That is a naïve take. Press organizations in the U.S. have always been private because Americans have historically been very suspicious of the government and wouldn’t trust it to report the news in an unbiased fashion. Private media has worked very well for America for most of its history. It’s only been relatively recently that right-wing rich people have started creating right-wing media sources that skew reality to the extent we see nowadays. And it’s still mainly right-wing publications being the bad actors. Thats why right-wingers are so keen on installing conservative CEOs and having companies run by them buying left-wing media organizations. They don’t want good reporting.
Yeah, obviously part of the problem is that Americans are not that smart. In other countries people want unbiased media because they know the value of being informed. Being caught spreading misinformation is an embarrassing affair for both the outlet and it’s viewers. Same thing applies to public media. People can see the bias and politicizing public media is a risky affair for political parties. For example the previous Polish government turned public TV into their propaganda machine and it was just one more thing people we pissed about.
In US the problem is definitely not just right-wing media. As I said in my comment, media in US is weak and biased in general. You basically have far-right outlets and corporate, right-wing outlets. The find anything left leaning you have to go to youtube and watch entertainment shows. For many years, the best news show was The Daily Show…
I also doubt it has worked so well for America in the past. It ended up where it is exactly because Americans were fed bullshit propaganda about their country for so many decades. All the media participated in this.
Many countries have media that report reliably on their governments and many countries have media spanning full political spectrum. No media is completely unbiased but there are different levels of bias and journalistic integrity. US basically doesn’t have any left leaning media outside of social media. All professional journalism in US has a pro-corporate bias. That’s why US is worse than most developed countries in this regard.
Has it? Has it served the american people? It served the corporate owners of said news organizations, but whether or not it’s actually supplied the things an informed populace needs to know is a different question? What’s your definition of relatively recently I guess?
Yes, it has. Most American news sources have reported about as accurately on current events as news sources from any other developed nation. The right wing ones (and by relatively recently, I would say it started when Fox News started spewing a deliberately skewed narrative in the 1990s) are a good point of comparison, since they clearly operate on a political mandate, whereas the other mainstream outlets are far better about just reporting the news.
So when even non right wing news was hyping the lead up to the Iraq War that was accuracy? The utter glee with which they covered the gulf war? The New York Times, among others, basically dripping with racist lies about the “crack epidemic”? Etc…
Seems to me that what you call accurate is better described as the corporate interpretation of the news. Accuracy has never been the chief concern.
I don’t remember any glee in the press on the Iraq war (maybe from Fox, idk, I’ve never watched them much). As for the crack epidemic, that has more to do with the CIA and racism in society at large than it does bias in the media.
Your contention that all the media outlets are controlled by corporate interests and that none of it is accurate is a biased and pessimistic take. I realize a lot of people on Lemmy are anti-capitalist, but you let it skew your vision of reality too much.
I don’t remember any glee in the press on the Iraq war
Probably because you just ate it up and never thought about it again. Why would you remember it as anything but “truth” i.e. Iraq was involved in 9/11, Saddam Hussein had WMDs, we were being cheered as liberators by the Iraqi people, the Dixie Chicks were traitors and Jessica Lynch was was getting gang raped the whole time she was a POW. Because that was what was being reported in the US media at that time.
The Gulf War was before Fox was founded. However there absolutely was glee in its coverage by American media.
I strongly deny your assertion that the way the so called crack epidemic was reported on came entirely from the alphabet agencies. I suggest you do a little bit more reading about that, because the way the media in particularly legacy media covered, it was psychotically racist. Look no further than the myriad of new york times editorials about so called crack babies overrunning our hospitals. Now, corporate media doesn’t want you to remember how they reported on it, just like they don’t want you to remember that when people did start reporting on the cia’s complicity it was the ny times and the LA Times in particular who led the attacks on the reporters.
Major media outlets are controlled by corporations, they often are major corporations. This is an indisputable fact. One that absolutely colours, how all media is covered in our nation. It has always been thus. Though please note I never said none of it was accurate. I said it was incredibly biased toward corporate interests. Something nobody could argue against while maintaining any shred of reasonableness.
