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One might suggest it illustrates a fundamental flaw in the concept of having people go out and write stories which are then read by hundreds of thousands or even millions of other people.
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Dec 23, 2018 16:15
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The problem still applies regardless in the sense that you can't "fact check" your way to empirical reporting because reporting is a: not based on empirical truths and b: to the extent it uses them they can easily be unverifiable. You are, fundamentally, trusting small numbers of people with control of the information supply and using their brains as the filter through which the world is presented. Even if you ignore the tendency for this to result in malicious actors (which I would suggest is itself a feature of the structure, it is much easier to buy off or have perverse incentives for a small group of people, and any given individual will have a very large scope to do damage in this way) you have fundamntally a very similar problem where you cannot report on many things without the bias of the author or editor affecting it massively. This and the inherent level of trust required a news outlet to pay people to do a job are things that you cannot fact check your way out of, as illustrated. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 16:23
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Well I would personally question whether or not the existence of the press as a form of entertainment which you correctly identify it as, and also correctly deduce that it is driven to be so as a result of a desire to sell papers, is not itself actively harmful when it also attempts to hold the position of information provider. I don't think, essentially, that you can have a press which does that and which also is supposed to be trusted to provide important information or serve as a check on power, ignoring of course the obvious inability of the press to do that anyway even if it were inclined to try. And as you can't really stop the existence of the press, or at least the existence of "a thing which publishes stories about the world on the basis that people like reading them" which would de-facto be one. I don't think people are remotely unjustified in just generally discrediting the notion of a trustworthy press. I obviously don't like the far right but I think the fact that "fake news" finds such fertile ground across society is a good thing, because fundamentally yes, it's all fake to some degree or other, and it's good that people recognize this in some way even if they don't react to it productively. The right might be shits but they're correct when they say the news is bullshit. The left should be doing it as well, because "actually they aren't they're honest and true and trustworthy" isn't a credible position. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 16:57
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We also have state funded media and it turns out they mostly do what the state tells them to do and it's not actually a very good idea  Collectively owned media might be an interesting idea though I'm skepitcal because it still has the problem of being produced by a few people, however democratically appointed they might be. Just don't really think the entire idea of a professional informer class works at all honestly, at least not well enough that you want to encourage faith in it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 17:09 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 17:07
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I would suggest that that lack of time, expertise, and inclination does not occur in a vacuum however. It is perhaps heavily encouraged by the presence of the press as a "viable" alternative. Yes you can't just believe whatever you hear on twitter either, you can't just believe whatever you hear from anyone. But believing things because you like the person writing it is precisely the attitude that is encouraged by the press as an institution. They all trade on perceived credibility, and in so doing, encourage the notion of credibility as an intrinsic quality, rather than a thing informed by circumstance. A paper does not tell you "trust us because material circumstances promote accuracy and honest from us in this instance" they just say "trust us because we're trustworthy" and this is expected to apply universally. And if the end result of trashing the press is just that people don't trust generally that's still preferable to a situation where people trust whoever has the biggest budget or whoever aligns with their political views. Though frankly at this point I would probably also feel a lot more secure in a world where people entirely abandon the notion of facts if it also resulted in breaking the control of media outlet owners over all discourse. Is total ignorance more dangerous than a carefully curated sense of knowledge? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 18:26
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I don't think antivaccination is particularly a good example of skepticism given that they all believe the same dumb theory about the gubmint trying to poison people with fema or whatever and do so wholeheartedly with very little critical thought. That also ignoring the idea that it's primarily an expression of people not being able to let go of their just world ideas in the face of reality. Antivaccination is, if anything, a far better illustration of the danger of telling people that they can get a comprehensive worldview from some idiot on the TV. Because it is looking for exactly that, except it's in response to not liking the leading brand of truth. It's also a bit funny in that the initial promotion of antivaccination as a concept was very much helped along by certain sections of the media reporting on it because it was very sensational despite being entirely incorrect So whatever it is, it's definitely not a good example of why we need the press. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:51 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 18:38
