For the most part, the less you understand a topic, the more easily you'll be outraged about it, and the more viewership ($$$) you'll drive to the people who give you outrage and withhold understanding.
The most dangerous meme in existence is Friedman's extremist view of shareholder supremacy, which we saw drawn to its obvious conclusion the past few weeks in the Rotunda.
For me, a more sobering example was that Twitter was gaining trust and it seems that in response Elon Musk bought and killed it. That felt a bit more like actively denying the emergence of new media. It was also an example completely counter to Friedman's view on shareholder value as, as an action, it destroyed shareholder value. Just as Bezo's actions have destroyed shareholder value in the Washington Post.
It’s hard to emphasize how unimportant it is for national news.
However, I think it's worth pointing out what goes on at root: distrust and/or seeing oneself as having being manipulated.
On this fulcrum the actual details, facts, intent etc is rendered irrelevant: if I feel the fool telling me 2+2=4 (a fact) will to me become more evidence of bs.
The only way out in the current environment is to not get caught up emotionally in non falsafible stories, stick to facts, and regard anything from news that's not communicating data, facts as entertainment.
Opinion makers are entertainment.
It's interesting how our perception of this can be so different. From my viewpoint, Twitter had completely lost all trust by actively silencing people they disagreed with. This got particularly bad around covid. I am not much of a Twitter/X user, but at least people aren't being silenced on a massive scale anymore.
This simply isn't true.
From your comment you clearly believe that Twitter had lost trust by "actively silencing people they disagreed with" whereas I, reading the reports that the trust and safety folks were putting out, felt like the policies they had in place to moderate people who they felt were not contributing to the conversation seemed to be rooted in reasonable principles. So we had two very different beliefs leading to very different viewpoints.
The original article that kicked this off talks exactly about this. Some people believe that the economy was "bad/weak", others believe that the economy is "good/strong". Two opposite viewpoints with presumably access to the same data!
Its a reasonable thing to engage in discussion with people who believe differently than you do to understand their point of view and what sources of data or evidence they base their beliefs on. To give a commonly cited example, one person would say "I believe the earth is roughly 6,000 years old based on my source which is the Bible." and another person might say, "I believe the earth is 4.5 billion years old, based on the idea of nuclear decay and carbon dating."
In examples like this, one can often quickly come to an assessment of whether or not it is worthwhile to re-examine one's own beliefs based on the other person's sources of evidence. It doesn't end up that you'll agree, just that you will understand why they believe what they believe.
The real problem isn’t money. It’s partisanship.
Journalists are overwhelming Democrats. The available numbers are stark: 96%, as far as anyone can tell.
If the roles were reversed, would any Democrat trust a media populated 96% by Republicans?
Trickle down is a kissing cousin.
Rich people are fine; insane profits are just fine.
Imbalance however is not. Single variable local maximums are distorting leading to corrupting.
Him and a CNN anchor were talking about crime stats being down. Newt disagreed and said Americans feel like crime is up.
Just a nit: my understanding is that anyone who didn't drink the poison was murdered.
Not that it matters for the overall point but it’s an example of a brand being the generic name for a product category backfiring.
It began with a book called “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” (1968).
When we say “drinking the Kool Aid” we mean adopting a dumb way of thinking. Not killing yourself, or even harming yourself. Just being stupid.
We wouldn’t say “they drank the kool aid” if someone committed suicide.
More important for present discussion, “The Kool Aid Acid Test” referred to actual Kool Aid, not a generic equivalent.
The Kool Aid marketing team embraced and promoted its countercultural image. Many brands did.
But this left the brand vulnerable when the counterculture became associated with extremism.
Recent parallels to this exist.
Arguably it's the same problem on HN
If you can make someone believe something, you can use that belief to get them to act against their own self interest. This isn't even a controversial thing for most people to understand. The canonical example that illustrates this was Jim Jones making his followers believe that their best choice was to kill themselves and their children by drinking cyanide laced Kool-aid.
This effect is weaponized through persuasive narratives being repeatedly presented. Once the belief is set, the narratives add in the action that is required next.
That the "media" is the primary tool of setting this narrative is, and always has been, the case. One of the reasons the very first amendment to the US constitution protected the right to a 'free press' was to explicitly allow the media to present narratives that were different than what the government wished to present. Further that they could do this without fear of reprisal.
The "media" has its own agendas and influences, we have a shortage of voices which are both independent and trusted. It is informative to watch the response by established media when such voices emerge.