The public's trust in journalism has cratered because they became activists instead of journalists. It's fascinating and telling that the article avoids this issue completely, not mentioning trust once.
Do people en masse really want this trad unbiased intellectual version of journalism though? It seems like all of the new successful outlets are explicitly biased/activist. I can’t imagine in our emotional polarized world what people are really clamoring for is the days of Walter Murrow.
Or did customers just switch to untrustable (but free) online papers, leaving activism as the only way to earn a living for former upright journalists?
It’s pretty hard to quantify. Reading the tone of NYT headlines over the last 20 years, I observe a steady increase in side-taking on both sides of the newsroom. Those headlines and stories are empirically more engaging and the market values engagement above all else.
I’m starting to wonder if post war America was this unique time in history, because I’m not saying your wrong but it also seems like historically the idea of an unbiased news media is not the norm.
In general I have trouble believing it’s the medias fault though, not that they’re without sin, I just think the forces that make something like this are bigger than the media.
> I’m starting to wonder if post war America was this unique time in history
It certainly was re: journalism.
When we only had the big three TV networks vying for our eyeballs, they each used news as a way to attract the broadest set of Americans. The nightly news was a loss leader, in the hopes that we'd watch the rest of the evening's programming/ads on that network.
The "unbiased" business didn't really exist until someone could be in all of our homes building rapport with our families every night. And cable, then more so the web, completely disrupted that.
There used to be many, many more newspapers, with room for distinction as the paper of record for any given demographic. Radio, then more so TV, put an end to most of those.
I see a bit of a reversal in the U.S. press. Peak craziness was 2020.
It was always a mystery if the activism was top-down mandated, i.e., journalists were forced to be activists by their management or not.
So it would be interesting to see who was fired. Mainstream has gotten saner in the U.S., with many heretical articles in the NYT and WaPo at least on the war topics.
This is not the case in the U.K. or Germany, where only one public opinion is allowed.
It is a wise propaganda tactic to label the exposing of inconvenient truths as “activist”, “mainstream media”, etc. All media can be labeled using such terms. The brilliance of Fox News was to preempt this fact by using the slogan “fair and balanced”. As if it is such and yet its listeners largely believe this and that they are receiving untarnished information and spin.
You have it backwards. Fox News compared itself to the “mainstream media” and labeled themselves “fair and balanced”. Conservatives ate that up and actually believe that Fox News is fair and balanced and that the “mainstream media” isn’t.
I go the no news at all route these days. We live in an age of cheap, effective, easy to create misinformation.
I remember when the NYT claimed they couldn't touch the lab leak theory because of Trump. It's more about what they're not exposing than what they are.
Well, for one example, just yesterday I was reading that the mainstream press didn't run with the "Biden is becoming decrepit" story because it might be viewed as helping Trump. So that was either "we can't run this story because it would help a political enemy" or "we can't run this story because it would be viewed as helping a political enemy".
That story was out there for months in non-mainstream press. (And probably on Fox, but they also are a fairly clear example of 'activism'.)
Is this a joke? Biden becoming decrepit has been running non stop in mainstream press his whole election, in fact it’s so common there’s almost an equal number of “why is the mainstream media obsessed with Biden’s mental state” articles.
Journalists were always activists in some sense. You need to have a strong moral sense to uncover truths that power wants to keep under wraps, you need to have a strong inner motivation to seek out information that can get you or loved ones harassed or even harmed.
Trust has eroded because the business model for journalism has eroded, with a lack of money the news had to look into tapping other sources of income like pay-per-click ads, to increase that you need to have clickbait, ragebait, all kinds of manipulation to make someone choose to visit your news site instead of the 100s of others that popped up on the internet. With that you start losing trust.
Also I believe your view of journalism is very likely an American one, with your 24/7 "News" channels that are more a drama-generating machine than actual reporting, or investigative journalism.
There's still a lot of good journalism being done, and nowadays a lot outside of the usual institutions of news where investigations could be done before but got eroded because they got poorer.
