Axois seems to do a decent job.<p>However, if you watch their interviews, for example, you quickly realize the problem isn't maintaining veracity as a fair source of news. The problem is if the reporters remain intrepid (as they currently seem to be), the people they interview-- like Ted Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses. I'm honestly surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent figures.<p>That, to me, is the bigger problem. There are plenty of partisan pundits who feel comfortable appearing on the "other" cable news to play the wrestling villain. Nearly none of them will ever appear on Democracy Now, for example, because Amy will:<p>1. not negotiate ground rules for the interview in advance<p>2. ask occasional follow-up questions<p>Amy Goodman clearly sits pretty far on the left. But those two simple rules essentially made her as much of a nuisance to Bill Clinton as to George Bush. (And if you haven't heard it, go on youtube and watch her grill Clinton when he was attempting to campaign during Hilary's Senate run on Democracy Now.)<p>And that's the bigger issue. I don't really care whether some pundit reinforces my worldview or not. I care whether they fold under pressure when an intrepid reporter reveals they don't know what they're talking about. The problem with MSNBC/Fox/CNN is they don't usually (or even consistently) apply that pressure. (And sometimes actively suppress it, e.g., not telling their audience that one of their military analysts who is arguing for an invasion is also a board member of a defense contractor that would benefit from the invasion.)<p>Edit: clarifications
Nonprofit news organizations are a thing and I've been incredibly positive about their future (full disclosure: I used to work for a nonprofit publication).<p>The nonprofit model encourages much more direct community engagement through conferences, festivals, and long-form interviews with local, state and national leaders.<p>A major hurdle that nonprofit and higher-quality news outlets face is that the major media players have dopamine-driven news down to a science, and it's a lot easier to consume a small and practically meaningless soundbyte than it is to sit and listen to a politician have a challenging discussion with an interviewer for an hour. The attention span of the average American isn't equipped for higher-level discourse as it's not nearly as exciting and rage-inducing as watching CNN/FOX/ABC/??? network.
This is feeding into a false narrative that Fox News largely created out of whole cloth. Fox staked out a conservative position, but claimed they were 'fair and balanced'. To suggest that other news outlets, like CNN or the Washington Post must have a liberal bent is to serve Fox's agenda. Articles like this show how one media outlet has managed to shift the Overton window.
Yes, there are some explicitly leftist news outlets, some, like Mother Jones, long pre-dating Fox news, and others, like MSNBC that pivoted in response to Fox. It is wrong to claim that there are no unbiased outlets because they used the term 'insurrectionists' to describe an organized group that broke into the United States Capitol with the intent to keep Congress from functioning. It's an objectively accurate description.
"If you sell culture war all day, don’t be surprised by the real-world consequences"<p>Isn't culture war 95% of what Taibbi writes about?<p>This isn't the worst diagnosis I've read, but I don't see him offering any solutions.
I'm wondering if there is any way for a "trusted to be mostly neutral" news organization to come about. Let's pretend we have a nascent neutral organization X:<p>Action: X publishes something properly critical of the right/left.<p>Reaction: The extreme right/left media throws all sorts of criticisms of X's reporting and sees what sticks.<p>Result: Some fraction of the right/left constituency starts to believe (and voice) that X is biased.<p>Action: X publishes something wrongly (or at least with more bias than expected) of the right/left<p>Reaction: All right/left media publishes articles lambasting X's coverage of the item in question.<p>Result: A fraction of the more moderate right/left constituency starts to think "maybe my extreme friend was right about X"<p>Cycle through the above a few times, and even though the majority of the country may trust X, most of <i>that</i> majority will be among the least politically engaged (because partisanship and political engagement are correlated), so you are left without much of an audience that cares about what you are reporting.
<i>What Rolling Stone did in giving a political reporter the freedom to write about the banalities of the system was revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate because biases end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in the traditional dull “objective” format.</i><p>I think Taibbi, whom I’m not generally a fan but do believe strives to be intellectually honest, makes a really unfortunate statement here. First, Rolling Stone would have only allowed your opinionated voice as long as it was generally an opinion the editors shared. Second, the idea that you did it <i>the right way</i> but the current breed is nothing but shallow polemics is tremendously arrogant. Third, “taking sides” means you are no longer a reliable reporter, as you unavoidably feel compelled to report things that justify the side you’ve selected.<p>Really, Matt and others who took off their masks of objectivity during the Bush presidency (Dan Rather, Helen Thomas, Bill O’Reilly to name a few) were the ones that opened the gates to the journalists of today that wear their bias and ignorance on their sleeve. “They literally know nothing”, as Ben Rhodes famously said.<p>I lament the same things in the article that Taibbi laments. The fear merchants selling wall-to-wall panic porn (from the Russians are coming! to Birtherism to whatever the lie du jour happens to be) have significantly damaged American culture and American politics. And all for clicks and eyeballs! But Taibbi, despite his attempts to distance himself, deserves a measure of blame for leading the way.<p>I know journalism has always had bias, but there was an incentive to make sure the bias wasn’t overt. Because overt bias would have been considered unethical. I don’t think we are better for it now the pretense of objectivity is gone.
