I think this excellent post also illustrates why the rise of anonymous posts is harmful. A letter to the editor used to be curated and non-anonymous. Nowadays, folks write BS on FB or via disqus with no fear of being shamed. What used to have the status of scribblings on the walls of toilets now has a megaphone and world-wide reach.
FB? Haven't you noticed the FT's comments? The quality of those have collapsed. There always was a steady segment of sour UK commenters who childishly crowed about any article depicting some kind of German problem (some Brits never got over their post WW2 demise and Germany's economic and political resurrection) but since a few years childishness, name calling and insults have seriously increased in the FT comments sections.
While US papers produce verbal boxing matches: comments in the WSJ are typically unbearable because they're so vitrolic, WAPO and NYT commenters are often profoundly stuck up. White rural rage anybody?
The FT indeed is expensive (i left them in april 2022 as i believe they've become a Guardian + financial news). The WSJ is remarkably cheap, $ 2 p month for the first year and after that $ 10 p month. Perhaps the powerful signalling value of the FT warrants its prime pricing...
Indeed, WSJ is good value for money. The other newspaper subscription that is good value is Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post which charges $19 per year and still has a decent roster of conservative opinion writers, not just liberals.
WSJ: yes, though it is as frustratingly extensive as the NYT - wading through it & skipping articles is a kind of never ending mindgame with yourself...I recently read that the majority of WSJ subscribers are liberals btw...
I indeed have the very cheap WAPO (i think a certain Donald J Trump would endorse that description). But mostly for easy access to older articles - not everyhting is in the wayback machine.
A short one, as usual...A pity you don't go into the question 'who decides what misinfo actually is?' Thát is the important question, not what happens on social media (which is typically thought of as basically the place where the prolls hang out. It's not said literally of course, that would be insulting and reactionary).
While our newspapers and tv are the places where the truth (still) is published and discussed...I would call that a bubble-induced opinion as well.
It's our entirely neutral gov's (...) and their think tanks and media that decide what is legit and what is not. Have you noticed that 'anti covid conspiracy theory' think tanks and fact checkers have not dissolved themselves now that is not a topic anymore, but instead have refurbished themselves effortlessly into anti climate denial, anti illiberal propaganda or anti whatever organizations? Still paid by gov's and gov-tied NGOs etc.
A significant amount of media articles aren't the product anymore of journalists' own investigations and research (those have crumbled) but result from think tanks and gov institutes posts, paid for by gov and NGO's tied to gov.
I.e. 'Sources say'...
With climate anxiety now at levels where young women have abortions to not have a child grow up on a 'boiling' planet, you wonder why there aren't any official campaigns - or just calls for such - to calm these poor ladies down. Apparently reaching peak hysteria on specific themes is not problematic at all. Nor does it justify creating 'anti anxiety' think tanks or NGOs. The only thing boiling in these women's lives is not the planet but their hot steaming media.
Could it be that journos and think tankers simply lack the guts to go against the stream? What does that make them? Not peddlers but at least acceptors of bs science and the gov line?
And WHERE does misinfo occur? It's also telling - and self congratulatory - that the above scientists stick to the sphere of social media, excluding generic media and academia, both of which are THEIR natural habitat.
With every scientific field having a major replication issue into the decimals (which they silently but generously accept) i'm more interested in the replicability of the conclusions of the above study than the conclusions themselves...
With the explosion of academia we now live in a world where every field is 'served' by hundreds of scientific journals who provide the career advancing legitimization for academics (number of publications in English language journals) ánd they're a lucrative (new) business model for academia and publishers.
As for peer review, that's not exactly the holy grail - anymore. If you're a 24 yo who wants to get ahead in your field, are you going to be harsh on the newest study of one of the cracks in your field?
No.
(Related: what do journalists cherish more: writing the truth or keeping access to government? Can journos actually write harsh truths and still remain in the select group that is accredited for White House briefings?)
By now there are peer reviewed studies on the quality of peer review. Science has become thát funny...
And despite journalism's self created image of being the force that controls gov (only after progressives took down Nixon - Pentagon papers & Watergate - did this exaggerated notion of their importance take hold), looking at just the supposed bible of journalism the NYT (as everywhere in the west i see Dutch centrist- and progressive newspapers and magazines conscientiously following US journalism's 'party line'): the NYT has carefully and unquestioningly supported US gov foreign policy for generations (it refrained from publishing Hersh's My Lai story for a year for instance).
It has published so much bs so often with such grave consequences (Iraq) it is no wonder that, at least in the US, public trust in journalism is just a tiny bit above the always-in-the-gutter politicians. (Contemporary European trust in journalism is collapsing as we speak and that's not social media's or Vladimir Putin's fault, that's journos own fault. And what are gov's and generic media proposing to solve this? Censorship...I.e. disinfo orgs...Why is it that progressives and centrists more and more are beginning to sound and act like the illiberal opponents they claim to oppose?
