Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America
Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America
Momentous week of GOP debate, Trump's arrest gets "horse race" coverage when the story's not about an election, but authoritarianism.
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.
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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 think you need to get on a plane right now. Take a few months off work and get on it using your own savings to do it. I'm now demanding that much more from you.
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?
sure, and if the news organizations could make a profit from "just news" they could choose to do that, the fact is, in today's hyper partisan environment viewers and readers would rather consume the type of hype that fox news has to offer, you may not wish this were so, but it is in fact the case, when the normal joe or jane wants to find out what's transpiring in the world around them they usually want all the information, and the opinions in order to shape theirs, which is why twitter was so popular with not just the average person but celebrities, and governments
So no explanation or analysis, then? OK