Trust in Media at New Low of 28% in US (gallup.com) 186
Americans' confidence in the mass media has edged down to a new low, with just 28% expressing a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust in newspapers, television and radio to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, according to Gallup. From the report: This is down from 31% last year and 40% five years ago. Meanwhile, seven in 10 U.S. adults now say they have "not very much" confidence (36%) or "none at all" (34%). When Gallup began measuring trust in the news media in the 1970s, between 68% and 72% of Americans expressed confidence in reporting. However, by the next reading in 1997, public confidence had fallen to 53%. Media trust remained just above 50% until it dropped to 44% in 2004, and it has not risen to the majority level since. The highest reading in the past decade was 45% in 2018, which came just two years after confidence had collapsed amid the divisive 2016 presidential campaign.
But they trust the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
Also whatever the "wise" AIs tell them. Time for some rage against the AI machines?
Unfortunately, I think most people are so into oracles that they will just learn to limit their thinking to the kinds of questions where the AI answers seem most useful. Especially for recommended cat videos.
Solution approach/Funny time:
Media can regain trust with more AI-generated cat videos!
Re:But they trust the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
Two words: Fox News. They're trustworthy? Yeah right.
I used to trust the Washington Post but they've made so many exaggerations and just plain errors in the last 5 years, and their censorship in the comments section has gone nuts. Earlier this year I canceled my subscription.
Re: But they trust the Internet (Score:4, Insightful)
It's fox entertainment, they report on news AND opinion. When they do both in the same hour, viewers can't tell the difference.
Re: But they trust the Internet (Score:4, Interesting)
Fox's own lawyers argued in court that you shouldn't believe what they broadcast. https://law.justia.com/cases/f... [justia.com]
"Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes."
Re: But they trust the Internet (Score:2)
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This is known in the business as the Maddow Defense [cernovich.com].
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Hmm... I think it's an interesting question as to whether FAUX should be allowed to brand itself as news. They do want to sell advertising, but I think that's for credibility and their real business model is different. They can have as much money as they need under the table as long as they put out the "news" they are being paid for... Truth in advertising has become a rather sad joke, too.
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CNN ruined themselves in my eyes when the broadcast medical doctors as "virus experts" during Covid. What the hell does a doctor know about microbiology, molecular biology, computational biology, virology, epide
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Nah.
The problem is media consolidation. When newspapers, radio stations, and television stations were independent, they were reliable to tell news without investors and shareholders pulling the strings.
Meanwhile the internet commentators aren't generally incentivized by investors except those on the kremlin's payroll like Dave Rubin, Benny Johnson and Tim Pool.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1366266/dl
Not saying these people "knew", but they should have known better.
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The whole idea of news for profit rather than to inform the public may be the root of the evil? When the REAL goal is to attract eyeballs for advertisers, the value of truth becomes dubious...
So we should blame "60 Minutes" because it was the first profitable news program? But that was built on the Golden Age of Journalism fantasy when frequency-based monopolies were auctioned off subject to the constraint of providing specified amounts of news as a public service. Or more blame to CNN for trying to do it o
MAGA was successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MAGA was successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Boy I sure am glad this is entirely the fault of my political enemies, and my side bears no responsibility whatsoever for the current state of things.
Re: MAGA was successful (Score:2)
From this side of the Atlantic I really don't see the equivalence between your 2 parties.
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That's because "both sides are bad" is an escape hatch that gets one out of the uncomfortable position of having to critically evaluate the two.
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The complaining about both sides being bad argument is an escape hatch for having to deal with their own hypocrisy.
"first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye"
Both sides are bad, awful really every sneaky underhanded anti-democratic act you can accuse a politically important member of either major party, someone of relatively equal importance in the other party has done the same and recently! You either choose to not see or you consume
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Re: MAGA was successful (Score:5, Insightful)
Well one is fascist and the other isn't, which should be a major thing even someone far removed from it and used to just comparing political parties to some crude "mid point" between your two dominant parties should be able to notice.
