"the choice to cover a story and what parts of the story to cover are always going to be a reflection of values."

This was always the highest power of the press. In the recent past, the choice to ignore a story, if agreed to by 3 or 4 press entities, meant the story was relatively "secret". The difference now is with the democratization of information.
So now people have a comparison with which to judge the choices made by any given dissemination, and to apply their own value system to the relative importance of any fact or story, and to judge other value systems in that realm.

Is this improvement or anarchy? Will this be permitted to continue?

I mean it's never going backwards, but it is also anarchy to a large extent until social media companies make stricter rules but then people leave for the next new one where they can say anything they want with reckless abandon be it true or nowhere near it.

Gate-keeping served a purpose once upon a time, but it's gone now. People can still choose to look for credible press and they are out there, but it takes time and usually a subscription charge when all the lies and misinformation you can ever want is out there for free in seconds because it's all made up and a real news piece takes time and effort to be sure it is correct and accurate and fair.

What purpose did gatekeeping serve?

No such thing

Oh, trust in news media is long gone.

I believe that one of the biggest challenges\causes in regards to news bias is how news is made profitable compared to the past. Different demographics want different news sources because of their own internal viewpoints. Advertisers sponsor news agendas for their demographics targets. Watch the types of commercials and brands from Fox news vs MSNBC. They are different audiences, both politically, and what they buy.

Unfortunately due to money and people wanting news that confirms their existing biases it is difficult to get "fair" reporting. I don't think news has ever been fair and bias free in the past, but it appears be be getting worse, and thus public trust is dropping in news truth.

It would be nice if journalists could still be fairly paid, but we could get rid of all advertising associated with news specifically. I don't think that there is any realistic way to do this however without radical government overreach that I would personally disagree with.

Article is pretty bad. "Look: they changed the title of an article. Here are some polls."

Media treating bullshit coming from "conservatives" as reasonable is why we're in this mess to begin with. Amp up the liberal bias, I say.

I'm assuming this person is referring to journalistic standards. Newspapers didn't just let anyone write articles they had to be written by someone with a degree in journalism or something similar and then reviewed by an editor. In theory if the news organization posts something wrong their reputation was at risk, which hopefully would provide incentive to not post false information. This whole process sending actual people out to the scene conducting interviews collecting information is very expensive. Whereas someone just providing their own 2 cents on any given news event does not cost anything beyond the time it takes for the individual writer to write it. The high start up costs of starting a newspaper company even back in their heyday prevented just anyone from being able to run their own newspapers, Although there were definitely were some newspapers that were far less reputable, often refered to as a "rag".

I'll take "extinct notions of once-great institutions" for $1000, Alex

EDIT for elaboration: Simply put, the rise of "activist" journalism has entirely done away with any notion of objective reporting.

Granted, journalism to some degree has always had an activist bent to it, but now it's just blatant to the point where they're not even trying to hide it anymore.

VICE is really bad about this. They finance some of their more decent pieces with countless amounts of misinformed and frankly, venom-laced garbage clickbait. Most of their recent shit too has had way too large of a "oh this poor criminal" bent.

There's nothing most of these activist journalists hate more than the common working person, all the while having the gall to claim they're on your side.

They're in no one's corner but their own.

Absolutely surreal

Transparency? Possibly in small amounts but overall unlikely.

Trust? That ship has sailed and is 1000 miles out to sea.

I don’t even watch the news anymore, absolutely nothing useful in there.

It's interesting that conservative media being caught(repeatedly) lying for political gain has somehow translated into all news media being perceived as unreliable.

yeah its one arm of the machine that is wrong

--CNN has entered the chat--

Which was the intention from the beginning

You’re half right - they were the ones caught repeatedly lying but they were also the most successful pulling in the biggest audiences. This leads to their competitors trying to mirror what they do (queue CNN trying to be the Fox News but for liberals).

The problem is the model worked and then others copy it.

You have to imagine in the past before resource scarcity and with high standards in humanities education - that there was more "honor" throughout society, including the editors of information. Gatekeepers now are as craven as any youtuber in mom's basement, just different chains of command.