Today, in the US and Europe, media applies STASI methods when shutting down anybody whose curiosity reaches beyond journos rehashing press releases and gov statements: 'climate denier', 'Putin-versteher', 'covid-conspiracy-theorist' or 'whataboutism' have become perfectly ok responses for adults. If you're on the supposed right side of history too often having solid sources (instead of gov statements and colleagues' press releases) plus accurate reasoning aren't required elements of journalism anymore. 'Putin blew up his own pipeline while already sitting on the tab- no really'...
For journos the problem is that the difference between their intellectual products and, to name one, Nancy Pelosi's waffling, is disappointingly meager.
Only around 2023 i became aware of the FT censoring perfectly legit Stanford PhD's who showed early 2020 through solid math and stats that lockdowns wouldn't work. All around the west critical thinkers are being ridiculed and made look suspect by the supposed guardians of the truth / controllers of gov.
Anonymous reporting is becoming an accepted career-ending practice. Not just in the illiberal east, but here in the bastions of liberal democracy.
US media and democrats still believe foreign media intervention put Trump in the WH (debunked by at least 3 studies) and the FT never corrected their Russiagate story - the NYT and Politico did, but quietly and not on the frontpage. Such corrections however never altered their positions since they simply went berserk after 2016. (Is Rachel maddow a journo? Or an obnoxious freak with way too many viewers than is healthy for any democracy?)
But media berserkistan has great rewards in times of Trump. For CNN ('we hate him but we love him') and the NYT - which went from 1 mln to 10 mln subscribers in a few years since 2016.
For one of the clearest voices on how media and public relate to each other and what has happened to journalism and where it's going: Andrey Mir.
One of his key points: subscriptions have replaced ads creating a (much more) direct connection between media/journo and reader/subscriber. This new relationship necessitates for any media's survival that the already existing opinion(s) of the reader are reinforced instead of challenged. (And he's not talking about TikTok...)
Subscription solicited as donation: a new cause of media bias
The decline in the media business caused by the internet has not distorted the picture of the world in the media. It has distorted the habitual distortion.
People lie. We will always lie. The only way to judge the relative merit of information is to looks at the incentives and back-skew your read on things. Ethics training falls into the endless mash of mandated bureaucrospeak that we all ignore while we think of all the things we have to get done.
I think this excellent post also illustrates why the rise of anonymous posts is harmful. A letter to the editor used to be curated and non-anonymous. Nowadays, folks write BS on FB or via disqus with no fear of being shamed. What used to have the status of scribblings on the walls of toilets now has a megaphone and world-wide reach.
FB? Haven't you noticed the FT's comments? The quality of those have collapsed. There always was a steady segment of sour UK commenters who childishly crowed about any article depicting some kind of German problem (some Brits never got over their post WW2 demise and Germany's economic and political resurrection) but since a few years childishness, name calling and insults have seriously increased in the FT comments sections.
While US papers produce verbal boxing matches: comments in the WSJ are typically unbearable because they're so vitrolic, WAPO and NYT commenters are often profoundly stuck up. White rural rage anybody?
good to know!
(I'm too cheap to subscribe to the FT and the WSJ; now I have an additional reason not to).
The FT indeed is expensive (i left them in april 2022 as i believe they've become a Guardian + financial news). The WSJ is remarkably cheap, $ 2 p month for the first year and after that $ 10 p month. Perhaps the powerful signalling value of the FT warrants its prime pricing...
Indeed, WSJ is good value for money. The other newspaper subscription that is good value is Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post which charges $19 per year and still has a decent roster of conservative opinion writers, not just liberals.
WSJ: yes, though it is as frustratingly extensive as the NYT - wading through it & skipping articles is a kind of never ending mindgame with yourself...I recently read that the majority of WSJ subscribers are liberals btw...
I indeed have the very cheap WAPO (i think a certain Donald J Trump would endorse that description). But mostly for easy access to older articles - not everyhting is in the wayback machine.
A short one, as usual...A pity you don't go into the question 'who decides what misinfo actually is?' Thát is the important question, not what happens on social media (which is typically thought of as basically the place where the prolls hang out. It's not said literally of course, that would be insulting and reactionary).
While our newspapers and tv are the places where the truth (still) is published and discussed...I would call that a bubble-induced opinion as well.
It's our entirely neutral gov's (...) and their think tanks and media that decide what is legit and what is not. Have you noticed that 'anti covid conspiracy theory' think tanks and fact checkers have not dissolved themselves now that is not a topic anymore, but instead have refurbished themselves effortlessly into anti climate denial, anti illiberal propaganda or anti whatever organizations? Still paid by gov's and gov-tied NGOs etc.
A significant amount of media articles aren't the product anymore of journalists' own investigations and research (those have crumbled) but result from think tanks and gov institutes posts, paid for by gov and NGO's tied to gov.
I.e. 'Sources say'...
