Submitted by thenewsisreal t3_z5pfxb in Documentaries
Reply to comment by TK421sSupervisor in Fit to Print (2017) - Documentary that tells the history of how Wall Street greed and lack of foresight lead to the decimation of the newspaper industry and tens of thousands reporters losing their jobs and the eventual erosion of a vital way to hold power accountable. [01:33:47] by thenewsisreal
For sure. Journalism is dead.The state, together with big corporations dictate what is truth now. No room for any critical sound in the media anymore.
It’s not dead, but it has been resting. It will come back in a new, and better form.
CNN was founded in 1980. That’s less than 50 years ago. There are plenty of opportunities to build new information networks.
We’re simply in a transition period.
The problem is that news media were relatively well funded organisations from the days of printed news media and later tv. They had muscle, so they could withstand legal repercussions from corporations or even countries who tried to silence them through lawsuits.
There are still plenty of good journalists around, and many have find ways to make a career through the internet in various ways, but if they don't have a resourceful organisation watching their back, they are much more vulnerable to being silenced or suppressed by rich and powerful entities.
Agreed. Which is why I keep advocating for more corporate regulations, consumer protections and modern Ranked Choice / STAR voting methods.
Improving our tools for democracy and reducing the power of the two party system is one of the biggest priorities I can think of.
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I hope so. There are some fantastic independent news channels in my country which I feel provide unbiased news. But corporate sponsored media, even CNN, are heavily pushing an agenda which has become very obvious since corona happened.
"even CNN". With the exception of Fox, CNN is probably the worst offender when it comes to pushing an agenda.
Yes! That’s what I would say, more than anything else, try to support independent news sources.
In the age of information (AKA unregulated digital advertising) there is clearly an agenda to sell everything. Or nothing at all, in the example of climate change and how we can hold corporations accountable for the amount of waste and pollution they produce.
The idea of pushing the responsibility onto consumers when the corporations have done everything to erode the power (choice) of the consumers is at a tipping point. People are waking up, and they’re getting fed up with the hypocrisy.
At least I know I am.
The problem with this line of thinking is that it leans on the 'things will always get better' mantra.
This is my personal experience with that: I am 62 years old now, twenty years old when Reagan was elected. Prior to that there was much hope and promise with 'work hard and you will get ahead', 'Year by year your income will increase, you will go from renting an apartment to owning a home', 'there is always a better job around the corner', etc. etc.
Then Reagan came in and killed the 'Fairness Doctrine'
https://www.mtsu.edu/first-amendment/article/955/fairness-doctrine
Then FOX news became a thing, and it's been downhill ever since. Americans still believe they have a television (or print media) that mostly tells the truth, yet that hasn't been the case for many years now.
So on one side you have people that dig deep to find the truth, recognize propaganda when they see it, take the time to do fact checking to make sure their news sources are consistently telling the truth. etc. etc.
So while those who dig deep see a constant degradation in quality of living, wages, costs of living, education and health care the majority of Americans live in a bubble of misinformation, although more and more of them are beginning to question what is told in the news media vs. their own personal experiences with family, friends, co-workers.
I have been waiting for 'things to get better' since Reagan occupied the office. It has steadily gone hill ever since then with no reversal of course, and in some cases making sudden lurches into worse conditions than I had thought imaginable.
Lulling oneself into a false sense of security helps no one. Taking the time to become aware of how dangerous does more harm than good, best to rip off the bandaid, learn to seperate truth from fiction and figure out how you are going to react to the reality of where we are, whether that's to become more involved with local or national politics or start making plans to expatriate to another country with better standards of living, income, health care and education.
I absolutely agree. The fairness doctrine needs to be modernized and applied to all digital communication not just broadcast communications.
We need data privacy, portability and interoperability regulations. Corporations do not get to control markets and access to information and yet that’s what we’ve allowed in so many digital examples.
Antitrust laws are woefully outdated.
I am not lulling anyone into a false sense of security or complacency with hope.
One way I believe we can make significant change is by continuing to support and expand Ranked Choice or STAR voting methods. It’s one way to reduce the power of the two party system and reduce the influence of money in politics by dividing their resources among more qualified candidates. I also think it’ll help reduce the “polling noise” that is pretty outdated and out of touch.
Are there? Look at twitter, let's say you're-
pro Musk-it takes a billionaire to buy a platform and "free" it from distortion out of the goodness of his heart.
Anti Musk- any billionaire can buy any media company and distort it to his and other billionaires interests.
In either situation, the prospect of a free and critical media is fucked.
History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.
There was a time not too long ago where news was all local. And while I don’t disagree with you on the disparity of power with big media conglomerates, the barriers to entry for self publication and self distribution has never been lower.
> It’s not dead, but it has been resting.
Naw, it's dead. When I visited the U.K. in the 1990's, I was struck at how different and politicized their mainstream news was compared to the United States. I was grateful for the objectivity we had in most American news outlets by comparison. Then, all of that started to change around 9/11 and the Bush years...and any objectivity completely went away during the Trump years. Now, our news media is far worse than what I remember about the U.K. 30 years ago. Journalism in England never got better, and I don't expect it to get better in the U.S. now either.
US media outlets have been owned by the 1% for quite some time, although most of the propaganda was through "news" fed to stations by the gov't. Now it's Sinclair, Murdoch, Ailes, etc.
One of my relatives is an ivy-educated journalism teacher, and often asks his class to consider both sides of news stories, but he's still pro-Trump and buys into a lot of the related bullshit. I'm floored that he's apparently unaware of the history of Fox, and the control of people like Murdoch.
It actually began back in the Regan administration with the repeal of the fairness doctrine.
The U.S. needs to modernize the fairness doctrine and make sure it gets applied to all digital “news” communication platforms, not just broadcast news.
Additionally, please support Ranked Choice and/or STAR voting methods. It’s one of the few ways we can begin reducing the power (dysfunction) of the two party system and reduce money in politics by dividing their resources across multiple qualified candidates.
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