If the audience or readers can find the strength to be more discerning and take responsibility for choosing their information, I'd say let it ALL flow.

CNN isn't as bad as Fox News, but just barely.

It's still fear mongering and mind numbing stupidity that teaches its audience to be tribal and simple minded.

There's tons of trust in specific sources, most of which is built on confirmation bias

just ignoring times 'left' media has lied for political gain? (what fucking left, whining about minorities and the environment is not 'left' if you also support corporations, private wealth and tax cuts).

all news is unreliable and virtually all of it is owned buy billionaires (media owned by 3 people is about as trustworthy as Chinese state media)

> It's interesting that conservative media being caught(repeatedly) lying for political gain has somehow translated into all news media being perceived as unreliable.

It hasn't. Non-conservative media is perceived as unreliable by conservatives because it doesn't reflect their perception of the world.

> all news is unreliable and virtually all of it is owned buy billionaires (media owned by 3 people is about as trustworthy as Chinese state media)

yes, including all the news people insist is "authentic" and "truthful", such as all the internet randos with millions of followers and sponsorships that somehow are seen as more "trustworthy" than actual for real journalists despite having literally no discernable business ethics, and their sources and methods being even less transparent

> Is this improvement or anarchy?

Neither. The same economic laws that govern mainstream journalism also cover "private" journalism, only with fewer restrictions because with fewer production costs, they don't need to appeal to a widespread mass audience, and can instead focus on political niches that are more loyal and less prone to seek out differing accounts of events

[deleted]

I only trust randos on the Internet whose ramblings reflect my own biases to a T. It's the only way to get accurate, authentic coverage of the only topics that are important and meaningful.

Well, most people going down the "all news media is bad" path didn't get there through any kind of logic or reasoning, so when they find alt media that supports their position, that alt media becomes the new truth for them. Post-fact society my dude. Welcome to the future.

Or, maybe, because they also just make shit up or run with stories that fit their narrative before verifying whether or not they're true.

Those things definitely do not go together. They should be called "Agenda Media".

> Is this improvement or anarchy?

Odd that you'd consider those diametrically opposed.

Yes. I don't. Poorly phrased. As an Anarcho-Stoic I should have said "Is this improvement or chaos" or...still needs work. Im not a scholar.

Agree. Somewhere else in this thread I tried to say that. "Gatekeepers today are as craven as any Youtuber, just with different chains of command" or some such.

[deleted]

Yeah, I agree with you! I'm gonna stop reading anymore comments since they might disagree and would be worthless opinions anyway.

The difference is that at least with mainstream news, some countries require them to disclose when they are publishing a sponsored or embedded journalist piece, and they are often required to pay at least nominal homage to the facticity of an event. No such restrictions exist for online personalities, as far as I know.

https://www.npr.org/2023/02/16/1157558299/fox-news-stars-false-claims-trump-election-2020

If you are directly sponsored you have to disclose as a online content creator, however, its not enforced well (tho it is enforced better than it was)

> all news is unreliable

Knee-jerk rejection of all news is as intellectually lazy as uncritical acceptance of all it. It's not being critical; it's just being gullible in the opposite direction.

The empirical reality, as evidenced in this study is that American centre-right and far-right media are significantly more insular and more susceptible to pushing propaganda than centre, centre-left and far-left media. Lazy dismissal of the entire media ecosystem because "duh billionaires" is both an inaccurate understanding of how the media really works - ownership is not control in today's world - as well as being demonstrably wrong according to available empirical evidence.

Ground News is a fantastic tool for dispelling bias in the mainstream media. I highly recommend it as a tool for media literacy.

Glenn Greenwald's misleading presentation of honest errors as deception is more about Greenwald's kneejerk refusal to accept Russian interference as a real news story than it is about whether any media outlets actually engaged in "making shit up".

