Let’s say they covered Hunter Biden scandal. How much would that cost them? Quite a bit I bet
There has to be a way to present alternate ways of interpreting facts without immediately getting accused of partisan censorship. US media can't even agree on what the facts are without the partisan accusation coming out.
How to rebuild institutional trust once it's gone?
The issue, amazingly, is Fox News and it’s ilk. Yet, the conversation here is the NYT.
This is a problem on two grounds
1) people talk about what they know. So like many discussions people nerd out on what they have information on.
2) The issue of Correlation vs causation in Fox’s impact on its viewers is pushed away for another day, when things are worse.
Is conservative pandering media causing a break from reality, or are they simply doing what they need to when dealing with their audience. Or perhaps both?
Is having someone like Rupert Murdoch and his children running the show a good thing ?
How could this be prevented ?
That is because practically everyone on HN agrees Fox is bad, biased, etc. Therefore the debate is going to be implicitly about how bad the NYT is in relation to Fox.
A related factor is that it's hard for an educated person to get suckered by Fox. There are too many garish infographics and obvious nutjobs. It just does not give even a superficial impression of being Legitimate and Unbiased and Supported by the Best Experts. But the NYT does, and that's what makes it more dangerous.
If I go into "Uncle Cletus's Homeopathy Clinick", I kind of deserve whatever I get. But if another con man has a convincingly faked (or even real) Harvard M.D., then sets about poisoning lots of people through incompetence and apathy and greed, then everyone insists it can't possibly be his fault because he has an M.D. from Harvard...
...you can see why "Uncle Cletus is the real problem here" can seem nonresponsive. It is not even especially obvious to me which is "worse", "Uncle Cletus" or Fake M.D., even if we grant that Fake M.D. is somewhat better at medicine. I know I personally could get suckered by the latter but not the former, making the latter more dangerous to me.
So, same reason why scam emails are rife with spelling errors.
They might actually face more criticism if they don't turn away the part of the audience with half a brain first.
Maybe US is due for another go. Unfortunately this time there will be no neat geographic divide and it will probably resemble Russian civil war. That scares the shit out of me, I am Canadian btw. Delegitimization of the elections, stuffing the court, non-stop riots, armed militias. Good vs Evil narrative.
This Pandemic has not been that bad, imagine if this thing was more deadly.. there is no unity, republic verges on the brink
You say that like it's hyperbole but there's a hell of a lot of people who think we're on that track. What not everyone agrees on is whether it'll be a problem next Wednesday morning or a problem for our great^N grand kids.
I don't think removing information can work. You can however provide more plausible information. If you remove anything you might as well give it up because it will always be seen as paternalism not fitting a democracy.
In 2005 we already had insane conspiracies on the net. Instead of using them to elevate yourself to a mundane level, you better ignore them. People will get bored quickly.
The democrats greatest failure was probably not championing freedom and free speech. You don't give such a precious thing to your political enemies.
It is refreshing to see conservatives arguing for it. You shouldn't believe them, but liberals arguing for speech codes should reorient themselves. Best start would be yesterday.
And people just jump in with explanations of how it totally makes sense to act like that in the given the profit motive.
It sets a pretty low bar for expectations. Also, it gives a lot of power to individuals whose modus operandi is the above.
But why is this the expectation? You could also subscribe to and support a publication because they make the hard choices, also publish the unpopular news. Because you think this is important. However, if you do this, support the publication, but the publication starts chasing profit instead of truth, then in the US, joke's on you! Of course they would chase profit instead of truth, everybody will tell you.
It kind of reminds me of the Ferengi in Star Trek sometimes. Does the Star Trek universe perhaps offer any insight how they run a society when the entirety of this society is doing nothing but chase profit?
No, they needed to represent viewpoints that were palatable to their advertisers.
A US-centric, neo-liberal world-view does not really 'represent all viewpoints'.