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I'm saying that "don't trust the media" is a good statement in general. Because the media is institutionally incapable of effecting change and also institutionally incapable of providing the kind of comprehensive and effective worldview they would like to sell you. Don't put your faith in the press and don't respond to attacks on the press by supporting them as an institution. Not least because, assuming you're on the left, they will never reciprocate the favour. That is another thing they are institutionally incapable of doing. The only people who benefit from the media in their current position are the people who run them and the people who they favour. So, in the US, that would be the lovely democrats and the republicans. In the UK it's the right to the far right. And both of these are institutional problems with the press as a concept. It's not something you can fix. You can at best hamstring them but you can't use their power to better ends, any more than you can free market your way out of the accumulatory problems of capitalism, for example. It's intrinsic to the form. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Dec 23, 2018 |
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Dec 23, 2018 19:10
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demonicon posted:I have to disagree with your first statement. The media IS capable of effecting change or at least propagating the change. I can't say I agree. Sure they might publish scandalous things but they can't agitate for meaningful, beneficial change in society. Because as you say, they're just companies. They can advocate for the policies that their wealthy owners like, or that their government sponsors like, but they cannot advocate for anything else any more than Wal-Mart would advocate for a better society rather than more money for them and gently caress you. A press cannot be state funded and not state run, because there is always the threat that they will have their funding revoked if they aren't publishing things that the state will tolerate. demonicon posted:Me too. It is upon the professional informer class to do this in a reliable and professional fashion. And this also supposes that there is money and readership to be gained from "surprising" people with facts. If tribalism is inherent then why would there be? The press instead, I think, serves overwhelmingly to define those tribes rather than break them. Because that's how you get a secure revenue/readership. You publish on a consistent theme and people buy your paper because they already like your theme. Do you know many people who buy different papers to be surprised? I don't. But almost everyone I know picks their journalistic outlet based on their existing preferences. Which is exactly the opposite. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:11 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 24, 2018 05:04
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awesmoe posted:Why should everything have to agitate for beneficial (as defined by you), meaningful change? Why is an informed citizenry not itself a worthy goal? Because there's no such thing as just "informed" people. There is not just a pile of information in the world and the more of it you stuff into people's heads the better. Or if there is that then you accomplish that at a university, not with a paper. A paper or news outlet is invariably about putting specific information into people's heads in order to present the vision of the world which aligns with the editor/owner's preferences. Which is what I was getting at with the initial criticism of the entire structure of the press as an institution. And what I'm pointing out above with the idea that this is how you build a reader base. This is part of the entire concept of a "reader base" which is that you have people you can rely on to repeatedly come to your outlet for information because you provide information that they like. So if you dislike the tribal nature of the world and politics then it is very strange to think the press is a good thing and that it does not massively contribute to that. And if you don't dislike the tribal nature of the world but still recognize that there are a lot of problems stemming from the specific tribal views which predominate, you still should have beef with the press because it is institutitionally incapable of expanding what views it promotes further than it already has. You already have the full spectrum of views which can be promoted by presses owned by private enterprises or government bodies. I do not think, on the whole, that it is doing the world much good as we see climatological collapse approaching with speed, forever wars being prosecuted by powerful western nations, and disgusting levels of wealth inequality leading to far right radicalization across the globe. All of which is propped up by a media cohort telling us how reasonable it all is. Even if you want to write them off as just the "bad press" or whatever, which I don't think you can given what a large proportion of the press it is. You have to acknowledge that the press does not, as a whole, or even the bits of it you like, provide an effective opposition to the damage that it does. And that promoting faith in the idea of the press is going to be very difficult to do while saying "oh but not that bit of course they're bad" Again and critically, you can't just increase someone's information level and that makes them better people like it's some kind of video game. All information leads people towards positions, and all press outlets come with a position that they would like you to agree with and which in so doing, would make you a consistent consumer of their output. Its extremely strange to look at the media as not being vehicles for encouraging tribalism in the world. There is no neutral "informing" people. Demonicon correctly identified this earlier in the thread when they pointed out that you can't remove bias from reporting. But further than that there is no news outlet that wants to remove bias from reporting, they all want to carve out their niche and get a reliable reader base out of it. And to suggest that this will lead to neutrally more informed people presupposes that there is a desire for this, that humans are aloof and unaffected by what they know, rather than people