His false portrayal hinges on accepting this falsehood: "It’s inevitable that media outlets will make mistakes on complex stories. If that’s being done in good faith, one would expect the errors would be roughly 50/50 in terms of the agenda served by the false stories". Besides having no way to confirm whether his cherry-picked list actually included all available inaccurate stories, the real test of whether an honest error occurred has nothing whatsoever to do with the distribution of errors. The real test is as follows: did the media outlet that ran the false story issue a correction?

Greenwald not only fails to highlight the vital fact that these "false" stories got corrected, he actuallly and bizarrely complains at one point that a story was getting "diluted" by editorial corrections, as if trying to get at the truth and correct one own's errors is some sort of nefarious political trick.

It's ironic that the news outlets that actively acknowledge their fallibility and try to make up for it get this used against them to supposedly prove their nefariousness, while right-wing attack sites can routinely lie and get away with it simply by never admitting error and by leaving huge errors uncorrected, or by deleting false information without mentioning they have done so if they absolutely have to, even covertly altering information in their reporting without ever admitting to it.

Not spreading misinformation, verifying facts before broadcasting rumors. No good is served other than ad dollars by not waiting for evidence or not publishing a story that can't be verified yet

Hatred for news media always seems to be based on the premise that the industry is a monolith. I think there is a large swath of naysayers who are neglecting the local newspaper reporters who sit through public meetings, meet and make in roads woth the community and shine a light on these local items that actually matter and affect the lives of individuals.

I'd suggest, if people want a robust and effective media source, they think locally.

Small, local newsrooms are suffering due to large corporations gutting the staff. If communities rallied behind these underpaid reporters, they'd see "news media" as a multifaceted industry that can (and currently does) provide valuable information to the community.

>Greenwald not only fails to highlight the vital fact that these "false" stories got corrected

> 9. Russian Hackers Invaded the U.S. Electricity Grid to Deny Vermonters Heat During the Winter (WashPost)

> ...until finally acknowledging, days later, that the whole story was false...

> 8. A New, Deranged, Anonymous Group Declares Mainstream Political Sites on the Left and Right to be Russian Propaganda Outlets and WashPost Touts its Report to Claim Massive Kremlin Infiltration of the Internet (WashPost)

> ...producing one of the longest Editor’s Note in memory appended to the top of the article...

> 3. CNN Explicitly Lied About Lanny Davis Being Its Source – For a Story Whose Substance Was Also False: Cohen Would Testify that Trump Knew in Advance About the Trump Tower Meeting (CNN)

> ...numerous other outlets retracted the story after the source, Davis, admitted it was a lie. CNN, however, to this date has refused to do either...

Not to mention the images provided of the original articles in which the corrections are literally highlighted.

I think Elon musk would disagree with you on your last point there. As would Zuckerberg, Bloomberg and Bezos. Money, ownership, and influence are key to controlling narratives and outcomes. It's one of the key tenants of capitalism.

Here is a study on how coverage of Amazon changed after Bezos bought the WP.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346592052_Media_Ownership_and_Bias_Evidence_by_the_Washington_Post%27s_Reporting_after_Amazon%27s_Acquisition_in_2013

News should be both accurate and challenging towards those who have power, and efforts like the Panama Papers are a shining example of what that looks like. But in a capitalist system where distribution of the news is inherently dependent on funds received via advertising and donations, conflicts of interest are constantly appearing. It's not just about whether they repeat false narratives or propaganda. It's sentiment. It's which stories they choose to cover. Are you going to focus your reporting on a commie spy balloon, which poses no real threat, or the toxic train wreck causing direct harm caused by horrendous domestic policy?

Marketing in news and science.

> I think Elon musk would disagree with you on your last point there.

Elon Musk is a fucking moron. He is utterly ruining the profitability of Twitter through his conviction that a "woke mind virus" needs to be combatted. Where does that fit in the belief system that capitalism and the pursuit of profit explains everything?

> Money, ownership, and influence are key to controlling narratives and outcomes.

Sure, ownership matters. But the problem I have with most Marxist-derived capitalist theory is that they reduce "influence" to nothing but money and ownership. Other things matter.

