| "Conflicting Signals". I don't even mean to be political, but one of the two parties here is notorious for lying, so much so that there's a wikipedia page dedicated to the falsehoods they have come out with: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements... First line: > During and between his terms as President of the United States, Donald Trump has made tens of thousands of false or misleading claims To have a productive discussion on HN, I'd like to ask a question I've always wondered about the USA: How come, given how the media represents things, there haven't been any new media companies, no new news shows, no new newspapers/websites, dedicated to honest, factual reporting, that have gone mainstream/nationwide? Is there something preventing this? |
There's really no trouble getting factual information in the US. The main source of actual information is the wire services, such as Reuters and AP. It's dull, tedious, factual reporting.
News shows, web sites, etc. all get their news from there. They add various levels of commentary, entertainment, and ideology to make it more engaging.
Some are worse than others; you can get fairly decent reporting from most mainstream news sources. The more biased a news source is, the more time it devotes to attacking those sources as being biased.
It doesn't require a news source. It requires looking at news for news rather than entertainment.
This is made somewhat more complicated in the last few years. Since real news is boring, reliable news sources are less profitable, and many are failing. That leaves them open to being bought out by highly partisan owners, who leverage their reputation while betraying it.
The wire services remain reliable, so far, and have the advantage of being primary reporting. It's not hard to find reality if you want it. It's just that not a lot of people want it.