture despite being pretty far to the left.
Too often people get canceled based on gossip or false rumors, like somehow “He’s 30, she’s 24” gets morphed into “Dude’s a full blown pedo” or… “This forum post from 9001 years ago uses a form of slang that is offensive now, but was acceptable at the time, clearly he’s a white supremacist” becomes “This guy eats babies in the glorious name of Satan, and by Satan I mean Trump!”
It’s just something I hope the internet grows beyond. Society and general.
I think there is a large amount of this that’s the result of social media. When I was a kid, there were still flat-earthers and other people who believe extremely stupid things. The thing was, however, that if you said that out loud, all of the people around you would with varying degrees of politeness tell you you’re a fucking idiot and you’d usually change your mind quickly. In today’s environment, not only can you go online and not get called a fucking idiot for your dumb opinions, you can find all of the other fucking idiots and form a
circle-jerkFacebook group for bad opinions and feel validated in believing them. Oh, and even if you don’t go looking for your own little community of morons, Facebook and the rest will happily help surface those morons for you.The reality of social media is that not only do they serve bar nazis, they might as well be tinder for bar nazis.
Hell you tell someone “Bro you’re a dumbass” these days
You’re the one getting the door for being “toxic”
If you try and engage many of those types they won’t accept reason and logic either, it’s a no win situation. Of course you’re still the toxic one for not wanting to do that dance again.
This is kind of the same reason, I think. They get enough validation on the internet and unfortunately this leads to more validation IRL as well. Humans and critical thinking already rarely go together, and social media only seems to have exasperated that.
deleted by creator
Such a simple statement that explains so much.
Bring back fairness doctrine and break up large media
Fairness Doctrine only applied to broadcast media, so it would need to be be expanded to include Cable/Satellite TV as well as somehow the Internet/streaming.
Well considering that the biggest news channels on youtube are legacy media channel even just the broadcast version would help, but yes it would need to be expanded
They’re only big on YouTube because YouTube pushes “authoritative” sources, even if you avoid them for your news. Remember when status coup’s footage of Jan 6th was taken down but CNN, which was replaying status coup’s footage of Jan 6th, was left up without issue?
who?
but why they are big doesn’t change that they are big.
I wouldn’t say the fairness doctrine is a good idea, but oh damn do we need to break up the media. Sinclair is a threat to our democracy.
I agree with half your comment, because Sinclair is a threat to democracy. But the change in our political culture began with right wing talk radio after the end of the fairness doctrine.
Of course there were other factors, like neoliberal attacks on our living standards. But perhaps there could have been another narrative to explain those neoliberal attacks in a more diverse media environment.
It is, and will always be- capitalism. When everything is for profit, lies become commodities. This system can work, until there is a crisis that markets can’t absorb. Climate change cannot be commodified because it affects consumers. Fascism is capital’s answer to the crisis. It can’t be voted away. We must demand for a planned economy to transform into a sustainable society. It’s our only hope. This is where we need to be.
I read an article not too long ago about a guy who started a worker owned restaurant. Everyone got a really good salary and any profits would be split evenly between all the workers. The article reveals that the business hasn’t actually turned a profit but it didn’t matter to the employees because the business made enough to cover it’s expenses and all the workers were paid really well (IIRC they were making something like $30 an hour).
The concept really blew my mind: a business didn’t need to be profitable to be successful.
Capitalism really does seem to be the problem.
Now imagine every business was ran this way. No overproduction. No expanding markets. Only producing what is needed. But there’s the rub. Who decides what is needed? Our whole cultural paradigm must change for this to be possible, and we don’t have generations to work out the kinks. It truly is the tragedy of the commons.
Hate to break it to you, but sometimes the opposite of a bad thing is another bad thing. Not even China rocks a planned economy anymore. They have these things like money and markets instead now.
deleted by creator
Lol at the idea that China is the opposite of capitalism… 😂🤦♀️
I think that’s his point: the China that existed as a planned economy collapsed decades ago and got replaced with their current quasi-capitalist system because the planned economy model was even worse than free market capitalism.
