I mean, the heyday of print news was almost a century ago and televised news decades ago.
Basically all digital news outlets, outside of just a few notable outliers, have no money to produce anything but low effort articles that are just a vehicle to show ads. And some of those are active propaganda outlets for basically nothing but evil interest groups.
What is there to have a positive view about...?
Society stopped paying for journalism and we got what we paid for.
I think the biggest thing that makes me distrust the news as it stands is that I feel like news reporting is far too prone to overly leveling debates. And by that I mean making both sides come across as equally credible, even when that could not be further from the truth.
The most common way I see it happen is like this:
you have a situation some group says that some totally safe thing is actually super dangerous.
There's a large body of scientific literature that really clearly shows its totally safe.
the news reports on it as such:
"While many within the scientific community state that there is no harm with X, anti-X proponents respond that the current studies are not substantial enough, and that they are simply asking questions."
This framing, does not point out that the anti-X proponents are just a group of 10 people, nor does it describe how much evidence there exists in the scientific literature showing the thing is safe. Both sides are made to sound equally reasonable, which in my mind is practically a lie by omission. Because they aren't equally reasonable.
Edit: One additional thought. I still will read news articles if they get shared to me, and I try to evaluate based off of what the source is. but another reason I don't actively keep a news subscription is because news orgs love reporting on tragedy. Because its more noteworthy. I'm just not interested in reading yet another article about how crime is on the rise. Or about the most recent fatal car crash. Etc.
I stare into the void enough as it is. I don't want another.
Is there an irony in this? The negativity cognitive bias often used by news media to increase the salience of their output now affects the perception of their product.
Everyone complains about the media, but few offer solutions.
My favorite type of solution is something along the lines of taxing organizations whose viewers are more disconnected from statistics on the ground (by a bipartisan independent board choosing the types of knowledge sets that a well informed population should have). We could also subsidize organizations that are doing well informing people.
This is a way of dealing with the externalities brought about by people having so much misinformation in their day-to-day decision-making.
I am not sure if this scepticism is exclusive to the teens. I think a lot of people are more and more sceptical about news media and the close ties it has with the establishment - especially the way we have seen different platforms "manage" the news on behalf of the establishment.
On the surface this feels right, "Oh look, the kids can see through the bullshit".
But this assumes that the kids have a stable honest reference point, and from there are calling out the bullshit.
That is almost certainly not the case. What is far more likely, is that kids are getting their news from random tiktoks that are farming views with credible bullshit, and from that totally deranged reference point, the kids are calling the news bullshit.
You will find few people more hostile towards contemporary journalism than me, and you will find no one more hostile towards "self proclaimed social media news producer" than me. I could write essays about the people in my life who left behind journalism produced news to go completely off the deep end getting "the truth" from tiktok.
How journalism and media evolve is key to democracy over the long run. Its inability to change and adapt to the times has already caused grave damage, but the damage it will cause going forward could be greater. Social media and the supposed advantage to having a camera in every hand did not pan out at all and in fact became a negative.
Does anyone under 65 consume traditional news anymore? They don't even try to hide their own biases these days, it's kinda gross. Sure, the same interests have found their way onto social media by influencing influencers, but the expectations are lower.
Though I think the real problem is if you are somewhat knowledgeable about any topic, the news will always get important details incorrect when they cover it. I believe there is a famous quote about that, but I definitely noticed it when I was a teenager in the 90s. I think this is the real reason Jon Stewart is the most trusted news figure for people of a certain age, and why social media/streamers/whatever are more trusted for younger people. That is, if you present things in a less authoritative manner, we're more likely to forgive factual errors.
I think it’s easy, too easy, to say something like “all mainstream media is biased and untrustworthy.”
The problem is, who do you trust instead? Twitter? Like that’s not biased. Actually I think it’s much worse. Not only is the editor of Twitter very biased, but it’s filled with bots and there is nobody providing any reliable fact checking. It’s very easy for motivated parties to portray a fringe idea as mainstream. It’s also easy to shout the truth out of the room. What one person tweet is just as valuable as another. Dunking on people (ratioing, etc) becomes your signal.