who are changed by the information they receive and will seek out more information to confirm their own biases. I didn't really address the first part of what you said but I would suggest that unless a: you like the world exactly as it is or b: you personally get money from the press in some way. You probably should also not like the press because they are, institutionally, hostile to your politics and interests. Now one of those might be true for you, but I think that's also an important criticism in the event that they aren't. I think we all live in countries which are strongly defined by the various media outlets and thus information we are exposed to, so if you are unhappy with the way your country or the way the world is, you should be pointing your finger at your national or the international media. Because they have a lot to do with it. And the kind of press you are exposed to and which defines your country is massively defined by your idea of press freedom. So if there is something wrong, in your estimation, with the result. There is perhaps, something wrong with that idea too. So coming from the UK obviously I have an intense dislike for privately owned media and also state owned media because both are extremely bad in the UK and it's for systemic reasons. Oh and to briefly address this: V. Illych L. posted:tbh i think it's uselessly paranoid to assume that media people are usually lying While I do of course think people lie a lot in the press I also am not making it a point of this argument because it's difficult to prove. I am limiting the argument to specifically the idea that the media presents selective truth rather than actual fabrications because that's probably a stronger argument. I am prepared to be very charitable and assume the press is generally truthful for the purposes of this argument. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 05:54 on Dec 24, 2018 |
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Dec 24, 2018 05:15
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If you want a good example of that you can try the BBC
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Jan 3, 2019 19:54
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I again suggest that the BBC is also an apt comparison such as the time they recently hired an actor and internet crystal healer to pretend to be a C of E cleric and advocate for leaving the EU, then clarified that while she is an actor, was paid, and is an internet crystal healer, none of these things are related and she was in fact a legitimate representative of the opinion of a significant portion of the population. Or that time when it turned out the question time audience caster was recruiting from literal fascist organizations in the UK. I'm sure they do functional reporting about things but they're absolutely a propaganda mill for the british government and so you can't trust them, what you can, at best do is use their work if it suits your end. But you can not simply trust that what they publish will be good because they published it. And this is true of all media. A press is a tool for disseminating the information desired by its owners. Occasionally their interests and yours will align. Nothing more and nothing less. The primary difference I would suggest is that RT is an asset directed outwards while the BBC is one directed inwards. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 01:54
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Discendo Vox posted:Totalizing cynicism about all sources of information is one of the desired endstates that the Russian foreign-facing propaganda program specifically attempts to encourage. It makes the message viewer easier to manipulate, rather than less, because they begin selecting passively and ideologically. I would disagree given that this presumes the existence of a non ideological view of the world as an alternative. And anyone who believes that is obviously already the world's biggest mark. I would much prefer conscious selection of information based on ideology to unconscious selection. And those are your choices. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:19 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:17
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Ah, yes, the stable genius stalwart against propaganda that is the solipsist. Do point me to this presumed golden age of rational thought and objective truth that we are moving away from?
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Jan 5, 2019 04:20
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Your rejection of the very idea of "facts" makes you the best mark for disinformation campaigns. If there is no non-ideological truth, there is nothing to strive for, all that matters is whether the source appeals to you ideologically, and all it has to do is tell you what you want to hear. Facts may or may not exist, but I generally operate on the assumption that they do. However this has absolutely no bearing on whether or not they are a major motivator in the world we live in. Especially not in large, political matters. I do not think it is possible to look at history and think that there has ever been a point where ideology has not been the ruling force in the world, to extents consciously cultivated and elsewhere simply emergent. So when talking about large scale information dissemination such as the media, I don't see it as useful to pretend that it is not also entirely ideological? Even if you believe in facts as I have previously said, you can construct an ideology entirely out of selective facts. Ideology is not even opposed to the notion of facts, it can simply be the selection of facts that you have been given access to by your environment, along with many other people. And that selection can be consciously or emergently curated. Which you might describe as propaganda and culture respectively. You can't escape that, nobody ever has, no society ever has, so why pretend that you can just pile up lots of facts and create an objective truth that everyone can believe in? Especially why do that in the face of overwhelming ideology everywhere you look? Just pick one you like and run with it. You've already been raised into it, so you're going to do that either consciously or unconsciously.