Journalism necessarily requires some level of engagement and activism, I just don't think what you mean by "activist" is the actual meaning of the word but a catch-all umbrella for stuff you don't like. Would love to be proved wrong though.
I think my favorite journalists are ones who have “strong opinions loosely held”. Like it’s interesting to go in with a hypothesis and maybe even a desired outcome as long as you are willing to take the data as it comes.
The worst is the opposite people with an agenda who extract the one counterpoint to a 500 page research paper and write an article about how the whole papaer validate their assumptions
But somewhere in the middle is the boring boilerplate overview that takes no real stance at all.
Absolutely in agreement, and I would expand that those are my favourite people in general. Having a strong opinion based on a good foundation but that can be changed if new facts emerge is one of the best traits people can have, it is a signal to me of genuinely curious people, filtering out the ones filled with the void of dogma.
It argues that journalism has a problem--just like everybody else.
Journalism specifically has a crisis because, as an industry, they have spent far too much of their credibility in service to narrative. A tainted product sheds customers, and here you are.
It means their credibility and reputation has been damaged due to their dishonesty being exposed.
The closest comparison would be like how a brand known for its high quality products might "cash-in" it's reputation for quick profits by reducing the quality and cost to produce said products (ex: Boeing, Craftsman). The key difference here is that rather than exchanging reputation for short term cash, Journalists burn their reputation for short term influence, usually to shepherd people into a common false narrative.
The irony in all this is that journalists obviously read the news too, so this shepherding has a kind of reinforcing snowball effect. Because of this, I suspect that individual journalists might underestimate how disconnected they are from reality compared to the average person, but this part is ultimately just speculation on my end.
so, in this narrative, it seems like the most popular news outlets are ones that take a specific side — daily wire the young Turks. Do you think these outlets represent the “true” narrative that people are looking for?
Like I’m not making any statement about whether or not news organizations are reliable purveyors of “truth” I don’t think they are, but I think the argument is the opposite of yours, that the attempt to unbiased is pushing people away.
In the COVID narrative, people are drawn to news organizations that take a strong stand in one direction or another, not the ones that try and thread the needle towards “truth” and that legacy media like the New York Times. Is too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals.
While a conservative looks at the New York Times and sees a liberal rag that occasionally panders to conservatives with an occasional below the fold op-ed that is intentionally de-prioritized to spin a narrative. Liberals in fact see those same below the fold op-Ed’s as evidence the the paper is unwilling to tell the “true narrative” because of fear of alienating conservative support.
Absolutely, my point was that if the theory I responded to were true, I would expect that the most successful new news organizations would be less biased/narrativey than the NYT. Do we see a wealth of new organizations that are that way? __maybe__ the free press but personally I find them the most narrativey of all.
Let's imagine populations: A, B, and C. Each population has their own distinct way of interpreting reality. It's not that their worldviews are completely different from each other, it's simply that the lens through which they view the world is shaped differently from the others due to a difference in priorities, culture and lived experience.
Now let's imagine 5 News Orgs: ABC, AC, A, B, C. These News Orgs are each aligned with the population letters reflected in their name. News Org: "A" for example will report on reality only through a lens that population "A" would find agreeable. While News Org "ABC" will report on reality through the combined lens of populations A, B and C, in essence looking at the issue from all angles.
News Org "ABC" would be considered "unbiased" despite the fact that it's still interpreting reality through a lens. This is fine though because the desire for "unbiased" news comes from a desire to understand an issue from all perspectives. Population B might look at the reports of News Org "ABC" so it can gain understanding on how Populations "A" and "C" are perceiving an event.
Suddenly population "A" says News Org "ABC" is harmful. It asserts Population A's lens is actually objective reality and that anything the contradicts it is false. It asserts "unbiased" news is actually a bad thing since it promotes things that disagree with "objective reality". News Org "ABC", buys this argument and becomes "Abc", still acting like it is "unbiased" but now inaccurately represents the positions of populations "B" and "C".