Planned economies didn’t work in the past with capitalist economies next door. Why have less, when your neighbor has more. Planned economies can work if its implemented worldwide. I’m only extrapolating the answer. Whether this happens sooner rather than later is the conundrum. Either we transition to a planned economy now and save lives and have a modicum of dignity. Or we ride this capitalist beast until billions are dead and we’re fighting over resources. The choice is clear.
Then China will collapse too. You have to get out of binary thinking. Us versus them. Any society based on growth will fail. Produce resources for survivability. That is all. Our way of doing things is gone. It can’t continue. Adapt or die.
While you’re getting out of binary thinking, consider that perhaps fully capitalist and fully planned economies are both bad, and a compromise between the two, attempting to harness the best features of each, is necessary.
Just like over-eating and under-eating are both bad. A healthy balance is better.
Where did he talk about China?
To me this is an interesting bit:
but brutal fascism or flawed democracy.
The US under Trump wasn’t North Korean style fascism, although it may have been headed in that direction. It was maybe fascism with strong overtones of democracy. People still got to vote, and their vote mattered, it’s just that Dear Leader had his thumb on the scale. Congress members and senators still showed up to work, and the decisions they took still mattered, even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms. The judicial system still kept churning and mostly following the laws and precedents, even if Trump appointed a lot of unqualified partisan judges.
My guess is that many Trump voters wanted this kind of system. They didn’t want a full-on North Korea sort of situation, and they were deluded enough that they thought they could keep a Trump presidency from becoming a full-on dictatorship. What they wanted was basically a “flawed democracy” where people who looked like them still got to vote and their vote mattered, but they definitely wanted their vote to matter much more than the votes of other people.
At the same time, the alternative was definitely also a flawed democracy. To get elected requires raising a ton of money, which ties strings to almost everyone who runs. The DNC largely picks who’s allowed to run as a democrat, and one of the main qualifications to run is a person’s ability to raise money. As a result, even when the democrats are in charge, common sense things that are supported by a majority of the population don’t pass when they’re opposed by any special interest with money.
It’s easy to understand why there was initially so much overlap between supporters of Bernie Sanders and supporters of Trump. People were tired of the oligarchy-controlled pseudo-democracy, and they wanted radical changes.
The advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google has weakened journalism at a time when we desperately needed good journalism. What’s left is basic horse-race and scandal-focused coverage for politics, and click bait for the rest. There are still some journalists out there doing good work, like the folks at Pro Publica. But, that kind of journalism is difficult and expensive.
I’m scared that the window for journalism being able to rescue the US might have passed. If Trump wins again, you know that the freedom of the press is going to take a serious hit. On the other hand, if the democrats win big they’re going to be completely tied to the people who fund their campaigns. And the corporate-owned media isn’t going to be doing stories on how the corporate-owned politicians are handing even more power to corporations.
People still got to vote, and their vote mattered
Both questionable statements, considering massive systematic voter suppression that has been going on for decades, and also on account of the US political system, not least first-past-the-post and the electoral college, your vote may easily end up not mattering at all (as compared to countries with proportional representation).
Sure. But it’s not like they announce the election results before the election. Not everyone’s votes count, and there’s a lot of bullshit, but the results are still fundamentally influenced by the voting. That’s “flawed democracy” vs. “pretend democracy”.
The difference is that occasionally you can get upsets like the Roy Moore vs. Doug Jones election. Even with all the knobs and levers twisted to give Moore every advantage possible, the allegations that Moore had been having sex with numerous underage girls was enough to derail his run. In a properly functioning system it shouldn’t have even been close. But, in the end, it was very close.
I don’t think we have to get even as far as the technically-legal but obviously shady as fuck outcomes like this, but just look at the last presidential election. Our votes only mattered because they didn’t manage to get away with ignoring them, and that’s largely just because a couple of people found the barest of morals and they were rampantly incompetent.
People still got to vote, and their vote mattered, it’s just that Dear Leader had his thumb on the scale.
This is only because an insurrection and attempted coup failed.
