Rush to Judgment, or The Death of Objective Journalism

pheller said:

I would like to see FCC rules that require a subjective interpretation of the news labeled as such, both in print and media. This would also include cases where news agencies acquire viral media without context of the situations being filmed. 

Trying to encourage steering this back on track:

Yes, but there is still the issue of defining "objective".  This can be a bit tricky in some circumstances, especially in complicated situations (which most are) it can be very difficult to show all the objective information without making a story a 30 minute analysis.  And, you still have to weight that information for relevance / importance (which can be somewhat subjective).

I think it's pretty clear that there are those who have drunk the Kool-Aid and don't really care what the truth is, as they've deluded themselves into believing they already know the truth.  They'll just tune in to whatever "news" outlet is selling what they're buying.  The worst of it may be that we have lost the ability to have civil discourse on a variety of topics.

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

sadly we see that here in this thread. 

aircooled said:

GameboyRMH said:

I was trying not to get too political but there's no way for a group of people to show up to an Indigenous People's rally in MAGA hats without appearing to be part of a racist protest group:

Honestly, probably best not discuss the specifics of the noted incident, lest this go down the wrong road.

(for fairness, hopefully, from what I read they did not "show up at the rally" they were there waiting for a their bus to go home, there is no simple answer to this situation... kind of the whole point)

This. They were there for a Pro-Life rally, waiting on their buses to go home. They didn't "show up to an indigenous people's rally". They WERE the target of racist hate, shown in several other videos but I can already tell you don't care and have already made up your mind. 

To try and get back to the core issue, I think more countries should have a BBC-like arrangement where some hard-set percentage of taxpayer money goes into funding an independent media organization. Commercial news operations would then have that as a competitor and this could slow the "race to the bottom" or at least offer a decent alternative. Keeping governments from changing the funding of this organization on a whim is important - by me we have one that governments are still too free to mess with and it's a docile lapdog to whichever administration is in power.

But on the other hand social media is applying pressure in the opposite direction - outrage is a lucrative force on social media and vapid clickbait cranks out ad views much faster than lengthy think-pieces. An elegant solution there might be to adopt stricter consumer privacy rules - this would make advertising less lucrative, effectively defunding social media and reducing its influence.

aircooled said:

pheller said:

I would like to see FCC rules that require a subjective interpretation of the news labeled as such, both in print and media. This would also include cases where news agencies acquire viral media without context of the situations being filmed. 

 

Trying to encourage steering this back on track:

Yes, but there is still the issue of defining "objective".  This can be a bit tricky in some circumstances, especially in complicated situations (which most are) it can be very difficult to show all the objective information without making a story a 30 minute analysis.  And, you still have to weight that information for relevance / importance (which can be somewhat subjective).

Yep. The concept of NEWS is subjective to begin with as there are human people deciding what they think you may or may not find interesting. 

Even for a simple news story, subjective decisions are made like:

What story do we cover?

Who are the best people to interview? Which expert? 

What questions do we ask? 

What answers do we use? 

And on and on.
 

bobzilla said:

aircooled said:

Honestly, probably best not discuss the specifics of the noted incident, lest this go down the wrong road.

(for fairness, hopefully, from what I read they did not "show up at the rally" they were there waiting for a their bus to go home, there is no simple answer to this situation... kind of the whole point)

This. They were there for a Pro-Life rally, waiting on their buses to go home. They didn't "show up to an indigenous people's rally". They WERE the target of racist hate, shown in several other videos but I can already tell you don't care and have already made up your mind. 

I've only made up my mind that there's no way to show up to that rally in those hats and appear neutral or supportive of that protest. If they wanted to take a little detour from their pro-life rally to the indigenous people's rally, they should've put those hats in their pockets to avoid making a hostile statement.

GameboyRMH said:

To try and get back to the core issue, I think more countries should have a BBC-like arrangement where some hard-set percentage of taxpayer money goes into funding an independent media organization.

Absolutely nothing about that arrangement prevents the "independent" media organization from also having an agenda that they promote.

