Do you dislike the mainstream media?

Do you dislike the mainstream media?


  • Total voters
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I bet you won't get a straight answer for this. Somebody should make a thread along these lines.

Post your news bookmarks folder or something. Bet a lot of people would be too embarrassed to admit what they consider unbiased journalism.

I can only speak for myself and my country, Sweden. We have 3 channels available for everyone. SVT1 and SVT2 are state government controlled and paid by us citizens. The 600 SEK(60USD) we pay every 3 month(yeah I know, 240 USD for only 2 channels per year sounds alot) will give us all the spectrum what you would consider cultural enrichment. Apart from the lack of Olympic games from the last 2 events(I think it´s a human right to watch Olympic, and you should not be forced to pay extra for a shit channel that happened to win the bid for coverage), I think I´m quite satisfied. And the big reason is the total riddance of commercials and advertisments. The third channel (TV4) that is also free to all, is a private based media(although it was bought by Telia recently, and the Swedish state owns a lot of stocks), and the majority of the funds comes from advertisments. Apart from all the horrendus talk-shows, and "real life-do this and show that so I can get famous programme", they do have as serious News coverage as the 2 channels I mentioned before.

I don´t see my self as being naive watching my Rapport(SVT1) and Aktuellt Agenda(SVT2) or TV4 news(TV4). What else would I watch? I tend to believe that people making noice about fake news (personal favorite is Trump himself) are the same people from each far to the left or right camp. The sad part is that they are so noisy that the above average intelligent human with a sober set of mind, will fall back and not take part of this spectacle of battle of clouded wits.

I learn a lot from this page, and 2 things I have found about american posters are: Statistics and the love for some conspiracy.

The statistcs comes from the love I have for NHL and the occational viewings of Monster Energy Nascar series.

Relax some more my fellow americans and try to find a middle ground instead of this vocal bitch fighting that is going on in here.
 
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There is a lot wrong with the media in itself but the main problem lies in the viewers without critical sense. If you take your time and check the news against other sources you will not be fooled so easily.
Take the Michael Brown shooting, for example. CNN said wrong things about it but you can easily check the witnesses recordings on wikipedia. The black witnesses said the cop was basically on the right.
The ICE arresting an illegal with his pregnant wife, put it on google and the first links will tell you the real story.

In general the media bosses are enemies of the people and I don't need any columnist to help me understand facts but I still need journalists to interview people, to record events and investigate. Twitter and other sources of citizen journalism are great but it doesn't feel all the needs.
 
Well, that's the thing, right? If you don't have the time or resources to check out everything individually, you're much better off trusting reliable sources. "Questioning things" sounds like sound, mature advice, but if people don't know how to question effectively (and almost everyone overestimates their ability), the results of it are not going to be better than trust. Of course, the MSM makes mistakes (and then corrects them when people point them out) and has its own blindspots (not referring to the comical "liberal media" CT, BTW), etc. But it's overall a better guide to truth than the "trust when I like it, don't trust when I don't like it" approach.

If you get this test wrong, you should seriously question your truth-detection skills:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...uick-puzzle-to-test-your-problem-solving.html
I almost got that wrong
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I thought it was some kind of geometric progression but it's just that the next number should be bigger
 
Indeed I do!

The most prestigious Swedish newspaper has one several occasions published fake news!

One of the most flagrant examples was a major headline that read that a Swedish municipality made billions on immigration! When an economist fact checked it, they tried to threaten other media outlets to not publish his findings!

Fast forward, the municipality is struggling with their finances due to immigration!
 
Try again.

That was what I said and what you said you disagreed with. The implication (if you're not the type who can think a step ahead) is that of course the press will treat people who act extremely differently differently (though, FYI, your assertions about what the media says about Trump are not true). Good piece this morning on a particular type of MSM bias toward Trump:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/media-trump-russia-collusion-benefit-of-the-doubt.html

The documentary was well-sourced with news reports, investigative journalists, eyewitness accounts, accounts of local prosecutors and law enforcement. The local prosecutor who tried to convene a grand jury outright says that Clinton killed the grand jury and he's a Clinton supporter. Somehow I doubt you watched the whole documentary, if at all. You're assuming it's some Alex Jones-type shit when it is clearly not.

