Trust in newspapers and television news collapses to historic low

https://www.axios.com/2022/07/08/news-republicans-democrats-trust-partisanship

by bilsbie • 4 years ago

180 234 4 years ago

pacarvalho• 4 years ago

Even though the graphs do show some correlation between politics and media trust, I believe there may be other factors at play here. For instance, the need to make headlines ever more clickbait may also be eroding trust. Since the body of the article and the headline often don't agree.

samizdis• 4 years ago

That doesn't really hold for TV news, though. And even though it is annoying in print when articles fail to stand up their headlines, it doesn't necessarily mean that readers dismiss such articles entirely. It's more that they get pissed at the headline writers. Cf any number of articles headlined as a cancer "breakthrough" or an asteroid "heading for Earth" etc.

RajT88• 4 years ago

Getting pissed at headline writers and not trusting the media not to lie to you, I am not so sure are two separate things.

option_key• 4 years ago

This could mean that information literacy is on the rise.

Victerius2• 4 years ago

Or the opposite (that information literacy is on the decline, and people who are more intelligent and better educated trust the news more, at least from credible sources like the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR, and CNN).

jwond• 4 years ago

I’m not sure there are any news outlets remaining that I would consider credible, at least not consistently. They all have substantial black marks.

haggy102• 4 years ago

CNN is credible? According to whom?

Georgelemental• 4 years ago

"credible sources"

Only for the credulous

ravenstine• 4 years ago

I might have agreed with you on the first 3 many years ago. Even NPR has gotten really bad with the burying of headlines.

At this point, the best thing people can do is to just glance at the news when it presents itself and then otherwise move on with their lives. If there's any good to come out of the age of disinformation, it's that maybe people will stop doomscrolling the news.

jakogut4• 4 years ago

If those are your picks for credible sources, you might be less informed than you believe yourself to be. I don't think they're the _most_ biased, but they're certainly not the _least_ biased.

Cupertino95014• 4 years ago

There are certainly people who think they're intelligent. They like to congratulate each other.

Taleb would call them IYI (intellectual yet idiot).

ekianjo3• 4 years ago

All the credible sources you mentioned are not credible at all. That's an interesting choice you did there.

themitigating11• 4 years ago

Why?

caramelcustard2• 4 years ago

If only! The "traditional media" bubble is merely getting augumented with the help of "influencers", sketchy Twitter accounts, state-run networks, fringe outlets, social networks, web celebrities and so on. Just because someone thinks that TV isn't "trustworthy", doesn't mean much and chances are they're getting even lower grade reporting under the guise of it being "non-traditional media" (it must mean something...right??).

kodah• 4 years ago

What's the point of publishing a report if they only intend to explain part of why they think only one of three interest groups in those categories don't trust them? The abysmally low numbers in the first place could start with an explanation, maybe one that doesn't shift the blame onto the viewer and takes accountability?

I say this as someone would be an independent or Democrat on this graph.

tyleo• 4 years ago

As an American both right and left leaning news outlets don’t seem trustworthy. I find right wing news particularly annoying as it seems to amount to anger spewing and name calling in many cases. Left wing outlets are no angels either and present an extremely biased and hyperbolic picture of the world.

themitigating11• 4 years ago

Which is worse?

balderdash• 4 years ago

They both produce the same outcome, they feed the consumers existing biases/priors and reinforce the notion that the other side is contemptible. They just do it it in different ways.

echelon• 4 years ago

Read both.

With both sides of the story you see what is being emphasized or downplayed by each party. You also see the shared themes.

Add in international sources and see how they differ.

rayiner6• 4 years ago

Look at the CNN main page right now: https://www.cnn.com/

For me it shows:

1) Mass shooting porn (several different items)

2) Something about Twitter

3) Different shooting

4) Assassination of the former PM of a G7 country (somehow below the fold)

5) Trump

6) Abortion

Only after much scrolling do you get to a story about the economy, which polls report is the single most important issue to most Americans.

ModernMech3• 4 years ago

I’m confused about what you’re trying to say. CNN ran the jobs and unemployment numbers this morning when they came out. And they are in fact on the homepage.

Contrast with FoxNews.com, which doesn’t have the numbers at all on the homepage (as far as I can tell, maybe I’m missing them, it’s late) and instead has an opinion from Larry Kudlow about how he thinks a recession is coming. Also after much scrolling. They did report the numbers though.

What is your point exactly?

rayiner6• 4 years ago

On the current CNN mobile page, the jobs numbers are more than halfway down, under something about Ford and VW self driving operations.

The point is that, at best, CNN is out of touch with what people actually care about, and also milking tragedy for profit. Less charitably, they’re focusing on stories that could help democrats in the midterms while burying economic stories that are bad for democrats, while milking tragedy for profit. In the last decade they’ve completely dropped the pretense that they’re not openly rooting for one side.

Fox News is partisan entertainment, and deliberately so. I’m not sure why you’re even bringing them up.

beej71• 4 years ago

Americans feeling like the economy is the most important thing and what Americans want to see most on the news are probably two different things.

crikeyjoe• 4 years ago

Of course, it's all programming. But now it's replaced by forums like this and all the bots.

pmorici• 4 years ago

The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that as the Internet and cable tv gave news organizations greater reach they tended to become partisan in order to differentiate themselves. Truth is no longer profitable to the extent it contradicts what their audience wants to hear.

jackcosgrove• 4 years ago

Public opinion is bimodal in the US, shaped by the two party system. During the broadcast era media were forced to tailor their message for the median because you can only broadcast one message. However the median is actually smaller than the two modes on either side. When multicast messaging became technologically possible, it made economic sense to tailor your message for one of the modes, both to differentiate and to tap into a more engaged audience, the extremes of which had been ignored during the broadcast era.

fatcat500• 4 years ago

They burnt through all the cultural capital they had by spending it on short-term political victories. Now people see the media not as a source of information, but as an instrument of the establishment to influence and control.

The same will happen with the other institutions. We already have large amount of people skeptical of the CDC, WHO, and other health oriented orgs. We have growing skepticism of large financial institutions (fed & inflation, IMF & "you will own nothing", etc.). There is widespread skepticism of academic institutions, which will cause the value of academic titles to depreciate.

All this because the people who control these institutions insist on using them as political instruments (at certain times).

I wonder what the situation will be 50 years from now...

creato• 4 years ago

This take would be a lot more reasonable if people weren’t turning to crazy Facebook uncles for information instead.