GameboyRMH said:

bobzilla said:

aircooled said:

Honestly, probably best not discuss the specifics of the noted incident, lest this go down the wrong road.

(for fairness, hopefully, from what I read they did not "show up at the rally" they were there waiting for a their bus to go home, there is no simple answer to this situation... kind of the whole point)

This. They were there for a Pro-Life rally, waiting on their buses to go home. They didn't "show up to an indigenous people's rally". They WERE the target of racist hate, shown in several other videos but I can already tell you don't care and have already made up your mind. 

I've only made up my mind that there's no way to show up to that rally in those hats and appear neutral or supportive of that protest. If they wanted to take a little detour from their pro-life rally to the indigenous people's rally, they should've put those hats in their pockets to avoid making a hostile statement.

there was no detour. But again, you've made up your mind these were terrible people. 

The news arm of the networks was not expected to make money until fairly recently, and that has had a huge impact on the infotainment aspect of it.

People who think media in the age of Walter Cronkite was unbiased are either misremembering or were not there.

At this point, you just have to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.  Look at the story mentioned in this thread.  What was reported was literally the opposite of what happened.  Just look at the post by Gameboy.  Those kids were there for a pro life rally and were waiting for their bus.  The did not show up to an indigenous people's rally or a meeting of the Black Israelites.  If you watch videotape of the event, you already know that, but even a few days after the cat is out of the bag, people still believe there is a shred of veracity in the initial reports. 

Those kids are getting death threats over a completely fabricated story.  Nathan Philips, the guy with the drum, claims to have served as a Marine in Vietnam.  He was born in 1955, and the USMC pulled out of Vietnam in 1971.  Pretty safe bet he did not go to Vietnam at 16, and there is no record he ever served.

In reply to Toebra :

I read that he served for four years, but not in Viet Nam. Originally it was reported that he was a Viet Nam-era veteran, which seems to have morphed into a Viet Nam veteran. I think he is more or less a professional protester which would explain why he would walk up to a kid who was just standing there minding his own business and start pounding a drum in his face and then claim they were chanting about building a wall. He knows how to get visibility and create a stir and that's what he did.

One day our journalism professor asked a seemingly innocent question: Why do news outlets exist?

Replies came from the classroom, most being some kind of mix of truth, justice and the American way.

Then the professor answered his own question: to make money.

There was a hush from the crowd. 

News organizations need to keep the lights on, pay their people, cover expenses, etc. And as a guy who manages that kind of stuff on a daily basis, yes, it does take money to gather and disseminate news and information. 

Back then, things were kinda simple. For TV we had the three big plus Fox and maybe CNN. This was pre-internet. For radio we had our local college stations plus a few out of Atlanta. There was the local paper and again the ones out of Atlanta. 

Today, yeah, it's a crowded field with everyone looking for eyeballs. (Can a Twitter feed be considered to be a news outlet?)

Back then we also studied law and ethics. There were standards and legal precedents. I still follow them. Does everyone else? Can't say. I do admit that I consume a lot of news--probably more than the average bear. Yeah, I see a lot of crap--both on the national scene as well as outlets catering to our automotive world.

My 2 cents: Think for yourself. Listen, read and make informed choices. Are you getting the entire story? Is it being tainted by the outlet or your own bias? Can you dig deeper to find more info? 

Sorta related side story. A few years ago I had jury duty and made it to voir dire. The judge again thanked us for coming and admitted that it wasn't a perfect system. But, he said, if anyone has an idea for a better one, let's hear it. The room was silent.

When it comes to news, what's the better alternative? State-run media? State-approved media? 

Remember that study more recently that said that people over a certain age were more likely to consume and distribute fake news than younger generations? I wonder how much of that contributes to "news" outlets gearing more media towards initial outrage and sounds bites and viral videos than actual objective journalism. 

We could argue that a lot of fakes news is perpetrated by outlets that have no journalistic integrity, nor are journalists at all. How many of those exist on facebook, instagram, twitter, and numerous syndicated radio shows and stations? Hundred, thousands?  

This case is just an issue where major news outlets took a viral video out of context and ran with it. At least they are critical enough of themselves to admit to it. 

