Compare this to MSNBC and Fox News whose business models are really the same: cater to their viewers’ dogma/bubble and reinforce biases, and don’t try to introduce new ideas because it is bad for their business.
Usually print media is considered higher quality journalism than TV media. There are numerous studies that show reading print media leads to people being more informed than just watching TV news. Whether this is correlation or causation I can’t really say.
My understanding of both Fox and MSNBC is they are entertainment programs, not so much news programs. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare those to anything in print, nor do I think it’s entirely possible.
A good news article might present both sides of a story, but try to fact-check claims by both sides, and bring in supporting evidence. That’s the key differentiating factor of quality journalism - helping bring facts to the forefront rather than let people on either side spin the facts for their purposes.
TV on the other hand is like SaaS - continious integration and deployment. Release first and apologize later if needed.
Doesn't CI rely on robust testing to ensure buggy software doesn't make it into production? I'm not sure the fire-and-forget of the 24/7 news cycle lends itself to a comparison to continuous deployment, as there is a strong bias to 'deliver now' given competition to break the news first, and it's hard to build in 'automated testing' (vetting?) of content.
No, maybe to you, but to vast amounts of people, millions of people, they watch a singular source for news and to them, that is the news.
In the US, since you’re referring to them, the news legally used to have to allow all sides of an issues to present their views. In the 1980s, the laws changed, and that is how news became so one-side.
My point is that the majority of people actually watching these news outlets see it as news, not entertainment or propaganda.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America#Smith–Mundt_A...
—- EDIT: Reviewed your CML link from spring of 1990, interesting read, but really fails to do critical analysis of the specific regulatory changes by name, what impact changes had, etc. Beyond that, stating obvious, it fails to cover all the material events since 1990.
I'd like to see a news app that has the facts and sensationalism separated, and then a reference to a more relevant fact/story that relates more directly to what a particular spin was getting at. So I guess feed their bubble with more accurate stories.
The question is 'How far can you go?'
For example does it make sense to present advocates for science and pseudo-science on the same level, with equal weight?
Putting a Biologist who explains Evolution on the same pedestal on equal time as a Priest who believes in Intelligent Design creates a false sense of balance between these viewpoints, even though these viewpoints are fundamentally different in their very basic quality.
You can spin this further to illustrate this point: racism, religion, false promises, lies, mental illnesses.
And even more importantly do you realize that in such world it's far more likely that only a priest will get invited to a TV show, not the biologist? Because that's the "how far" that I'm afraid of, fundamentalism that believes that the only way is to force "the truth" upon people, and it's of course always their truth.
For example: Given two commentators, if one is arguing that TV boards and government committees are supposed to be populated by and representative of the general population and the other arguing that TV boards and government committees are populated by crab people secretly supporting the illuminati; the discussion should be about how effectively TV boards and government committees are being filled by the general population and how effective they are at articulating societal consensus related to important issues.
In the "gotta hear both sides" world, rational discussion is dragged off the table by the notion that every issue has two equally valid sides no matter how absurd one "side" might be.
But were revealing a more fundamental issue here: Where are the checks and balances of the media?
As it stands now, we've got two possible solutions:
1. Censorship, which I find dangerous and shortsighted. 2. The media itself, which results in a 'who yells the loudest' kind of culture.
This issue bleeds into all kind of problems with propaganda, advertising, fake-news, bias, ideology, lies, scams, click-bait and other kind of bullshit.
In this discussion we've been talking as if there was some kind of sane regulation of these things. But there isn't really.
All of this stuff erodes trust and creates trenches. Sometimes it feels like it is getting worse. People have been talking about how Google Search is getting weaker on this site. There is so much more noise and bullshit today than there ever was, because we're accreting information w/o distinction.
There are projects, which try to make fact-checking easier for example, new kind of platforms and ideas to foster real debate. But those things are still on the fringe.
This is a massive, important and unsolved problem I think.