JasonFruit2• 4 years ago

They turn there because what could be less establishment? The establishment gives its imprimatur to the news media, and they've proven untrustworthy, so the (weak) reasoning goes, why not turn to whatever the establishment condemns? Listen to Alex Jones, Joe Rogan, Sargon of Akkad, Q, the Doomsinger of Alexandria (okay, I made that one up). They don't trust any of it anyway, except a few of the worst Q addicts, but they figure, we know CNN lies and twists, and they hate us, so might as well listen to the liar who's on our side.

pclmulqdq• 4 years ago

Many of them are turning to new sources of opinion-driven news, like the daily wire and the young turks. I can't say for certain that this is a worse future than what we have had over the last 5 years in mainstream news, but it cements the balkanization of information channels.

donw2• 4 years ago

People have recognized that the New York Times and NPR are less trustworthy than crazy Facebook uncles.

rayiner6• 4 years ago

Maybe folks want to be responsible and eat their vegetables, but if they’re going to be served nutrition-free calorie bombs either way, it makes sense to go with the flavor you prefer.

DFHippie• 4 years ago

The problem with saying institution X is "not as a source of information, but as an instrument of the establishment to influence and control" is that most people who say this do believe some institutions. The ones that tell them what they want to hear are obviously honest. The ones that say otherwise are obviously corrupt.

Believing "institutions are corrupt" without addressing specific instances of corruption is an abandonment of critical thought itself.

You can LARP life for a while, but reality continues outside your fantasy, and at some point you will have to reconcile the two. You may find at this point that you weren't on the side of truth and justice after all.

donw2• 4 years ago

People assume all institutions are default-corrupt.

True for any social system that grants one group power over another.

Only constant and consistent demonstration of honest behavior signals otherwise. Trust is a delicate thing, and must be maintained.

jerry1979• 4 years ago

The article we're discussing specifically talks about the run-up to the second iraq war. I didn't watch the link, but I assume they highlight when the New York Times helping trick the country into war.

slg• 4 years ago

Maybe this is part of the picture, but it is far from the whole picture. You are just completely ignoring the attacks on the trustworthiness of institutions that have come from outside forces. For example, was it the people controlling the National Weather Service that made it a political instrument by covering climate change? Or was it politicians and other powerful people who made the factual reporting of a changing climate a political issue?

cato_the_elder• 4 years ago

was it the people controlling the National Weather Service that made it a political instrument by covering climate change?

This USA Today comic explains it well: https://www.gocomics.com/joelpett/2009/12/13. For better or worse, climate change is used as tool for advancing political agendas with a certain vision for the future.

rayiner6• 4 years ago

You are just completely ignoring the attacks on the trustworthiness of institutions that have come from outside forces.

Conservatives have been complaining about “liberal media” since forever. But the divergence in media trust between Democrats one hand and Independents/Republicans on the other grew dramatically in the Bush era, and again during the Trump era: https://www.allsides.com/news/2020-12-31-0913/trump-era-driv...

In the 1980s I assume most NYC news anchors hated Reagan, but they at least tried to hide their contempt.

hertzrat• 4 years ago

Trust is low because I read a science journalism article recently that claimed mit (or somebody else) had found, but we’re not sharing, drugs that prolonged life spans by 30%. In reality, the report said that they found a drug that raised levels of a certain chemical predictably in mice and humans, and did not venture further claims. The article is fraudulent and almost every science news post does it.

If the media wants to be trusted, they need to stop lying

CSMastermind3• 4 years ago

It's interesting to me because the original subscription model of newspapers was built to counter the perceived low information quality that came from an era where papers were based entirely on sales and ad revenue (leading to the original 'clickbait' headlines).

It seems like the internet, powered by advertising, brought the 'attention' economy roaring back. In its wake news organizations and their hard-won subscriber bases were eroded.

Now we seemed poised to relearn the same lessons about what happens when your incentives are not for truth and accuracy but rather attention.

zwkrt• 4 years ago

Before that though there were interest based papers and local news that was hard hitting and relevant, union papers, private investigation, and generally a high interest in journalism that was worth a damn.

As the internet has evolved inexorably to take advantage of our psychology, I don't think we are going back.

mattbuilds2• 4 years ago

Sorry to hijack your comment and kind of unrelated, but does anyone have any books that discuss the beginning of mass media/newspapers. Your comment about the internet brining back the “attention” economy has me interested in the origins of mass media. Just seems like it would be an interesting topic that probably has some relevance today.

WA9ACE• 4 years ago

I very much enjoyed Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman.

MrDunham• 4 years ago

Not exactly what you’re asking for but Ryan Holiday makes the “yellow journalism is back again” point in “Trust Me, I’m Lying - Confessions of a media Manipulator”. It’s a (terrifyingly) good book and he goes into how he engineered nationwide protests and counter protests starting with a billboard he paid for and defaced - all to drum up interest for a movie. Also includes other shenanigans he did that the attention-driven media ate up and never fact checked.

I also have a friend who has fooled/manipulated the media on a National scale to humiliate the US Navy (he’s a Westpoint grad). So… there’s likely truth to the book.

NERD_ALERT• 4 years ago

Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky. It was written in 1988 but is still one of the greatest breakdowns of the formation and behavior of mass media I’ve ever seen. Still manages to be relevant today.

CSMastermind3• 4 years ago

The Chief: The Life of William Randolph Hearst by David Nasaw and Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print, and Power by James McGrath Morris both cover the time period I'm referencing through the lens of two of the most powerful men in the industry at that time.

The Form of News: A History by Barnhurst and Nerone is a dry and academic take but a pretty informative one.

bnralt• 4 years ago

Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann, written 100 years ago but honestly just as applicable today. Libre Vox even has a free version up on YouTube[1]. Chomsky actually took the title of his book from Lippmann's, but Lippmann's is a much more advanced and nuanced take (also Chomsky has grossly misrepresented what Lippmann was saying, so I find it hard to trust him).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX1eEQVDdjA&t=1s

dredmorbius7• 4 years ago

One of the most delightful takes I've run across is a 1909 lecture by Hamilton Holt, himself a magazine publisher, titled Comemercialism and Journalism. It's a short, engaging, fact-filled, and highly-informative read:

https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft

Other than that, I've compiled a "light reading list" which I still feel is a good starting point though I'd probably add to it. Previously mentioned in this thread, and inlcuding Holts's work, as well as several of the other suggestions responding to your question.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...

chasil2• 4 years ago

News sources that want to save themselves must alter themselves in this way:

- present multiple extremes

- find the recommended mid ground from their perspective

- show the consequences of extremes

To simply show a single perspective isn't journalism, from my own perspective.

colordrops• 4 years ago

Or just report god damn facts like a wikipedia article. I'm sick of all these opinions being passed off as news these days. If something is an opinion or assessment by the journalist, it should be marked in bold with red flashing letters. Yes facts can be omitted or selectively woven to support a narrative, but that's a different problem, and can be relatively easily detected by cross referencing sources.

tjs8rj• 4 years ago

Save themselves? Isn’t their strategy doing alright business-wise? Your users are passionate and retained when your partisan enough (but not so partisan they can’t trust you).

