There was a Vox video called "Who made these circles in the Sahara?" that really showcased the investigative powers of journalists once they have the budget to bring in the big guns.<p>Budget cuts and the gutting of profitable newspapers by Alden Global Capital really destroyed a lot of journalism and turned it into "internet journalism", at which point, they are scarcely better than the average reader.<p><a href="https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://youtu.be/twAP3buj9Og</a>
One day, I hope we look at this period in history and marvel at the fact that our knowledge of current affairs was largely left to chance (or worse yet, algorithms that are designed not to inform but to sell) -- whatever happens to catch our eye as we scroll through our various timelines. With all the data, technology and query capabilities we have at hand, I'm surprised I can't set up preferences like this:<p><pre><code> drop sports
drop celebrity news unless death or court case
drop crime unless within state
prioritise presidential election
prioritise rocket launches
prioritise aviation accidents</code></pre>
Technology has brought increasing competition to the news business, starting with AM radio, then cable news, then the likes of Drudge Report on the internet, and finally social media. As a result, the media are pursuing consumers much more aggressively, and in particular they are targeting specific demographics. Hence polarization, "juicy collection of great narratives," [0] and the death of objectivity [1]. The age of Walter Cronkite and Edward Murrow is not coming back.<p>[0] <a href="https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1461796763162054663" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1461796763162054663</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/newsrooms-news-reporting-objectivity-diversity/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/30/newsrooms...</a>
> The Los Angeles Times took note of V’s success and tapped them to help launch its own personality-based TikTok account. They’re one of many publications attempting to recreate the success of individual creators on TikTok within their newsroom.<p>But what's the point? TikTok doesn't share AD revenue, so why do all of that for nothing?<p>Is it in hope that these followers become readers?<p>I personally don't trust any single creator news source, a single person is much much easier to influence than a whole news agency.<p>I used to follow johnny Harris regularly, then he dropped an economic video about a supposed new economic model that's supported by many companies.<p>The issue is almost all the talking points in that video were taken from the WEF, the same "you will own nothing and be happy" guys.[1]<p>I still think news creators have a place in the news cycle, maybe for more fun stuff, like science questions maybe economics, Tom Scott style videos, or digital investigations like coffeezilla, but for real news, news agencies are still king, especially ones that are publicly funded.<p>1. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dum0bqWfiGw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dum0bqWfiGw</a>
I'm a bit flabbergasted as an outsider.
Reading these comments, there's such a lack of trust it seems in very basic tenets of society and it's institutions in America. (Dismissing certain factors to a degree I'd understand.)
If this were an actual sample (which I hope it's not) the country may just descend into anomie.
Does anybody have a source (CJ or traditional) that is unbiased?<p>It seems that everything from mass media to small tiktokers are so biased, I can't believe anything they say.
If you want to find out whether Lil Tay is dead or alive, it's a bit of a conundrum. Apparently, you can't trust any sites or accounts that she might have, since they could have been hacked. It's unlikely that you could get any government verification like a death certificate right away, and there won't be one if she is still alive, and who trusts the government anyway. The verification that she is alive comes from "a statement provided to TMZ from Tay's family", but is there any reason to trust that? I've never heard of TMZ so have no idea how credible they are, and in any case perhaps somebody spoofed being Tay's family and they didn't check very hard, and Tay is actually dead. What are you going to believe, a video statement from Tay herself perhaps, which may be a deep fake?<p>Edit: Of course, I have no idea if Tay was a real person in the first place, or just a personality created by deep fakers.<p>Edit: Wikipedia (dubious of course) says that TMZ is a tabloid owned by Fox Corporation. Yeah, like I trust Fox. let alone some tabloid they own.
The biggest problem I see is that, from a quick scan, all of that so-called news has nothing in it that affects anyone's personal life in any way. Mostly for entertainment but no value otherwise and probably forgotten within seconds of reading it.<p>I also question any organization that has vulgarity in their name or title. What is the need for such a thing over civility?
Made the same comment yesterday on another submission but it still fits this discussion.<p>I suggest people who read a lot of news to read up on Rolf Dobelli's book named Stop Reading the news.<p>I found it an eye-opener and have since blocked all news websites on every device. Currently 3 weeks without a newspaper and I don't feel I am missing a thing.<p>The best chapters were the ones were he explained with great examples how irrelevant the news was, how news would make you less creative and feel much smaller than you really are.<p>Now, he also clearly tries to distinguish news and longreads. If your paper is a daily paper that tries to be very generic... you can skip it. If your paper is a medical journal and your profession is a doctor. Keep reading that medical journal.
Pick your poison. For all its flaws, I'll still take citizen journalism over corporate interests. The MSM abdicated its journalistic responsibility in favor of activism and manipulation; they caused this as much as social media did.
> Platforms like Instagram and TikTok have grown beyond making connections and delivering entertainment into places people trust to keep themselves informed<p>And the NYT, MSNBC, Foxnews, Verge et al have grown beyond places people trust to keep themselves informed into delivering entertainment, going back to the early 2000s with 24 hour cable news and talking heads shows.
News has always been fake.<p>The earliest centralised news was local kings, lords, whatever, instructing the town crier or scribe what to tell the people. You'd be nuts to think it had anything to do with facts.<p>As civilisation developed, and we had things like the Roman Empire, it was the same deal, except different senators or others would pay criers to spread stories in different sectors, usually their own or a competitors, to sway things one way or another. Remarkably similar to today. And yes, it was fake news. Such as telling citizens that the Carthaginians were baby-eating deamon worshippers, to get people to support a war to wipe out an economic rival.<p>Then we had governments in WW1 portraying Germans as monsters in those silly posters, inventing horrific crimes against humanity.<p>Then we had all the media telling tall tales about Saddam Hussein and his secret invisible nuclear chemical weapons in cartoon trains in the desert where they didn't even have railway lines, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dead innocent people who never harmed the USA, and the destabilisation of the Middle East for decades.<p>It has always been nonsense.<p>So when you're evalutating the credibility or utility of random internerds and their "news", just be mindful of what you're comparing them against.
When I was 16 there were better things to do than pay attention to the news. I mean if the "adults" were struggling to solve complex issues, why give me anxiety over it.<p>The over riding goal today has become attention capture/Like/View/Click collection. But this is a temporary blip.<p>The story is breaking down with the platforms seeing growth stall, reduction in free content (pushed behind paywalls/login screens), banks collapsing, period of low interest rates ending, advertising budgets shrinking, subscription charges rising, new regulations that are upending how things used to work etc etc.<p>The Attention Economy is under assault and things are going to change. Content creators (be it news orgs or influencers) are functioning under the belief that if they create the "right" content they will get the views.<p>But the platforms (just like HN) dont inform them as more and more content creators enter the chat, and more and more content is Produced, the amount of content being Consumed doesn't increase cause total collective Attention is a constant. It has become easy to produce content, copy it, broadcast it. So supply goes on rising. But demand cant match it. And then spending time analyzing what "works" for the content creators is delusion.