And almost immediately Google and Facebook issued a press release about how they will be filtering Fake News. While there might be some genuine altruism and desire to make the world a better place, it was also a brilliant business move. They effectively jumped in and filled the void left in manufacturing consent market. They are signaling they instead of companies and political candidates investing their billions in CNN and NBC they should come to them now.
There's certainly something to be said for giving people the sort of news coverage that's good for them instead of the sort they want. Not reporting on disasters until all the facts are in. Never mentioning the names of mass murderers who are after fame. More statistics and less anecdote. But if given a choice the bad media will drive out the good (mostly).
You could solve the problem if you had a reliable source of philosopher kings we could set to rule over us. Until we find one I think we'll have to do with giving the people what they want. It's far from optimal but at least it corrects quickly when things go badly which is a lot more than you can say for most other things people have attempted.
I'm also interested in the same question. It's hard to find news that is both covering important long-term issues and trying to seek the truth of the matter. Plus I get frustrated at how insular news in the USA is, many of the USAs problems have already been somewhat solved in other countries but the media rarely mentions them. So citizens and politicians waste time spinning their wheels and arguing about theoreticals instead of learning from experiments that have already been done.
One of the hosts is also the 'co-founder of podcasting', took a company public and registered mtv.com, back in the day. They have a very interesting news media deconstruction process; Highly recommended.
Prevailing media has a strong democratic bias. Opposing media has a strong republican bias (breitbart, oann, etc).
Better media doesn't give a shit. I suggest sott.net, global research, strategic culture, mises.org, the intercept, reason, opslens, the unz review, counterpunch, zerohedge.
KEEP IN MIND: all of these sources require a STRONG BS filter. It's like startups v established companies: lots of bullshit with diamonds in the rough thrown in. It's your job to find the diamonds. When you find them, they're totally worth it.
Those should get you started. In general, I tend to also follow a host of individuals on twitter of varying backgrounds to get a greater variety.
And, I am sorry, but the paper you quote is just pseudo-intellectual drivel. If I could decipher anything from it, it boiled down to "because there is no such thing as perfect free market, therefore Austrian School is flawed".
Or something like that.
No, the point is that science has advanced. The laws of motion are true because they've survived scientific critique over a long period of time. Aether isn't true because over time the scientific critiques built up and science moved on with new theories. Austrian economics is aether not the laws of motion.
>If I could decipher anything from it...
If you had trouble deciphering it I would suggest that you not subscribe to any economic school because you just don't know enough to pick.
-- Albert Einstein
Any recommendations?
https://theintercept.com - mostly anti-propaganda efforts
https://phys.org - an aggregator often linking to primary sources
https://www.currentaffairs.org - political opinions that generally seem thought out
http://www.realclear(politics|world|*).com - a network of aggregators with a good balance
http://evonomics.com - economic perspectives I also don't mind reading.
I would really love to find more options - especially something in a debate format so I can judge arguments from multiple sides on an issue.
http://www.usmessageboard.com/threads/which-youtuber-channel...
For online news aggregators... He's overly right-wing for my tastes, but the best truly independent aggregator I've been able to find is Drudge. I'm frankly stunned that after 20 years, the powers that be have not yet found a way to shut him down.
Even worse. They also own most of the local papers too.
What's even more troubling is that there will be more consolidation of the news industry in the future...
> It looks like it's going to be many decades before these giant media outlets finally lose their relevance.
Except that traditional media is moving into social media. Not only that, they have the ears of the social media magnates.
Google/facebook/reddit/etc have all had talks with traditional media companies and have started "favoring" traditional media in their algorithms/search results/etc. There are far more "nytimes/WaPo/etc" on social media today than a year ago or 5 years ago. Even on HN, look how much traditional media links we have here.
I don't think traditional media will go anywhere. As you said, they serve a valuable purpose - brainwashing large segments of the population.
I'm curious about why you've got the US government out of the equation. Do you really think that those "few distasteful foreign goverments" play a bigger role or collude more than the US government with those media corporations?
I have a (physical) subscription to the Economist, which is where I get all my serious news. I can't tell you how great it is to read the news without the page content shifting all around because of ads loading.
The latter was difficult. I was emotionally attached; it felt good to put that issue on the counter ("I'm smart, informed, discerning!"); and there was nothing else. But alas, as soon as The Economist started with their tech and software focus spreads it quickly dawned on me that these guys just know how to sound authoritative. That was a bad move on their part.