With climate anxiety now at levels where young women have abortions to not have a child grow up on a 'boiling' planet, you wonder why there aren't any official campaigns - or just calls for such - to calm these poor ladies down. Apparently reaching peak hysteria on specific themes is not problematic at all. Nor does it justify creating 'anti anxiety' think tanks or NGOs. The only thing boiling in these women's lives is not the planet but their hot steaming media.
Could it be that journos and think tankers simply lack the guts to go against the stream? What does that make them? Not peddlers but at least acceptors of bs science and the gov line?
And WHERE does misinfo occur? It's also telling - and self congratulatory - that the above scientists stick to the sphere of social media, excluding generic media and academia, both of which are THEIR natural habitat.
With every scientific field having a major replication issue into the decimals (which they silently but generously accept) i'm more interested in the replicability of the conclusions of the above study than the conclusions themselves...
With the explosion of academia we now live in a world where every field is 'served' by hundreds of scientific journals who provide the career advancing legitimization for academics (number of publications in English language journals) ánd they're a lucrative (new) business model for academia and publishers.
As for peer review, that's not exactly the holy grail - anymore. If you're a 24 yo who wants to get ahead in your field, are you going to be harsh on the newest study of one of the cracks in your field?
No.
(Related: what do journalists cherish more: writing the truth or keeping access to government? Can journos actually write harsh truths and still remain in the select group that is accredited for White House briefings?)
By now there are peer reviewed studies on the quality of peer review. Science has become thát funny...
And despite journalism's self created image of being the force that controls gov (only after progressives took down Nixon - Pentagon papers & Watergate - did this exaggerated notion of their importance take hold), looking at just the supposed bible of journalism the NYT (as everywhere in the west i see Dutch centrist- and progressive newspapers and magazines conscientiously following US journalism's 'party line'): the NYT has carefully and unquestioningly supported US gov foreign policy for generations (it refrained from publishing Hersh's My Lai story for a year for instance).
It has published so much bs so often with such grave consequences (Iraq) it is no wonder that, at least in the US, public trust in journalism is just a tiny bit above the always-in-the-gutter politicians. (Contemporary European trust in journalism is collapsing as we speak and that's not social media's or Vladimir Putin's fault, that's journos own fault. And what are gov's and generic media proposing to solve this? Censorship...I.e. disinfo orgs...Why is it that progressives and centrists more and more are beginning to sound and act like the illiberal opponents they claim to oppose?
Today, in the US and Europe, media applies STASI methods when shutting down anybody whose curiosity reaches beyond journos rehashing press releases and gov statements: 'climate denier', 'Putin-versteher', 'covid-conspiracy-theorist' or 'whataboutism' have become perfectly ok responses for adults. If you're on the supposed right side of history too often having solid sources (instead of gov statements and colleagues' press releases) plus accurate reasoning aren't required elements of journalism anymore. 'Putin blew up his own pipeline while already sitting on the tab- no really'...
For journos the problem is that the difference between their intellectual products and, to name one, Nancy Pelosi's waffling, is disappointingly meager.
Only around 2023 i became aware of the FT censoring perfectly legit Stanford PhD's who showed early 2020 through solid math and stats that lockdowns wouldn't work. All around the west critical thinkers are being ridiculed and made look suspect by the supposed guardians of the truth / controllers of gov.
Anonymous reporting is becoming an accepted career-ending practice. Not just in the illiberal east, but here in the bastions of liberal democracy.
US media and democrats still believe foreign media intervention put Trump in the WH (debunked by at least 3 studies) and the FT never corrected their Russiagate story - the NYT and Politico did, but quietly and not on the frontpage. Such corrections however never altered their positions since they simply went berserk after 2016. (Is Rachel maddow a journo? Or an obnoxious freak with way too many viewers than is healthy for any democracy?)
But media berserkistan has great rewards in times of Trump. For CNN ('we hate him but we love him') and the NYT - which went from 1 mln to 10 mln subscribers in a few years since 2016.
For one of the clearest voices on how media and public relate to each other and what has happened to journalism and where it's going: Andrey Mir.
One of his key points: subscriptions have replaced ads creating a (much more) direct connection between media/journo and reader/subscriber. This new relationship necessitates for any media's survival that the already existing opinion(s) of the reader are reinforced instead of challenged. (And he's not talking about TikTok...)
Subscription solicited as donation: a new cause of media bias
The decline in the media business caused by the internet has not distorted the picture of the world in the media. It has distorted the habitual distortion.
https://human-as-media.com/2021/12/22/subscription-solicited-as-donation-a-new-cause-of-media-bias/
https://human-as-media.com/category/future-of-journalism/
People lie. We will always lie. The only way to judge the relative merit of information is to looks at the incentives and back-skew your read on things. Ethics training falls into the endless mash of mandated bureaucrospeak that we all ignore while we think of all the things we have to get done.