Republicans view NYT as very biased, but democrats almost entirely believe it’s unbiased and accurate. The NYTs rides the line really well and continues to grow.

On the flip side, both democrats and republicans largely regard Fox News as entertainment news and more biased. They don’t ride the line too well.

jdkee• 4 years ago

Jack Blakin over at Yale law has been writing about this very issue (and proposing solutions) for some time.

See https://lpeproject.org/blog/the-political-economy-of-freedom...

shrubble• 4 years ago

Almost 30 years ago, author Michael Crichton laid out his media criticism in Wired magazine.

It's sad that aside from the dated examples, it rings so true now: https://www.wired.com/1993/04/mediasaurus/

O__________O3• 4 years ago

If you look at the linked page, pretty obvious that the source of the divide is politically driven and largely tied to republican distrust of the media — which goes back Regan destroying objective reporting with deregulation in 1987 and Clinton enabling media monopolies in the 90s:

https://apnews.com/article/business-immigration-deregulation...

stjohnswarts• 4 years ago

It was popularized by fox news. They declare themselves as the only source of "fair and balanced news" and lot of less sophisticated people buy into it because they feed them stories, regardless of the truth behind it, they want to see and rub their opinion all over it instead of just reporting the facts of the story.

dlivingston• 4 years ago

It’s a multivariate problem. I would guess that both you and parent are right, along with half a dozen other major variables.

That’s not to diminish the role that Fox or Reagan has had, but rather, that it’s a much more complex problem.

And, you would be remiss laying it solely on Conservative feet.

rayiner6• 4 years ago

Fox News didn’t even exist until 1996. OP is talking about a decline in trust in institutions that started long before that: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2015/11/23/1-trust-in-g...

99_003• 4 years ago

Then why, as the article states, do "Independents' views are generally closer to Republicans'."

99_003• 4 years ago

What do you mean it is "politically driven". And what does enabling media monopolies have to do with republican distrust of media?

Also, from the article "Independents' views are generally closer to Republicans'". How does that square with "republican distrust of media"?

O__________O3• 4 years ago

[Follow up]

Prior to deregulation, all news organizations were required by law to present both sides of the story fairly — after it, the were not. Without deregulation, Fox as is would not have been legally possible. Policy was explicitly pushed by Regan’s executive team at the FCC and Regan vetoed bill passed by US Congress to over turn it; if that’s not the definition of being politically driven, not sure what is, given Supreme Court had already ruled FCC was allowed to enforce fairness in the media.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine

Without fairness being legally regulated, media will never gain the public’s trust again — which at this point is unlikely because the government has become so corrupted by its own self interest to do so; this includes governments preferring monopolies in industries that relate to national security such as media & telecommunications. Decline in the public’s trust is not a result of fair media not being trustworthy, but of biased media intentionally sowing distrust.

I have repeatedly seen individuals who lean towards biased sources be more biased when presented with fair accounts of news events. On flip side, my experience is that individuals seeking balanced accounts of news events tend to be more fair when accessing the events.

origin_path3• 4 years ago

Such rules don't work. The UK does have such rules still written into law and the BBC's charter but they are simply ignored. The regulators are fully captured and act as enforcers of the chosen agenda, e.g. at the start of lockdowns Ofcom created a new rule that broadcasters weren't allowed to question government health advice!

Fox is not the problem the USA has. Fox is the solution. Would all the people who think news media is untrustworthy be lapping up CNN if Fox didn't exist? Again, other countries provide the answer - no, they wouldn't. They would just assert that all TV news is biased and refuse to watch any at all, whilst simmering in anger at the system that tries to eliminate them from public life.

raggi4• 4 years ago

I think the US needs to regulate "news" vs. "entertainment news" and so on.

I remember speaking to some younger folks recently, and I mentioned journalistic integrity, and they didn't even believe the concept ever exists. I doubt they have ever consumed any significant amount of content produced by professional journalists operating under the stricture of formal editorials and fact checking, but it is still somewhat concerning that they don't even acknowledge its existence.

There's some things to be said in this space:

- Newspapers were never competently replaced, business model wise

- Web ads were never sufficiently constrained to not break web pages

- Ad blockers ultimately started to completely destroy any last chance that ad powered solutions could pay for professional journalism

- Entertainment journalism has a different business model, enabling it to be more readily available, and popular, than formal journalism

- I don't think anyone knows where to go from here

I really dislike the term "media" in these discussions, because it seems to lump "entertainment news" squarely in with formal journalism, and I do not think they're equivalent - moreover it's clear the difference is not well observed anymore, and that's extremely concerning.

nathanaldensr• 4 years ago

I know where to go: away from the internet and back to real life, observing what is around me with my own two eyes and drawing conclusions from that. If I find myself ignorant about a particular topic, I will go study it myself rather than rely on "the experts."

hackerlight2• 4 years ago

That's just a stop-gap solution. We have small bandwidth and can't be expected to figure out the truth on our own for every relevant topic.

That's why it's a travesty that there aren't journalistic outlets that can be reliably counted on to stick up for the truth when that truth happens to be contrary to their political leaning.

giantrobot• 4 years ago

It must be nice to be an omnipath with unlimited time and resources.

raggi4• 4 years ago

There are almost no communities left in the world who do not at least use a manufactured mechanical device to create fire every day, and even the production, sale and distribution of those devices has some significant and politically relevant implications to our world.

I don't think the eyes only world exists anymore. You're absolutely free (I hope) to try to ignore the rest of it, but you'll interact with it regardless.

mqnfred• 4 years ago

Could it be that the younger folks are less inclined to acknowledge the existence of objective truth than older generations?

I could argue that it is orthogonal to integrity seeing as I believe integrity to be about intent and not result.

What cannot be argued however is that this viewpoint definitely casts a shadow on journalism as a profession, even the "serious" journalism.

What always struck me in Chomsky’s lectures are the constant barrage of examples of big, serious publications pushing agendas left and right.

I guess what I am trying to say is that serious is a low bar here, not that much higher than entertainment news.

skissane2• 4 years ago

Could it be that the younger folks are less inclined to acknowledge the existence of objective truth than older generations?

Does anyone really question the existence of objective truth in general? Even those who claim they do, don’t actually act like they do-when it comes to non-controversial factual claims such as “1+1=2” or “Canada is north of the (mainland) United States” or “World War II happened”.

People only really question objective truth when it comes to issues connected to social/political/ideological/ethical/philosophical/etc controversies-on issues distant from those controversies, everyone accepts it in practice.