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Jan 5, 2019 04:30
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Discendo Vox posted:You can apply active, critical thought to sources of information without treating all of them cynically. Popper ain't a positivist, but he still thinks something like progress can be made! It's possible to pursue more accurate information without believing you're going to obtain something completely without bias- and that is, in no small part, a process of public error and correction. Again this continues to act under the assumption that there is a towering corpus of publicly accepted fact which RT is trying to knock over. There isn't. There's the ideological positions put out by many different groups from which the populace selects according to their preference. This is already the world we live in, it's the world we have always lived in. What difference does it make when factual, sensible, honest reporting produces the world that nearly obliterated itself during the cold war? Or the atrocities of the world wars? When was this loving age of truth that was not drowning in the blood of wasted lives every loving second? How do you look at the 20th century and come to the conclusion that the way the media works, or has worked for its entire existence, is a good and stabilizing force that threatens to be undermined by wild cynicism and distrust of pricks who make money selling people whatever people want to hear or printing whatever their governments tell them to? What great truth was served by the press support for all our wars and empires and suppressions of rights and endless loving exploitation of everyone in the world to feed the wealthiest? What wonderful edifice did all of that erect when all those sensible and reasoned articles were written by people trying to present "self serving factual beliefs" and what is lost by saying gently caress all of it? In what world is that preferable to simply recognizing the ideological forces that drive the world and working overwhelmingly to push the ones that the press as it exists can not represent, because gently caress knows the ones they can have had more than enough time to run things and I am tired of it. And the planet itself is rapidly growing weary of it too. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 04:55 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 04:44
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Discendo Vox posted:What definition of propaganda are you working with, because it appears to be so broad as to encompass all information passed through human hands. When you set out to present information with the intent of changing someone's mind about something, generally as part of a coherent set of information designed to elicit buy in to a particular worldview. i.e yes, everything that a media outlet puts out, because there's an editor in charge and they set the ideological limits of the outlet according to their preferences. It doesn't include all information because it's possible to convey information more unthinkingly or not significantly as part of a coherent effort to build a worldview but that form of information transmission would be more on an individual level or possibly scientific, again not within the space occupied by media outlets. Signfiicantly this definition of propaganda does not discriminate between things you made up and things you think are true, because that's irrelevant. The point is that you are in both cases simply giving people information intended to occupy their need for a coherent understanding of the world, with the intent of assuring their loyalty to your publication or cause. Sometimes things with a factual basis are the most effective method of doing that, sometimes outright lies are, sometimes a mixture of both, with the facts giving cover to the lies. Sometimes if you're really lucky you can end up in a situation where the facts and the lies are produced by different institutions but which all contribute to the same media environment and general cultural tone, allowing a sort of superficial ideological divergence without compromising the fundamentals. The US is very good at this whereby its political environment is very effectively restricted to two flavours of liberalism with varying levels of racism and bible thumping mixed in. Note that I do not specify that this is intentional, I'd probably describe it as being more like an emergent class interest created by the nature of the US media than a conscious effort set out by a particular individual. In either case I would suggest the answer is cynicism. Some are lying to you, some are selectively feeding you useful truths. None are actually good for the world at large. This is probably informed specifically by my being from the UK where the entire press is either rabidly right wing or wet fart liberal, while the primary political opposition is further left than any of the media. This necessitates media cynicism because you cannot simultaneously believe the press is good and be politically active on the left, because they are all hostile to you. Having more people like the media and their output would be flat out a bad thing for me and where I live. I would suggest the same is true for most places on the earth. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 16:21
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Helsing posted:I'm far from an ardent defender of the press but you seem to be taking this set of arguments well past their breaking point here. You correctly point out that journalism can't really fulfill its own self stated objectives very well because ideology is to at least some degree inescapable and merely "piling up" more factual data doesn't bring us closer to a true picture of the world because inevitably these "piles" of facts have to be shaped into an ordered narrative by some ideological assumptions. That's all fine as far as it goes but I think you can still construct a case for the utility of journalism. The problem with that line of thinking is that it takes the existence of a hosed up water supply as the natural state. Rather than a state that arises because of the politics of the country in which you live, and those politics are massively decided by the media environment. The media makes the world better by pointing out some of the most egregious problems of the world it created without daring to go so far as, and in the majority of cases actively opposing, the formation of them into a systemtic critique of that enviornment? I do not think you can draw the starting line at "we live in a hosed up political environment and the press pushes back against that". If you do do that then sure, I guess it might look appealing, if you very selectively pick the bits of the press you like. But I think it's incorrect to do so because the political environment is created by the media environment. They are two halves of the same thing. How much of that same media tradition supported the tax cuts and antigovernmental sentiment that led to the election of the people responsible for loving up the water supply? What's that good tweet? "I do not like the problems but the causes, the causes are very very good?" Your press is your politics, and vice versa. They are not separable. If you want them to be, then media cynicism is your only option. You necessarily have to cultivate some form of deciding what you believe outside of the press. An ideology, consciously adopted and spread. You could, if you wanted, create your own outlets to spread it, but you should do so with the understanding that this is what you're doing. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 18:03
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Repeating something doesn't make it true, bud.