Gradually the media landscape shifts, it becomes just 4 News Orgs: "AA", "Ac", "A", "BB". Population "A" is now overrepresented across the media landscape, population "C" is represented but incorrectly and B is only represented by outlets that exaggerate its position on everything, over-correcting the issue.
Population C is aware there is an issue here but can extract some value by consuming content from multiple outlets and comparing things. Population A is no longer aware C exists and believes B is evil. Population B is also now unaware C exists and thinks A is evil.
Gradually the media landscape changes again, now the News Orgs are just "$ZZ", "AZ$", "A$" and "BBB$$".
- Population C is completely unrepresented and just looks at social media, it has no trust in any of the remaining News Orgs.
- Population B's exclusive outlet has become completely hysterical, and influenced by corporate interests taking advantage of the fact that Population B has limited options. Many in this population are enamored with it, many others have abandoned it entirely like with population C, but being less technically savvy, are now relying exclusively on local Facebook groups for their news.
- Population A, still believes it's lens is objective reality and has become accustomed to trusting all News Orgs other than "BBB$$". However, these organizations having long lost any sense of integrity, and have begun taking advantage of this blind trust by selectively reporting on things that align with the political interests of Party Z, believing that doing so will serve the greater good. Additionally, to make up for the fact that their audiences are now in decline, the remaining News Orgs are all selling their influence for extra cash. Some in Population A see the corporate influence in the remaining News Orgs but believe they can filter it out, however most trust them completely and fail to even filter out the corporate interest. Few if any are even aware of party Z's influence despite it being reported on "BBB$$".
----
So I'll be upfront and say the above giant-wall-of-text-metapor is imperfect and something I just threw together and maybe got a ...
I don’t think I fundamentally disagree with anything you said, except your conclusion, my position would be, that it’s macro forces that make news organization ABC untenable and untrustworthy. if ABC kept being ABC the pattern you noticed would have happened anyway, maybe just faster or differently.
And maybe counterintuitively, I think a real ABC would be the least trusted source of all.
The only alternative I think would be to go back to a time where there was only an ABC(haha).
I do think it’s interesting that the only solution people come up to these problems is something authoritarian, this isn’t a criticism of you actually, I don’t know your politics but it’s something I’ve been wrestling with lately. Is the only way to have a free/informed/unified society to have total control of the information flow? Or total control of the culture?
Or maybe asked another way, how do you create the ABC that people want to watch when there’s so much other media out there customized to your exact perspective.
There’s also the fact that ABC is inherently conservative(small c) because what about D! And E! and L!
Honestly I don't believe these sorts of issues can be resolved with authoritarian approachs, in fact I believe any kind of top down approach is doomed to make this kind of thing even worse really. We would end up with populations A, B, C and just News Org Z! I wasn't trying to offer a solution with my prior comment, but a post-mordem of how legacy media has declined, and how this could have been avoided.
We had a period where the FCC only offered a limited amount of airspace so News Orgs has certain obligations to keep the public at large informed. This required a more diverse set of perspectives and I really do believe these perspectives helped keep each other in check. However with these obligations gone, and the collapse of the integrity fostered during this period, legacy Journalists have grown into smug elitest who, drunk over the reputation they gained while they had this integrity, now think of the public as a group to be guided rather than informed.
Looking forward I believe the proper solution to all this will emerge naturally as legacy media's decline continues to glide downwards. Personally speaking I simply get my news from the front page of Wikipedia, maybe more options like this will come about as the priorities of society at large continues to evolve as it gets comfortable with the internet? I don't think we will get anywhere though so long as "unbiased" is treated as a taboo word, something I believe legacy media has grandly succeeded in spinning the public on in recent years, atleast in my eyes...
No, journalism is under real economic pressure as their original revenue source has evaporated. Now you can’t take the time necessary to fund deep investigative journalism.