And I think a lot of people don’t make a careful distinction between the existence of objective truth and our ability to know it. Some people who question the existence of objective truth, what they are really trying to say, is our ability to (confidently) know what is objectively true has been significantly overrated-which is a claim far more worthy of intellectual respect than what they are literally claiming, especially if one restricts the scope of that claim to certain topics.

raggi4• 4 years ago

Could it be that the younger folks are less inclined to acknowledge the existence of objective truth than older generations?

I tried to ask this part in the conversation. It was their belief that no one producing media demonstrates any interest in trying to be objective. They expressed a belief that no individual or organization ever even attempts to do so, that agenda is ever present. This expression seemed to imply that they believe it is possible, but that no "they" can be trusted to attempt do so.

hackerlight2• 4 years ago

What regulations do you have in mind?

raggi4• 4 years ago

At minimum labelling entertainment news clearly as such, and applying some amount of industry standard requirements. There are many bodies working on this, but most ombusman organizations remain in-house. I suspect we can broaden that, such as the Press Complaints Commission.

bandyaboot3• 4 years ago

Speaking of the US, and generally, we have the media and the politics that we deserve. I just laugh at these polls. Yeah, our news media is super low quality, but so is our average citizen.

edit: To clarify, I laugh not because it’s funny, but because all the other more appropriate emotions have long since run out.

borissk2• 4 years ago

That's a slippery slope thinking - if the average citizen is low quality and easy to manipulate why would the bureaucrats and politicians avoid stealing bits and pieces of the common good - leading to corrupted societies like Russia and many/most African countries where no progress is made/can be made.

Obviously the West is not there yet, but if the majority of the elite thinks the masses can't defend their interests and are not worth fighting for, we'll get there.

bandyaboot3• 4 years ago

Yes we will. So far the institutions that have been built up have continued on cruise control avoiding much in the way of large scale or persistent corruption. But, the 4 years of Trump demonstrated that our institutions are currently pretty helpless against brazen corruption. Many millions of our citizens will shrug their shoulders at, or even cheer on corruption so long as their side is winning the all important cultural trolling wars.

ALittleLight• 4 years ago

Perhaps I'm misreading, but are you implying that politicians and bureaucrats in the US aren't currently stealing bits and pieces of the common good? I'd agree that it's not currently as bad as Russia or some African nations, but obviously American politicians are already doing this.

How many senators, congressmen, and presidents have made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars from their "government service"? Why, I can think of a president off the top of my head who used his earlier position heading US anti-corruption in a country to get his son paid millions of dollars by corrupt people in that country.

tayo42• 4 years ago

Nothing to do with politics, I started to lose trust in news when I started coming across more articles on topics that I was actually knowledgeable about and noticed they're misleading, just wrong, or had some bias in it.

If you think about it, does the typical journalist who probably trained in just writing really understand some of these complex topics they write about.

_gabe_3• 4 years ago

If you think about it, does the typical journalist who probably trained in just writing really understand some of these complex topics they write about.

No, but I like to think that journalism is supposed to be about finding the real experts, asking good questions that the general populace would want answered, and judiciously recording and reporting the answers they get. I feel like most of the journalism we get today is more akin to bad interviews, where the interviewer doesn't know when to shut up and let the expert talk haha.

SoftTalker2• 4 years ago

Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

crmd• 4 years ago

Go to nytimes.com right now and search for the string “far-right” and then the string “far-left”, counting the number of times these respective phrases were included in an article in the past year. Then, do the same on foxnews.com. Symmetric opposites.

Even readers with relatively low media literacy understand now that mass media doesn’t just give you curated stories about what is happening, they are also telling you how to feel about what is happening. This has probably always been happening but ordinary Americans are more aware of it now.

They are about as credible as the US Supreme Court which claims to apolitically “call balls and strikes”.

lemmsjid2• 4 years ago

While I find Fox News odious politically, at least the news desks at Fox News and the New York Times are dedicated to factual reporting, even if bias can be found in choice of story or omission. At least both are dedicated to public discourse and a certain regard for verifiable truth. The scariest by far thing to me is the increased movement towards total trust in media bodies that are happy to live in a realm of utter fabrication and appeal to raw paranoia and hatred of other groups.

germinalphrase• 4 years ago

How much of their respective content is “news” versus “editorial”?

throwaway892238• 4 years ago

Is that actually true? Historically? If you go back to the first newspapers, they were basically rags. Throughout history, newspapers have been censored, they've been biased, partisan, used as propaganda. At the turn of the American Revolution they became political weapons. Later the robber barons used them to shape public opinion and punish rivals.

Lately we seem to make a lot of proclamations about how terrible things are, and then we feel bad because we think things are "worse than ever". But usually they aren't as bad as they used to be.

dredmorbius7• 4 years ago

The comparison isn't with Gilded-Age era Yellow Journalism (generally 1890s -- 1910s), but the period of professionalised journalism born from Walter Lippmann's book Public Opinion and dating roughly from the 1920s through about 2010, with a significant decline being noted beginning with the consolidation and financialisation of news in the 1980s.

In reality, there's been a long-term secular decline remarkably constant over decades dating to the 1950s and the end of WWII. That's been punctuated by a number of factors --- the advent of television and television news, mass advertising, cable TV, media consolidation, financialisation, the Internet, neoliberalism, 9/11, the US-Iraq War & War on Terrorism, the 2008-09 global financial crisis (which tanked ad spend), and the rise of the smartphone and mobile social media.

I.F. Stone interviewed on the PBS show Day at Night in 1974 spoke of what he saw as a golden age of American journalism in the 1970s, largely with the reporting on Watergate and the Vietnam War. That's the zenith to which the present situation might be compared.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=qV3gO3zxQ1g

The topic is of course fare more complex. I've compiled a "light reading list" which I'm still working through myself, and need to add to, here:

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/7k7l4m/media_a...

CSMastermind3• 4 years ago

You might want to consider adding Matt Taibbi's Hate Inc.: Why Today’s Media Makes Us Despise One Another to your list. It follows a similar theme to many of the books you have listed and discusses more modern topics like the coverage of the Iraq War and the Trump presidency.

majormajor• 4 years ago

In my dad's view Watergate was itself the first signs of the decline, the press was unfair to Nixon, etc. Don't get him started on the press and Reagan.

There has certainly been a rise in the availability of low-quality crap since then - especially post-Twitter - but I have a pet theory that if people's politics hadn't shifted towards the extremes in a way that caused them to distrust the old mainstream, there would be less interest in the crap. (E.g. Fox News didn't "convert" anyone in that house, it was just a previously-unavailable sort of preaching to the choir that hit a ready audience. Funnily, after a couple decades of it, though, it lost its flavor to them.)

tldr: common view is "lower quality media" -> "partisanship and division" and I don't know how we'd be confident in that vs "partisanship and division" -> "more demand for low quality media."

towaway154633• 4 years ago

For those ignorant of history every day is an incomprehensible shock, for those well versed in it a reminder that human nature never changes.