I mean seriously, this "both sides are the same" shit needs to stop. The Democrats are obnoxiously corporate, sure, but they're not trying to roll back protections for marginalized groups, they're not trying to dismantle democracy, they're not building concentration camps, and they haven't created a secret police with a budget larger than the fucking Marines solely to enforce one relatively unimportant set of laws as brutally as possible knowing it'll also result, and has also resulted in, harm to innocent Americans who haven't done anything wrong. They are also, for all their faults, pro-science.
How are they the same?
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Boy I sure am glad that people on the Internet are intellectually lazy and want to reach for "bothsides" as a way to not put accountability where it belongs.
Hint: While examples of "both sides" can be seen if you dig enough, and use powerful enough microscopes; one particular party doesn't involve any digging at all, and the only way you couldn't see it is if you were blind or willfully looking elsewhere.
TL;DR: while "both sides" may have some share of the blame, it's absolutely not an equal share. Stop pr
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one particular party doesn't involve any digging at all, and the only way you couldn't see it is if you were blind or willfully looking elsewhere.
Funny, the zealots on both sides say that.
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The whole intent of the "fake news" agenda was to make people only listen to a single voice.
This is absolute bullshit. There is no "single voice" on the right and even MAGA does not agree on everything. Remember recent almost-war with Iran? Tucker and Bannon pulled us out of it. Remember Elon wanting more H-1B? Remember Ben Shapiro getting ostracized over asking for affirmative action for Jews and censorship of pro-Palestine voices? etc. etc.
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MAGA agrees with Trump in lock step. You get some fringe politicians here and there like Rand Paul or someone whose term is finished but you’ll never see the house speaker disagree. Look how many people who were tossed aside the second they became of no use by the party.
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Some of those "Fringe" right-wingers like Rand Paul were already morons. Rand Paul is the "gold is money" guy. It's not, and has never been in modern history, but it was put out of commission BY the right-wing Nixon Republican party, and the rest of the world followed suit. Now gold is just an asset that people run to like lemmings every time the value of their country's dollar sinks, and people get duped into buying gold-plated lead.
Like the least stupid right-wing politicians have always been the ones in
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MAGA agrees with Trump in lock step.
Really...
It's Not Just Epstein. MAGA Is Angry About a Lot of Things [wired.com]
I don't know who you're talking to, but while they're generally happy with him, Trump supporters call him out fairly frequently when they think he's getting squishy on something. They were mad at him for the Syrian involvement in the first term, and in just the last few months they've been unhappy about both the strike on Iran and his flip on the Ukraine war, both of which they maintain we shouldn't be involved in at all. There was criticis
Re:MAGA was successful (Score:4, Interesting)
even MAGA does not agree on everything
MAGA is a party/movement of exclusion, based on if one is MAGA enough and an ever narrowing definition of that. Anyone who doesn't agree with the current definition too hard and/or for too long won't be MAGA anymore. Trump easily discards even very loyal people if they don't conform; he may take you back if you have something he wants/needs, but he won't ever forget your transgression -- for as long as he can actually remember things anyway. Current toadies will be happy to remind him, though perhaps not entirely accurately. His brain operates on a LIFO model.
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Anyone who doesn't agree with the current definition too hard and/or for too long won't be MAGA anymore
This is demonstrably wrong. Bannon and Tucker very publicly disagreed with Trump on Iran and are still core MAGA. That is, Trump had to concede to the base that held him accountable to anti-war electoral promise. There were credible threats of third-party runs and projected midterm losses for Trump (likely resulting in Democrat-led impeachment).
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The single voice on the right is Trump's voice, because every GOP elected politician is scared to death of him endorsing a primary challenger that is even more cowardly and depraved than they are.
The rest is noise. As soon as Trump gives them an opinion, they'll all change their tune and start singing 4-part harmony, just like with every other thing in the last 10 years.
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Yeah the Nazis had a lot of different ideas too.
A gradual game of musical chairs where eventually only the right ideas get a seat at the table.
Re:MAGA was successful (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole intent of the "fake news" agenda was to make people only listen to a single voice. Now the FCC is making sure everyone is singing the same tune.
