Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low

Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by treis on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @04:24PM (#33253363)

A mildly alarming number of right wing conspiracy theories are turning out to be true:

Hunter Biden's laptop was dismissed as a hoax but turns out it's legit

The "election company leaking data to China" thing was dismissed by the NYTimes like the day before the CEO got arrested.

The "Lab Leak" sort of falls under this too

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by SllX on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @04:30PM (#33253438)

Somebody asks the right question but if it’s the wrong person asking the right question, it’s now a “conspiracy theory”.

Sometimes the person asking the question is a genuine jackass and sometimes they’re merely of a different partisan persuasion; but if you’re willing to ignore the person and address it, you might find it’s worth checking into anyway.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by subsubzero on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @04:41PM (#33253581)

Also don't forget the medias reporting of covid:

Jan-Feb 2020 - Masks don't work! don't worry about covid, get a flu shot!

April 2020 - Covid lives on surfaces for 17 days, disinfect all surfaces, also all masks are effective against covid(even cloth ones!)

Early 2021 - Vaccines(pfizer, moderna) will stop symptomatic covid with +90% effectiveness, also you have to have a vaccine otherwise you will spread covid. to others.

Late 2021 - Oops, cloth masks are not effective against covid(omicron), also vaccines for young children wear off in terms of effectiveness after a few weeks.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by SketchySeaBeast on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:04PM (#33253941)

I'm not saying the media is blameless, but this seems like a lot of post-hoc thinking - you're treating the media like they should have known that omicron would exist and so they shouldn't have reported the effectiveness of the vaccines on earlier strains, or reported whatever was the current understood science of the time because things later changed when they didn't know that.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by antihipocrat on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:19PM (#33254136)

I suspect that if the implied interpretation of your observations was the majority view it would negatively affect the public's opinion of science and government agencies rather than the media.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by HKH2 on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @08:30PM (#33255940)

When they fail to investigate blatant inconsistencies, they are culpable.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by LatteLazy on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @04:30PM (#33253440)

Not sure about the middle point, but I'm still waiting for the other two?

Hunter Biden had a laptop, but nothing illegal or unethical was on it.

And lab leak remains completely evidence free.

If you have actual evidence to the contrary I'd be happy to see it. But ever time I've asked in the past...

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by seti0Cha on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:09PM (#33254012)

Already posted this on another comment, but that last sentence makes me want to make sure you see it.

Summary here: https://reason.com/2022/03/17/the-new-york-times-belatedly-a...

Referenced NYT article here: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

tldr; NYTimes now says the emails have been authenticated. Make of it what you will.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by goodpoint on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @04:26PM (#33253395)

A broken clock...

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by afavour on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @04:50PM (#33253716)

> Hunter Biden's laptop was dismissed as a hoax but turns out it's legit

Does it? I'm genuinely not up to date here but the Hunter Biden laptop story was all about the supposedly explosive stuff stored on the laptop and I've still not seen any proof of that.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by seti0Cha on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:01PM (#33253895)

The New York Times quietly acknowledged that the contents were probably legitimate in a story on a related subject. Unsurprisingly, it hasn't been a very high profile story in the mainstream media.

edit: link: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by afavour on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:20PM (#33254163)

I guess I don’t really understand what you’re looking for here. You’re complaining about a lack of mainstream media coverage then pointing to mainstream media coverage. Typically papers write a follow up story when new facts have emerged, what new facts have emerged?

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by seti0Cha on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @05:55PM (#33254568)

> Typically papers write a follow up story when new facts have emerged, what new facts have emerged?

Great question. What new facts HAVE emerged that caused the New York Times to change their stance on the provenance of these emails? Seems like a story should have been written about that, right? Unless no new facts did emerge, but that would be even more concerning, wouldn't it? That would mean they were either intentionally misleading people or changing their mind capriciously.

It's bizarre to me the way people treat this as a non-issue. I myself wanted the story to be false because I didn't want it to cost Biden the election. I don't, however, approve of being mislead about things, even if I agree with the goals. This is doubly true for a news organization. It's a failure of their primary responsibility.

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Re:Americans' Trust in Media Remains Near Record Low by treis on Tuesday October 18, 2022 @06:13PM (#33254752)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-...

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/hunter-biden-laptop-...

The WaPo one is more technical and the NY mag article is more lurid.

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