That is a naïve take. Press organizations in the U.S. have always been private because Americans have historically been very suspicious of the government and wouldn’t trust it to report the news in an unbiased fashion. Private media has worked very well for America for most of its history. It’s only been relatively recently that right-wing rich people have started creating right-wing media sources that skew reality to the extent we see nowadays. And it’s still mainly right-wing publications being the bad actors. Thats why right-wingers are so keen on installing conservative CEOs and having companies run by them buying left-wing media organizations. They don’t want good reporting.
Yeah, obviously part of the problem is that Americans are not that smart. In other countries people want unbiased media because they know the value of being informed. Being caught spreading misinformation is an embarrassing affair for both the outlet and it’s viewers. Same thing applies to public media. People can see the bias and politicizing public media is a risky affair for political parties. For example the previous Polish government turned public TV into their propaganda machine and it was just one more thing people we pissed about.
In US the problem is definitely not just right-wing media. As I said in my comment, media in US is weak and biased in general. You basically have far-right outlets and corporate, right-wing outlets. The find anything left leaning you have to go to youtube and watch entertainment shows. For many years, the best news show was The Daily Show…
I also doubt it has worked so well for America in the past. It ended up where it is exactly because Americans were fed bullshit propaganda about their country for so many decades. All the media participated in this.
I’d love to hear which country you think has “unbiased media” lol
Many countries have media that report reliably on their governments and many countries have media spanning full political spectrum. No media is completely unbiased but there are different levels of bias and journalistic integrity. US basically doesn’t have any left leaning media outside of social media. All professional journalism in US has a pro-corporate bias. That’s why US is worse than most developed countries in this regard.
Has it? Has it served the american people? It served the corporate owners of said news organizations, but whether or not it’s actually supplied the things an informed populace needs to know is a different question? What’s your definition of relatively recently I guess?
Yes, it has. Most American news sources have reported about as accurately on current events as news sources from any other developed nation. The right wing ones (and by relatively recently, I would say it started when Fox News started spewing a deliberately skewed narrative in the 1990s) are a good point of comparison, since they clearly operate on a political mandate, whereas the other mainstream outlets are far better about just reporting the news.
So when even non right wing news was hyping the lead up to the Iraq War that was accuracy? The utter glee with which they covered the gulf war? The New York Times, among others, basically dripping with racist lies about the “crack epidemic”? Etc…
Seems to me that what you call accurate is better described as the corporate interpretation of the news. Accuracy has never been the chief concern.
I don’t remember any glee in the press on the Iraq war (maybe from Fox, idk, I’ve never watched them much). As for the crack epidemic, that has more to do with the CIA and racism in society at large than it does bias in the media.
Your contention that all the media outlets are controlled by corporate interests and that none of it is accurate is a biased and pessimistic take. I realize a lot of people on Lemmy are anti-capitalist, but you let it skew your vision of reality too much.
Probably because you just ate it up and never thought about it again. Why would you remember it as anything but “truth” i.e. Iraq was involved in 9/11, Saddam Hussein had WMDs, we were being cheered as liberators by the Iraqi people, the Dixie Chicks were traitors and Jessica Lynch was was getting gang raped the whole time she was a POW. Because that was what was being reported in the US media at that time.
The Gulf War was before Fox was founded. However there absolutely was glee in its coverage by American media.
I strongly deny your assertion that the way the so called crack epidemic was reported on came entirely from the alphabet agencies. I suggest you do a little bit more reading about that, because the way the media in particularly legacy media covered, it was psychotically racist. Look no further than the myriad of new york times editorials about so called crack babies overrunning our hospitals. Now, corporate media doesn’t want you to remember how they reported on it, just like they don’t want you to remember that when people did start reporting on the cia’s complicity it was the ny times and the LA Times in particular who led the attacks on the reporters.
Major media outlets are controlled by corporations, they often are major corporations. This is an indisputable fact. One that absolutely colours, how all media is covered in our nation. It has always been thus. Though please note I never said none of it was accurate. I said it was incredibly biased toward corporate interests. Something nobody could argue against while maintaining any shred of reasonableness.
You don’t remember how the media directly aided the Bush administration’s lies to justify the Iraq War?