The people who fervently believed in either the right or the left have always believed their faves were right and the opposition was wrong. The fake news push was aimed at the uncommitted middle and introducing doubt in their minds so that they had no point of reference for what even the facts were, rendering them even more susceptible to manipulation.
The availability of a single voice is a Trump second term thing. Outright canceling of universities, companies, and people. There used to be a timidity about looking like a tyrant, but that timidity is gone. With that timidity erased, the canceling is now open and directly aimed at media and even at late night talk shows. The attack on the Constitution continues.
One of the reasons that the timidity is gone is that the Trumpers have strategically eliminated all moderate Republican voices so that there is now no internal opposition. These former “voices of reason" have retreated and are now just silently shaking their heads. There is no possibility of rolling back this continued attack on the Constitution, at least until 2028, and we'll see what happens then. The US electoral system is unfortunately very easy to manipulate.
Re:MAGA was successful (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that "fake news" worked is just a symptom of the problem, not the root cause.
The root cause is that the internet - over 30 years or so - has steadily forced news outlets to come out with stories that within shorter and shorter amount of time. As geeks, we all know that you can have fast, good or cheap, pick two. The same applies to journalism. But the problem is that fast is a hard requirement now - and journalism isn't a high-margin business so cheap is as well. That tosses out good. (And of course this trite rule doesn't capture the full picture. Good cannot be done even with high budgets if the time constraints are too strict.)
So, journalism has degraded in quality. It is fast - we know that there was an earthquake halfway around the world within about 10 seconds. But it cannot be high quality. The time constraints are impossible. Without high quality, lots of mistakes will be made which in turn reduces trust.
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I'm sorry what? Are you implying that vilifying and using media for political gain is a modern symptom that only exists because the internet made news dumb? Sorry but the very people who are the ones labelled as "fake news" are the few who are still providing old school full coverage reporting.
The points you make sound good on the face of it, but they don't fit together in our reality. The "fake news" approach has always worked - just in America there hasn't been a dictator wannabie to try it yet and there
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The root cause is that the internet - over 30 years or so - has steadily forced news outlets to come out with stories that within shorter and shorter amount of time.
The Internet made it much worse but wasn't the cause. You're describing rolling news.
Re:MAGA was successful (Score:4, Interesting)
While Trump leveraged distrust of the mainstream media, he didn't initiate that distrust. It was developing for decades before he came along.
Most of the news outlets *earned* that distrust, by fixating on 1) drama and 2) political correctness. Fox News started out trying to go for "We report, you decide," but that tagline is long gone. Now they're as slanted on the right, as MSNBC on the left. Even NPR's reporting, with its high standard of journalism, finds itself left-of-center. https://www.allsides.com/media... [allsides.com]
Re: MAGA was successful (Score:2)
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I don't disagree. And so is MSNBC.
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Even NPR's reporting, with its high standard of journalism, finds itself left-of-center
Well reality has a well known liberal bias which is why MAGA types trust fox news over reality.
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For example, pretending that the X and Y chromosomes mean nothing,
Reductio ad absurdum.
Literally nobody except you has claimed that.
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So you admit you're lying?
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Even NPR's reporting, with its high standard of journalism, finds itself left-of-center.
This is what happens when the overton window shift so far in such a short amount of time - organizations that stay exactly where they are appear to move left, because the window has shifted so far rightward.
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Most media is owned by the rich and powerful who benefit from Trump. They do nothing but sanewash his outlandish lies or call out anything illegal that he does. He spews literal gibberish https://www.snopes.com/fact-ch... [snopes.com] and it’s crickets chirping.
They're basically is a single voice (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember The Hill started to get really popular. Slightly left of center content all over the place. Then all of a sudden it started a hard right turn. It didn't make a hell of a lot of sense until I looked it up and sure enough a billionaire owned media outlet bought them out and fired everyone.
Sooner or later everybody goes through tough times and if you want spewing propaganda from the wealthiest people on the planet then there's a high probability you're going to run out of cash.
When that happens you are the go out of business and go away or you let yourself get bought out hoping to maintain editorial control and naturally you lose it.