The advertising duopoly of Facebook and Google has weakened journalism at a time when we desperately needed good journalism.
Though they didn’t help, honestly the faux both-sides “journalism” is taking its own L’s, mostly. I canceled my sub to the Times quite a while back because of this type of thing, and I find it rare to see actual journalism quite a lot of the time. Headlines like “deadlock in congress due to continued failure to reach consensus on tax bill.” Actual reality: Republicans want to cut taxes for the wealthy and provide loopholes for yacht owners with no plan to pay for it, Democrats want to spend approx 0.00000001% of the military budget to provide free meals for elementary students.
See also, any trans issues. “Controversy roils over trans athletes in sports.” Reality: one fucking asshole in Iowa or Idaho or Mississippi or wherever want to blanket ban on trans athletes in sport because one MTF wants to play a sport. Oh, and they don’t even have a kid that goes to the school/participates in the sport and the MTF player hasn’t broken the top 10.
Or climate or Trump or anything with the slightest bit of controversy. Butchering the quote, but it’s something along the lines of “as a journalist, if someone tells you it’s raining, and another person tell’s you it’s not, it’s not your job to report disagreement, it’s your job to stick your head out the window and see if it’s raining.”
Applied to that first quote, if journalism was doing its job, every outlet would be reporting in no uncertain terms that the former president tried to deny your right to vote and overthrow democracy.
even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms
I think the last decade or so of GOP actions are a clear example of why any norm or precedent that’s actually vital to how things run needs to be codified into an actual rule or law with a clear punishment for violations.
This is spot on.
The problem Democrats have is that we have to drag two huge stones around our neck.
-
We have to fight the fascist right
-
We have to do so while everything is controlled by corporate interest
Either of those is a massive undertaking on its own, doing both is near impossible.
We can’t push for more radical Democrats since the cost of losing is a fucking orange maniac… So we have to elect the corporate centrist.
Corporations have done a fantastic job keeping 50% of the population dumber than a bag of bricks and voting against their own interest.
I’ve also seen corporate interest drive wedges into Democrats as well. We’re starting to be split on bullshit like is it LGBT, or LGBTQ, or LGBTQ+, arguing about semantics and looking to take people down for accidentally using the wrong word.
Nevermind if everyone in the group agrees on equal rights for all, you’re using the wrong term this month, therefore we are building a divide between us.
It’s maddening how well it’s working.
Corporations have done a fantastic job keeping 50% of the population dumber than a bag of bricks and voting against their own interest.
A lot of people vote against their own interests, but I don’t think you can really blame the corporations for that.
Voting against their interests tends to be culture war nonsense, and corporations don’t really want to get involved in that because they never want to take sides, because that could cost them customers. See the recent Bud Lite nonsense for example.
Instead, what they tend to do is use their money to seed out candidates who hold views they don’t like (basically ensuring that the DNC and RNC only run candidates that the companies approve of) or doing things after elections to get loopholes and carve-outs in laws that benefit them. When you effectively have both the democrats and republicans on your payroll, you don’t really care which side people vote for, you just ensure that whoever’s elected is beholden to you.
As for keeping people dumb, again, not something most corporations work for. Some of them, like tech companies, even want an intelligent workforce. The more people in their hiring pool, the less they have to pay. Having said that, they’re happy if the government cuts funding to schools if it means tax breaks that benefit them.
But yeah, I think fundamentally you’re right. The only team that can beat the fascists includes a lot of corporate democrats. And with corporate democrats in the “big tent”, there are lots of reforms that are never going to be on the table. And, when people see corporate-owned politicians in power and refusing to even consider common-sense reforms, they get frustrated. Some stop voting entirely. Others give up and vote for the fascists because they hope that will at least disrupt the system.
Bringing it back to journalism, it seems to me like what we need is good journalism that exposes both the stranglehold the corporations have on a lot of politicians, and how much bribery and influence peddling there is, but also how the other side is outright fascist and what the consequences might be. Instead we get horse race journalism, and talking points, and both-sides he-said-she-said bullshit.
