First: I don't know which sociological studies you refer to, but most of it is politically colored arm chair philosophy. These insights didn't come from sociology, but from political movements.
Second: there's a difference not providing a full picture of a war or a new economic policy, and outright lying. I expect news organizations to provide me with the basic info: incomplete, but not counter-factual. Saying they're all lying and always have is a (probably politically motivated) spin against normal news organizations.
> Saying they're all lying and always have is a (probably politically motivated) spin against normal news organizations.
Perhaps the most wooden way to interpret what they're is saying. I think that most people would read this as "by in large, most are lying".
Pointing this out is useful because it shows the irony in the whole matter. This kind of wooden interpretation of words and lazy disqualification is what leads someone to the "black and white" spin you're accusing the GP of. This falls in line with the type of _gotcha_ logic that insists: "Well you said x, and x means X regardless of rhetorical device usage." and "OP has expressed sentiment in Y, which leads me to believe he's actually Y and therefore not $CREDIBLE".
The point is, engaging like this deprives the dialogue of nuance, rhetorical freedom and grace. If we continue with this way of interpreting one another we'll likely fall into the same polarization that we're complaining about (again, a grand irony).
This is still too extreme. "Lying" requires intentionality and implies maliciousness. It suggests that people who work in media are mostly evil people with the primary goal of misleading you. It both ignores and shows ignorance of how the media industry actually works. It also removes any hope of actually fixing the media industry because the only solution according to this mindset is getting rid of all the lying journalists. It doesn't leave any room to understand or address the incentives that actually got us to our current situation.
> it took a few years ... to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war, about every economic policy, ...
is exactly what you call a "wooden" statement. But even when the author meant "by and large, the media lied", the statement is a dishonest exaggeration it is. Of course there are media that can be caught lying over and over again, but there are sufficient large, conscientious news outlets to suppose it is a dirty spin.
> If we continue with this way of interpreting one another we'll likely fall into the same polarization that we're complaining about (again, a grand irony).
Discrediting all media equally is part of polarization, and letting it go isn't helpful. Discussing it as if it were true, as many seem to do, is a symptom that it has gone too far.
I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I've just seen first hand (1) the real information on the battlefield (2) the public affair office's briefing to medias, which is factual although omits sensitive things and (3) the media's subsequent reporting which largely ignores what the PAO said and goes on with their made up interpretation. It's frankly sickening. They're writing fantasy.
https://doomberg.substack.com/p/railroaded
"Even though this, and all information quoted in this piece, is readily available to any reporter with access to Google, countless references to the dangers presented by phosgene are giving the public anxiety over the decision to execute the controlled burn. To pick one example from many dozens, a Newsweek story, titled Did Control Burn of Toxic Chemicals Make Ohio Train Derailment Worse?, includes the following sentence: “Phosgene is a deadly gas that was used in chemical warfare during World War I.” The report goes on to quote – and we kid you not – a TikTok video from an “entrepreneur” for more insight.
Sigh."
Lots of things are dangerous even at concentrations measured in PPM. For example, the level of Phosgene that’s “immediately dangerous to life” is 2 ppm: https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/idlh/75445.html.
Maybe the point is that this 20 ppm quickly turns into less based on further dilution. But there’s a lot of analysis required to support the post’s assertions that the author just skips over.
If you consider the decades of scolarship it takes to clarify extremely well doccumented events, like the outbreak of the first world war, it's clear that even with a mountain of evidence, and all the time in the world, the 'basic facts' can be stubornly elusive even with the best of intentions.
The idea that an accurate picture should be able to emerge before 9-o'clock, in a newsroom, in a haze of conflicting reports, seems pretty incredible to me: and historically, that's not what has happened. So 'accurate news' is neither something we should expect, nor something we have a great deal of evidence of.
But propaganda is tricky, you need people to keep paying attention which means the most overt spin is to be avoided. Done well you shift the narrative over decades not just swap positions on day one. Fox News is the most well known US example, but you don’t want to just preach to people who already believe your message.
Thus you want to control the widest possible selection of media.
The New York Post is a great example. It was the sports and bookie newspaper - they’d publish Vegas odds and have tabloid news. They slowly transformed into a giant editorial paper and funnel into the broader Fox ecosystem.
They have an effective, free product. I need to pay to read The NY Times, but Fox is free and the sponsors are all low quality high margin stuff. Radio is prostate pills, TV is old people drugs and gold, etc.
Interesting, I worked in Saudi Arabia for awhile...most of the Africans and Southeast Asian laborers were all 100% convinced that professional wrestling was real. Pro wrestling is HUGE in developing nations.
Personally, I don’t watch anything. I read across a broad array of print sources and prefer to trust specific journalists rather than entire organizations. I try to get most information from primary sources, or to triangulate information from multiple outlets which are preferably maximally uncorrelated. This is much easier than it may sound. And think tanks and academics are often better information sources than entertainment news outlets.
No, not for propaganda. If you want people to have a certain perception and position on a topic, selective reporting of topics and the presentation of them is far more relevant. This certainly does qualify as misleading.
Lies are even more ineffective since they often can be directly disproved, which biases people to believe the opposite. You want to present your spin in a certain blur.
Many prominent sociologist pretty much explain the mechanisms media and advertisers employ in detail. To say this is a fringe position is misleading too.
There is a difference between withholding information, selective emphasis, and outright lies. They are all bad, but they are equally bad. If you want to make things better you attempt to differentiate better from worse actors.
TLDR; all media, and all people, are biased, but they are not all equally biased. This bias can produce false beliefs. If you think false beliefs are a bad thing you promote the better actors and condemn the worse.
Almost every US newspaper printed the blatant and unconvincing lies of the Bush Administration as if they were fact, and reported the results of the weapons inspectors as if they were gullible idiots.
Meanwhile, outside the UK even conservative news outlets in Europe were deeply skeptical of the whole story.
At the time, I thought the government and the news media knew something I didn't, because it just seemed ridiculous that they could overthrow an entire government in a few weeks for a few tens of billions of dollars.
It turned out that no, it was just one great big lie from top to bottom. (Only the SF Gate showed any skepticism at all, bless their hearts.)
> Second: there's a difference not providing a full picture of a war or a new economic policy, and outright lying.
It should be obvious to ethical or moral people, but I guess I need to explain that your statement is very often not correct.
Deliberately covering up the truth is often a form of lying. For example, if the American people had known that the weapons of mass destruction claim came from a single person nicknamed Curveball who had made false claims in the past and whom the CIA suspected might be crazy (thus the nickname!), I suspect the Iraq War might never have happened.
"they believe national news organizations intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public to adopt a particular point of view through their reporting."
This is the core of the survey. I didn't see them or your parent mention lying. Although I have seen such blatant miscommunication of the facts that the resulting news is counter-factual.
An attempt to mislead is stressing some parts of the actual information and omitting or obfuscating other parts to promote a specific viewpoint. But not actually making false statements. This is literally what most of the layers do much of the time in court.
To me, this is a much lesser evil, as a rational person can detect the spin and probe for missing parts, which is what the judge and opposing lawyers work on.
Lying is a much bigger deal because it is harder to expose through rational exploration. Possible, but requires more external facts. In a court, a spin is a normal part of the defense, but being caught in a lie is likely to doom the case. My 2c.
> intend to mislead, misinform or persuade the public
persuasion is not misinforming is not misleading.
> it took a few years ... to be come publicized knowledge that the media lied about every war ...
Isn’t… isn’t that a pretty black and white spin on the idea of sociology? Do you have any studies to share that indicate “politically colored armchair philosophy”?