When the left wing blathers on about wealth inequality this is the problem we're talking about. The real problem isn't the inequality it's the enormous amount of power we've given approximately 1,000 people. They can basically tell you what to do and if you don't do it they can crush you like an ant.
Unfortunately the left wing sucks at messaging and they are ridiculously conservative when it comes to changing messaging and tactics so they are still operating like it's the 60s and there's a huge number of Black folk fighting for equality and white folk fighting with them.
The problem right now isn't equality the problem is we have this tiny group of people with way the fuck too much power who can order us around. But the left wing is still hung up on equality.
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It is the intense wealth those few people have that affords them that enormous power, so of course inequity is at the root of it.
You don't get an oligarchy if your economy doesn't allow for an obscene concentration of wealth. You certainly don't fix the problems caused by the oligarchy by continuing along a path where the wealth transfer continues to get historically bad year after year.
So raw inequality isn't the problem (Score:2)
I don't get to order the person waiting tables around outside of their restaurant and the AI programmer doesn't get to order me around outside of my workplace. Even in that context there's all sorts of limits in place.
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Political parties have become tribes, and now at least half of the country has lost the capacity for being critical of their own. I don't see how this gets reconciled peacefully, let alone amicably.
28% (Score:2)
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dunno. the impression i get from this very forum msm is still very much the gospel for way more than 28%. but, wait ... wtf ... has someone just farted?
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also, this is about us msm. it seems us population is finally awakening. in the eu we're still merrily sleepwalking our way to the abyss.
2 Rules for "trust" of MSM (Score:2, Flamebait)
Rule #1: when the entire MSM machine fires up and suddenly starts pushing the same narrative very aggressively in lockstep with each other, you can take it to the bank that not only is that narrative FALSE but also likely very harmful to you.
Rule #2: when the MSM âoefact-checkersâ and censorship machine fires up into overdrive to suddenly try to debunk or censor some topic, you can bet the house that whatever that topic happens to be is directly over the target.
Symptom of a larger issue (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just distrust of media, or just the blind willingness to delegate our opinions to the loudest voice in the room. We don't trust anything anymore and that's a real problem. Plenty of people would rather trust random idiits than people educated in a field.
We're not on the same page, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. And that makes it really hard for a society to function.
It sucks. But here we are.
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We're not on the same page, and probably won't for the foreseeable future. And that makes it really hard for a society to function.
So you don't think diversity is strength anymore? Or only if it diverse from political opinions you personally approve?
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So you don't think diversity is strength anymore? Or only if it diverse from political opinions you personally approve?
Diversity was NEVER our strength... UNITY was our strength. The United States was supposed to be a melting pot. Diverse peoples coming together and uniting as AMERICANS. Diversity was simply the ingredient.. The finished product was supposed to be people who viewed themselves, first and foremost, as American citizens, no matter where they came from.
There are few things that piss me off as much as some cunt flying the flag of the shit-hole he/she left to come here.
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Diversity and unity are orthogonal. Diversity always has been a strength, a monoculture is a shitty way to live.
Nobody sane wants to live in an environment where everyone is like them.
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The real problem is those who were trusted have betrayed that trust. Horribly, blatantly, and continually.
If I cheat on my wife and lie about it for years, then she finds out and files for divorce, the problem isn't her lack of trust in the marriage.
Not just news organizations (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact checking and bias (Score:2)
It is now easier than ever to fact check an article. In the 90s my economics prof gave us a 1% bonus for each article that we submitted
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WSJ is owned by Rupert Murdoch and is essentially a version of Fox News aimed at people you can't easily lie to. If you think it's left wing you not only haven't read it, you barely know anything about it other than the name.
CNN has been drifting rightward for years, albeit dialing it back periodically when their ratings collapse as a result. Turns out Fox News viewers aren't going to watch an outlet that's constantly called "leftist" by the right wing, while liberals and the left do not like media that's b
It's not the media that's the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
It's social media that is the media and they only want to weaponize all media to make people more polarized so they will be more engaged and make them more money. The biggest problem is there is no gatekeepers or editors. Pre 2000's media was sanitized and editied, now any idiot can reach the world, even media organizations that tell lies.