I think you're just showing that you don't know what "well-sourced" means, and that you're extraordinarily gullible when propagandists are telling you what you want to hear. It's not an assumption that it's Alex Jones-type shit; it's an observation. Look into this harder. You'll see that you've been lied to, and that should cause you to question your judgment about news going forward.

I almost got that wrong
I thought it was some kind of geometric progression but it's just that the next number should be bigger

Yeah, that's the issue. Most people make guesses and then check them, and feel that they are confirmed, and think they know the answer.
 
People forget that "news outlets" are just showing them a product. The "news" portion of the story doesn't matter as much anymore, as the opportunity to make someone feel a certain way about that "news" story. That's what spin is. Some people like the way CNN makes them feel, some people like how FOX news makes them feel. I like to compare it to people who preferred WCW to WWF. Both are real programs you're watching, but neither products are necessarily "real". Hard to explain by typing, but at one time in this country, the news was real, and was able to be trusted and relied upon. People used to think pro wrestling was real also. I guess what I'm trying to say is if you are entertained by the news programs great. If you're getting your news and forming opinions from those same shows, not great.
 
They are fine... I only generally watch when there is something big happening.

It's not hard to separate the opinions from the facts
 
I think you're just showing that you don't know what "well-sourced" means, and that you're extraordinarily gullible when propagandists are telling you what you want to hear. It's not an assumption that it's Alex Jones-type shit; it's an observation. Look into this harder. You'll see that you've been lied to, and that should cause you to question your judgment about news going forward.
At best, Bill was just taking orders from above to look the other way and then to kill grand juries and state investigations. Even Bill himself didn't deny what was going on, he just passed the buck to the feds and said he wasn't involved and everything happened at the federal level and the state wasn't involved. But the evidence directly contradicts that claim.
 
At best, Bill was just taking orders from above to look the other way and then to kill grand juries and state investigations. Even Bill himself didn't deny what was going on, he just passed the buck to the feds and said he wasn't involved and everything happened at the federal level and the state wasn't involved. But the evidence directly contradicts that claim.

I don't think there's any chance that you'll seriously look into the claims you make here (or the other nutter claims you made regarding Haiti and the Clinton Foundation). That's the point. It sounds great to say that everyone should be skeptical of the MSM and look into the truth themselves. But when you have people who don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to do that effectively, in practice, you end up with people who are far more misinformed than they'd be if they just trusted generally reliable sources.

That's not to say that the MSM is perfect. For one thing, it's made for a very general audience so people who follow the news more closely or just prefer more in-depth coverage will inevitably be disappointed (like food critics who go to McDonald's). For another thing, they try to be as broadly inoffensive as possible, which means that they have a strong both-sidesist approach, which will bias coverage toward whatever side in a major controversy is further from the truth. And then there's the fact that fact-checking methods in the media generally require going to official sources, which biases coverage toward the existing power structure. And then the MSM is generally run by people who live in major cities, are highly educated, and have high incomes, which introduces other unconscious biases (anti-racism, less religious than the population as a whole, right-leaning on economic issues, etc.). And then because reporters have to cover a wide range of topics for a generally uneducated audience, on complicated technical issues, they're inevitably going to oversimplify and often make conceptual errors or trust untrustworthy sources (here's a good piece on a recent fuck-up by Tapper: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/08/20/jake-tappers-faulty-medicare-for-all-fact-check/). The problem is just that, to continue the analogy, people are reading food critics saying that McDonald's is bad and then eating shit out of clogged toilets instead (like your nutter videos).
 
I don't think there's any chance that you'll seriously look into the claims you make here (or the other nutter claims you made regarding Haiti and the Clinton Foundation). That's the point. It sounds great to say that everyone should be skeptical of the MSM and look into the truth themselves. But when you have people who don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to do that effectively, in practice, you end up with people who are far more misinformed than they'd be if they just trusted generally reliable sources.