A memorable example, in Ireland, during the campaign for the referendum to legalise same-sex marriage, was a radio news article where they were talking to someone in the hotel industry about the potential impact on the industry from wedding bookings. Because of the balance rule, they then had to have on one of the three available complete lunatics they had for all discussions of same-sex marriage to rant about how the gays were going to transgender all the unborn babies or something (due to all political parties supporting the amendment, and the Catholic Church staying out of it, there were a very small number of public figures available to go on the radio/tv for 'balance', and most of them were conspiracy theorists).
Some broadcasters have recently changed the rules around certain subjects; for instance the BBC no longer invites climate change denialists or creationists for 'balance' in most contexts.
I'm uncertain how I feel about it. It can produce truly bizarre results, like the marriage one I mentioned, but it does seem useful in some cases. A major concern I'd have about it is that it certainly _is_ used to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories, especially where one side of the argument is "basically everyone" and the other side is a weird fringe, or where the natural proponents of one side are sitting it out (common on social issues in Ireland, where the Catholic Church is skittish about opposing liberalisation too visibly).
There are some good faith and sound mind tests that should be applied here but if someone wants to genuinely make a case for choosing a political leader via athletic competition (which has no basis in history at all, nope) then why not hear them out? What are you afraid of?
But ruling out absurd ideas is incredibly important.
If you want to present a discussion on "Selecting sides for the news: How much restriction is too much?" Should the sides be "Industry consensus vs societal consensus" or should you make sure that the "Any censorship is intellectual theft and every news outlet must comply with individual requests for people to state their positions on the topic" side is treated the same as the first two?
Have them both on, and then probe, and even make a decision. The viewers can still choose, but it is much more of an investigation than politely taking turns.
The internet and social media allow you to ignore the correct conclusion because it makes a person uncomfortable with the idea that they could be wrong when everything they read reinforces that incorrect conclusion.
By far the worst actor I've seen is (old media) Rush Limbaugh. It's hard to believe that Rush could believe that America faces any threats (e.g. war, crime, economic, environmental) other than the "Democrat party." You'd imagine that he wants to see a system more like Japan (liberalism with one party) or China (one party, no rights, no dissent.)
More generally I see the problem of "spamming the agenda", combined with the "if it bleeds it leads" tendency of the media.
Before Trump ran for president CNN's ratings were in the toilet, and it lumbered on between school shootings and MH370. To report on things like that you might have to take the Redeye from Atlanta to a flyover state, but today you can sit your ass in Atlanta or Washington DC and just cover 'what trump said', and 'what somebody said about what trump said'.
Since the election, the news has seemed to be "broken" in the way that a "clock" breaks. Arstechnica's Dealmaster always has a sale on Amazon Fire devices, Anker power banks, Xbox Gold, and whatever craptop Lenovo has a surplus over. The banner on CNN often seems to go unchanged for weeks. (e.g. "TRUMP WANTED TO FIRE MULLER")
COVID-19 was the first real news in a long term, but there is an obsession about "what trump said" compared to the other 300 million Americans. Trump doesn't really care if it is good or bad news, he just wants to be in the news, and if he held a press conference and nobody came, that would bring him to tears.
Similarly there is always some article pushed by a right wing group that says there is too much occupational licensing in the U.S (maybe true, but the same editorial turns up every month as if it was fresh) or that there is a trade-off between economic efficiency and inequality. (e.g. the evidence is that if you have too much inequality people tilt the scales, rich people buy T-bills depressing interest rates, and try to keep the action for themselves and their children... One of those reasons why Stalin invented the Purge)
Is there data that show CNN debates on climate change correlate with a decrease in belief in climate change? This sounds like folk lore rather than reality to me, but I could be wrong.
Broken because the talent of listeners to fully evaluate every statement is not distributed evenly.
Germany and Europe learned this the very hard way after WWI and they drew consequences after WWII.
Yes, I fully agree with you: not all opinions are created equal. Because some are scientifically accepted while others are scientifically rejected. Some are philanthropic, some are antisocial.
And we have to take a stance if we want a more humane World, and media have to preselect if we don't want war.
Anytime people argue about having a authoritarian dedicator style of hard line "DO NOT QUESTION THIS EVER" should remember you might end up on the other side of the fence.