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My thinking as well. Once monetization of social media was perfected all of the "silent" voices could now be heard. Unfortunately, many of those voices were partisan hacks.
s/many/nearly all/
It turns out that when advertising is free, the worst elements of society that provide the least benefit to society take advantage of it to bad ends.
We may never know for certain if Walter Cronkite was a decent person but he did attempt to be a gatekeeper for news, maybe even things that matter.
Wish I had met him, but sadly, I didn't, so I can't say. I did meet Sam Donaldson (who overlapped with him at a different network) and Katie Couric (who missed overlapping by only a few years at the other major network), and they seemed like decent people. I'd imagine Cronkite was as well. Most of the journos back then were.
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Walter Cronkite was a big fat idiot. You heard it here first. :)
Thank Project 2025 (Score:2, Insightful)
Never mind that the Fox tabloid jumped wholeheartedly on this bandwagon and got bitchslapped for almost $8 [forbes.com]
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Badly designed survey (Score:3)
This survey is meaningless. You don't ask a general summary question ("How much do you trust the media?") and report the result. You ask specific, neutral questions ("What is your level of trust or distrust of the NY Times on topic X?" "What is your level of trust or distrust of Fox News on topic Y?") and then aggregate the data to produce a summary answer. That is Survey Making 101.
All general summary questions are invalid, period.
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All general summary questions are invalid, period.
Do you have a survey to prove this?
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All general summary questions are invalid, period.
Do you have a survey to prove this?
"Invalid" isn't a proper characterization. "Useless" is the word I'd choose. The question isn't specific enough to have any meaning beyond gauging someone's general feelings. There's nothing to take action on with that information.
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While you have a point, I don't think the result is totally meaningless.
I do distrust different sources to different degrees, and on different subjects.
I personally rank Fox News and MSNBC as the most slanted (in opposite directions). CNN somewhat less slanted, but still pretty lopsided. NPR more towards the middle, but still gives different treatment to the different political points of view. There's a pretty good analysis here: https://www.allsides.com/media... [allsides.com] Though I don't agree with their "Center" rat
"Fair and Balanced" (Score:2)
Fox News started this idea that political reporting always needs to treat both sides of an issue as equally valid, regardless of how closely either side adheres to facts and and good-faith arguments.
"Fair and Balanced" as it has become would demand equal time for Jews and Nazis in a piece about the Holocaust.
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That's a pretty extreme example and not at all where the bar is. You get shouted down by the left by even trying to have a reasonable debate over trans participation in women's sports. You couldn't have an opinion on the border (like what was 90's bipartisan policy) without being labeled a racist. China COVID
A somewhat longer view (Score:2)
In a song from the early 1950's ("The Roving Kind") a man being a politician is used to justify the claim that he's a "good and righteous man". (But that may be a hang-over as it's a rewrite of a song from much earlier that I don't know.)
It's all about the ad revenue (Score:2)
News outlets will do anything to keep the eyeballs fixed so advertising revenue keeps flowing. If that means aligning with certain political groups so be it. The Internet has only pushed their ad revenue seeking ways even further down the rabbit hole. When news casters started acting like talk show hosts and spewing their opinions is when "journalism" died. I'm old enough to remember the likes of Walter Cronkite telling the news like it was. I want the news of current events, not some stupid talking head te
That's generous. (Score:2)
Many people don't trust them at all.
Gee why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Gee Santa, why don't people trust journalists any more?
NYT Editor, in an interview on NPR in June 2016: "We have to set aside journalistic objectivity sometimes [the context was about Trump's run for office and how to defeat him]"
No, you really don't.
You're a reporter. You can report the news without interpreting; if it's honestly reported and awful, trust your readers to understand it and draw their conclusions. Your CURRENCY as a reporter is your holding yourself separate from the news you're reporting.
When the national paper of record goes ON RECORD to say that they are picking sides in a political contest, they have forfeited their claim on credibility. They have stated openly that political bias > honesty.