Large papers still have decently sized editorial staff but those are the shrinking minimum. Most publications have simply given up, chasing emotional driven headlines, increasing “engagement”. Others simply vanished.
It is the logical consequence of an attention based economy. Play by the rules or perish. Unless the financial incentives change that will be the name of the game. Along with a disintegration middle who can only grow with truth-seeking and fact based reporting.
Of course it is a breeding ground for activism and extremism.
Maybe there was a time where this could have been possible. But this lies now in the past. The majority of people now get their news from social media and the young generation has effectively abandoned media governed by editorial staff.
Or rather: Of course it could be successful, but I doubt it would be economically viable.
I will say even though I disagree with this perspective, I am heartened by how optimistic it is in presuming that your fellow person wants objective credible news.
The vocation crisis in journalism is being driven by economics. Papers sold classified ads, broadcast television sold commercial spots, and this was profitable because it was difficult to replicate the distribution systems (as in the music industry.) Now the FAANG companies have captured the ad revenue because they own the distribution, and those companies (so far) don't seem interested in investing in quality journalism.
This is unlike the entertainment industry, where Amazon and Netflix have become content producers to some extent. They did this because they realized they could get more money by creating entertainment content.
But this is a book review. The book is not about what causes a _perceived_ vocation crisis. It is about how journalists today, in Seattle and Toulouse, France, are dealing with it. The athors' conclusion is that the response is personal to each journalist; there is no unifying theme. The book argues journalism has non-commercial as well as commercial motives. It has a social function as well as an economic one. There is an entire Epilogue titled "Is Journalism Dying?" The authors do not think so.
I agree with the authors that the economics of journalism alone cannot kill it. It will persist so long as there is a belief in its social purpose. Maybe so-called "tech" companies that insidiously intermediate peoples' web use are the world's greatest profiteers from ineffective advertising spend. But journalism is more than selling ads. People want to be journalists for a variety of reasons other than money.
Generally, no one pays for what so-called "tech" companies produce, whatever that is; software perhaps. If they pay to use one of these middlemen, and they are not advertisers, it's not much. The companies give away their employees' output for free. But people still pay for books and newspapers, the stuff that journalists produce. "AI" appears to be aimed stealing that business, too. It might succeed. But even if that happens, people still want to do work and produce stuff that is socially useful, like journalism, using their own energy and brains.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 85.8 ms ] threadDid customers lose trust because of activism?
Or did customers just switch to untrustable (but free) online papers, leaving activism as the only way to earn a living for former upright journalists?
What are the signs and effects of this activist media? Who are its players? Are there sides? What are they?
In general I have trouble believing it’s the medias fault though, not that they’re without sin, I just think the forces that make something like this are bigger than the media.
It certainly was re: journalism.
When we only had the big three TV networks vying for our eyeballs, they each used news as a way to attract the broadest set of Americans. The nightly news was a loss leader, in the hopes that we'd watch the rest of the evening's programming/ads on that network.
The "unbiased" business didn't really exist until someone could be in all of our homes building rapport with our families every night. And cable, then more so the web, completely disrupted that.
There used to be many, many more newspapers, with room for distinction as the paper of record for any given demographic. Radio, then more so TV, put an end to most of those.
It was always a mystery if the activism was top-down mandated, i.e., journalists were forced to be activists by their management or not.
So it would be interesting to see who was fired. Mainstream has gotten saner in the U.S., with many heretical articles in the NYT and WaPo at least on the war topics.
This is not the case in the U.K. or Germany, where only one public opinion is allowed.
It is mistaken to think that the choices are only Fox News or CNN(or equivalent), the other (seemingly growing) choice is no news at all.
I go the no news at all route these days. We live in an age of cheap, effective, easy to create misinformation.
That story was out there for months in non-mainstream press. (And probably on Fox, but they also are a fairly clear example of 'activism'.)
Journalists were always activists in some sense. You need to have a strong moral sense to uncover truths that power wants to keep under wraps, you need to have a strong inner motivation to seek out information that can get you or loved ones harassed or even harmed.