For example: the Right wing insists that media has a massive left-wing bias because most journalists identify as left-wing. And part of this is true: a majority of journalists identify as left-leaning. They also have some measure of influence over news production. It's not nearly as much as the Right claims, but it's there.

Or do you claim ownership of media mean that journalists, journalist unions, journalistic professional bodies exhibit no influence on the media whatsoever. They can't even publicly complain about failure to uphold journalistic standards? Can't strike? Can't do anything at all?

> But in a capitalist system where distribution of the news is inherently dependent on funds received via advertising and donations, conflicts of interest are constantly appearing.

In a capitalist system, competition is a thing. Even if just 2 people control all the news (and we have not reached that point yet), just having 2 means that media outlets can and do try to attack each other's profitability in a number of ways, one of which is to jump on another's errors or false reporting, in order to try and look better by comparison. To some extent, therefore, news media in a capitalist system is partly self-policing, if even a slight tendency towards competition exists. Perfect? Hell no. But the pressure is there.

I would strongly suggest reading the study I posted. It includes a good model for how both negative and positive pressures havehistorically shaped news content; it is also a model of news that modern right-wing media ecosystem has completely abandoned.

Both sides are not the same.

I don’t know what to believe anymore. There is so much information and misinformation. I think I understand what’s going on but I always wonder if I actually do.

[deleted]

I did download the study you shared after reading the abstract, but it's over 400 pages so we'll see. Life is busy, eh?

>Elon Musk is a fucking moron. He is utterly ruining the profitability of Twitter through his conviction that a "woke mind virus" needs to be combatted. Where does that fit in the belief system that capitalism and the pursuit of profit explains everything?

Oh god, totally agree with you about Musk. Unfortunately for everyone involved wealth, not abilities, is the best indicator for a person's future success in capitalism. If you like studies, there is one from Georgetown University looks at people's socioeconomic status (SES) based off their families' starting SES. I'll put the link at the bottom.

Musk is the perfect example of how messed up capitalism is. Brainless assholes like Musk can gain power and influence - simply because their daddy was rich - and then go on to totally ruin something that is used by hundreds of millions of people. We can argue about how much power the guy actually has, but however much, it includes being able to buy a company that has a hundreds of millions of user. And you know fire 7,500 of the people who worked there. That is a LARGE amount of influence and power simply because he has money.

​

>Sure, ownership matters. But the problem I have with most Marxist-derived capitalist theory is that they reduce "influence" to nothing but money and ownership. Other things matter.

I don't claim that only money and ownership are the only influences in capitalism. I do argue they are largest and typically the most powerful.

​

>For example: the Right wing insists that media has a massive left-wing bias because most journalists identify as left-wing. And part of this is true: a majority of journalists identify as left-leaning. They also have some measure of influence over news production. It's not nearly as much as the Right claims, but it's there.

I am with you here.

​

>Or do you claim ownership of media mean that journalists, journalist unions, journalistic professional bodies exhibit no influence on the media whatsoever. They can't even publicly complain about failure to uphold journalistic standards? Can't strike? Can't do anything at all?

I guess what I'd say is that individual reporters who are bothered enough by issues with journalistic integrity at major news purveyors often leave for smaller ones or try and found their own. Unions on the other hand don't have anywhere near as much power as they used to. The NYT union hasn't been able to prevent their members wages from rolling backward for years. They finally went on a 24 hour strike back in December, but so far I don't think they have succeeded in getting a new contract that comes close to their demands. I hope that they step up their game and win. Considering the talks have been ongoing for almost two years, I wouldn't give them great odds.

Why would journalism be immune to the weaknesses inherent in capitalism? If you don't pay your workers enough to build up savings, if you tie their healthcare to their employment, it makes it much harder for them to stand up to being mistreated. The median wage of journalist appears to be somewhere around 50k, which is not great in today's economy.

