Will Bunch expresses what I’ve been thinking since Trump was elected. American democracy is under attack from within. The fascists who yearn for an authoritarian government in the media are promoting it, and the media who supposedly don’t support it fail to recognize it. They are busy trying to follow the political playbook of the 20th century.
I have stopped searching for answers, the best that most of the non-conspiratorial articles can give us is ‘trust us, bro’
I’m a little bit past that level of trust for the media at this point. I’m going to need more than ‘trust us, bro’
I have actual expectations of the media that they just aren’t able to live up to.
No, they definitely cannot live up to your standards because your standards are not possible to live up to. Which brings us all the way back to the start of the conversation – bias-free journalism does not and cannot exist. Because the journalists are real people with physical bodies and actual needs and desires. You can be transparent about bias and agendas and allow readers to form conclusions based on the persuasiveness of your work. But for a reader who insists on an unpassable purity test, there’s no hope.
Unfortunately, a lot of people (like you) have been raised with such profoundly bad media literacy that you believe there’s such a thing as perfect objective truth and so when you see things that fail to reach that standard, no matter how thorough, researched, and convincing it is, it can be dismissed with a handwave.
But remember, when you say there’s been no investigation into those nordstream bombs, you are lying. It’s a lie. There’s been tons. And not enough information was found to form a definite conclusion. It’s an unsatisfying result, but not proof of journalistic laziness.
That’s such weak bullshit.
It’s not that hard to report the facts. Do you think science can? Math? Why can journalists not do it?
The mere selection of which stories to pursue or not pursue leads to bias. The personal conditions that affect whether a story even teases in front of a journalist in the first place to inspire investigation is part of their sphere of personal bias. There is not a single point in the investigative process that does not involve implicit bias. This isn’t contentious or up for debate even if you personally don’t like it. It’s correctly part of the formal training of journalists to be able to identify and mitigate their own bias and how that bias affects their reporting.
Everyone has an agenda. Every. single. person. Journalists are people, therefore they have agendas. Anyone who looks you in the eye and tells you they have no beliefs, convictions, or feelings is lying to you. So if a journalist looks you in the eyes and says their work is entirely and flawlessly without any sniff of bias, they are the one you should trust the least.
Yes, that includes the sciences. Very much. Biased and bad science happen routinely. There’s a process in place for being transparent in research, explicitly stating your biases, and testing/reviewing works. Sources of bias is a section in the template of pretty much EVERY published research paper. Because that’s what you have to do. Just as with journalism. Because to report on the facts requires you identify and be transparent about potential sources of bias because there are ALWAYS potential sources of bias.
Leave this conversation and work on your media literacy. Go type the phrase “media bias is unavoidable” into Google and do some goddamn reading. People much smarter than you and I have written shelves full of books on the subject.
You’re not grasping that I understand what you’re trying to say.
What you’re also not grasping is that it’s a journalists job to report the news. They aren’t supposed to fully embrace their biases or push a narrative that they prefer, or ignore newsworthy stories because it doesn’t align with their politics.
The fact that they are doing that is why they are TERRIBLE JOURNALISTS
I just read a headline on lemmy a few minutes ago that read: “Tesla cars bursting into flames in Florida following hurricane”
The exact headline is “Teslas are bursting into flames in Florida after being flooded during Hurricane Idalia”
https://www.techspot.com/news/100032-teslas-bursting-flames-florida-after-flooded-during-hurricane.html
Now read that and use your brain, because what the author of that ‘piece’ is trying to do is obvious. They are trying to make a statement about Elon Musk by attacking Tesla because they disagree with Musks politics.
That’s not simply having an unconscious bias. That is a very very concious bias and a deliberately misleading headline to push the author’s opinion of Musks politics and to try to smear his companies cars.
When you actually read the article, it becomes pretty clear that anything with lithium ion batteries is dangerous when mixed with salt water. Any EV’s, golf carts, etc etc
But the author deliberately wrote in the headline that Tesla’s are bursting into flames. Misleading the readers of the headline to believe that the issue is with Tesla cars, without mentioning any other brand of car or vehicle that has the exact same dangers.
Now that’s just being a bad journalist, leading with a headline like that. That’s nothing like you’re claiming that’s unavoidable or to be expected.
Here is another article written without the bias of Musk being involved:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/electric-vehicles-exposed-to-saltwater-can-burst-into-flames/ar-AA1g7ny2
Floridians battered by Hurricane Idalia this week may not have expected another threat — that floodwaters could cause their cars to suddenly burst into flames.
Yet that’s exactly what happened when two electric vehicles caught fire after being submerged in saltwater churned up by the storm. Firefighters in Palm Harbor, Florida, cited the incidents, both of which involved Teslas, in warning owners that their rechargeable car batteries could combust if exposed to saltwater.
Can you see the difference here? Just stick to the facts and don’t try to push your narrative on your readers. I’m also pretty sure both of these authors got paid for writing these articles, so get out of here with your ‘journalists won’t write actual news stories because they don’t get paid for that’ shit.
I mean you can find these types of stories posted all day long on Lemmy.
Have higher standards for journalists and quit simping for these hacks.
Examples of bad journalists does not justify your position of declaring all journalism so terrible that you will not even read reporting about issues you deeply care about from diverse sources.
You’re lying to me. I’m done.
This is just you closing your eyes, sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “lalalallalalalalalla”
Later, man