We should always listen to the other side. History has shown people can believe ridiculous things for a long time and treat it as common sense.
The modern spin on The Advocates is Intelligence Squared[2].
[0] http://openvault.wgbh.org/collections/advocates/full-program...
The longer format and strong moderation really lend themselves to interesting discussions, and you can learn a lot. One of my favourite debates of this format (though not IQ) is Peter Thiel vs Eric Schmidt (then executive chairman of Google) arguing about whether Google was still capable of innovation [2012]:
Otherwise you end up with the “ministry of truth” — and we all know how that worked out.
people can have different opinions on how much of it is caused by people.
for example moving to biofuels is being considered a big fuckup and this was done by the biggest supporters of imminent climate catastrophe.
There are reasons it is no more global warming but climate change.
more progressive people tend to move faster to progress but at the same time they make more errors while doing it..
Basically: airing of unscrutinised claims is propaganda, not news, even if done with both sides.
> Today, this is almost universally seen as a failure of journalism.
That is a shame.
Ouch. Accounts that post like this get banned here regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and please don't ever do this here again. (We had to warn you about personal attacks once before.)
The level of knowledge needed to adequately parse an expert's opinion, evaluate it, check its assumptions, research the evidence supporting those assumptions, follow up with research on the validity of that research... well, it takes a lot longer than a TV segment. In a TV segment like this, the "expert" with the better grasp on rhetoric and rhetorical devices "wins" in terms of audience agreement, and factual & verifiable basis of opinions is a distant second in terms of influence on audience agreement.
Or strike that: it's probably a distant 3rd: 1st place influence is whether or not it agrees with a viewer's current opinion. 2nd would be rhetorical ability, 3rd would be any actual evidence.
So, by all means let the facts speak for themselves-- just don't let yourself believe that is readily possible in a TV segment like those referenced.
Showing which news sources employ the most underhanded rhetorical devices may be a positive goal in itself, but it doesn't, by itself, help the audience make their own determination on an issue. Even more of an issue is that a viewer's determination of which source is more willing to mislead or omit relevant details is much more likely to be influenced by prior opinion than by the content of either source.
Basically, the problem isn't, in itself, biased news sourced, its that the format is fundamentally ill-suited towards giving individuals enough information to come to a reasonably well-supported position on just about any topic of moderate complexity. Further take any topic that appears to be of simple complexity and scratch the surface a bit and there's a decent chance it will turn out to be not so simple.
Even if putting that aside, the utility of bringing to light underhand tactics isn't meant to be used in and by itself but instead serves as one of many aspects of debate to help decide what is right/wrong true/false.
Regarding the poor suited nature of news for getting the full story across to reader I fully agree but again just because a tool isn't perfect, it doesn't mean it gets cast aside; more perspectives (and these are mainstream organisations) on a subject doesn't hurt at all.
I don't have an answer on the issue of news organizations being poorly suited here. On the one hand, there is an appeal to your the idea you convey that something is better than nothing. However, that status quo is also what has lead us to the current situation. There is a correlation with the rise of 24-hour news networks and the internet with the increased vitriolic, polarizing, and propagandist tone things. The need to fill air time was a big part of that. I don't wholly think that was the cause. There was some trend in that direction already:
Note to readers: This next part is not intended to cast blame only in one direction. It is simply one concrete example of the type of things that became commonplace.
Around 1990 Newt Gingrich penned a memo for titled "Language: A Key Mechanism for Control" It went on to explain how language could be used to manipulate people, complete with a guide for how to use demonizing dehumanizing language against political opponents. Over the years it was systematically disseminated through his party, and when Newt became house Speaker around 1995 he literally made it required reading. Shortly after is around the time that the term "liberal" went from being a fairly neutral description like "conservative" to being a hated moniker for a political opponent. (Though right-wing, alt-right, etc., fill that purpose. now for the other side)
A journalist’s job is to try to present the truth, not create false equivalence.
This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen as a failure of journalism.
Given the lessons learned, I wouldn’t be so quick to replicate that experience with a website.