>But mainstream journalists almost to a fault genuinely view their job as bringing important facts to their audience, and they care about getting things right.
What you call "mainstream media" I call "corporate media". And some journalists may feel that way however clicks, eyeballs, and stickiness take priority over their views. There’s too much competition for traditional media outlets to survive without adopting techniques that were once unthinkable. Corrections are rarely issued these days and edits are done in an almost stealthy manner. I had to stop following the Twitter accounts that tracked these changes because it became an endless stream of tweets.
The days of Tim Russert, David Broder, Jim Lehrer, Ted Koppel etc. are long gone. I would consider Matt Taibbi[1] one of the last journalists that followed in their footsteps but he is definitely not corporate and barely mainstream. Taibbi left Rolling Stone and uses Substack which has been attacked by the NYT, and others, as alt-right and misinformation which I find ironic coming from the paper that published Judith Miller’s WMDs propaganda. Even Jason Calacanis referred to Taibbi as a “right guy” on one of the recent All-In podcasts even though Matt is an ardent Sanders supporter. The Blob doesn’t like it when you don’t toe the line.
Corporate media is dead to me even though the vast majority of it is "Left".
>I understand the fight your picking, but really this isn't that much of an argument.
Really? I don't watch Fox News or any corporate media and you assumed I did. You might be shocked to learn that I worked in the Clinton administration and voted for Obama!
>> And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.
Is it? Maybe it once was but the collapse of local news and the massive drop of talented writers and support staff like editors and fact checkers seems to have changed the environment. Most news today is little more than Twitter posts cobbled together.
> 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.
> But the quality of the news from these sources makes all corporate news look like complete garbage, because it is
I don't follow all of those, but the ones I have seen a lot from (especially Greenwald and Taibbi) seem to have abandoned even the pretense of doing news for pure commentary, and commentary that is usually pretty predictable in content from just the subject matter and the current alignment of political factions.
I can understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach but mistaking them for quality news sources is... surprising.
> In my opinion, once-objective mainstream journalism is now about writing content to please target audiences and catch trending topics on social media, as well as keep fast cycles going to appease the algorithms on news aggregation sites and search engines.
That’s an awfully cynical take when all you have to ask is how these publications could stay afloat without drawing readers in. They’re in a tough spot when people are opting for their Facebook feed over paying for articles from proper journalists.
> 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.
(giant image) 2 sentences talking about some dude I've never heard of.
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Huh. I wonder. I mean, obviously it wasn't the only nail in the coffin and they need money but I mostly see nytimes, Wired, BI, etc links and look for an archive link or just move on.
I'd value it more but half of the time they don't even do any actual reporting. It's just rewriting the same crap 5 other papers wrote from a 100 character release from the AP.
Yeah, I value quality, honest reporting. The problem is most of the time they all are in the same race to the bottom. I saw a video on youtube the other day from "Forbes Breaking News" titled "Biden's dog bit secret service agents on 24 different occasions".. WOW Forbes that's definitely breaking news! It's really important that we watch that RIGHT THIS MOMENT isn't it? Really important info there.
These "journalists" and their papers can whine all they want. The reality is they are out of touch and toxic. Yeah, you lost to comment sections because people can actually just read through them.
You also lost because half of the time when I see a tiktok or video on twitter about an event, it's from the source. Someone, on the scene, actually looking at what's happening. Then the bigs swarm on that person's DMs "CAN WE WRITE AN ARTICLE?!"
And as far as investigative journalism goes, youtube is full of people doing it 100x better than most of the crap I see these days in big orgs. Do I want to watch the 25min rundown of the whole situation from the perspective of some dude who spent the last 3 months researching with his team? Or do I want to read a 3000 word article that bloviates about irrelevant things while occasionally repeating the same factoid they based the whole piece on?
I'm just one person with a pretty cynical view of most things but my view is that news orgs lost because they dug their own graves. Because they continued to be out of touch and manipulative and wrong in so many cases that I stopped caring about whatever clickbait garbage they were trying to serve me.
> 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.)
> Media companies have layers of editors, they have at least some diversity, a woman will hopefully look at a story or script before it goes out, sometimes even a lawyer might tell them to tone it down a bit
Sometimes editors and a corporate machine behind the news isn’t the best thing.