​

>In a capitalist system, competition is a thing. Even if just 2 people control all the news (and we have not reached that point yet), just having 2 means that media outlets can and do try to attack each other's profitability in a number of ways, one of which is to jump on another's errors or false reporting, in order to try and look better by comparison. To some extent, therefore, news media in a capitalist system is partly self-policing, if even a slight tendency towards competition exists. Perfect? Hell no. But the pressure is there.

Okay. Sure. But jumping on someone else's false reporting or error can't stop a paper from refusing to publish a story. Or just leaving out details. Or from weighting their coverage to skew one way or the other by surrounding it with opinion pieces. Or from having sponsored articles. Or from having a non-left leaning journalist cover a specific piece because the owners are concerned about ad revenue. Or running misleading ads for bad actors at all.

Look at the "Left-leaning" major news coverage of Steve Donzinger as an example. He's a lawyer who was sued by Chevron after he won a case against them regarding pollution in [edit: Ecuador], where they were supposed to pay out 8 billion to indigenous people there. They never mention the Judges who advanced this case against Donzinger have connections to Chevron. I wonder how many of those news sources take cash from Chevron? I know the NYT does. They have been paid by Chevron to produce ads on it's behalf.

I'm not claiming that both sides are the same. Right wing media would paint Donzinger as traitor or something. But that doesn't mean we can trust major media outlets to not be beholden to their owners.

Links:

1. Georgetown study: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/
2. NYT strike: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/07/business/media/new-york-times-union-walkout.html
3. NYT article about Donziner: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/business/energy-environment/steven-donziger-chevron.html
4. Compare with The Intercept reporting: https://theintercept.com/2020/01/29/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit-steven-donziger/
5. Chevron ad produced by NYT's in house ad agency: https://twitter.com/chevron/status/1182709141669851136?lang=en

That made me laugh real hard on the inside.

It's a consequence of the "attention economy." Extremely low overhead to content creation led to both a saturation and dilution of content, and, at the same time, a shortening of attention spans. It's a race to the bottom in terms of quality reporting. There's a vicious cycle that goes something like, distracted populace is attracted by sensational content, creates an economic demand for pandering and sensationalism, populace comes to expect sensationalism and pandering and reject quality reporting.

What got branded as the post truth era is really more of the post nuance era. Every piece of journalism must fall to one side or the other of some ideological line of narrative, or it's like a 3rd football team that no one has ever heard of running onto the field and making a touchdown in the middle of a tie game; it merely confuses and enrages the fans.

We're to the point now where a large percentage of people can't even comprehend any information or point of view that can't be shoehorned into a recognizable narrative. You can watch them get stuck in a loop of, "so what you're trying to say is..." until they succeed in placing it securely into one camp or another, or finally decide in frustration that this new information is useless to them and therefore meaningless

Unironically yes. My biases include things like "I've seen the news' brazen lies and refuse to trust them". Most people's don't, and therefore I can discard their news-informed opinions.

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Local newspaper are either hyper local news (covering only the small town it’s published in) or in the case of larger cities print mostly news from national sources anyway. Reading Chicago Tribune or St. Louis Post-Dispatch is not much different than reading New York Times. Most national content comes from AP or Reuters, and most columns are syndicated nationally known figures.

I get support for local reporters, but above the county level, it’s all nationally syndicated news.

Well, here in Germany, every household pays a tv tax of 18 euros. This goes to media channels, including news. One of the purposes is to decrease bias.

Perhaps there are studies checking the efficiency of such a measure.

We have the tv license in the UK, 150 odd a year that funds the BBC who are the most bias news source in the world. Is the version you guys have over there working? Ours certainly isn't.

No. A common working person someone who makes just enough to get by and does work with their hands, Work that actually helps us as a species and not some middle management office job for a company that offers no product.

That would be my assumption of what they ment.

You think Google employees making 200k a year doing literally nothing but eating getting massages and taking 5 meetings a day are "common working people" and everyone below them are just scum to you.

