[mark_l_watson]

Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree. This is the model that PBS Nightly News takes: let both sides of an issue talk and treat everyone respectfully.

Compare this to MSNBC and Fox News whose business models are really the same: cater to their viewers’ dogma/bubble and reinforce biases, and don’t try to introduce new ideas because it is bad for their business.

[SoylentOrange]

I don’t live in the US, so please take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. I imagine you are a smart and decent person on the other side of this screen.

Usually print media is considered higher quality journalism than TV media. There are numerous studies that show reading print media leads to people being more informed than just watching TV news. Whether this is correlation or causation I can’t really say.

My understanding of both Fox and MSNBC is they are entertainment programs, not so much news programs. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare those to anything in print, nor do I think it’s entirely possible.

A good news article might present both sides of a story, but try to fact-check claims by both sides, and bring in supporting evidence. That’s the key differentiating factor of quality journalism - helping bring facts to the forefront rather than let people on either side spin the facts for their purposes.

[kkotak]

Print media is akin to software released on DVDs - a lot more testing (fact checking), approvals (Editorial decisions) need to happen due to the perceived finality of the medium.

TV on the other hand is like SaaS - continious integration and deployment. Release first and apologize later if needed.

[jhelphenstine]

I think you've got a witty metaphor here, but after mulling it over:

Doesn't CI rely on robust testing to ensure buggy software doesn't make it into production? I'm not sure the fire-and-forget of the 24/7 news cycle lends itself to a comparison to continuous deployment, as there is a strong bias to 'deliver now' given competition to break the news first, and it's hard to build in 'automated testing' (vetting?) of content.

[deadbunny]

CI doesn't imply CI with testing.

[ComputerGuru]

I think the world would be better off if no one ever referred to anything they watched on TV as “news” any more and kept it that news is something you read that can be cited and referenced.

[billme]

>> “ Fox and MSNBC is they are entertainment programs”

No, maybe to you, but to vast amounts of people, millions of people, they watch a singular source for news and to them, that is the news.

In the US, since you’re referring to them, the news legally used to have to allow all sides of an issues to present their views. In the 1980s, the laws changed, and that is how news became so one-side.

[artificial]

They are news entertainment not just to him, pretty much all the mainstream sources are news entertainment. They're not objective. This argument seems like calling breakfast cereal breakfast whereas it's marketed as part of a complete breakfast. The differences are subtle, like the WHO is a political organization that covers medical topics. A decent write up of the broadcast transition: https://www.medialit.org/reading-room/whatever-happened-news

[billme]

I would argue mainstream media is literally propaganda, or at least the US government is legally allowed to broadcast propaganda [1] — either directly via direct government intervention— or like what is now known to be the case in Turkey, for example, where parties buy out the media to gain favor from a given political group.

My point is that the majority of people actually watching these news outlets see it as news, not entertainment or propaganda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_of_America#Smith–Mundt_A...

—- EDIT: Reviewed your CML link from spring of 1990, interesting read, but really fails to do critical analysis of the specific regulatory changes by name, what impact changes had, etc. Beyond that, stating obvious, it fails to cover all the material events since 1990.

[artificial]

Ah, thanks for the clarification. I see and completely agree with your points. Everybody believing something that's wrong doesn't make it right, critical thinking is down and I believe that there's far too many distractions for people to stay on top of things (it's a full time job following politics).

[mark_l_watson]

+1 thanks for the great reply.

[Kuzutsukake]

As misleading as a particular spin of a story might be, those perspectives are still valid in the sense they connect with what is important to their readers.

I'd like to see a news app that has the facts and sensationalism separated, and then a reference to a more relevant fact/story that relates more directly to what a particular spin was getting at. So I guess feed their bubble with more accurate stories.

[ComputerGuru]

I disagree since these days (And especially TV-based) MSM has taken it upon themselves to tell readers what should be important to them.

[dgb23]

The problem OP describes is real though.

The question is 'How far can you go?'

For example does it make sense to present advocates for science and pseudo-science on the same level, with equal weight?

Putting a Biologist who explains Evolution on the same pedestal on equal time as a Priest who believes in Intelligent Design creates a false sense of balance between these viewpoints, even though these viewpoints are fundamentally different in their very basic quality.

You can spin this further to illustrate this point: racism, religion, false promises, lies, mental illnesses.

[ivanhoe]

We can spin it the other way too: Should people be fed only with information approved by some TV boards or government committees? Are we adults expected to vote, but not allowed and/or trusted anymore to make our own mind on what we believe in?

And even more importantly do you realize that in such world it's far more likely that only a priest will get invited to a TV show, not the biologist? Because that's the "how far" that I'm afraid of, fundamentalism that believes that the only way is to force "the truth" upon people, and it's of course always their truth.

[shuntress]

There is a middle ground between presenting one-and-only-one viewpoint or presenting every possible viewpoint with implied equal validity.

For example: Given two commentators, if one is arguing that TV boards and government committees are supposed to be populated by and representative of the general population and the other arguing that TV boards and government committees are populated by crab people secretly supporting the illuminati; the discussion should be about how effectively TV boards and government committees are being filled by the general population and how effective they are at articulating societal consensus related to important issues.

In the "gotta hear both sides" world, rational discussion is dragged off the table by the notion that every issue has two equally valid sides no matter how absurd one "side" might be.

[ivanhoe]

I think that crazy stuff is taking over the TV more because it's purposefully pushed by TV stations in a run to compete with all reality shows than because of giving voice to the both sides. Just look at the History channel that has nothing to do with history anymore, but it's all about aliens, Illuminati, Masons, Hitler's secret weapons (actually that one was interesting), etc. It's a lite fantasy entertainment that is cheap to make and it sells well, TV equivalent of pulp fiction, and channels are pushing it very intentionally.

[dgb23]

I agree with your sentiment. There are two sides/extremes to this, both of which are undesirable or even harmful.

But were revealing a more fundamental issue here: Where are the checks and balances of the media?

As it stands now, we've got two possible solutions:

1. Censorship, which I find dangerous and shortsighted. 2. The media itself, which results in a 'who yells the loudest' kind of culture.

This issue bleeds into all kind of problems with propaganda, advertising, fake-news, bias, ideology, lies, scams, click-bait and other kind of bullshit.

In this discussion we've been talking as if there was some kind of sane regulation of these things. But there isn't really.

All of this stuff erodes trust and creates trenches. Sometimes it feels like it is getting worse. People have been talking about how Google Search is getting weaker on this site. There is so much more noise and bullshit today than there ever was, because we're accreting information w/o distinction.

There are projects, which try to make fact-checking easier for example, new kind of platforms and ideas to foster real debate. But those things are still on the fringe.

This is a massive, important and unsolved problem I think.