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Jan 5, 2019 18:13
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I am not missing the point, I'm rejecting it, I do not think there is a useful line between your concepts of "is a propaganda outlet" and "is an outlet that functions to create a hegemonic media environment which serves the interests of the wealthiest classes while causing major harm to everyone else but definitely isn't propaganda." They achieve the same thing. When you're defending the latter from the former, what of value are you defending? If you were going to set up a propaganda factory for economic liberalism how could you create a more perfect one than the press as a whole as it stands? With incredible effectivness it works to delegitimize all outside viewpoints while restricting the range of debate between various options which cannot address the fundamental injustices and harms in the world. And in addition to that, what is any political faction outside of the ones represented by the press at present, supposed to do about it? Because my suggestion is that you should be looking to set up your own propaganda outlets. What other choice do you have? Propaganda as lies as opposed to the truth of journalism is a useless distinction, because the end result doesn't really matter whether you're running lies, truth, or a mix of the two. All of those can have the same effect on our society. All of them do because they're all just part of the same big environment. The problem with the media environment isn't the existence of RT or other outright bullshit mills. If you waved a wand and got rid of all of them you'd still be left with a bunch of more factually based but still functionally bullshit discourse. It's arguing about the state of the silverware on the titanic, and it will never be more than that. And I would also suggest that the fact that the press is limited to that is part of why bullshit mills have appeal. People are right to believe that the press is full of idiots who don't actually want to present a useful view of the world to them. Because it's true for most people. In that environment people are gonna look for alternatives that are more believable, even if they're not true. So if you dislike the existence of RT and tabloids but still like the press, then you gotta look at why they're so appealing? What's the bit of your environment that you seemingly support doing that complete lies can so easily compete with it? The distinction between the NYT and RT makes sense as a dislike of one of their respective political positions and a like of the other, but not really in other ways. If you like the society that the NYT advocates for, then sure, great, go with it. If you don't, and I trust you don't, then you should dislike both of them. You should recognize both as hostile to you. Helsing posted:The media didn't create the world though. It didn't create capitalism. It didn't even create neoliberalism. You write as though our entire social structure is just a byproduct of media ownership, which seems to be putting the cart in front of the horse. While the media legitimizes the status quo and places boundaries on what is considered reasonable debate it doesn't actually create reality. No it didn't create the world but it has existed in the capitalist world for long enough that it is a fundamental part of how it is maintained. Again I do not assert that this is a conscious plan by some big fucker with a bag of cash sitting at the top and directing the entire press to do things. I am suggesting that the press, at this time, is a fundamental pillar by which the status quo is maintained. This relationship is emergent. And how it came about is not relevant to one's reaction to it. I also would not suggest that the existence of the "free press" means that it is responsible for improvements in rights. The press is overwhelmingly reactionary in that respect, it argues for the status quo, collectively. It is a lead weight on societal change. When things change it's through outside forms of organization, the press does not and can not lead the way other than the parts of it owned by people who use those companies as propaganda outlets, and you might have noticed that the efficacy of these outlets increases with the amount of money behind them, and the more money behind them, the more lovely their politics? That's a losing battle. The media can lead you to worse places, it cannot lead you somewhere better. So you have to acknowledge that relationship, you have to say "the press is bullshit and lies, this is what we believe" and go from there. You have to be telling people that what they read in the paper and see on TV is bullshit, you have to promote media cynicism. Because otherwise you cannot advance any other position than what they do. You have to reject the status quo to advocate for an alternative. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:37 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 20:23
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It makes just as much sense in an an environment where there is an ideological monopoly. That's the thing, you don't need to actively suppress views to effectively censor them, you can simply flood the environment with superficial differences of opinion which all share the same fundamental acceptances of the key things you want. It is also possible for this to happen without conscious direction though I would suggest that the US's, and other countries' political histories in the 20th century have had a major effect with the active censorship of socialist ideas creating a media culture hostile to them, though the existence of the media as profit driven and directed by a wealthy class is also a factor. This is the key thing. Totalitarian suppression of views is not necessary. And neither is a top down direction of propaganda. You can end up maintaining a critical mass of ideological support by simply drowning out the alternatives under weight of information availability. And this can occur organically and be self sustaining too.