Take, for example, Amy Robach. A CBS reporter who wanted to air the Jeffery Epstein story years before he was arrested for the second time. Then ABC tipping off CBS and the leaker being fired.
There’s also the Chris Cuomo basement scandal.
Or Brian Williams lying about his experience covering Iraq.
Or Glenn Greenwald and Bari Weiss being pushed out of their newspapers.
Or studies showing that the media covered Russia’s invasion of Ukraine far more than the US invasion of Iraq.
Or censoring of the Hunter Biden laptop story. Also haven’t seen much about the contents of the diary in the mainstream press…
The media has failed time and time again on what I outlined above and much more. They have an agenda, be it left or right, that is larger than any one person and are largely beholden to advertisers and whatnot.
I applaud independent media. There are a lot of people doing really great work on substack. Jimmy Dore, for example, does amazing reporting and really shows the bias of the media.
People like Alex Berenson, Matt Taibi, Glenn Greenwald, etc are doing really great investigative reporting that I once respected mainstream outlets for.
Just because someone has a large audience doesn’t mean they should be censored. Talking to people about things for hours is invaluable and Rogan does a great job on his show.
>it’s essential that mainstream journalistic institutions reaffirm their bona fides as disinterested purveyors of fact and honest brokers of controversy
This hasn't been true for decades. Almost all modern mainstream journalism is activist journalism. I think it's been normalized to the point that even journalists are unaware of their institutional bias.
> So, is the fall in popularity of mainstream news a result of the lack of neutrality, or because it's not partisan enough?
I don’t think those two explanations are at odds with each other. People may prefer listening to a news source that tries to be neutral. But if the reporters can’t hide their personal leanings, they would rather go with a news source where the reporters’ personal leanings agree with their own.
People aren’t stupid. They can tell the difference between someone who is trying to overcome their personal leaning and be neutral, and someone who is so affected by their personal leaning that they can’t even conceal it. People can trust the former person even if they disagree. People can’t trust the latter person.
> "The real problem isn’t fake news; it’s that people have given up on that search for truth"
I disagree. Most people have neither the time, inclination, or often the tools to "seek the truth" by themselves, and therefore they rely on the media to (in)form their views.
Moreover there is such a thing as influencers and trend-setters. The media do not simply report on what people are expressing, they can also (and often very much do) set an agenda. Knowing this, it's journalists' duty to report the news accurately and not mix reporting with opinions, not manufacture or distort facts, and avoid feeding into the Outrage Economy and its endless echo chamber.
By chance, I stumbled on a "meta-journalism" website just today, that analyses how mainstream print media (both left- and right-leaning) cover the news, it's pretty interesting. It's also often pretty damning. I hope they become better known:
> 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.
> It's quite funny that they consider this as more trustworthy than conventional "news".
Given the state of conventional news, can you blame them? Foxnews is just a republican party news organization. And everything else ( CNN, MSNBC, WaPo, NYTimes, NPR, etc ) are a democratic party news organization.
It is sad that news has become so political and none of it is reliable. It's just one political side lying, exaggerating, clickbaiting and hating the other political side. It's a political/news war and the first casualty of any war is the truth.
Maybe it was always this way and I was just too young and naive to notice.
> Are they sure? I bet it's just one big echo chamber of people copy/pasting each other, just like every trend on social media (memes, etc).
As long as they don't censor, it won't be an echo chamber. Social media only becomes an echo chamber when the company takes sides. Sadly, google, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc are being forced to take sides with disastrous results. It doesn't help that formerly trusted organizations like the SPLC and ADL have turned extremely biased and unreliable.
The worst part is that news companies are at the forefront of pushing for censoring on the internet. Which creates more echo chambers, which creates more divisions. But I suppose that is good for ratings and that's all that matters to news companies. Not truth, not objectivity. Just ratings.
Given how toxic news media has gotten, it's better than teens stay away from it entirely. How many adults go insane watching CNN, MSNBC or Foxnews? Too many. The news industry has only itself to blame for it's predicament. Nobody trust news for a reason.
>we’d be much better off if the average person got their news from the NYT, WSJ, Economist, etc.
