> Today's mass media is better, in terms of adherence to the truth, diversity, and creativity than at any point in time.
Perhaps where your from it is, but the corporate news media in the USA just literally burned all of their remaining credibility backing the wrong horse in the presidential election. They cheated for her, outright lied for her, and covered for her failings. The people here saw it, and the ones not watching through rose colored glasses now rightly now distrust the media even more than before.
To say "hating journalists and their work has become the last unifying cause" and attempting to paint journalists as the victim is disingenuous at best. They made their bed, now they're mad that they have to lie in it.
>It clearly has. Had it not been for Wikileaks, and various online news organizations we would never have known the sheer amount of corruption afoot in this election, as well as the extent of the death grip political elites have on the entire system. I suppose old media has just become too entrenched and cozy with those in power to speak truth to power.
Also, ownership has become ultra-concentrated among the "old media". There'd be more of a case in its favor if old media actually competed with each-other in a diverse marketplace anymore.
> Ultimately the problem is that it isn't that we have illegitimate news flooding the market of information it's that we are finally starting to realize almost all of our information was biased to one degree or another and we are slow to adjust the way we consume information.
Why not both...?
> isn't that we have illegitimate news flooding the market of information
This is absolutely a problem. Old media seems to be pretty content with narrative framing for the most part, this new brand of illegitimate media just makes shit up. They have no intent to engage in the public discourse, their only purpose is to reinforce alternate realities and to shift the Overton window.
> I think the problem is the addition of "opinionated" content media outlets publish to generate outrage. E.g. IMO the NYT is the gold standard of journalism but a lot of their opinion pieces are not even fit to print
A lot of their journalism isn’t that great anymore either. (In the last 3-5 years, there has been a massive upheaval in the ranks as revenues have declined and experienced journalists have left.)
Since there's no rebuttal in your reply, consider this a break :)
Analog radio, newspapers, and television were already in a managed decline before the 2016 election. The events that unfolded forestalled the inevitable a bit longer, but the music is about to end for these propagandists masquerading as reporters. Trust in legacy media is at a record low.
> You know what the media has become? A cesspool of bullshit unworthy of any trust.
I wouldn’t label all media outlets under the same but mainstream media (think of what we grew up watching - CNN, NYT, BBC etc) is increasingly becoming what you described, opinion driven activism fueled journalism rather than reporting facts. It’s a sad state of affairs but across the world it is the same norm, journalists have turned into crowd pleasing (many have their own tweeter world where they are not shy to be an ideologue) click rate seeking media professional rather. My sense is that this type of journalism and their wide coverage under libel protection for example in US only polarizes further the people and as you mentioned make people mistrust _all_ experts. Which is not a good place to be for a society.
Good news is more and more independent journalism (ones not behind under mainstream umbrella or with brands of their own) are doing works in real journalism. People such as Glenn Greenwald are using platforms such as substack which is far better imo than any news you read these days to cover and report a nuanced topic.
>unfortunately with the rise of internet the anybody can aggregate thereby the difference between blogs and nytimes is blurred to end users.
Worse still, this reduced revenue for high-integrity high-overhead traditional news outlets, and led to reducing the quality of their journalism because they couldn't afford to maintain the same standards.
So even the better news reporting institutions had to get worse to stay in the game.
>We, the public, who are unwilling to fund quality journalism, have ourselves to blame for this.
I'm afraid that even if good journalism existed today, yellow journalism will always pay more.
>In both cases, the public is being screwed by entities they’d rather trust. The sad thing is neither of these entities appear to care they’re harming their relationship with the people they serve.
> I'd also argue that what's left of the corporate media is rapidly losing credibility, highly partisan and rarely objective.
How so, exactly? This is kind of an odd moment, where the US president is deeply incompetent and a shameless liar, and some seem to think it's biased for the mainstream media to even point those facts out.
There are definitely some aspects of the traditional media that fit your description (all cable opinion shows are best avoided by everyone), but that's by no means all of the media.
> Is legacy media really leaking talent and cash like I hear so often (honestly asking, haven't seen the data)? If that's true, and social media and technology have neutered their position atop of opinion-forming institutions, that is going to build some very bad incentives in these legacy media companies as far as journalistic integrity goes.
They're definitely in decline financially, but that does mean there are a lot of great journalists that are available to hire.
>> we could end up losing a number of the 'quality' press and the institutional memory of journalistic practice that comes with the territory, which, depending upon your point of view.
Like most things these days, finding good journalism tends to be exceedingly rare. In a world of over saturation of everything (books, movies, music, news), you really have to dig to find something that is objective, politically unbiased, and fair.
Even 5 years ago, it was much easier to find dependable news sources and solid, objective reporting. Nowadays, I find I'm searching a lot longer to find something which isn't outwardly slanted in one political direction or the other.
> I don't see any evidence of that, or at least, that they are any worse now than they used to be.
It's just easier than ever to find out and/or challenge their shortcomings and inclinations, thanks to the web. We are also coming out of 15 years of very close relationships between power and media, which were painfully evident at various critical points in time (post-9/11, Iraq, 2008 etc). A general rise in distrust was met with new media that made it easier to disseminate and multiply such distrust (whether justified or not).
> seek out other equally low quality sources as a substitute. That doesn't make sense to me.
"Quality" is a very subjective term. You fundamentally rate journalism quality in relationship to the fundamental truths you perceive. If you believe Big Companies are up to no good and you read a detailed reportage of corporate abuses, you think it's high-quality reporting; but if you believe corporations are the economic engines of America and should be cut some slack, the same exposé can be read as scandalistic and alarmist. Most other parameters one would use to judge journalism (source quality, corroborating cross-references etc etc) are simply beyond the average person.
> Even I don't trust anything coming out of any large institutions anymore
Learn to differentiate between facts and editorials/opinions.
Alternative media isn't very good at presenting basic facts correctly, something institutions still do well and can only spin so far. Alternative media outright lies about facts.
> The mainstream media is getting choked with pressure from social media and alternate news sources. I have seen a pattern across many of the major outlets who used to have more conservative approach to reporting, are now becoming more and more daring and bombastic with headlines for clicks and attention
All the journalists working for these media outlets spend their day tweeting random bullshit and hot takes. So it's only natural their "professional" work sound more and more like the tweets they author all day long.
These journalists have zero credibility, because they optimize for their followers and twitter brigades, not for integrity or reporting news.
Sure, but the new crop of media that we've seen arise in the past couple of years isn't objectively better - it's just wretched in different ways.
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