Re:Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity ...
by derefr on Tuesday May 19, 2015 @06:04PM
(#9573466)
> they take a position, but they try to hide it
Of course they do. That's what the public actually wants when they say they want "intelligent reporting"—an opinion they agree with that they can pretend is unbiased fact-based reporting. (It's the same idea as sarcasm: it's a display of intelligence to be able to signal one thing to your friends and another to the general public.)
True fact-based reporting, on the other hand, gets blasted by both sides of a debate for "supporting the other guy"—because any statement that's not explicitly in favor of them, even a statement making an orthogonal point, is against their agenda.
> the strife in dome inner cities was cast as police vs population when in reality government is at greatest fault
Most problems come down to systems of incentives spiralling out of control when nobody is watching, that create principal-agent problems when agents do what the incentives tell them to do. My favorite piece of NPR is Planet Money, because economists tend to at least be attuned to the "incentives" framing for most subjects, even if all they get to talk about is monetary incentives. I'd love to see regular reporting done by economics-trained (and maybe game-theory-trained) journalists, though.
Of course they do. That's what the public actually wants when they say they want "intelligent reporting"—an opinion they agree with that they can pretend is unbiased fact-based reporting. (It's the same idea as sarcasm: it's a display of intelligence to be able to signal one thing to your friends and another to the general public.)
True fact-based reporting, on the other hand, gets blasted by both sides of a debate for "supporting the other guy"—because any statement that's not explicitly in favor of them, even a statement making an orthogonal point, is against their agenda.
> the strife in dome inner cities was cast as police vs population when in reality government is at greatest fault
Most problems come down to systems of incentives spiralling out of control when nobody is watching, that create principal-agent problems when agents do what the incentives tell them to do. My favorite piece of NPR is Planet Money, because economists tend to at least be attuned to the "incentives" framing for most subjects, even if all they get to talk about is monetary incentives. I'd love to see regular reporting done by economics-trained (and maybe game-theory-trained) journalists, though.