Conversely, what _do_ people trust? (Score:2)
I haven't thought news on the big 4 networks was particularly fair or comprehensive for decades. IMHO, it's very constrained by time, viewer attention, placating advertisers, organizational priors, and "if it bleeds, it leads". I haven't seen a story which I thought told the whole picture for a long time.
But given that, what I wonder is where do people think they get their current events news? Facebook? TikTok? Podcasts? TV? Radio? Church? Moe's bar? I know a lot of people just don't care about current even
The Trump Rorschach test effect (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether you love Trump or Despise him, the simple fact is that his presence in the political arena broke the brains of a lot of people and the results have produced a number of spin-off effects. Some people see Trump and see a patriotic successful businessman, others see him as a rude, ignorant, uncultured fascist. People in this latter category, discarded all traditions in a reaction to him, seeing themselves as defenders of civilization and their every action as justified. People who supported Trump saw t
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Water is wet
You sheeple will believe anything.
Re: In other news (Score:2)
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The fact that you can still see the comment gives me a little faith in slashdot, I personally don't care what the score is, however the media on both side now simply silences opinions they disagree with.
Of course they have that right since they are private institutions, but people have the right to stop listening and believing them, and that is exactly what has happened.
The thing about trust is that is very hard to get back once you have lost it, they sold their soles for profit, now they are paying the pri
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NPR would be very surprised to hear that. Or laughing their collective ass off.
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He banned the Associated Press because they don’t kiss his ass. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24... [npr.org]
You’d have stroked out if Obama banned Fox from the white house.
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Given what's happened since 2016, largely as a result of the extreme right wing media's lying since the 1990s, I think it was the wrong call not to kick out Fox News. It would have upset the establishment, but let's be quite honest, the country is at an end, the constitution isn't worth shit, human rights abuses are now mainstreamed, and much of this is due to the malign influence of a single Australian media baron, and the unwillingness of the Democrats to fight back or the establishment to recognize what'
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He banned the Associated Press because they don’t kiss his ass. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24... [npr.org]
And AP still covers him.
You’d have stroked out if Obama banned Fox from the white house.
I'd have laughed just as hard, since Faux News is every bit as much a joke as the Communist News Network and all the rest.
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Gee, why do you think they're trying to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from the federal budget?
You don't think that NPR's continued reporting of easily observable reality, especially when it doesn't mesh with what the administration is saying, might be related?
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Cutting the federal funding is the best thing to ever happen to their fundraising. They're raking in more than they lost from viewers/listeners.
But don't let facts get in the way of your wank.
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Gee, why do you think they're trying to eliminate the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from the federal budget?
Because state run media isn't a good look. Just ask China's CCTV, Russia's RT, and Venezuela's TeleSUR.
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Re:Media = PRAVDA - LEFT WING propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
No one trusts the media. They lied about Covid (Chinese bio-weapon), lied about it's threat-level. (It was relatively harmless). Campaigned to lock us down for the harmless virus. Campaigned to keep us locked down. Campaigned to force mRNA experimental Genetically Engeered substances into people's bodies. Note, these are not "vaccines" by the original definition, and they cure NOTHING. The press are just LEFT WING propagandists, aka Liars. They also tried to tell us Biden was doing a great job, and Kamala Harris could run the country. Then you have endless Trump Derangement Syndrome, the same as the Score-5 brainwashed woke indoctrinated groupthink gaylords on Slashdot. The Media also cheers on those who laughted at the horrific murder of Charlie Kirk, and tried to blame it on the "Far Right". So, do we trust the Media? Do we heck. The Media are LIARS.
The fact that part of what is ostensibly mainstream media spews stuff that would lead to a post like this is exactly why trust in the media is at an all-time low.
Back in the 80s and before, journalists actually had to take the time to learn enough about their stories to sound intelligent. And that meant that when they interviewed a talking head in politics, if the politician lied, the journalist would often correct them.
In the post-news era, we started seeing more and more talking head "news", where news channels spent more and more of their time having guests on the show who spew whatever bulls**t they want and nobody calls them on it.