Standard fascist ladies and gents. How did this happen to "Liberals"

I don't know, how much economic factors play into this compared to the demographics of journalists. Like, in Germany we have two big public news stations wich are financed by an 18€ fee every (working) citizen has to pay, wether they watch/listen to it or not, so there is no need to be profitable. Yet those stations have a clear progressive bias.

So a reason for this might be, that - especially young - journalists often come from an urban, academic class, some sociologist called them "progressive left", but they are more like "woke capitalists" with values and a worldview that is highly different from the rest of the people, so many people don't feel represented by them but rather often patronised.

It's so funny to see media bias/manipulation when they report on a subject you know intimately/professionally.

When it happens quite a few time, you develop a good gauge of what's true in a story, what's exaggerated for the view/click and what's political/ideological agenda.

I dont think that BBC is that biased (at least in comparison with other sources). Check a bias in media website to see. For instance,

https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

Deutsche welle is quite good, and it is funded by this tax. Dont know abiut the other channels, since I am not a german speaker.

The BBC was widely lauded as a more reliable source of international news than US news outlets about a decade ago. I stopped watching broadcast news around that time, so I can't say if that's changed since.

Reddit's No. 1 Mod is Ghislane Maxwell, need I say more? Oh, sweet irony. Look into her very ethical "Media Mogul" Daddy. She's a chip off the ol' block. While you're at, see who else in our beloved "Modern Media" shares some of the same traits and values as the Maxwells. In the end, the answer is always the same. Follow. The. Money. Once you know who is paying "Producers" to create "Stories" for mass consumption, you'll understand their motives entirely.

Again, Reddit's No. 1 Mod is Ghislane Maxwell....entirely by "cohincidence", of course ;) Prove me wrong :)

If I read you right, you're saying the Globalist Corporate Media Cabals....I mean "Conglomerates", formerly known as "The Press", actively lie and shape the Public Narrative. Who could ever dream of such a thing? A profit-motivated Lying Press Sounds down right conspiratorial.....Also sounds incredibly accurate and like something we've all heard before. If only we had listened.

Pro Tip: You "Press" is just another person's "Propaganda".

Most of this started with the Telecom Act of 1996 which "Deregulated" media outlet laws that forbade any one person/entity from owning too many outlets in a given region here in the US. This allowed for and all but forced localities to make their own news, but once Newspapers and News Channels began to "merge" so did their outlooks. We've all seen the vid on YT of the "Local News Anchors" reading their Corporate Propaganda spiel from the single company that owns Dozens of "local news outlets".

Obama then put the nail in the coffin when he over turned a law forbidding the use of US State-Sponsored Propaganda here at home. We have to fight "Terrorism", remember, so we "have" to deploy Propaganda on the populace, or the Taliban wins, amirite? That's how we got amazing "Media Resources" like Reddit, Twitter and Tik-Tok that work hand-in-glove with the US Feds and various other "Foreign Entities" to "shape the media narrative".

See history of great folks like Ghislane Maxwell and her Daddy and their ties to very intellectually Liberal and level-headed outlets, like Reddit, which never use bots, mods, algorithms or literal paid brigades of "Commenters" to slide threads into oblivion.

Prove me wrong :)

Forced State-Sponsored media....what could go wrong? I'm sure they'll be very rigorous on the folks paying their salaries, and if not they can always go to another, independent paper and get another job, right? Wrong. Statism is NEVER the answer ;) What sort of "study" could check the "efficiency"(wtf?) of State-Sponsored Propaganda? .....an equally biases State-Sponsored "study", no doubt.

If you were more skeptical and educated about the history of your own beloved "German" Press over the years, I don't think you would even consider this as a "solution" to the question at hand.

More government = Less Freedom; Less Government = More Freedom

AMEN!!!! Force state-sponsored propaganda and you have no other options. This is precisely why Orwell modeled Big Brother after the BBC where he worked for years. He knew from experience. They even have a statue up at BBD HQ mocking him with one of his own quotes.

"If Liberty means anything at all, it means telling the People what they don't want to hear."

Correct, the People do not "want to hear" the lie, propaganda and double-speak that the BBC produce for global consumption.