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Jan 5, 2019 20:47
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And has it gotten us very far, do you think? I already said that yes, they will report on the worst excesses of the system they propgate, but they will equally turn vehemently against any attempt to usurp that system. This is part of the problem. This is why they are so effective an obstacle. They say on the one hand that terrible things are happening, but on the other work hard to obfuscate any systemic, left wing critique of why they happen. Do you not think this contradiction is a problem? Do you not think that perhaps the contradiction is fuel for all the far right stuff I assume you dislike? When you have a press that tells you terrible things are happening but cannot offer you a coherent explanation for why, and equally can have a section of itself, by virtue of private ownership, more than willing to voice the extreme right answer to why the world is hosed, do you not think this represents a systemic problem with the press and how it affects society? It is terrible that people die hungry or sick, but UBI or medicare for all or a 15 dollar minimum wage are unworkable programs, and also theyr'e socialism and socialism is worse than hitler and it's actually the fault of the drat immigrants and that's why we need to invade syria. These are your three flavours of content produced by the US media and most media in the west. They at best identify problems, in the middle rail against the left solution, and on the right they promote the vilest solutions. But it's all part of the system. It is a holistic thing. They're all organized the same way, and they cannot deviate from that because what wealthy and powerful institution is going to advocate for things that threaten itself? It doesn't matter what individual journalists might want, they can't change the way their industry operates. They won't change the way the media as a whole affects society. It doesn't matter how many reports on bad things they put out because they will be followed up with a stifling of the left and a fostering of the right, ever and always. It's a three hit combo. You say society is rotten, you paint the good solutions as wrong in some way, morally or practically, and you offer people the far right line that acknowledges the rot in society and gives the wrong solution. You may not do it consciously but that is the effect. It is not all done by the same company, but it is all done by the same mode of organization. Which is wealthy private or state owned media with a remit to seek profit and readership. This can cover all positions but the left wing one quite effectively, because the democratic left wing position is opposed to the wealthy privately owned model, and the state ownership model is similarly oligarchic due to the nature of it being controlled by representative democracies which themselves are generally steeped in the wealth and privilege of the political class which makes it makes it inherently hard for a left wing government to maintain control of, and it becomes a very effective instrument in the hands of a right wing one. I don't know how a collectively owned media might work out because it'd have to be a massive structural break from the normal hierarchical organization I think. It's unknown enough that I couldn't venture a view on it. With the british labour party's ideas about transferring some things to collective or municipal ownership though it might possibly be an option we could see in the future. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jan 5, 2019 |
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Jan 5, 2019 21:53
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Squalid posted:I'm not sure Russian media is significantly more supportive of socialism than American media, or at least not in a constructive way. They'll have socialist on but the scope of tolerated narratives is just as constrained as in private American media. Well, yeah Russia is a turbocapitalist hellhole why would they be? I don't recall suggesting that? The analysis that RT is primarily a tool aimed at disrupting the political landscape of other countries is entirely correct and to that end they can of course use anything, including socialists to do that. They'll give air to anything if they think it'll cause political ruckus somewhere else. Herstory Begins Now posted:So this is just an emotional feeling that you have about journalism and not something actually grounded in reality, thanks for clarifying. Look if you're not even going to bother to engage with what I'm saying what's the point in responding? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 00:39