And in the post-truth era, that level of idiocy began bleeding into the news, with "journalists" putting spin on the news, with the destruction of fact checking, and with the quality of the reporting spiraling.
What do I blame for this? Two things. First, the rise of Fox News, created by Rupert Murdoch to be an intentionally conservatively biased news source. Second, decades of media consolidation producing steady declines in pay and in job availability for people who work in journalism, leading it to become a less and less desirable field, resulting in most of the best and the brightest choosing other fields. This is not to say that there aren't intelligent journalists, just not nearly as many as a percentage of the total. Also, media consolidation has resulted in fewer voices in general, which further erodes trust.
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What do I blame for this? Two things.
I would pick two different things: 1) The mere existence of 24-hour news-entertainment channels, a-la Fox News, CNBC, etc. 2) The people that consume the product from point #1, and conflate it with "journalism".
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What do I blame for this? Two things.
I would pick two different things: 1) The mere existence of 24-hour news-entertainment channels, a-la Fox News, CNBC, etc. 2) The people that consume the product from point #1, and conflate it with "journalism".
Well, one of those is basically the same as one of mine, to be fair. IMO, it's not 24-hour aspect that's the problem. It's the entertainment aspect. CNN was founded in 1980, and Headline News was founded in 1982. The quality of news/journalism didn't really start to decline rapidly until the late 1990s, and it cratered by the mid-2000s.
Before Fox News, CNN was the only 24-hour news source. It had no competition, so it had no incentive to spin the news and sensationalize it to get viewers. If you wante
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Well, one of those is basically the same as one of mine, to be fair.
I'd say similar, yes. But the differentiation, from my perspective, is that I don't exclusively blame Fox. CNN may have not existed in their current form prior to Fox, but they are absolutely currently equivalent in my mind.
The quality of news/journalism didn't really start to decline rapidly until the late 1990s, and it cratered by the mid-2000s.
I was too young and stupid to pay attention to the news prior to the mid-2000s. Our current dumpster-fire state of news-as-news-entertainment is the only way I've known the 24-hour TV networks.
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CNN was probably the beginning of the end. My wife is a journalist who knew other journalists... one of whom was in Ethiopia in the 1980s as part of a set of international journalists. The CNN crew set up a fake scene of parents mourning their babies. The babies were real, it is just that the scene was moved (yes, they moved dead babies and presumably paid the parents) so it looked better on camera. (I likely have some details a little wrong, but the gist of the story is correct - and no, this cannot be con
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I'd say this began long before Fox news. I'd say it began before CNN. I'll put the blame square on TV anchors in the 1970' and 80's. For one, Fox News would not exist had Koppel, Kronkite, Donaldson, and whazzisface not demonstrated such strong biases and dishonesty. Fox was a reaction to them, not something that eme
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Is it fair to blame Fox for what was already happening? Or complain that it was intentionally biased in the opposite direction from that which the other outlets were intentionally biased?
The appearance of Fox News was when any appearance of trying to be honest in newmaking went out the window. So yes, it really is. They made the talking head gallery into an art form.
Before that, there was a clear line between news and interviews, and biases were largely subtle, mostly in the form of choosing which stories to cover, rather than in the form of deliberately interposing large amounts of commentary into the coverage itself. This is not to say that there weren't editorials, but they were clear
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Re: Media = PRAVDA - LEFT WING propaganda (Score:2)
They lied about Covid (Chinese bio-weapon), lied about it's threat-level. (It was relatively harmless).
COVID is simultaneously a bioweapon and relatively harmless?
Do you even hear yourself?
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> They lied about Covid (Chinese bio-weapon)
Are you saying the media argued it was one, because I honestly didn't see that claim outside of the weird right wing media I try to avoid but Slashdotters link to from time to time. It clearly wasn't a bio-weapon.
> lied about it's threat-level. (It was relatively harmless)
The first wave had a death rate of about 2%, which is extremely high for this kind of virus. Long COVID is also a factor - it wasn't known what the long term effects would be, but it turned
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No actual mainstream press outlet has taken any of those positions, so as usual, you're just making things up so you have something to be angry about.