SoftTalker2• 4 years ago

Very pithy. Is that yours or are you quoting someone?

wolverine8769• 4 years ago

For those ignorant of history every day is an incomprehensible shock, for those well versed in it a reminder that human nature never changes.

That's a popular claim - just like the claims against journalism - but also historically ignorant. Human biology hasn't changed in ~200K years, but human nature has changed dramatically. It took 190K years to discover agriculture and 195K years to discover writing, and look what happened since then! Look at our natures compared with humans 200, 500, 1K, 10K, 100K years ago: We're democratic, free, incredibly prosperous and safe and peaceful, etc. etc.

dilan-dio43• 4 years ago

Completely true. When compared to the history of the US, most Americans operate with the perspective of a gold fish trying to remember the Fibonacci sequence.

Things are far from "worse than ever": https://nypost.com/2018/03/03/9-charts-that-prove-theres-nev...

hinkley• 4 years ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism is a term used to vilify Hearst and Pulitzer. The highest prize in journalism is still named after one of the canonically worst actors in journalistic integrity.

Everyone who was alive then is now dead, so of course we are having to relive that era.

randomtwiddler• 4 years ago

The notable difference is that historically the ownership of the outlets was widely varied.

Now it is consolidated under the control of very few.

That doesn't seem like a positive change to me.

rufus_foreman2• 4 years ago

Given that we think of someone like John D. Rockefeller as a robber baron due in part to journalists like Ida Tarbell, it seems like the newspapers were being used to shape public opinion of people like Rockefeller rather than the other way around.

uejfiweun• 4 years ago

This was inevitable.

News used to serve a very necessary purpose. People simply didn't get much information and the news was a very necessary way to learn what was happening in the world around you. But times change. Now we live in the information age. People are constantly bombarded by information, so much that they can't even process it, myself included. The news media simply had no hope.

So they executed a strategy that absolutely succeeded in the short term: reporting to induce mass hysteria. Covid is the worst pandemic ever, Trump destroyed the entire country, the US is a fundamentally racist and awful country that must die, etc. As I said, they succeeded in the short term to boost revenues, but the truth is that it was all mostly bullshit. And this strategy could only work once. Most things the news reports are just idiotic bullshit or opinions of people who don't matter, and people en masse are recognizing this.

So yeah, I think this was inevitable. In the words of CBS president Les Moonves, the whole shift was "bad for the country, good for [CBS's] business". I definitely agree that the modern clickbait news is bad for the country, and I am not a shareholder of CBS, so I personally celebrate the collapse of trust in news and can't wait for it to completely die and for the new grassroots era of information to take hold (but I do dread the impact of deepfakes and the like).

jakogut4• 4 years ago

We see similar approaches with social media. Fear and anger drive engagement, and engagement creates more ad revenue. I point this out whenever anybody expresses outrage to me over something they read off social media.

themitigating11• 4 years ago

Why would grassroots journalism be more trustworthy? More people with no oversight or consequences?

The amount of money spent on some research stories is tremendous how will grass roots journalists be able to do that

The news was the only thing capable of pointing out corruption in business and politics. It was perfect, it didn't always work, sometimes they lied, and many had an agenda. Now it isn't trusted. Guss who will benefit.

MBCook2• 4 years ago

Between one party practically running on the media being evil, the news covering every little thing no matter how stupid as a big event to keep up ratings, and barely doing any journalism (just showing press conference soundbites as fact) I’m not too surprised.

themitigating11• 4 years ago

Which party?

peyton2• 4 years ago

The one amplifying (misinformation|fake news), of course ;)

MBCook2• 4 years ago

You have got to be kidding.

marssaxman• 4 years ago

the "single most important factor" in media distrust was "the horrible coverage" in the run-up to the Iraq war and "the disastrous media coverage in the years after 9/11,"

This is certainly true of my own experience. I am surprised to see it being pointed out so plainly in what appears to be a relatively mainstream sort of news outlet.

AlexandrB• 4 years ago

There was also zero consequences for both the horrible coverage and the lies. We have people like David "axis of evil" Frum holding prestigious positions at media companies. He should be pumping gas or flipping burgers somewhere.

debacle• 4 years ago

There were extreme consequences, but during the Obama era the government stepped in and started spending a lot of money propping up the news industry.

harry-wood• 4 years ago

I didn't understand that bit to be honest. Maybe because I'm from the UK. Why was the media coverage in the years after 9/11 disastrous?

flycaliguy• 4 years ago

Perhaps the way the war in Afghanistan was drummed up.

xeromal• 4 years ago

I'm no expert but the news was a big part of causing American fervor when we started wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were united in a very unique way after the attacks and the news took advantage of that to drum up war support. We went to war with Iraq that literally had nothing to do with it. Wild when you think about it. I was young at the time and even I was calling for their country to be nuked. News 24/7 talking about the invasions.

karaterobot• 4 years ago

I was in college then, and remember thinking that there was a disturbing disconnect between what the news was reporting and what any third party sources were able to verify. The "yellow cake uranium" canard in particular, but anything related to the war on terror. And this was not Fox News, this was my college town's left-leaning NPR station.

munificent• 4 years ago

Basically all of the major news companies took the Bush administration at face value and parroted whatever they were told to say in order to sell the US on attacking Iraq. Then shortly afterwards, it came out that Bush, Cheney, and co. had completely lied to the American people and fabricated a false justification for an unnecessary war that ended up killing thousands of innocent civilians burning trillions of dollars.

rufus_foreman2• 4 years ago

The media consistently favored pro-war sources and ignored anti-war sources during the run up to the Iraq war. Publicly holding an anti-war opinion was a dangerous career move in the media at that time.

Journalists like Judith Miller of the New York Times were accused of being "stenographers" who reported whatever they were told by sources in the government without doing any independent verification, with many of the claims they reported later being shown to be false. They would report on things like Colin Powell's testimony to the UN on Iraq rather uncritically, when Colin Powell's own privately stated opinion of the draft of his speech was, "This is bullshit".

The effect of this was that the US public was misinformed about the role of Iraq in terrorism and the 9/11 attacks, as shown by surveys where a majority of the public would get the facts wrong about basic questions surrounding Iraq and 9/11, and both the public and politicians supported the war more than they would have if there was a more balanced debate in the media.

The argument is, basically, "If the US public knew the truth, they wouldn't have approved of going to war". Which of course is the case in most wars the US gets in - the role of the US media in the run up to a war is to make sure the public doesn't know the truth.

Clubber• 4 years ago

Here's a related video I watched last night (not mine). Kinda goes over the historical events that changed what journalism is. Money and McCarthy era backlash are a couple big ones.