TikTok? Maybe less easy to influence, but now the editor is an adversarial nation state.
YouTube? If you thought msm wanted engagement, YouTube is much worse.
Substack? Respectfully, is full of people who are not trustworthy enough to be platformed anywhere meaningful, and for the few that are independent for legitimate reasons, don’t have the resources to do consistent factual reporting in anything more than a very narrow domain.
Long story short, maybe msm is imperfect, but imo it’s the best we got. And I’d rather have some source of truth that is at least attempting to fact check and get the truth right, even if biased, because when you don’t have any truth compass—when all information is equal regardless of how far from reality it is—it becomes very easy to be manipulated.
Ironically this is something I see in media a lot and dislike. Things like "80% of people think country going in the wrong direction".
Well while you're polling them, ask which direction is correct. Because 40% wanting less Trump bullshit and 40% wanting more Trump bullshit is totally different than letting your average reader assume 80% agree with their own assesment of what's wrong.
I want people to have strongly negative views on Fox News and the even worse variants of that kind of propaganda.
According to the news media, we have been living in perpetual crisis, closing in on apocalyptic times for the last 10+ years. Constant fear and negativity through Radio, TV, Internet throughout every day, from the moment you wake up.
Yes, they are just doing their job, but here's the thing: Hardly any of it is relevant to me. Everyday its TRUMP this, that. Please tell me why should I care? Why are you putting this shit into my mind, how is this my problem?
It's getting harder and harder to disconnect from all that garbage. Unsolicited attention grabbing is what it is. Like a dumb movie everyone has to watch.
It wasn't always like this. People didn't care much about politics, sometimes you caught the news of a plane crash or something tragic, but for the most part they had their own life's to live. Now everyone is hopelessly addicted to the spectacle.
And social media isn't making it any better. I don't know if I'm seeing too grim, but please tell me you feel it as well, when you see people just regurgitating the latest dumb shit wherever you go.
Then you visit a poor country for holiday, outside the western/anglosphere, and see all those people just living their lives, not fully consumed in some narrative.
I remember the same sentiment when I was a teen and the sentiment was common among my peers.
The times have changes significantly, and what is available to teens is very different now than what it was even 5 years ago.
That said, the teen brain likely has not changed much in that time. (trying to assert independence, be different than their parents, do what they want, trust what they want, etc)
The news media is heavily biased to the far left. This is due to the bias of ownership, as well as the low salary cost of young reporters who tend to lean left.
It's a race to the bottom in this AI slop world we now live in. That's the problem with trying to get eyeballs in a mass alternatives universe. To stand out you need to get more radical and extreme to keep your audience. Eventually the general population click and realize that the alternative media is generally trash. That's when people start looking back at quality media. It's just a vicious circle.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 43.7 ms ] threadIs this a data point? I have no idea, but he's cool and so is The Onion.
Basically all digital news outlets, outside of just a few notable outliers, have no money to produce anything but low effort articles that are just a vehicle to show ads. And some of those are active propaganda outlets for basically nothing but evil interest groups.
What is there to have a positive view about...?
Society stopped paying for journalism and we got what we paid for.
The most common way I see it happen is like this: you have a situation some group says that some totally safe thing is actually super dangerous. There's a large body of scientific literature that really clearly shows its totally safe. the news reports on it as such: "While many within the scientific community state that there is no harm with X, anti-X proponents respond that the current studies are not substantial enough, and that they are simply asking questions." This framing, does not point out that the anti-X proponents are just a group of 10 people, nor does it describe how much evidence there exists in the scientific literature showing the thing is safe. Both sides are made to sound equally reasonable, which in my mind is practically a lie by omission. Because they aren't equally reasonable.
Edit: One additional thought. I still will read news articles if they get shared to me, and I try to evaluate based off of what the source is. but another reason I don't actively keep a news subscription is because news orgs love reporting on tragedy. Because its more noteworthy. I'm just not interested in reading yet another article about how crime is on the rise. Or about the most recent fatal car crash. Etc.