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If you want to talk about specific time periods and the nuances of the press then I am not going to stop you. But I'm not being entirely rhetorical when I ask what time and place people are suggesting that the press has been able to support the changes that I think most of the posters here, to one degree or another, would find necessary in the societies and the world we live in. I do not know of any such time or place, if you do then please share. I don't, though, think that historical trends are enormously significant to the criticism I'm making of the media in the here and now, though they may interest you personally of course. My specific criticism is that at this present moment in time, definitely in the UK and I would venture in the US and probably most of the rest of the western liberal democratic world, our respective national medias are an obstacle to necessary left wing reform, and an aid to right wing populism which I think most of us do not like. And that the reason for this is because of their structure as privately owned and state operated enterprises which structurally leads them to promote liberal and right wing positions and hinder left wing ones. And this, taken in an environment of increasing intranational and international inequality and with the looming danger that climate change and far right politics to escalate that trend of inequality, means it is important to examine the political utility of the press as an institution, in this day and age. I am arguing that this isn't a problem you can solve by saying we just need to get rid of specific publications, not least because that, as you correctly express concern at the prospect of, would have to be accomplished by simply increasing state control over the public discourse. I am personally quite skeptical of that being beneficial as well, in no small part because I don't like state broadcasters any more than private ones. But equally that what you might call the "bad" parts of the press emerge from the same structure as the supposed good parts of it. They're just selling a different thing to different people. The problem is surely that entire attitude to information dissemination? Not approaching that doesn't make any more sense to me than someone who dislikes worker exploitation but just wants to try and regulate it out of existence rather than approaching the idea that the exploitation is an inherent aspect of the employer/employee relationship and if you dislike it you might want to tackle that relationship rather than just hammering down all the bad outcomes that keep popping up. If you want more specific things then perhaps could you venture a different view on this? Do you think that it is possible to keep the general structure of media companies that we currently have but somehow improve them to not be an obstacle to left wing politics and also not prefer to promote right wing politics? Do you think that the hierarchical structure of press companies with well paid and centralized editorial control does not have an effect on the political bent of the publications making them generally if not fundamentally advocates for the moneyed classes and their political positions? Do you have good examples of attempts to change this, do you know what a cooperative media outlet might actually look like and whether it had any effect on the output? If you have like, specific disagreements with stuff like that then I'd be happy to hear them but thus far I can't get beyond "how dare you say the press is bad"
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Jan 6, 2019 01:32
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Herstory Begins Now posted:You're not even making any provable claims in either direction, you're just expounding your pet theory of how journalism works without grounding it in literally any examples of actual journalism, much less any of the actual discussion of this stuff that goes on inside of journalism as a field. Moreover you're neglecting that any leftist journalism exists whatsoever so you can make some (frankly absurd) point that 100% of journalism serves a far-right purpose. The LSE report was posted on the last page and you dismissed it as irrelevant. I live with this poo poo. You might as well ask me to prove the drat sky is blue but if you absolutely must have things quantified before you believe them then there's plenty in that report to look at.
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Jan 6, 2019 01:41
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Absurd Alhazred posted:Has it occurred to you that maybe the experience of the particular last few decades in the former center of empire and current running self-important running joke for the world community Knifecrime Island might not be representative of the entire landscape of media in the entire world? I can't speak about foreign language press but the poo poo that comes out of the US looks plenty familiar. If anyone wants to propose a difference in their own press that would be interesting though lacking context I couldn't obviously comment. Cynically though I would be surprised if there are not following trends in many places, the US in particular tends to push the rest of the world towards its own habits. I would posit the UK as perhaps an end state of the private press model, however, and a useful case study of the state press model with the BBC. If you like those, it might be a good idea to see how it works here, because you could have it to look forward to. If you want to compare and contrast trends in the US press specifically, being something I would very much identify as having similarities, then that would be interesting too. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:53 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 01:47
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Mate if you want to go back to counting brexit in UKMT that'd be just dandy I can make myself look like a tit without your half arsed input.