Every few weeks this issue comes on HN. It's hard not to mention my startup, The Factual, which is proving that people will pay a modest amount for ad-free, unbiased news on trending topics. I suspect this will get downvoted but I don't know how not to scream "we have a solution" to a problem so many have. So as not to be entirely biased let me mention other good offerings: The New Paper, Knowhere News.<p>Of course, our solution is not for everyone. If you have a well-tuned Twitter feed, or have figured out forums like HN/Reddit where you get news and commentary you trust, then we may not be as useful for you. But for the vast majority that just want the facts on topics of importance our daily newsletter is an easy way to stay informed and then get on with life. And we've priced it to be affordable for everyone so that factual news is not just for the rich.
Ideas for a fix:<p>#1 - Allocate a share of money and create a BBC like news source totally un-biased and pay the reporters extremely well(to attract good reporters). Have decent UI on the web, well produced shows and a mandate that both sides are allocated equal time.(PBS does this but is not very well produced, it needs more money)<p>#2 - Have "Bias" flags mandated on each article(or visual bubbles on TV), reflecting the authors political persuasion. This would be similar to responsible business reporting where the author states whether he has a position(shares) in the company or industry he reports on.<p>#3 - Require that whenever a article is posting a position, a opposite view point is required to be tagged next to said article.
>If you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous pressure all November to stay away from information suggesting Trump lost the election. If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment.<p>Is this pressure coming from editors or from readers?<p>Would an outlet that dispassionately reported the fact that Trump lost the election truly have been able to have been "perceived as neutral arbiters" by Trump supporters?
A gaping hole in this article is the fact that >90% of the media is comprised of culture war sellers in favor of the left (not to mention all FAANG companies), and <10% in favor of the right.
So, I have to preface this with saying that I am not a particular fan of the guy as a businessman or a President. Having said that, between this "fact check" from NBC <a href="https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/785299709342654465?lang=en" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/785299709342654465?lang=e...</a> in October of 2016 and CNN commentator Donna Brazile being "totally not sorry" that she leaked the debate questions and topics to Clinton's campaign in November of 2016, it was very clear that this guy was never going to get a fair shake from the media, and that any and all reporting of him must be carefully examined.<p>I don't have it on hand, but remember that whole bit about him calling veterans losers and weak? Yeah, so if you start digging for the full transcript, you get to see just how taken out of context that was. I just can no longer trust the established media not to have a huge agenda and be constantly on the lookout for a "spin."<p>Trump may have been an emabarrassment, but the media has actively made me lose faith in reporting. He'll be out of the office soon, but my ability to trust in reporting has been forever tarnished. Decades of reputation have been squandered by these acts.
> Fox’s business model has long been based on scaring the crap out of aging Silent Majority viewers with a parade of anything-but-the-truth explanations for America’s decline.<p>Okay, so what is the truth? Isn’t that what everybody’s looking for? Give an uncontroversially factual explanation of that and people will start looking for solutions instead of problems. Unless they are the problem, and then they’ll be forced to engage in all-out propaganda war to convince people otherwise.<p>It seems to me that the truth is usually cheap and unprofitable. So if you want to know what the biggest lies are, see how much is being spent to convince you of something. Truth may often be associated with somebody losing a lot of money. These are GDP destroyers, stock market crashes waiting to happen. We’re all socially invested in preventing them.
> We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent.<p>Like PBS? Turns out if you’re not sensationalist, and others are, you lose viewership.
i’ve come to the conclusion it’s impossible to be unbiased and to pretend it is, is a total farce. the best we can do as readers is read multiple sources from different sides and try to piece together the truth from it. journalists are 99.5 percent hacks, we shouldn’t pretend otherwise<p>my personal preference would be a world where we just have like reuters and AP sources that try to give purely factual info..(though even they are biased somewhat) and then just substack. we don’t need nyt
I think the media is again just a symptom, the major problem in the US is the two party system which is a result of the electoral system and the electoral college in particular.<p>If there are more than two "teams" it's much more difficult to just be against the "other side" and you can see that while other countries certainly have their problems, places with multiparty systems have significantly less "hatred" against the "other" side.