  Why News Used To Have Less Bias
  Exploring the claim that American news in the 50's and 60's was unbiased.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgZPJpdmw3A

caramelcustard2• 4 years ago

Journalism as both an industry and an institution is going through a global "subculture" phase: from the arrogance of "you can't sit with us" attitude of ideologically driven media to those who follow neutrality for the sake of neutrality to please every audience possible.

themitigating11• 4 years ago

Do you evidence of this?

FpUser• 4 years ago

My impression of modern news is that there is virtually no journalism and it is mostly low quality propaganda.

ekianjo3• 4 years ago

The standards used by traditional media outlets — like fact-checking, bylines, datelines, and corrections — have not been fully-adopted by online news commentators on blogs, podcasts and social media.

amusing comment, since so-called "fact checking" is just pure horse-shit mechanism to call something disinformation by using some fake experts that are in your pockets.

alfor3• 4 years ago

The mass media is very left leaning and getting worse.

They used to control the narrative, not so much anymore.

They are in a spiral of death: lower revenu, more clickbait titles, less trust, more clickbait until there is nothing left of substance.

The conservatives could feel how much media was perverted a few year ago, now it getting clear for people close to the center.

themitigating11• 4 years ago

Election fraud accusations were reported on constantly without any evidence by right wing media.

This is from a ruling in the case against foxnews that they tried to have dismissed: “Even assuming that Fox News did not intentionally allow this false narrative to be broadcasted, there is a substantial basis for plaintiffs’ claim that, at a minimum, Fox News turned a blind eye to a litany of outrageous claims about plaintiffs, unprecedented in the history of American elections, so inherently improbable that it evinced a reckless disregard for the truth,” Cohen wrote in his decision.

Just a note, this is not a judgment just a finding that the case can proceed

alfor3• 4 years ago

How many report have you see to discredit the same idea. My guess is that it’s probably 10 to 1.

How many false accusation have you seen against Trump? It was a constant barrage of attack. Even humorists where no longer funny by hitting Trump so many times it got boring.

Anyway, you are free to believe that the media is unbiased.

he00012• 4 years ago

How is media left leaning according to you? How does it manifest?

alfor3• 4 years ago

Vilification of most people on the right or just against the extreme of the left.

I saw this with the way they treated Dr Peterson, they attacked him and tried to discredit him before trying to understand.

I think it is mostly a question of temperament: people who are more open and creative are more on the left. Those go to work in media, big internet company and filmmaking and get a huge megaphone.

This can’t go on forever, it create a huge dissatisfaction and warranted distrust for those companies.

borissk2• 4 years ago

It's just human nature.

Look at Windows Update. It's a great feature, makes the OS many times more secure - potentially can patch 0-day exploits almost instantly. But Microsoft cannot use it just for customers good, they have to abuse the feature and use it to push advertisement, push more telemetry (aka snooping), push unwanted OS version updates, push unwanted option changes (oops, Edge is now the default browser). They fear that if they use Windows Update just for customer's good they are leaving money on the table and they hope the majority won't notice/understand the abuse.

Same thing with mass media. It's a great feature of modern society and technology - a key element in any modern country (both liberal and unfortunately totalitarian - like Russia and China). But the owners cannot use it just for the society good - they fear they are leaving money on the table (and leaving money on the table means you're an easy target for take over) and they hope the majority won't understand the media is being abused (but as the article states the majority now does understand mass media is being abused and is not trustworthy).

LAC-Tech• 4 years ago

Public trust in government has also declined rapidly.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/06/06/public-trust...

I am doubtful whether this loss in legitimacy can be recovered.

onphonenow• 4 years ago

I’m one of those rule follower types. Worked in govt for a while. Long time democrat “big govt” voter.

If I’m losing faith it’s got to be a bad sign I think. So I believe these stats. I never thought govt was great, but very often “good enough”.

Then we got cdc blocking Covid testing, Biden doing his big EV summit without Tesla and going on about GM being the one changing things, the space launch system boondoggle, just makes it hard to trust govt will spend money wisely

peterweyand02• 4 years ago

Trust in journalism, television and the news has never been lower, especially among Republicans and independents. And now for the good news -

"And distrust in traditional institutions could force them to reckon with institutional problems, like a lack of diversity."

I don't even know what to say, I'm shocked by the complete lack of self introspection.

Even three lines up we have -

"Data and experts suggest the public struggles to distinguish fact-based journalism from opinion content online."

So I guess a gay black man would be able to somehow report facts better? The entire article is baffling.

sbf501• 4 years ago

I think you missed the point: How many gay black men own news institutions, or run them?

peterweyand02• 4 years ago

When someone says "an institution needs more diversity" they mean that given two people for any job in the industry the minority should be chosen for diversities sake. They want women, homosexuals, and ethnic minorities and religious minorities to be more qualified for available jobs for the sake of being rarer, as opposed to true equality. It's nonsense. And I say this as a weird person - me being weird shouldn't make me more qualified for any job in which my weirdness is orthogonal - nor should any non-job related uniqueness qualify anyone else.

There are too few (good) jobs and too many qualified people, so it's a kind of gatekeeping. College is similar for the most part, but they do you the favor of teaching you something (while fleecing you at the same time, but that's another issue).

TMWNN2• 4 years ago

"And distrust in traditional institutions could force them to reckon with institutional problems, like a lack of diversity."
I don't even know what to say, I'm shocked by the complete lack of self introspection.

My "favorite" example of this, from CNN before COVID19 became a worldwide problem: "Coronavirus task force another example of Trump administration's lack of diversity" <https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/30/politics/donald-trump-coronav...>

akomtu• 4 years ago

So, let's take a look at the Axios' front page that fits 20 headlines:

4 headlines are about Musk and Twitter, as if this event has any importance to our lives. In any case, there is no need to rehash the same thing four times.

4 headlines are about abortion. Yeah, we know what's happened, you've told us ten times this already. It seems they just need to fill space with something.

2 talk about the Japan's Abe. As if they didn't talk about him yesterday.

Then there's a bunch of cheap space-fillers like "The summer of subvariants" and "Handshakes are back". Trying to resuscitate the corpse of covid. These are budget click baits: mouse traps without the bait. GPT-3 would do a better job.

The style of most content there is a mix of fearmongering, opinion forming, omission of details, and so on. Needless to say, they never ever report the opposite side of things: readers might start thinking, forming their own opinions and we don't want any of that.

Where are the actual news, Axios?

dilan-dio43• 4 years ago

This may not be horrible thing if merely applied news from TV/social media, as most of that is pure garbage from both sides.