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Jan 6, 2019 01:55
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Squalid posted:I'm a bit unsure towards what conclusions your criticisms of western media are supposed to lead Owlfancier. You reject state media as a viable alternative, which leaves either private nonprofit publications or worker run pamphlets as the only traditional media alternatives I can think of. Or modern algorithm driven social media and moderated spaces like this forum, which are also subject to biases, censorship, and other problems. You've just observed that bias exist, but I don't see a suggestion for how to remove it or at least make it a bias towards something we like. As I said collective ownership might work but it would, I think, have to be wildly different from what we have. I don't know. Genuinely if there are examples of that I would like to see them to see if they do work and have the desired effect. But even then I'm not sure how they could compete with an environment where any rich rear end in a top hat or country so inclined can pay as many people as they want to drown the world in garbage information. That's broadly why the one thing I would advocate for is cynicism. Essentially I don't see a way to really win this. There might be one but it's diffcult to see how the progression of technology in this instance doesn't work against us, assuming "us" in this instance is the people who would be well represented by left wing politics. You're right in that algorithmic or moderated social media are not the solution I think, or at least that the moderation either automated or otherwise, cannot be trusted to provide a "good" set of information or even necessarily a good environment. Because as we've seen there are already people ahead of the game in that department and working to flood those platforms with the same noise, and those companies being privately owned means they will happily sell any information people pay them to, as was the case with the recent facebook stuff and cambridge analyitica. Nationalizing them might be a good step but you're talking about doing that in the US which, uh, good luck? And would you be happier with them under the control of the US government? We do have press rules for elections in the UK but how does that translate to international news sources now that the internet is global and more and more people use it as their source for news? The laws aren't enforcable internationally. Perhaps they could be with effort but I'm skeptical that it would get that far. Nonprofits and poo poo yeah, they can exist but I imagine we both think that they couldn't really be competitive. So what else is left but general cynicism? You have to trivially dismiss a massive amount of information you might come across and this seems only likely to increase as the traditional media moves more online and online becomes a bigger part of all our lives, and more people get in on the idea that just spreading massive amounts of information works. Or hell, what I want doesn't even signify, it's difficult to imagine how this doesn't inevitably lead to cynicism and a checkout from the media by necessity as it simply becomes completely oversaturated. This is a technological thing, really. Information dissemination is becoming monumentally easier so you can no longer rely on "rich enough to own a newspaper" as the filter. Any idiot can put anything out they want and I think it's a bit... pointless to object to this or hope to oppose it, any more than it would be to demand we all move back to using 3.5in floppy disks. You couldn't fix it by nuking russia because the US will start doing it too. Everywhere will. It's a technological cat and it's out of the bag. I agree with DV that this is the end state though I disagree that it's unique to RT or that it's something you can really oppose. So the question then becomes what comes next? How do we live in the post-facts post-papers-of-record world? I don't have an answer for you but I do think it's a very good and very pertinent question. It's possible, perhaps, that this might just kill most of the online world as a meaningful information platform, sort of like the online advertising crash. You just automatically (sometimes literally) filter it all out and it gets lower and lower returns on investment. With people instead withdrawing more to... oh there's a proper word for it, like review sites and stuff or when people combine social media and consumerism? You don't listen to random ads you see but you instead go to a place that you trust to give you information on what to buy and that has much more weight? Which then of course becomes quite a lot more like the traditional press, but it opens an interesting possibility for democratization as these curation sites tend to rely a lot on user input. That itself is obviously open to abuse, but it could be almost... collectivist? In an ideal world perhaps. I think it's interesting to consider that wikipedia works as well as it does in the field of information provision. Far from perfect but a mile better than I would have expected. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Jan 6, 2019 |
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Jan 6, 2019 02:25
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