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I was thinking about buying a subscription to the Washington Post to try and support real journalism, but lol at that fake "Russian propaganda" story that they published. Is it worthwhile to try to support these established and well-recognized news organizations, even though almost all of them have been complicit in our current media trainwreck? I don't want my  going towards lovely journalism, but I also don't want the true crackpot news organizations to push out the more legitimate ones that are at least attempting to bring out the truth.
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Dec 2, 2016 16:54
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BarbarianElephant posted:Every media organization fucks up occasionally. If you wait for the newspaper that has never been wrong, you'll never subscribe to anything. The Facebook fake news scandal is about sources that are *always* wrong or dishonest, not those that are occasionally hoodwinked. This a good point, and it's absolutely true. Makrond posted:Would teaching people media literacy actually fix the problems we see with mainstream journalism though? I'm genuinely curious, because people seem to have decided that good journalism isn't profitable, in a world driven increasingly by Jobs And Growth. Breaking the back of 'fake news' and their funding model doesn't necessarily mean people will take their money to institutions that practice good journalism more often than not, right? At that point what do you do? If your job as a journalist rests on your employer deciding you make them enough money to justify your pay, how do you advocate for things that directly affect their bottom line? How do you hold the powerful to account when they stop talking to you because you think human rights aren't just an inconvenience to ignore? How do you shed light on government wrongdoing when breaking the story lands you in jail? The economic side of this whole complicated issue is also what interests me. A lot of the good, hard-hitting investigative journalism and reporting has been traditionally done by print newspaper organizations, which are now well into financial decline due to the advent of the internet. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that internet-based news outlets have picked up much of the slack left by the void of traditional on-the-ground reporting and investigating. Most outlets seem to be content with leeching off the journalistic efforts of the remaining print newsrooms still left standing, which has exacerbated the phenomenon where articles are citing sources that are secondhand or thirdhand or worse. The fact of the matter is that we need well-funded and independent media organizations that can take on powerful interests and dig deep with investigative reporting. Unfortunately, we are coming up against the aspect of human nature that makes people tend to favor news that panders to their individual biases and preconceptions rather than favoring news that comes closest to the realistic truth. In practice, this means that people will throw their attention (and money) toward fake news groups that satisfy their worldview over legitimate news organizations. I think maybe we need to start thinking about supporting sane and credible news outlets financially as a purely political gesture, e.g. subscribing or donating to legitimate news outlets in the same way that we donate to and support political candidates. Personally, I don't actually spend any money on any kind of news media, because I can read everything I want for free on the internet. I'm pretty sure that drat near everyone here knows that you can bypass internet paywalls on most news articles through incredibly simple means. I think the rise of fake news and the erosion of credible journalism can, in part, be traced back to this ongoing "free lunch" that we've been enjoying for the past decade or so. It's catching up to us. UV_Catastrophe fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Dec 3, 2016 |
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Dec 3, 2016 20:16
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