I stare into the void enough as it is. I don't want another.
My favorite type of solution is something along the lines of taxing organizations whose viewers are more disconnected from statistics on the ground (by a bipartisan independent board choosing the types of knowledge sets that a well informed population should have). We could also subsidize organizations that are doing well informing people.
This is a way of dealing with the externalities brought about by people having so much misinformation in their day-to-day decision-making.
But this assumes that the kids have a stable honest reference point, and from there are calling out the bullshit.
That is almost certainly not the case. What is far more likely, is that kids are getting their news from random tiktoks that are farming views with credible bullshit, and from that totally deranged reference point, the kids are calling the news bullshit.
You will find few people more hostile towards contemporary journalism than me, and you will find no one more hostile towards "self proclaimed social media news producer" than me. I could write essays about the people in my life who left behind journalism produced news to go completely off the deep end getting "the truth" from tiktok.
Though I think the real problem is if you are somewhat knowledgeable about any topic, the news will always get important details incorrect when they cover it. I believe there is a famous quote about that, but I definitely noticed it when I was a teenager in the 90s. I think this is the real reason Jon Stewart is the most trusted news figure for people of a certain age, and why social media/streamers/whatever are more trusted for younger people. That is, if you present things in a less authoritative manner, we're more likely to forgive factual errors.
The problem is, who do you trust instead? Twitter? Like that’s not biased. Actually I think it’s much worse. Not only is the editor of Twitter very biased, but it’s filled with bots and there is nobody providing any reliable fact checking. It’s very easy for motivated parties to portray a fringe idea as mainstream. It’s also easy to shout the truth out of the room. What one person tweet is just as valuable as another. Dunking on people (ratioing, etc) becomes your signal.
TikTok? Maybe less easy to influence, but now the editor is an adversarial nation state.
YouTube? If you thought msm wanted engagement, YouTube is much worse.
Substack? Respectfully, is full of people who are not trustworthy enough to be platformed anywhere meaningful, and for the few that are independent for legitimate reasons, don’t have the resources to do consistent factual reporting in anything more than a very narrow domain.
Long story short, maybe msm is imperfect, but imo it’s the best we got. And I’d rather have some source of truth that is at least attempting to fact check and get the truth right, even if biased, because when you don’t have any truth compass—when all information is equal regardless of how far from reality it is—it becomes very easy to be manipulated.
Now who would want that?
Ironically this is something I see in media a lot and dislike. Things like "80% of people think country going in the wrong direction".
Well while you're polling them, ask which direction is correct. Because 40% wanting less Trump bullshit and 40% wanting more Trump bullshit is totally different than letting your average reader assume 80% agree with their own assesment of what's wrong.
I want people to have strongly negative views on Fox News and the even worse variants of that kind of propaganda.
Yes, they are just doing their job, but here's the thing: Hardly any of it is relevant to me. Everyday its TRUMP this, that. Please tell me why should I care? Why are you putting this shit into my mind, how is this my problem?
It's getting harder and harder to disconnect from all that garbage. Unsolicited attention grabbing is what it is. Like a dumb movie everyone has to watch.
It wasn't always like this. People didn't care much about politics, sometimes you caught the news of a plane crash or something tragic, but for the most part they had their own life's to live. Now everyone is hopelessly addicted to the spectacle.
And social media isn't making it any better. I don't know if I'm seeing too grim, but please tell me you feel it as well, when you see people just regurgitating the latest dumb shit wherever you go.
Then you visit a poor country for holiday, outside the western/anglosphere, and see all those people just living their lives, not fully consumed in some narrative.
I remember the same sentiment when I was a teen and the sentiment was common among my peers.
The times have changes significantly, and what is available to teens is very different now than what it was even 5 years ago.
That said, the teen brain likely has not changed much in that time. (trying to assert independence, be different than their parents, do what they want, trust what they want, etc)