Statism is never the answer. The First Amendment to the US Constitution is. That's why they put it first, of course.

[deleted]

The only "Transparency" you need is who is funding our various "Media Outlets". Once you know who's footing the bill, you'll know the Narrative they're shaping and the Agenda they're pushing.

Of course, if you should happen to notice any patterns in said ownership, the person who "investigates" and "reports" these demonstrable and undeniable facts will then be labeled an "-ist" of some sort by the vary people they're reporting.

It's the classic, 2-bit, Commie-character assassination techniques, and you'll find it all over our "Modern Media" in the form of "Heavily Moderated(Censored)" websites, that aim to create a "Safe Space" for all "ideas"......as long as they conform to the Corporately Sponsored Media.

Yes, that's entirely the point of Propaganda. Seems to be working.

[deleted]

The posts about the money driven nature of news are correct.

But beyond that, there is also a divide between news media along the lines of values. And it is not clear to me how that could be easily resolved, or even if it can be resolved.

Today there is more of a focus on values and seeing things subjectively and inter-subjectively. Previously there was an overall philosophy of that saw an objective ideal, that was never realized but was nevertheless the ideal. Today ideals tend to be very much value driven, not objective.

What I would like to see is major news organizations starting a fact checking section that is as values free as possible. Ignore whether the thing in question makes the world a better or worse place. Simply focus on whether it is a fact or not.

There is no trust with old time media. It is there own fault. They lie so much they don't even see it. The new media they go after gets more support every time they go after them. But they cant even see this. Jest because you make a boat load of money it don't make you right. As we all know. The numbers show they are loosing with the thoughts of the people.

Facts and figures don't sell subs, or get people to click on bait. ALL that matters is making profit. They never have and never will care about the "Truth", or the "Facts" both of which are both clearly just "Social Constructs", obviously. Besides, the Truth hurts, and "causes harm" to "Modern Readers" and the "Community" writ large, and we musn't have that. They don't care one bit about the "oppressed" it's just a bit of virtue signaling that they can use to justify their silence an biases. "Think of the Children....I mean the Environment.....I mean muh Feelings......I mean, ....."

Downvoted by an Anonymous coward with no rational retort. EXACTLY as I predicted ;)

Again, double-downvoted by Anons with no rational retort. EXACTLY as I predicted ;) ONLY the TRUTH hurts and Reddit do be hatin' the Truth :) It's not always conducive to creating a "Safe Space"....for liars.

Look up the Laws yourself my fellow Americans and "Philosophers". I 100% guarantee I am 100% correct.

Prove me wrong :)

Again, anonymously Double-Downvoted without a pithy retort insight, or s single bit of contradictory evidence. I would've thought my fellow Philosophers would know how to construct a more cogent counter-argument, but alas not. Then again, look who runs the joint past and present :)

"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" <---- Look that up. It's a rather famous "Philosophical" axiom, which is more than applicable to the current topic at hand. Wouldn't you agree?

That's like saying Jack the Ripper was slightly better than Jeffrey Dahmer. Define "better" :/

"...permitted to continue", by whom, Dear? Who is issuing these "permits", exactly? Surely, you don't want the Govt. coming in to "fix" things?

The "News" is far MORE concentrated and LESS democratic than ever. The body count of journalists proves it. Don't ever mistake reeeeeee posts on Reddit and Twitter for actual objectivity, or a true "diversity" of viewpoints. It has never been easier in the history of Humanity to silence your fellow humans and "shape the Narrative" as you see fit. Things are and have only been getting worse and by no means "better". Now, I have to scrub my Corporately-Funded "Social Media" posts lest my Government-Funded "Social Credit Score" be tarnished. After all, there are consequences for "harmful" WrongTweet and they should not be permitted to continue...

Ouch! I just cut myself on that edge. When will you be moving to an "Anarchist Utopia", and who will be paying for your internet so you can play on Plebbit? Those fiber optic cables and 5G towers don't install themselves.