Man I don't know about that. In some ways, yes I agree with you. But in other ways I can't.
None of the major entities produces news and commentary from the labor point of view, for example. It's hard to get them to talk about media consolidation, news for profit, and a whole pile of other issues too, and it all boils down to a couple things:
1) AD driven models favor those who can buy the products and services pitched in the ADS
2) Conflicts of interest abound! The massive media consolidation we saw after the Telecommunications Act of 1996 really did a number on one of the basic dynamics we depend on, and that is many owners, many models, competition all tended to work as checks and balances. A small, indie house could run a labor story, or talk about Net Neutrality without having a conflict rooted in a big corporation not wanting to publish news and commentary that would impact it's bottom line in a negative way. Just one example.
Today, we've got investigative journalism relegated to niche players who are doing good, often quite expensive work that isn't being seen due to suppression and a misinformation problem that is not easy or cheap to solve.
Your point isn't invalid. I am saying it's more complicated than that.
>> Some will say mainstream press is biased and has an agenda
The people that say that are generally conservatives (or a subset of conservatives). Liberals generally don't complain about the mainstream media being biased. I'm just pointing out that the idea of the mainstream press being biased and having an agenda is itself biased and has an agenda.
>> so-called mainstream will answer by proposing more fact-checking.
Fact checking is supposed to be automatic. When a mainstream news outlet gets caught reporting false information, it's a big embarrassment. The NY Times had the Jayson Blair incident a few years ago and it really stung. The Times also apologized for over-hyping the Iraq War[1].
>> Is striving for neutrality something the press should do? Or should it work on clarifying how biased it is, and why?
High quality news outlets already strive to do both. "Honest news" isn't a new idea; it has always been a part of journalistic ethics.
> 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.
> Personal opinion: I think it was around 2004 when the media slowly stopped being the journalists that protect our democracy, and instead corporations and individuals with political agendas.
It's literally always been that way.
For a while in the late 20th Century US, the alignment of the propaganda interests of the major US media was such that it spoke with almost a single voice, but the homogeneity wasn't some kind of virtuous objectivity.
> I called out mainstream media, as people often assume it is more reliable than the non-mainstream media.
It's pretty ambiguous: Where do you draw the line between them, and what evidence do you have about their relative reliability. The professional journalism I see, e.g. news sections in established newspapers, is far more accurate and honest than the non-mainstream stuff I see.
>and to provide, often, a less-biased report on things.
This isn't what a journalist does at all though and I think they're pretty honest about this if asked.
At best they take the facts and induce bias to provide them in a way that is most palatable to their audience and mirrors the belief of their audience to get more views and therefore more ad impressions. At worst they see themselves as a class above normal people and their job is to ensure the people below them think the right way.
Essentially in a world where the actual events is transmitted via video over social media moments after they occur, seems pretty redundant that we need it filtered through biased individuals who's business only existed because newspapers used to be the most efficient way of doing that.
What you call "mainstream media" I call "corporate media". And some journalists may feel that way however clicks, eyeballs, and stickiness take priority over their views. There’s too much competition for traditional media outlets to survive without adopting techniques that were once unthinkable. Corrections are rarely issued these days and edits are done in an almost stealthy manner. I had to stop following the Twitter accounts that tracked these changes because it became an endless stream of tweets.
The days of Tim Russert, David Broder, Jim Lehrer, Ted Koppel etc. are long gone. I would consider Matt Taibbi[1] one of the last journalists that followed in their footsteps but he is definitely not corporate and barely mainstream. Taibbi left Rolling Stone and uses Substack which has been attacked by the NYT, and others, as alt-right and misinformation which I find ironic coming from the paper that published Judith Miller’s WMDs propaganda. Even Jason Calacanis referred to Taibbi as a “right guy” on one of the recent All-In podcasts even though Matt is an ardent Sanders supporter. The Blob doesn’t like it when you don’t toe the line.
Corporate media is dead to me even though the vast majority of it is "Left".
>I understand the fight your picking, but really this isn't that much of an argument.
Really? I don't watch Fox News or any corporate media and you assumed I did. You might be shocked to learn that I worked in the Clinton administration and voted for Obama!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrlHnhnmB1A
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