That's not to say that the MSM is perfect. For one thing, it's made for a very general audience so people who follow the news more closely or just prefer more in-depth coverage will inevitably be disappointed (like food critics who go to McDonald's). For another thing, they try to be as broadly inoffensive as possible, which means that they have a strong both-sidesist approach, which will bias coverage toward whatever side in a major controversy is further from the truth. And then there's the fact that fact-checking methods in the media generally require going to official sources, which biases coverage toward the existing power structure. And then the MSM is generally run by people who live in major cities, are highly educated, and have high incomes, which introduces other unconscious biases (anti-racism, less religious than the population as a whole, right-leaning on economic issues, etc.). And then because reporters have to cover a wide range of topics for a generally uneducated audience, on complicated technical issues, they're inevitably going to oversimplify and often make conceptual errors or trust untrustworthy sources (here's a good piece on a recent fuck-up by Tapper: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/08/20/jake-tappers-faulty-medicare-for-all-fact-check/). The problem is just that, to continue the analogy, people are reading food critics saying that McDonald's is bad and then eating shit out of clogged toilets instead (like your nutter videos).
The documentary featured lots of footage from the mainstream media as well as investigative journalists who work for the MSM. And accounts from credible people like law enforcement and prosecutors. Let's just agree to disagree. I'm far from a CT guy, but if there's evidence of something, I'm open to it.
 
The documentary featured lots of footage from the mainstream media as well as investigative journalists who work for the MSM. And accounts from credible people like law enforcement and prosecutors. Let's just agree to disagree. I'm far from a CT guy, but if there's evidence of something, I'm open to it.

"Features it" to make a wholly fantastic case. And the cheesiness of the opening should have been enough to get your bullshit alert going, but because it's telling you what you want to hear, you uncritically accept it, which is common. If people would apply the same level of skepticism to propaganda videos that they do media reports, they'd be in much better shape, and wouldn't fall for such obvious nonsense (and, again, that applies perhaps even more to your loony claims about the Clinton Foundation and Haiti or to Pizzagate or Clinton Body Count CTs, etc.).

You realize that the biggest story in the MSM in 2016 was that Hillary was once not careful enough avoiding hacks, though she wasn't actually hacked, right? And that the GOP investigated Benghazi seven times despite no finding of improper activity of any kind? But you think that Clinton somehow is just getting away with massively more serious stuff.
 
That was what I said and what you said you disagreed with. The implication (if you're not the type who can think a step ahead) is that of course the press will treat people who act extremely differently differently (though, FYI, your assertions about what the media says about Trump are not true). Good piece this morning on a particular type of MSM bias toward Trump:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/media-trump-russia-collusion-benefit-of-the-doubt.html



I think you're just showing that you don't know what "well-sourced" means, and that you're extraordinarily gullible when propagandists are telling you what you want to hear. It's not an assumption that it's Alex Jones-type shit; it's an observation. Look into this harder. You'll see that you've been lied to, and that should cause you to question your judgment about news going forward.



Yeah, that's the issue. Most people make guesses and then check them, and feel that they are confirmed, and think they know the answer.
That was a good piece. I find myself pondering that all the time, and also how they refused to call his lies actual lies for so long.

Years now of, "Hyperbole, bending the truth, from a certain perspective, etc.". They just outright refuse to say he, or his sycophants, are lying.

Frankly, I think it is all related to the "both sides bias" we've discussed in here.
 
I don't really see the MSM as a single entity with a single voice like a lot of it's detractors seem to do.

I also don't have a man-crush on any politicians at the moment, which is probably a big influencing factor in the increase in criticism we've seen in the last few years.
 
That was a good piece. I find myself pondering that all the time, and also how they refused to call his lies actual lies for so long.

Years now of, "Hyperbole, bending the truth, from a certain perspective, etc.". They just outright refuse to say he, or his sycophants, are lying.

Frankly, I think it is all related to the "both sides bias" we've discussed in here.

Yeah, I think if they were to present the full range of plausible speculation based on available facts, that would be read as bias. Both-sidesism usually kind of works (it can be distorting, and it's never strictly speaking logically or empirically defensible but it prevents clear bias at most times), but it breaks down hard when you have someone like Trump in the WH.
 