Trust has eroded because the business model for journalism has eroded, with a lack of money the news had to look into tapping other sources of income like pay-per-click ads, to increase that you need to have clickbait, ragebait, all kinds of manipulation to make someone choose to visit your news site instead of the 100s of others that popped up on the internet. With that you start losing trust.
Also I believe your view of journalism is very likely an American one, with your 24/7 "News" channels that are more a drama-generating machine than actual reporting, or investigative journalism.
There's still a lot of good journalism being done, and nowadays a lot outside of the usual institutions of news where investigations could be done before but got eroded because they got poorer.
Journalism necessarily requires some level of engagement and activism, I just don't think what you mean by "activist" is the actual meaning of the word but a catch-all umbrella for stuff you don't like. Would love to be proved wrong though.
The worst is the opposite people with an agenda who extract the one counterpoint to a 500 page research paper and write an article about how the whole papaer validate their assumptions
But somewhere in the middle is the boring boilerplate overview that takes no real stance at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout
It argues that journalism has a problem--just like everybody else.
Journalism specifically has a crisis because, as an industry, they have spent far too much of their credibility in service to narrative. A tainted product sheds customers, and here you are.
The closest comparison would be like how a brand known for its high quality products might "cash-in" it's reputation for quick profits by reducing the quality and cost to produce said products (ex: Boeing, Craftsman). The key difference here is that rather than exchanging reputation for short term cash, Journalists burn their reputation for short term influence, usually to shepherd people into a common false narrative.
The irony in all this is that journalists obviously read the news too, so this shepherding has a kind of reinforcing snowball effect. Because of this, I suspect that individual journalists might underestimate how disconnected they are from reality compared to the average person, but this part is ultimately just speculation on my end.
Like I’m not making any statement about whether or not news organizations are reliable purveyors of “truth” I don’t think they are, but I think the argument is the opposite of yours, that the attempt to unbiased is pushing people away.
In the COVID narrative, people are drawn to news organizations that take a strong stand in one direction or another, not the ones that try and thread the needle towards “truth” and that legacy media like the New York Times. Is too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals.
While a conservative looks at the New York Times and sees a liberal rag that occasionally panders to conservatives with an occasional below the fold op-ed that is intentionally de-prioritized to spin a narrative. Liberals in fact see those same below the fold op-Ed’s as evidence the the paper is unwilling to tell the “true narrative” because of fear of alienating conservative support.
Whereas the NY Times is the most popular, according to Statista.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/381569/leading-news-and-...
Now let's imagine 5 News Orgs: ABC, AC, A, B, C. These News Orgs are each aligned with the population letters reflected in their name. News Org: "A" for example will report on reality only through a lens that population "A" would find agreeable. While News Org "ABC" will report on reality through the combined lens of populations A, B and C, in essence looking at the issue from all angles.
News Org "ABC" would be considered "unbiased" despite the fact that it's still interpreting reality through a lens. This is fine though because the desire for "unbiased" news comes from a desire to understand an issue from all perspectives. Population B might look at the reports of News Org "ABC" so it can gain understanding on how Populations "A" and "C" are perceiving an event.
Suddenly population "A" says News Org "ABC" is harmful. It asserts Population A's lens is actually objective reality and that anything the contradicts it is false. It asserts "unbiased" news is actually a bad thing since it promotes things that disagree with "objective reality". News Org "ABC", buys this argument and becomes "Abc", still acting like it is "unbiased" but now inaccurately represents the positions of populations "B" and "C".
Gradually the media landscape shifts, it becomes just 4 News Orgs: "AA", "Ac", "A", "BB". Population "A" is now overrepresented across the media landscape, population "C" is represented but incorrectly and B is only represented by outlets that exaggerate its position on everything, over-correcting the issue.
Population C is aware there is an issue here but can extract some value by consuming content from multiple outlets and comparing things. Population A is no longer aware C exists and believes B is evil. Population B is also now unaware C exists and thinks A is evil.
