I contracted sat TV for a while. I had to pay extra for movies but news channels were free. It was like someone was paying for me to watch that movie

I've been working in a PR-type space recently. That narrative is the subject of war between so many different actors.

The worst thing is watching everyone around me, even very intelligent people, get so angry over a space that is so heavily fabricated, optimised even for that very same outrage.

I think the idea that news does things for ratings and therefore money is not really true. Control of the narrative is vastly more lucrative for other stakeholders in these organizations. Some of these news organizations like the Washington Post for example lost $77 million last year. Fox news fired Tucker Carlson, the most popular news anchor in the channel's history. This is not an economically driven business, at least in terms of the news outlet's own profit and loss.

Non-profits give away billions and billions for non-economic reasons, they'd probably fund these loss making news outlets, and they indeed fund many non-economic advocacy organizations because they help them change the widely believed narratives to support their respective missions.

> Fox news fired Tucker Carlson, the most popular news anchor in the channel's history. This is not an economically driven business

Nonsense example. Carlson was the figurehead for a narrative that cost Murdoch $800 million in defamation.

https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/jul/26/tucker-carlson...

Carlson has not been a news anchor his entire time at Fox News - he would be more fairly called a commentator or show host.

He was a commentator when he was on CNN as well. He has never been a news anchor.

I would swear as well in court Fox News claimed he was an 'entertainer' at some point.

Actual investigative on the ground journalism costs more money and time and nuances. All of these are expensive. So why not feed the people junk.

It’s better to read novels then, at least I’m not disappointed that it’s all fake.

People really need to understand how journalism works as a business model. When you only consume news that reinforces your beliefs, that creates an incentive to produce news that conforms to your beliefs. This doesn't mean your beliefs are wrong, just that you should be aware of your own biases and guard against them.

Excessive cynicism is a real danger too. Democracies rely on an informed electorate to guide decisions. If you throw up your hands and say the truth is unknowable so nothing matters anyway, you're giving into autocracy. There absolutely are forces that would like you to give up on the notion of being able to tell truth from falsehoods.

You may not know absolute truth for absolute certainty, but if you live in a democratic society and you'd like to keep it that way, you really ought to make an attempt to know what's going on.

What if our aversion to pursuing absolute truth, insisting on stopping at true enough (like democracy being our most sacred institution) is the problem though?

I would like us to strive for better, not keep it the way it is now.

It's an optimization game, and far too many people care far too much.

You could spend every waking hour reading news, it wouldn't improve your or anyone else's life much, and it definitely wouldn't be better than putting that effort into a whole lot of other things.

You care for democracy and politics? Excellent. Get involved in your local politics. won't take one tenth of the time and will pay off orders of magnitude more than reading stuff constantly.

What is omniscience is an illusion though?

I know some very famous people and have been in the press myself a few times. The general attitude among people the press covers is that reports of them, their business, and the reason they are in the press is distorted to the degree it's fabrication. The news is cat herding of economic waves various industries and power brokers are trying to create for their advantage. There is no "news" only economic manipulation, of every possible kind.

Technically, how the narrative is established? What is the procedure?

When several news organizations follow the same narrative in a coordinated manner, is it because their editors just advertently sense "the party line"? Or the are some meetings where they are instructed? Or some written instructions distributed among them?

In Russian and Ukrainian practice I heard the term "themnik" - brief written instructions of how to present various themes.

Given that in the early post-soviet times, when this started, they all hired and learned from western (mostly american) political technologists, maybe this practice came from the west?

Have you ever saw or heard of such instructive, narrative establishing docs?

> Technically, how the narrative is established? What is the procedure?

> When several news organizations follow the same narrative in a coordinated manner, is it because their editors just advertently sense "the party line"? Or the are some meetings where they are instructed? Or some written instructions distributed among them?

In the US, I think it's mostly due to shared individual biases causing the organizations to coalesce around a "party line." IIRC, a large majority of journalists have personal beliefs that are for one party and against the other, and even a very strong sense of professionalism can't fully neutralize bias like that.

Does "Manufacturing Consent" ring a bell? Sounds right up your alley:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent?useskin=...

Yes, thanks. I am (superficially) aware of this as well as of the Lippman and Bernays work.

I am just curious about specific details or material artifacts of the media narrative control.

Herman and Chomskiy, as I understand, describe more conceptual model, that media orgs depend on their owners, on advertizers, etc, and thus influenced or biased.

But how does it work, if reallly present?

Pure self-censorship when people don't want to harm the interests of those who they depend on? This alone may not be enough, because requires clear understanding of the interests, which may not always be transparent.

Personnel policy, when only people with right beliefs are hired? May be not flexible enough, if the narrative needs to be changed quickly.

> I started my career as a reporter a decade ago. I can't tell you how many stories I filed that an editor twisted into something different to fit their narrative.

I think it's important to read news with that in mind, but almost treat it as game of spotting and anticipating the way things will be twisted to fit the narrative. It's helpful to familiarize oneself with concepts such as "burying the lede," and read some snarky media criticism from a perspective that cuts against the typical bias of the mainstream media.