As for keeping people dumb, again, not something most corporations work for. Some of them, like tech companies…
Yes and no…
to a large company, more legbor skilled in doing the thing you want them to do is excelant to drive wages down, everything else a person can learn is not their priority.
For their customers, adiction makes people unable to think no matter how smart they are. To force someone to keep buying, make them an adict. Super common in amarica, things like processed shugar, high fructose corn syrup, loot boxes and gambling come to mind.
nah turfs are now openly allying with Nazis, so we can safely rule hem out of the whole “being left” thing
-
Congress members and senators still showed up to work, and the decisions they took still mattered, even if some of the Republicans were constantly violating precedents and norms. The judicial system still kept churning and mostly following the laws and precedents, even if Trump appointed a lot of unqualified partisan judges.
From an outside perspective this is a good demonstration that while your system is somewhat flawed, it’s still resilient. By flawed I mean mainly the two party system and stuff like judges being appointed by politicians. However if your system didn’t have some builtin failsafes, it would have been much more vulnerable to influence from unwanted sources.
Even if most trump voters wanted to turn the US into a proper aristocracy, (some right wingers actually do*), the process would have been much more complicated in comparison to countries that have become dictatorships in the past decades.
*I’m referring to a somewhat new trend, where influential people are claiming that the US is suffering from a dumb population, and that experts should be given more power.
What exactly do you mean by “aristocracy”? You could argue that that’s what the US already is. Lobbying by the very rich means they get their way much more often than the majority of the population gets their way. Even many of the senators and congress people are deci or centi-millionaires.
I’d say the Trump voters want a fascist state with some hints of democracy remaining. They want rich people (other than Trump) to have less of a voice than they currently do, and they’re willing to give up many democratic aspects of the current system to get it. I think most of them would still like to be able to vote for things, and would still want their votes to matter. But, I think they’d be willing to give up many of their rights as long as the strong man in charge hurts the right people.
Look, guardrails that can handle being hit hard once can’t be counted on to protect you again. Also, I think what’s meant by “brutal fascism” above is Trump’s end goal, not how he behaved in his first term. I’m only slightly to the right of Gramsci and Bookchin, and even I don’t think his first term achieved full-on fascism. But make no mistake, there’s good reason to believe 2024 will be our last free election (they’re already not fair) for a while.
Brutal fascism may be Trump’s end goal, but that doesn’t mean he has any likelihood of getting it. What matters more is what everyone else wants. Dictators don’t become dictators on their own. They need generals, lawyers, judges, cops, etc. to all work with them to achieve their aims. There are certainly some people in Trump’s orbit who would welcome a Trump dictatorship, but there are others who want him as a figurehead that allows them to become oligarchs. There are others who actually do believe in some form of democracy, they just want a democracy that looked a lot like the 1776 democracy, where only the opinion of white land-owning white males mattered.
As for the 2024 election, even if Trump wins, things will only get slightly less free and slightly less fair. They’re already badly bent, and they’ll get bent some more, but it’s not like elections are going to go from “free” to “non-free” over 4 years. There’s just too much institutional momentum and not enough popular support for Trump for that to happen.
If you think we don’t have a lot of institutional and popular support for right-authoritarianism, I don’s know what country you’ve been living in the last 20 years. Who’s going to stop him? The Democrats? The party that’d bring a policy paper to a gunfight? I hope I’m wrong and things are as rosy as you think. But I won’t bet my life on it.
The incentives of capitalism and the intended role of the 4th estate are not compatible. Stoking the flames of populism is simply too lucrative of a business model when compared to trying to keep the public informed. This is what allows perverse media groups to proliferate and dominate the public eye.
I don’t think this is an easy problem to solve. If you’re able to successfully regulate things like Fox, does that fix it, or do people just start gravitating more towards alternate media like Joe Rogan? Do you start regulating podcasts too? Twitter influencers? I feel like it’d just become a never-ending game of whack-a-mole. And given that the 4th estate’s role is to check the government, how do you use the government to safeguard it without giving them too much control over it? It’s a difficult balance to strike.