I agree whole heartily, but I think we should go bigger. I think we should create a fourth branch of government, call it the Informational, whose job is to independently educate and inform citizens of matters relevant to their citizenship. This could be modeled after the supreme court, that is life-term (or reasonably long) nominations with a public vetting process.
I agree. I think there's a real market for an _extremely_ boring news site. 4-5 paragraph articles, sentiment analysis to be "neutral", some way to link to context and history on topics, and links to source documents. Same for weather. Here's the forecast- no flashing text and stupid names for every single storm.
WikiTribune is an attempt at this new "third party" media system described in this article. WikiTribune has since transformed into <a href="https://wt.social" rel="nofollow">https://wt.social</a>.
I have a somewhat pessimistic view that the profession of journalist should be split into two, similar to lawyers:<p>1. Government journalists (the equivalent of prosecutors). Not getting any explicit special protection, but that's not the point. Your job is to present government's position and actions.<p>2. Anti-government journalists (the equivalent of advocates). Those would get explicit special protection. You could only be one as long as you're not taking government money. You would be obliged to control the government.<p>They should have completely different job titles.
I've been working on this idea of a news site that presents the events of the world in two columns. In the first column is a dry, wikipedia like list of events and facts, with references to how those facts were established, or who testified to the fact. (with lots of links thorough to related events)<p>Then in the second column is the commentary. Its where "journalists" and the community discuss the event.<p>A clear separation of "reality" and our interpretation of that reality.
Tired argument because people seek out the 'news' they want to hear. Some iron-clad, dull, unbiased news channel isn't going to solve anything. People like Taibbi will just pretend it doesn't exist as it gets poor ratings.<p>We have right leaning people jumping ship from Fox News for not being pro-Trump enough. I would love for people like Taibbi to address how to reach those people, not rehash the same tired argument of complaining about the media.
I feel like "The New Paper"[0] fits the bill of what the author wants. It's neutral (i.e. unaffiliated with either party), operates on an email distribution model, and strives really hard to keep news from being sensational. It also links to primary sources as much as possible. For example, in today's TNP email:<p>- Twitter permanently suspended President Trump’s account, citing "risk of further incitement of violence" (source). Several other social media and technology companies (including Facebook, Instagram, Shopify, and Stripe) took similar measures against President Trump, his campaign, and related accounts and websites.<p>That's it - that's all that's written on that particular event. No "interpretation" on what the implications on free speech or whatever are - that's left up to you, the reader. The source linked is Twitter's blog.<p>I've been using it for a few months now and I love it.<p>[0] <a href="https://thenewpaper.co/" rel="nofollow">https://thenewpaper.co/</a>
i've used something called the "media bias fact check" to determine the left/rightness and reliable/unreliableness news sources are:<p><a href="https://mediabiasfactcheck.com" rel="nofollow">https://mediabiasfactcheck.com</a><p>I have no affiliation with them, just perplexed by the same problems everyone else here is mentioning, and it has been helpful to use.<p>I also think it would be helpful if reporters listed their registered political party on their bylines, ie, "John Smith, Democrat/Republican/Libertarian/etc". Or if the TV reporters wore a sign stating as much.
"The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies now operate under the assumption that at least half their potential audience isn’t listening. This leads to all sorts of problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only the most obvious."<p>After Trump won, story after story, show after show in the MSM and beyond was about reaching out and talking to the Trump voters. Famously left-wing people went out to speak with Trump voters to get to know them, to understand why they voted, and made sure to humanize them. They went out of their way to not be negative. This went on for a long time.<p>This was on CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, and other MSM outlets.<p>The flaw in this article is reading only the negative headlines, and ignoring all the reporting that is done.
“ We need a new media channel, the press version of a third party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are absent. Ideally, it would:<p>* not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans;<p>* employ a Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative points of view;<p>* embrace a utilitarian mission stressing credibility over ratings, including by;<p>* operating on a distribution model that as much as possible doesn’t depend upon the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon.”<p>This reads like a description of NPR to me.
"If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn’t clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment."<p>This is pedantic and downplays what occurred.