I don't think there's any chance that you'll seriously look into the claims you make here (or the other nutter claims you made regarding Haiti and the Clinton Foundation). That's the point. It sounds great to say that everyone should be skeptical of the MSM and look into the truth themselves. But when you have people who don't have the time, resources, or knowledge to do that effectively, in practice, you end up with people who are far more misinformed than they'd be if they just trusted generally reliable sources.

That's not to say that the MSM is perfect. For one thing, it's made for a very general audience so people who follow the news more closely or just prefer more in-depth coverage will inevitably be disappointed (like food critics who go to McDonald's). For another thing, they try to be as broadly inoffensive as possible, which means that they have a strong both-sidesist approach, which will bias coverage toward whatever side in a major controversy is further from the truth. And then there's the fact that fact-checking methods in the media generally require going to official sources, which biases coverage toward the existing power structure. And then the MSM is generally run by people who live in major cities, are highly educated, and have high incomes, which introduces other unconscious biases (anti-racism, less religious than the population as a whole, right-leaning on economic issues, etc.). And then because reporters have to cover a wide range of topics for a generally uneducated audience, on complicated technical issues, they're inevitably going to oversimplify and often make conceptual errors or trust untrustworthy sources (here's a good piece on a recent fuck-up by Tapper: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/08/20/jake-tappers-faulty-medicare-for-all-fact-check/). The problem is just that, to continue the analogy, people are reading food critics saying that McDonald's is bad and then eating shit out of clogged toilets instead (like your nutter videos).

This just rings very well in my ears.

If I could describe us Swedes as people I would call us friendly with a lot of trust in people. This trust is based on our well functioning institutions. It´s much more harder to be corrupt here because if you want to go that way, you have to go through a long road of instances, and each and one of them are there to do the quality check. Therefore by default, I trust my news I get from the general Swedish TV. But don´t mistake this with what I read from the news papers. We don´t really have any neutral news magazines, they will sway left to right and do their bidding to cover that little extra if some from the other side has done something injudicious.

I know USA is a big nation, but you do have states and for me they are almost like their own countries in a mosaic with others and you are gifted with the upper hand, speaking the same language. But I get the impression the average american are being sceptical by nature, and a trivial thing as to turn on the TV and doubt what they are airing is for me kind of sad. Is there a pattern to be seen if you live in a place like coastal New York area or in the deep places of the Ozarks(I love the TV show)?
 
You absolutely CANNOT put FOX News in the same category as CNN and MSNBC.
 
i think most of the evening news anchors do well. i used to watch the CBS evening news fairly often, but not so much anymore. no one is perfect, but imo they follow the practices of journalism and stay about as impartial as a person can.

im not talking about perfection...I am talking about an industry standard. Evening news anchors have been the same since they first started having them, doing just local news stories and the only job for many of them is to "read" what other people have investigated. Many arent even really journalists. The others, the field anchors that are actually brought to the desk for commentary on their stories are the journalists.

But I am glad you brought up CBS.

Old school CBS journalist, Walter Cronkite. Thought of as one of the greatest ever.
Mid school CBS, Dan Rather...smeared by CBS for his Bias after 40 years of being there and about him a quote from Cronkite "It surprised quite a few people at CBS and elsewhere that, without being able to pull up the ratings beyond third in a three-man field, that they tolerated his being there for so long."

Or how about this article using another one of the OLD greats...Bob Schieffer.

https://www.wiltonbulletin.com/1230...says-decline-in-local-journalism-is-a-crisis/

The modern media, is the worst in history because since modern times "after 1850" there has always been a large variety of news sources and that is just not the case today. The amount of "channels" or "Websites" means nothing if you can find almost the exact same story, word for word, on dozens of them...or having companies like Sinclair having their "local" stations read the SAME SCRIPTS in, what was it? 26 stations!
 
You absolutely CANNOT put FOX News in the same category as CNN and MSNBC.

Says who? Is it you being (I´m guessing) a voting democrat or are there other factors in play here?

Enlighten a Swede please.
 
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