That said, clearly we aren’t striking that balance now, so perhaps it’s time to try something different.
I think that Fox news as well as Talking Heads like Joe Rogan and our old friend Rush Limbaugh are very effective propaganda artists who reach such a wide audience that they need to be shut down and held accountable for their actions into stabilizing this country. This country will devolved further into authoritarianism if we don’t put a stop to it.
But the same methods used to stop Joe and Rush could be used by government in an authoritarian way. Giving government more control over media is a very dangerous and difficult thing to do without media devolving into a propaganda arm
I suspect the people calling for it are either too short sighted to see that, or think their people would hold power if that was applied and then leverage it into only allowing propaganda for the “correct” party.
Always remember, never give the government power that you wouldn’t mind your opposition wielding.
In short the rich folk have the country over a barrel due to FPTP-voting and a lack of campaign financing subsidies. This scheme was designed by ancient wealthy romans for the benefit of ancient wealthy romans and it’s not a coincidence this form of democracy is the one America seeks to deliver upon the rest of the world.
Literally it’s called “the great experiment” because it’s failed before and will fail again if not allowed to evolve and advance into a form with better representation and where wealth doesn’t dictate everything happening.
The greatest driver of violence, crime and corruption is wealth-inequality, it’s no coincidence unions and such worse are branded as communism and criminal behavior by the plutocrats running the country, unite and demand change!
it’s no coincidence unions and such worse are branded as communism
Divide-and-conquer is one of the oldest games in the book; it’s a shame people can’t (or don’t want to) recognize this for what it is.
deleted by creator
This seemingly (though not really) simple truth is really propaganda. CNN isn’t unbiased, but then, no one is. Fox News is blatantly lying. Mentioning both sides is a way of whitewashing the truth about the worse actor. Tying the complaint to corporate profits is a way of disguising the real message.
No one should take news reporting at face value. Everyone should be educated in media literacy. But there’s a big difference between a motivated agenda and outright disinformation.
A side-observation that I think is truly only coincidence: user name is Kool_Newt. Newt Gingrich is one of the people I blame most for setting us on this cursed path of culture war and lunacy. It definitely existed long before him (Caning of Charles Sumner), but he lit that fuse on fire and fanned the flames.
Yup. Newt did everything possible to sow division and hatred. Even instructing others on how to go about it.
And then he had the audacity to claim Obama was “divisive”, blah blah blah.
deleted by creator
This is an incredibly short sighted, simplistic view of journalism. If for profit companies don’t pay journalists, then who does? Good luck crowd sourcing an international news bureau. If everyone is the press, then no one is because how do you know who’s telling the truth and who isn’t?
You act like all companies are evil and all individuals and co-ops are somehow pure of heart. It would be the same shit disinfo, just with worse production value.
Not to mention the current American political climate was started in the mid 90’s by Newt Gingrich. He created the philosophy of “party before country,” along with the launch of 24/7 news networks, which is largely responsible for the mess you see today. ⁸ It’s going to take the same amount of time that started this mess to reverse it.
PS: Let’s not forget about the “my way, or the highway” generation, Boomers. Once most of them are out of office we’ll start to see the trend reverse.
Not to mention the current American political climate was started in the mid 90’s by Newt Gingrich
Honestly not sure where people come up with theories like this. What about the various Red Scares and McCarthyism? Variations on the same theme go back throughout history - the phenomenon isn’t about some unique American exceptionalist trait, it’s a consequence of the tide of the avarice of rulers meeting the tide of the mindless tendencies of the masses towards group mentalities. Power necessitates a way to gather support and creating an in-group and out-group accomplishes that.
Tradition attributes the origin of the motto to Philip II of Macedon: Greek: διαίρει καὶ βασίλευε diaírei kài basíleue, in Ancient Greek, meaning “divide and rule” wiki
Honestly not sure where people come up with theories like this.
Because it’s factual history at this point…
https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/07/07/newt-gingrich-republican-party
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/
deleted by creator
What would be the motivation for individual journalists to spread disinfo?