Gradually the media landscape changes again, now the News Orgs are just "$ZZ", "AZ$", "A$" and "BBB$$".
- Population C is completely unrepresented and just looks at social media, it has no trust in any of the remaining News Orgs.
- Population B's exclusive outlet has become completely hysterical, and influenced by corporate interests taking advantage of the fact that Population B has limited options. Many in this population are enamored with it, many others have abandoned it entirely like with population C, but being less technically savvy, are now relying exclusively on local Facebook groups for their news.
- Population A, still believes it's lens is objective reality and has become accustomed to trusting all News Orgs other than "BBB$$". However, these organizations having long lost any sense of integrity, and have begun taking advantage of this blind trust by selectively reporting on things that align with the political interests of Party Z, believing that doing so will serve the greater good. Additionally, to make up for the fact that their audiences are now in decline, the remaining News Orgs are all selling their influence for extra cash. Some in Population A see the corporate influence in the remaining News Orgs but believe they can filter it out, however most trust them completely and fail to even filter out the corporate interest. Few if any are even aware of party Z's influence despite it being reported on "BBB$$".
----
So I'll be upfront and say the above giant-wall-of-text-metapor is imperfect and something I just threw together and maybe got a ...
And maybe counterintuitively, I think a real ABC would be the least trusted source of all.
The only alternative I think would be to go back to a time where there was only an ABC(haha).
I do think it’s interesting that the only solution people come up to these problems is something authoritarian, this isn’t a criticism of you actually, I don’t know your politics but it’s something I’ve been wrestling with lately. Is the only way to have a free/informed/unified society to have total control of the information flow? Or total control of the culture?
Or maybe asked another way, how do you create the ABC that people want to watch when there’s so much other media out there customized to your exact perspective.
There’s also the fact that ABC is inherently conservative(small c) because what about D! And E! and L!
We had a period where the FCC only offered a limited amount of airspace so News Orgs has certain obligations to keep the public at large informed. This required a more diverse set of perspectives and I really do believe these perspectives helped keep each other in check. However with these obligations gone, and the collapse of the integrity fostered during this period, legacy Journalists have grown into smug elitest who, drunk over the reputation they gained while they had this integrity, now think of the public as a group to be guided rather than informed.
Looking forward I believe the proper solution to all this will emerge naturally as legacy media's decline continues to glide downwards. Personally speaking I simply get my news from the front page of Wikipedia, maybe more options like this will come about as the priorities of society at large continues to evolve as it gets comfortable with the internet? I don't think we will get anywhere though so long as "unbiased" is treated as a taboo word, something I believe legacy media has grandly succeeded in spinning the public on in recent years, atleast in my eyes...
Large papers still have decently sized editorial staff but those are the shrinking minimum. Most publications have simply given up, chasing emotional driven headlines, increasing “engagement”. Others simply vanished.
Of course it is a breeding ground for activism and extremism.
HBO had a hit show based off that premise (The newsroom)
Or rather: Of course it could be successful, but I doubt it would be economically viable.
This is unlike the entertainment industry, where Amazon and Netflix have become content producers to some extent. They did this because they realized they could get more money by creating entertainment content.
I agree with the authors that the economics of journalism alone cannot kill it. It will persist so long as there is a belief in its social purpose. Maybe so-called "tech" companies that insidiously intermediate peoples' web use are the world's greatest profiteers from ineffective advertising spend. But journalism is more than selling ads. People want to be journalists for a variety of reasons other than money.
Generally, no one pays for what so-called "tech" companies produce, whatever that is; software perhaps. If they pay to use one of these middlemen, and they are not advertisers, it's not much. The companies give away their employees' output for free. But people still pay for books and newspapers, the stuff that journalists produce. "AI" appears to be aimed stealing that business, too. It might succeed. But even if that happens, people still want to do work and produce stuff that is socially useful, like journalism, using their own energy and brains.