The problem is that news that isn't sensationalized and hyperbolic is so dry that it will never be palatable by the average news consumer. There's a couple out there that manage to ride the thin line of both objective and entertaining like The Intercept, AP, Quillete.

unity10013• 4 years ago

This was caused by the consolidation of the press by a handful of corporations (at the moment 4-5 i believe) after the regulations that prevented that from happening were removed. The number of 4-5 also paints a false picture: Those 'different' corporations would have shared owners and large investment funds among them, so basically all press is consolidated among a handful of extremely rich men at this point.

There was absolutely no reason why such people would not buy out all news and use it as a tool to propagate their own private interests when those regulations were removed. Especially by using them to push their public agenda to boost their business interest and different corporations' stock prices. Just like how it was in late 19th century with the Robber Barons.

And don't even start looking at its effect on the elections - that's a bigger cesspit than what you can imagine.

mc322• 4 years ago

The news is not only shaped by news "organs" but also shaped these days by journalists themselves with their own interests and agendas whereas before they had an editor to dampen some of that personal stuff.

But now we have journalists lying in the face of facts or ignoring strong counterarguments.

In other words they have more or less all have their personal slant and push it to the fore without much restraint. There is little nuance. And by god, do they copy pasta talking points. Today Shinzo Abe out of the blue acquired the adjective "divisive".

vkou• 4 years ago

whereas before they had an editor to dampen some of that personal stuff.

Or alternatively, before they had an editor to set that set of interests and agendas.

unity10013• 4 years ago

I very much think that all of those 'journalists' always magically agree with the majority shareholders of the organization who pay their paycheck.

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/five-reason...

"All Murdoch editors, what they do is this: they go on a journey where they end up agreeing with everything Rupert says but you don't admit to yourself that you're being influenced. Most Murdoch editors wake up in the morning, switch on the radio, hear that something has happened and think: what would Rupert think about this? It's like a mantra inside your head, it's like a prism. You look at the world through Rupert's eyes."

...

It would not be different in any other corporate media outlet. Only maybe more subtle.

brokenkebab2• 4 years ago

This explanation cannot stand history check. When broadcasting worked over radiowaves, and press required literal printing presses, the entry barrier to become a medium was several levels of magnitude higher then it is today, and consequently grip of corporate power was stronger. One may say this is why public had better opinion about media - because it was a closed club, or a caste if you like, and media's dirty laundry very rarely had a chance to appear before everyone's eyes. Not because media were better, but because consolidation let them sit on their pedestals unchallenged. And btw we should stop pretending that growing audience cautiousness towards mass media is some kind of problem.

origin_path3• 4 years ago

Yes. Twitter is destroying classical media. Journalists claim to be neutral observers of reality, and when the only source of information you had about them was their short TV reports or newspaper articles, there was no other basis on which to disagree. People might have suspected some stories didn't get reported, or they might have occasionally read a story about something they knew a lot about and realized it was biased, but there was no solid way to prove bias.

But now for years they have all been on Twitter and it is suddenly plain to see. Freed from the rules and conventions of their professional medium, they spot nonsense on Twitter and show just how poor their understand truly is. The illusion of impartiality is impossible to sustain like this, which is why the BBC has tried restricting journalists from Twitter, but it's just impossible. They can't stay away, and their credibility declines with every tweet they make.

unity10013• 4 years ago

Not at all. Then, and even until late 1970s, regulations prevented corporations from buying up local small media. Any local group could have their own radio, leave aside their own tv until 1970s. Now that the regulations have been removed, all of them have been bought up. So much that when the network owner starts running a story, the same story is run with the exact same script in all state, local networks.

https://www.npr.org/2018/04/02/598916366/sinclair-broadcast-...

ZeroGravitas2• 4 years ago

This seems to be soft-selling this, they conspired to achieve this aim:

https://www.journalism.co.uk/news/rupert-murdoch-thatcher-me...

hadlock• 4 years ago

Was really impressed in the drop-off in covid news. Covid continues on at the same rate as before, is getting zero coverage, zero challenge to the CDC/WHO on giving a formal name to the "omicron" BA.4 and BA.5 variants despite so desperately needing to. The whole "it's mild" and then, well, neutralizing as many people before omicron as after, in two or three months, was an impressive anti-panic play, I'm not sure what else you could call that. Russia is sweeping through Ukraine at an impressive rate, but you wouldn't know that reading the headlines. Conservative media is telling one story, but the left is ignoring a lot of headlines as well.

mensetmanusman• 4 years ago

The US is a $20 trillion economy. Russia is sweeping through Ukraine at an impressively slow rate considering how little we are supporting them relative to the size of our economy.

midislack• 4 years ago

"Orange man bad" killed it, it just became farcical. Nobody will ever, EVER take the media seriously ever again. I blame the deep state, which the media went from claiming didn't exist, to praising for helping to defeat Trump.

It's cool, fully half the country is no longer tuning in and prefers to get their information from more reliable sources like Alex Jones. CIA fucked up SUPER hard and people aren't going back onto the farm's pastures, ever again. Can't take it back, can't fix it. Only thing that could help is honest reportage from a neutral perspective, and let's face it this will never ever ever happen.

It's the end of an era. And America will become more healthy and diverse because the media failed so badly. Fifth estate became the fourth column decades ago, but people finally noticed once it became just farcical.

99_003• 4 years ago

Because the news is not credible. It's biased, misleading and deceptive.

It favours the Democratic party. Of course many Democrats see bias in their favour as being simply reporting the truth.

This stat says it all:

Just 5% of Republicans said they had "a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" in newspapers, compared to 35% of Democrats.

Only 8% of Republicans said they had "a great deal or quite a lot of confidence" in TV news, compared to 20% of Democrats.

*Independents' views are generally closer to Republicans'.*

wolverine8769• 4 years ago

It has zero to do with newspapers (news websites?) and TV news. It's a radical revolution that is reaching a new peak - it's very hot to join the movement and disparage the institutions. It's power, to destroy, when the other option is to feel powerlessness; it's a mob that has completely swept up a large segment of the population and they are sweeping away much of the good and productive in society. People are so deep in it that they can't discuss it or even name it ...

I don’t know who discovered water but I’m sure it wasn’t a fish.

(Seriously: very likely you know what I'm talking about, but what is it called? We haven't even named it, we are so paralyzed.).

The critical question to ask, of any radical revolution, is 'who benefits'? It's almost never the people caught up in it; they are usually manipulated or used or simply discarded by someone else who acts opportunistically. And the nihilism of this revolution ensures they will not benefit. How much damage will be done? How many generations will it take to rebuild? 1,000 years, like after the fall of Rome? I'm sure Romans thought that was impossible too, until the very last moment.

mikewarot2• 4 years ago

Social media is fracking societal bonds for profit. It's not some evil conspiracy, just an alignment of incentives. We're in the timeline where SkyNet didn't send back a T-1000, they sent back Mark Zuckerberg and the like.

