I started watching news from overseas as they seem to be more objective and professional.
Both sides have "news" outlets which are agenda based and profit motivated. And truth doesn't usually sell as well. That's a problem. You can't even trust the fact checker sources as they say "out of context" or "partially true" when it's a fact against their agenda/team. Even the fact checking sites are super biased.
If you align with a side, you attach your identity to it like Paul Graham wrote about with Keep Your Identity Small [1]. People don't like their identity criticized, or want to believe they may be wrong, so they believe what they want and create their own distorted bubble.
My buddy always said "we're told to not talk about religion or politics. Probably the 2 most powerful and influential topics that exist". Now people have started talking about them, but not in a productive fashion.
If you believe someone on the other side is bad based on their views, you can't have a dialogue. This is the greatest tragedy. Disowning family members and friends over their views because you concluded they must be bad people?
Very few people on either side are actually bad. They just have a different experience, they've aligned their identity and team, and there's a ton of forces at play (ex: media, special interests, etc) to keep that divisiveness going.
>Both sides have "news" outlets which are agenda based and profit motivated. And truth doesn't usually sell as well.
The problem with the both sides argument is that one side is disproportionately loose with the truth and constantly resorting to not just half-truths, but complete fabrications.
Without good faith there will be no useful dialogue.
The left side is loose with the truth too. They suppress newsworthy stories or do no reporting on things that are against their agenda. Selective reporting is loose with the truth as well.
So maybe one side fabricates more and one side withholds more. Two ways to be scandalous. They are both profit driven and aren't truthful any way you slice it. They are not trustworthy with news and cannot be relied upon to be objective. Even the shows positioned as news are super biased and full of opinions.
I understand they are entitled to have opinionated segments with personalities. That's fine.
But we have regulations around what is Champagne or Bourbon. And you need a license to cut hair. Maybe anything dubbed "news" should have a standard?
This is the answer, I don't have the source in front of me but I remember reading some surveys about American trust in institutions circa 2015 and people who identified as Republican trusted "Media" at a rate of 8%. I can't imagine that number particularly improved since then.
To add to this, lies with easily proven evidence if they wanted to investigate. Eg. Check report on something from a hearing or court document, checked the hearing or the court document itself and it's completely opposite to what the media is reporting.
Not everyone knows how to check public records. I just signed up for PACER this year, and I'm still trying to work out how to access State and local court system's records since they're so distributed.
Like it or not, we haven't exactly done a great job at exposing primary sources to everyone. Until that can happen, media outlets who pay for boots on the ground will still have a degree of intutively granted credibility. Once everyone knows how to access it at will (and can be bothered to) we may see some better measurement on the reliabilitt of information sources.
Sadly I tend to believe that a very small minority of people will ever bother to access the documents, the rest will just believe whatever the media will tell them.
I just got to the point this year where I finally got fed up with the level of editorial discretion taken with so many hot news takes. Makes me a real stick in the mud because I'm just not comfortable not seeing the primary doc anymore. I want to know what actually happened, not what someone thinks I should know about what happened.
Agreed. Anyone who studied any subject deeply should recognize the concept of Gell-Mann Amnesia; I think anyone who tried to verify anything outside of their domain will quickly confirm that this phenomenon is, in fact, very true.
No. People chose their own truth because they didn't like what the media was saying even though it is much closer to reality than whatever crap they were fed through "alternative" media.
Both sides have "news" outlets which are agenda based and profit motivated. And truth doesn't usually sell as well. That's a problem. You can't even trust the fact checker sources as they say "out of context" or "partially true" when it's a fact against their agenda/team. Even the fact checking sites are super biased.
If you align with a side, you attach your identity to it like Paul Graham wrote about with Keep Your Identity Small [1]. People don't like their identity criticized, or want to believe they may be wrong, so they believe what they want and create their own distorted bubble.
My buddy always said "we're told to not talk about religion or politics. Probably the 2 most powerful and influential topics that exist". Now people have started talking about them, but not in a productive fashion.
If you believe someone on the other side is bad based on their views, you can't have a dialogue. This is the greatest tragedy. Disowning family members and friends over their views because you concluded they must be bad people?
Very few people on either side are actually bad. They just have a different experience, they've aligned their identity and team, and there's a ton of forces at play (ex: media, special interests, etc) to keep that divisiveness going.
[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html