Weren't news media always biased? I think, I remember reading such remarks in Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and that book is 140 years old. And I wouldn't vouch for all countries and every year in the history, but the further we go back in time, the more censored and biased media we see. At least that's what I know from history professors.

>Anarcho-Stoic

We really are living in a Monty Python skit, aren't we?

There is a lot of truth to that. But it doesn't explain the publicly funded broadcasters - BBC and ARD for example. Those also have a editorial stance based on certain values, and will choose to not run some stories even if they are factually correct. Why?

I think the benefit of following BBC or Al Jazeera, as an American, is that our national news sources overemphasize the importance of America on the international stage. Even if a news source is incredibly biased, access to alternative news sources can induce cognitive dissonance. This can be uncomfortable, but allow us to objectively engage with our own internal biases.

Yes, there were always "Muck Rackers" and "Yellow Journalists", but you also had hundreds more outlets at every level with a truly "diverse" array of ownership and viewpoints.

The money was also much smaller and the tech didn't exist to physically control so many outlets at once. There were also laws in place, here in the US, that limited media ownership in a given region, but that was overturned by the 1996 Telecom Act, which "deregulated" media ownership and allowed for the creation of the uber-double-mega-media Corps we have today.

The same Fox that "produces" their "stories" for the "News" is the same Fox that produces stories for their movies, is the same Fox that own dozens and dozens of major, online magazines. "local news" channels, and other press outlets that you would never think are connected, but are all owned by the same few folks at the end of the day.

Of course, simply saying "Welp, it's always been done, so what can you do?" is no argument at all either. After all, "Two wrongs don't make a right.", amirite?

I'm not stating any preference, but the US supreme court is getting ready to hear all about democratized information and whether it will be allowed or not.

The EU is also considering a clamp-down.

But any form of regulation is, arguably, the censorship. Is it not? So no, I'm not saying that nothing should be done. I actually think that today media is free as never before, and thanks to the internet everyone can be one. But being biased is a human nature. I can feel it myself, that it is impossible for me to stay unbiased in every topic. And could it be that most people want information to be biased, and to hear only things they like? Maybe not always, but mostly.

Because "anti-liberal" is literally "kill Mike Pence and burn down the capitol." Both sides don't deserve equal consideration.

Edit: Name a single conservative stance I should give a shit about.

There is always some truth even in lies, but liars do not know that because they can no longer make the difference.

All I can say, is that you have lot to learn.

For starter, you can educate yourself on different international groups who check media agents for trustworthyness and political alignment. One does not need to be a genius to know its possible to judge these things.

For instance, biased media channels will use loaded words and frame situations in a specific way. And you can count these situations, and score it. It is all a matter of methodology.

If you dont believe this can be done at all, by no person or machine, then you can not even trust yourself to judge the media you consume by yourself.

Since, what methodology are you applying that is better? You should introduce it to the world, and help us out.

Agreed, though I can't tell if it's for the same reason. Try adding some basic substance to your post.

“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war”

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The other reason would be if they’re paid for with a tax, “progressive” politicians are more likely to raise that tax which could raise their pay

All that matters is being first, not being factual. Clicks over truth.

'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

The "better" method is many, many independently owned outlets, so that people have a wide variety of sources to draw their data set from in the first place. Relying on "International Groups" is Globalism, which is 100x worse that Statism. Yes, give me a "Truth Score" to go with my "Social Credit Score" and my "Gullible, Nanny Stater Dip Shit Score"!!!!!

I'm sorry you love the boot heel of your Government on your throat. Free Peoples do not. That's why "Modern Germany" has repeatedly conquered and is nothing more than an occupied puppet state of the US :)

Now, go run along and pay your government, which is really our government to lie to you and to "score" you for being the proper little Pleb that you so desperately want to be.

Vielen Dank!

"Here in Germany" ....Media Good....."I am not a German speaker."

Wirklcih? Ich spreche kleine Deutsch!....nur ein bischen ;)

All I can say is you literally have no idea what you're talking about in either German or English.