Everyone has an agenda, whether it’s ideological, malice, etc.
I disagree. Tying all press to government funding is the surest way to captured media by the ruling party. If journalists are not independent then they are not a check against power.
Is anyone really surprised by this? Or am I just so deeply under my rock I can’t relate to normal people anymore? :(
When you’re surrounded by ignorance it becomes difficult to find the island of reason
This is giving me so much comfort, thank you.
Journalists today have no association with the scum of the Earth types radicalized by authoritarian movements. They are college educated and understand complex principles, but radicalized people are the opposite, which is simple and based on assumptions. It’s built on racism, xenophobia, and hate towards anyone different from them that they can blame. The entire point is about power and ensuring that conservatives hold that power.
Now many young people think there is an oligarchy in the United States, which there isn’t, yet. This conservative authoritarian movement intends to establish it. Currently power still resides in the voters. The wealthy keep circumventing the means of messaging but fail time after time. That is why Elon really bought Twitter and intends to destroy it, because it prevented the message the wealthy wanted the public to believe. It’s why the Fediverse is so important, because the wealthy can’t stop the flow of information.
there has to be a way to do journalism without a web traffic or profit incentive.
About 10 years ago, the crypto community was talking about this with regard to microtransactions. The idea was that nobody really wants to pay a monthly subscription fee to news publications, but getting someone to digitally pay 1-10 cents to read an interesting article is probably doable. Unfortunately, digital currencies became what they are today instead of anything actually useful.
Actually a better solution exists and is used to varying degrees of success in other countries. BBC, ABC, CBC to name a few. Are they perfect? No. Are they funded adequately? Probably not.
That said crypto once again is looking for a problem to solve and there’s nothing to solve that isn’t already solved. Fund the existing solution properly does nothing but help.
that’s the fucking opposite of solving this problem
That’s the whole idea behind transact.io (non-crypto), but it’s had trouble catching on with news publishers because they are very risk adverse.
No kidding. Back in the day, news organizations would actually sell physical papers. The Internet has destroyed them, for better or worse.
That’s because “journalism” is a joke and died a long time ago.
That’s becuase journalism cant affird to give it to you straight because they can’t piss you off, since they need to sell articles.
I’ll tell you EXACTLY what the hell the problem is, but you aren’t going to like it at all, I promise.
The problem is everyone (yes you and me included) is way too entitled and desperate to be either noticed or get ahead. Some of this is economy, some is the internet making the globe feel small, some is politics, mostly though it’s our incessant greed combined with the ease of life in modern times.
When people are unhappy the government reflects that.
News need to be reduced to just news, without the presenters’ opinions on it. It’s this “processed information” dilemma, fuelled by greed and enabled by lacklustre regulations, that’s enabling the chaos. Not just (but especially) in the USA.
There is no such thing as news that does not have analysis and editorial processing in it. The more someone tries to pretend there is no implicit bias in their reporting on facts the more nervous you should be.
Being upfront about your biases, writing persuasively, and admitting/addressing counterfactuals and limitations is the honest way to report the news.
Honestly, I couldn’t disagree more.
I think doing this is what’s got us into this pickle to begin with, where everything is so ultra partisan
They’re right though. The best propaganda is built on facts out of context.
The truth is even during the days of Edward R Murrow the news was still highly biased and politicized. Whether or not you chose to acknowledge it. No matter how neutral or unbiased you try to be. The ways in which you choose to frame things, or the things you choose to focus on. Will always Expose and push your own biasses. Anyone who thinks they can truly Escape such things has little clue of what they’re talking about. If scientists and researchers can’t create AI devoid of Mankind’s worst biases and bigotry. What makes you think actual people can escape it?
But why should we settle on propaganda being the state of things? Shouldn’t this be unacceptable?
I see it like racism, sure it exists and it has existed for a long time, and maybe it’s even getting worse and more obvious. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t fight back against it and demand better though.
Same with journalists, imo. Demand they be better. If you’re presenting you own biased take at least present the best arguments the other side has.
