News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.
Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, blogs, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.
7. No duplicate posts.
If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.
All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
I think some of the thinking is ignoring the huge shift away from obvious plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face truths.
Yes, media has often been leveraged by wealthy and powerful to force a narrative. That is not new. What is new is the creation of narratives out of whole cloth.
If you don’t remember Nixon (if you’re under, 45 say) there was a years-long drama around “did the President lie” and “if he lied, was it illegal” that resulted in him leaving office early to avoid continued litigation. The only thing on any video outlet for a few days straight was congressional committee meetings. That’s a different world.
Imagine all your scrolling, 9am-5pm, was committee hearings, the same committee hearings, talking heads about the committee hearings, and more committee hearings. For days. It’s hard to imagine there could be a media environment like that.
And it was one in which journalism, unthinkably now, had some respect. News was serious. Written and presented by smart people. It was common for a reporter to make an effort to use plain language, but it wasn’t dumbed-down. That, believe it or not, started in the 80’s. With USA Today. It was a whole thing.
“The news” was where everyone - not just your demographic but all demographics started their conversations.
Was it pure objective truth? No. Was it used to start wars and destroy the environment for money? Yes. Well then what’s different between then and now?
Well, think of Qanon. If you’ve ever looked into any Qanon “thinking”, it becomes clear that it’s utterly without foundation in the real world. It’s fanfiction. And it gets “reported” as news.
That’s what is qualitatively different from news in the 70’s. That would never happen, because an editor would say “what the fuck is this” and throw it out for being completely made-up garbage. Not today. Today they run it. All of it, over and over until a gunman walks in to the pizza shop to find the basement where the kids are held. (There’s no basement, of course. The whole thing is right-wing made up garbage.)
So while I absolutely understand and even appreciate the cynical view that “so what, nothings changed” that is just not true. It has changed in a truly fundamental way that is more than dangerous. He’s right about that.
The worst part is, the most powerful voices to save truthful reporting are the corporate news industries, who are run by accountants, not journalists.
You are absolutely correct and this was very well stated. Television networks used to view news programs as a public service. They weren’t intended to generate revenue, but rather as part of the payback to the public in order to use the public airwaves.
Newspapers were always generally profit driven, but you had the distinction between the yellow journalism approach and the Grey Lady approach. There’s less of a distinction today, and you now have a phenomenon where the bad drives out the good via the Darwinian process that essentially boils down to being able to monetize clickbait.