[techostritch]

so, in this narrative, it seems like the most popular news outlets are ones that take a specific side — daily wire the young Turks. Do you think these outlets represent the “true” narrative that people are looking for?

Like I’m not making any statement about whether or not news organizations are reliable purveyors of “truth” I don’t think they are, but I think the argument is the opposite of yours, that the attempt to unbiased is pushing people away.

In the COVID narrative, people are drawn to news organizations that take a strong stand in one direction or another, not the ones that try and thread the needle towards “truth” and that legacy media like the New York Times. Is too liberal for conservatives and too conservative for liberals.

While a conservative looks at the New York Times and sees a liberal rag that occasionally panders to conservatives with an occasional below the fold op-ed that is intentionally de-prioritized to spin a narrative. Liberals in fact see those same below the fold op-Ed’s as evidence the the paper is unwilling to tell the “true narrative” because of fear of alienating conservative support.

[leereeves]

I don't think the daily wire or the young Turks are even close to being the most popular news outlets.

Whereas the NY Times is the most popular, according to Statista.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/381569/leading-news-and-...

[techostritch]

Absolutely, my point was that if the theory I responded to were true, I would expect that the most successful new news organizations would be less biased/narrativey than the NYT. Do we see a wealth of new organizations that are that way? __maybe__ the free press but personally I find them the most narrativey of all.

[yesco]

Let's imagine populations: A, B, and C. Each population has their own distinct way of interpreting reality. It's not that their worldviews are completely different from each other, it's simply that the lens through which they view the world is shaped differently from the others due to a difference in priorities, culture and lived experience.

Now let's imagine 5 News Orgs: ABC, AC, A, B, C. These News Orgs are each aligned with the population letters reflected in their name. News Org: "A" for example will report on reality only through a lens that population "A" would find agreeable. While News Org "ABC" will report on reality through the combined lens of populations A, B and C, in essence looking at the issue from all angles.

News Org "ABC" would be considered "unbiased" despite the fact that it's still interpreting reality through a lens. This is fine though because the desire for "unbiased" news comes from a desire to understand an issue from all perspectives. Population B might look at the reports of News Org "ABC" so it can gain understanding on how Populations "A" and "C" are perceiving an event.

Suddenly population "A" says News Org "ABC" is harmful. It asserts Population A's lens is actually objective reality and that anything the contradicts it is false. It asserts "unbiased" news is actually a bad thing since it promotes things that disagree with "objective reality". News Org "ABC", buys this argument and becomes "Abc", still acting like it is "unbiased" but now inaccurately represents the positions of populations "B" and "C".

Gradually the media landscape shifts, it becomes just 4 News Orgs: "AA", "Ac", "A", "BB". Population "A" is now overrepresented across the media landscape, population "C" is represented but incorrectly and B is only represented by outlets that exaggerate its position on everything, over-correcting the issue.

Population C is aware there is an issue here but can extract some value by consuming content from multiple outlets and comparing things. Population A is no longer aware C exists and believes B is evil. Population B is also now unaware C exists and thinks A is evil.

Gradually the media landscape changes again, now the News Orgs are just "$ZZ", "AZ$", "A$" and "BBB$$".

- Population C is completely unrepresented and just looks at social media, it has no trust in any of the remaining News Orgs.

- Population B's exclusive outlet has become completely hysterical, and influenced by corporate interests taking advantage of the fact that Population B has limited options. Many in this population are enamored with it, many others have abandoned it entirely like with population C, but being less technically savvy, are now relying exclusively on local Facebook groups for their news.

- Population A, still believes it's lens is objective reality and has become accustomed to trusting all News Orgs other than "BBB$$". However, these organizations having long lost any sense of integrity, and have begun taking advantage of this blind trust by selectively reporting on things that align with the political interests of Party Z, believing that doing so will serve the greater good. Additionally, to make up for the fact that their audiences are now in decline, the remaining News Orgs are all selling their influence for extra cash. Some in Population A see the corporate influence in the remaining News Orgs but believe they can filter it out, however most trust them completely and fail to even filter out the corporate interest. Few if any are even aware of party Z's influence despite it being reported on "BBB$$".

----

So I'll be upfront and say the above giant-wall-of-text-metapor is imperfect and something I just threw together and maybe got a little carried away with. To keep it terse I had to strip away some nuance.

Ultimately my goal here was to help highlight the difference between lies and a simple difference in worldview. The moment the dollar signs and Zs started getting into the mix of things was also the moment these orgs started burning the trust Population A had in them in exchange for influence over population A. I also think this results in a situation where someone in Population A, can no longer accurately assess what others in Population A actually believe.

I'd additionally argue that a proper "unbiased" News Org that attempts to represent the positions of all populations is less likely to end up in the situations described above, even if they are less popular. That multiple perspectives help keep bad actors in check like a natural pesticide, and the overly-partisan nature of contemporary news outlets doomed them into becoming what they now are since they have essentially abandoned their immune response.

[techostritch]

I don’t think I fundamentally disagree with anything you said, except your conclusion, my position would be, that it’s macro forces that make news organization ABC untenable and untrustworthy. if ABC kept being ABC the pattern you noticed would have happened anyway, maybe just faster or differently.

And maybe counterintuitively, I think a real ABC would be the least trusted source of all.

The only alternative I think would be to go back to a time where there was only an ABC(haha).

I do think it’s interesting that the only solution people come up to these problems is something authoritarian, this isn’t a criticism of you actually, I don’t know your politics but it’s something I’ve been wrestling with lately. Is the only way to have a free/informed/unified society to have total control of the information flow? Or total control of the culture?

Or maybe asked another way, how do you create the ABC that people want to watch when there’s so much other media out there customized to your exact perspective.

There’s also the fact that ABC is inherently conservative(small c) because what about D! And E! and L!

[yesco]

Honestly I don't believe these sorts of issues can be resolved with authoritarian approachs, in fact I believe any kind of top down approach is doomed to make this kind of thing even worse really. We would end up with populations A, B, C and just News Org Z! I wasn't trying to offer a solution with my prior comment, but a post-mordem of how legacy media has declined, and how this could have been avoided.

We had a period where the FCC only offered a limited amount of airspace so News Orgs has certain obligations to keep the public at large informed. This required a more diverse set of perspectives and I really do believe these perspectives helped keep each other in check. However with these obligations gone, and the collapse of the integrity fostered during this period, legacy Journalists have grown into smug elitest who, drunk over the reputation they gained while they had this integrity, now think of the public as a group to be guided rather than informed.

Looking forward I believe the proper solution to all this will emerge naturally as legacy media's decline continues to glide downwards. Personally speaking I simply get my news from the front page of Wikipedia, maybe more options like this will come about as the priorities of society at large continues to evolve as it gets comfortable with the internet? I don't think we will get anywhere though so long as "unbiased" is treated as a taboo word, something I believe legacy media has grandly succeeded in spinning the public on in recent years, atleast in my eyes...