The point should be to inform the reader and for the audience to make up their own minds from the stated facts, not looking to a journalist to tell them what to think.
I understand this is the implicit bias argument, but there are ways around that, regardless of how much affect you think it may have.
Because of human nature. The most sure way to go wrong is to believe that we can ever be truly objective. We all have biases, and bigotry. Show me anyone that claims otherwise and I will show you a liar.
The best we can hope for is to be aware of our own biases. And be open to people who don’t share them. And most importantly not tolerating intolerant people. No matter how much they play into our own biases.
Outside of that. Avoid all for profit news as much as possible. And 24hour outlets like the plague. Stick to outlets like PBS, the BBC, possibly even local news. (As long as it isn’t Sinclair owned) They will all have bias and framing still. But less so than other outlets. And whenever someone makes a point of telling you that they are balanced or objective. Then just assume their trying to hide their biases. And should noy be trusted.
This can still lead to omissions, or outright ignoring news articles contrary to the reporting groups political agenda.
There is much too much editorializing in the news. It’s so rare to even see an actual news article that doesn’t use tweets as citations or even the basis for their entire article.
I really feel like journalism has just devolved into journalists scrolling Twitter and writing about what they’ve read every day.
Reporting on tweets IS factual reporting.
It’s just out of context. It needs to be properly analyzed and editorialized (to show how utterly inconsequential it is, or stop the story from running entirely because of its lack of newsworthiness – both of which are judgement calls beyond that mere facts).
You’re conflating two totally different things. Inconsequential, low-value reporting is a natural consequence of the way society has devalued journalism over our lifetime. Both literally and figuratively. News outlets simply cannot afford the kind of beat and investigative journalism they used to be able to do, but they still have to put out articles to keep eyeballs on them or else they will only lose more funding. It has nothing more to do with media bias than any other kind of reporting (that is to say, all reporting contains biases).
One way it devalues it is by simply drying up funding, making intensive investigative journalism basically impossible for any professional.
Another way is by spreading this vast narrative of the biased media that cannot be trusted on anything (which feeds into the funding drought).
The cure is journalistic transparency and individual media literacy, not for journalists to pretend they’re beep boop robots that have no normal human opinions on anything.
I guess you just accept that no journalist can be bothered to ‘investigate’ who blew up those pipelines because ‘funding has dried up’ making it ‘impossible’ for them to ask questions?
This seems like something any real journalist would love to sink their teeth into, and discover the truth of. Why haven’t any of them? Because they don’t have funding?
Bleh, I don’t buy it. Not one bit. That’s an excuse.
And tweets aren’t facts, they are statements. If a journalist wants to ‘report’ on a statement made on Twitter they still need to at least go an interview the person who made the tweet, then interview people around that person, and interview people who refute whatever statement is made in the tweet.
Like, you know …. Follow up.
But what it sounds like you’re saying is ‘no one has enough funding to do anything more than sit at home and remotely scroll Twitter looking for stuff to write their opinions about’.
I’m sorry, but I demand much more than that from the media.
You can’t draw blood from a stone, dude. Why aren’t YOU out there investigating it?
I’m not a journalist
And how does one end up part of your slave caste of journalists, where you’re allowed to demand they sacrifice themselves and work without pay? Just curious since like you, I don’t want to accidentally end up one.
Or will you go ahead and hire one yourself to do that investigation? Just a few tens of thousands of dollars will probably support a few months of the work you demand.
It’s always been bad, but some decades ago, newspapers and TV brought on actual experts for analyses, whereas these days, everyone can step on a soapbox – as a result, you get people who have no clue what they’re talking about spouting nonsense left and right.
Of course you want people to do educate themselves on their own on matters they find important, but it developed into a direction where watching Fox and reading some tweets from your echo chamber gives you enough confirmation to make you feel like you did do proper research.
Exactly.
What happened to the news telling you: here is the reasoning for this political decision from the party in power, and now here is the counter points from the opposition party.
And let us, the people, sort out which one we want to back?
Removed by mod
So no explanation or analysis, then? OK