::: THIS ::: Is the AI apocalypse. We'll figure it all out, and route around the damage, I hope.

wolverine8769• 4 years ago

The same people benefit every time (the reactionaries). It's hard to believe that is coincidence.

rexpop2• 4 years ago

disparage the institutions

Can't we just call it post-structuralism or post-modernism?

wolverine8769• 4 years ago

It's not post-modernism; it's a rejection of post-modernism. Most importantly, the new movement-that-shall-not-be-named embraces and worships power, in themselves and others. Perhaps the most essential foundation of post-modernism is that power is a curse and danger.

strogonoff• 4 years ago

With depressing regularity I encounter people from democratic countries denounce not just journalism and institutions but the fundamental system of government, calling for an overthrow (not another election, because they think elections are rigged).

Cynicism so extreme it crosses into naivety.

While I can see who may be benefitting from it, I suspect a significant part of it is people moving up the Maslow’s hierarchy combined with deep-seated mental issues (some likely left over/inherited from much more financially insecure times).

mikewarot2• 4 years ago

The model of journalism en vogue consists of telling stories that are depressing AND tell the user the problem is too big to fix, and thus absolving them of blame.

It's hard not to end up nihilistic and hopeless in a world filled with those stories.

The route around it is to ignore those institutions that have failed us, and build our own networks. HN is one of those networks. Pay attention to what people tell you, and if it turns out to be right or not in the long run. That's what I do.

lifeencoder• 4 years ago

Newspaper of the 21st Century https://nsource.news

TwoNineFive• 4 years ago

The NEWS media has nobody but themselves to blame. My most recent favorite thing to despise is how often they use "blast" and "slam" and other hyperbolic wordage in headlines.

t0bia_s• 4 years ago

Really?

Well... This could be trusted or not. It is just on our decision if we trust in information that is given to us or not. Or why even bother in first place if most of the news are actually irelevant for me?

beloch• 4 years ago

This article ends on a couple of pretty bizarre points.

Politico founding editor and editorial chairman John Harris reminded Smith on stage that "in the old days," a handful of people at a small number of outlets had all the agenda-setting power and they "would’ve all been white men."

Diversity in the newsroom eroded trust!?

"All of us have biases and that maybe true objectivity is, what does your newsroom look like? How diverse is it?" said Al Jazeera English host Femi Oke at the event.

Al Jazeera is Qatar's state-funded news agency. It's not the diversity of their newsroom, which probably isn't any higher than average, that matters but the topic that determines how much you can trust them. The language of coverage also apparently matters, since their Arabic coverage often has a significantly different slant than their English language coverage.

-------------

I probably put more trust in traditional media than average, but that trust has definitely declined. This is for a few reasons not really covered in the article.

Practically all but one or two newspapers in my country are owned by the same corporation. They target different demographics with different papers, but show a remarkable unity on topics that the owners have an interest in. Consolidation of media into a smaller number of wealthy, corporate hands has undeniably introduced significant bias, but it's gotten harder to identify that bias as the diversity of news publications has decreased. We are no longer presented with multiple independent viewpoints on a given event. Rather, we get multiple columnists from the same media conglomerate under the same editorial pressure.

The internet has also played a role by making the monetization of news more difficult, and the typical corporate response when revenue drops is to cut costs. Why fund a bunch of war-zone reporters to get different views of a conflict when you can fill the same amount of air-time for a fraction of the cost with a bunch of pundits arguing with each other? This is cheaper, but also produces far less reliable information about the conflict.

Bottom line, we need to find a way increase the diversity of ownership of news sources and also find a way to fund quality journalism.

I still do appreciate traditional media because, if you're aware of their ownership biases, you at least know what you're dealing with. Alternative and social media are often much harder to vet.

forinti• 4 years ago

The quality of news generally is just awful. You could pick a newspaper from any day of the year and you'll have the same articles: crime, soccer, some hardly disguised ad for a new movie, etc.

There's no reason to read it.

TV news is also highly ritualistic. Why do they mention the stock exchanges every day? It's not really information, and those who care about it already know.

ZeroGravitas2• 4 years ago

This feels a bit like polling people's belief in gods plural, or holy people/organisations.

In many ways, it could be mapping knowledge that there is more than one opinion on the matter. Which could be interpreted positively (once you know there is more than one perspective you might evaluate them all more objectively) or it might reflect people doubling down on denouncing the other people's gods, or a mix of the two.

Without any context on who has faith in what sources it seems somewhat useless. Particularly as "mainstream" media seems particularly slippery to define.

"Do you believe in superstitions?" Is going to give weird answers if a more secular voting group is also aware that their particular religion is a superstition vs "No, I don't believe in any superstitions, I'm a Baptist".

egberts1• 4 years ago

Crushing consolidation of news, newspaper, magazines, and media in both printed and digital form are the cause of distrustfulness when “narratives” are being crafted by and in the hand of fewer but more-consolidated owners.

This is called “mainstream media”.

Budding writers of mainstream media are then forced to craft a disingenuous storyline to befit their masters.

This is called a “narrative”.

Unless they can secure their own wage and seek out the truth to the bottom of a story, they are called “muckrakers” and they would be practicing “yellow journalism”.

And this current situation is not healthy for a freedom of press needed to maintain a robust form of democracy, pure (simple) ot not (Republic).

For now, your local bar and neighbor shall remain closest to the kernel of truth.

throwaway8689• 4 years ago

On the occasions when I have been close to a newsworthy event, I have seen/read the reports afterwards and found them quite different from my own knowledge - so I haven't had much trust in the news in a long time.

wdr1• 4 years ago

The litmus test I often apply is: Do I feel more informed on the topic, such that I understand different POVs & can make up my own mind? Or am I being pushed a narrative?

There are some exceptions, but most media fails.

I don't want a news source to tell me how to think. Or even to validate my thinking. If anything, I want to understand why I might be wrong & other ways to look at a topic.

ninefathom• 4 years ago

While this is certainly believable, I think it's merely a symptom of a larger cultural shift towards sensationalism. Rephrased, I think that large swathes of the human population have been conditioned over the last couple of decades to perceive "fact" as "dull."

Some might frame this as a chicken-and-egg issue: did the media outlets feed our instinctive bias towards flashy-shiny-blinky-zoomy, or did our natural bias pull the media outlets in that direction? At the end of the day, however, it seems likely that it was probably both; the addiction demands ever-increasing dosage and so on.

The better question, to me, is this: do we, as individuals, have an ethical or moral responsibility to condition ourselves to be more appreciative of bland fact, for the sake of the species as a whole? Are cold, boring facts like broccoli for our brains?

Trust in newspapers and television news collapses to historic low

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