Keith Tanner said:

alfadriver said:

The biggest problem with news is when it was forced to make money.

Once that happened, the "eyeballs first" mentality crept into the news system.

CNN was the first cable news network, and they have to make money to survive.  Others followed, especially when partisan views were not talked about on the various choices.

News has always been forced to make money, really. I agree that it was CNN, though. They had to fill the void of the 24 hour news cycle, which is a lot more pressure than trying to fill a newspaper or come up with a 30- or 60- minute newscast. They also had to be showing the absolute breaking news (because they could) so the time to fact-check or research stories took a back seat to being the first to air as competition grew amongst the 24 hour networks. When everyone was on air at the same time, it became the level of urgency that set one channel apart from another and the networks all grew BREAKING NEWS! banners that were on permanently.

The internet sites just put this on fast forward. All of a sudden there were hundreds of identical sources, created without the need to build any infrastructure, who had no way to distinguish themselves other than with more and more shocking content and more and more drama.

The thing is, it's all developed this way because it works. Fox News is constantly in a state of panic because it gets lots of attention and attention equals money. The clickbait style of headline evolved because that's what people actually click on.

 

From what older news hosts have talked about, I'm not so sure that they HAD to make money.  Maybe break even, but the need to present the news in an "entertainment" sphere was much, much less.

Anyway, the money genie is out of the bottle, and there's no real way to put it back.

bobzilla said:

there was no detour. But again, you've made up your mind these were terrible people. 

Even if the groups ran into each other or the indigenous people's group approached the pro-life rally group (which is how the pro-life-rally group described it), the only way to fully exculpate the pro-life rally group is to ignore the symbolism of the MAGA hats.

Best case scenario for them: they displayed a message with undertones of racism on their bodies and caught flack for it, and then the media ignorantly portrayed them as pushing that message aggressively rather than just passively displaying it.

Just lock this E36 M3 down now. 

FWIW, we do have sort of state run news.  NPR and PBS are supported by tax payer dollars.  Not 100%  by any count, and they do try to avoid any conflict of interest with who they are reporting on (as in not letting a politician hold their funding to say specifically what they want to say).  It's not perfect, but relative to the talking heads shows that carpet F-News and CNN- they don't have that at all, and relative to the infotainment that CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC says is their nightly news- it's more in depth and varied.  

But, for sure, NPR/PBS is the closest thing to BBC and CBC news.

As for the specific incident that started this thread- we REALLY need the previous 10 min of what happened.  We first saw one side, then another, but there's the whole REAL start to the incident that we don't have information for.  So it's STILL impossible to really judge what happened.  To say that the kids are racists or they are innocent are BOTH wrong with the current data we have.  Back up at least 10 min to see how this all started.

‘Most Westerners believe that the media's job is to inform; holding that truth, accuracy, and fairness are paramount. In stark contrast to this, there are those who have adopted Vladimir Lenin’s view that the media "is not only a collective propagandist and a collective agitator, it is also a collective organizer."

Unlike most opinion columnists, activist journalists in the Leninist tradition are less concerned with offering thoughtful insight. Rather, they are focused on advancing their cause; journalism, or some distortion thereof, is simply a means to that end. ‘ Ari Morgenstern

GameboyRMH said:

I was trying not to get too political but there's no way for a group of people to show up to an Indigenous People's rally in MAGA hats without appearing to be part of a racist protest group:

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/21/opinions/maga-hat-has-become-a-potent-racist-symbol-bailey/index.html

At best the group unintentionally made a racist statement by doing so, which would still be their mistake. If they really just wanted to counter-protest the Hebrew Israelites, they should've left those hats at home and perhaps have donned some other uniform, maybe something from their school?

That's not what happened here, GB. 

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-21/maga-hat-teen-speaks-out-amid-death-threats-denounces-outright-lies-about-tribal

The full video is there, recorded by some extreme shiney happy people.  The Catholic kids where there to protest murdering children, not to disrupt some other protest that was also going on.

A little background on the "Native American" with the drum:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-01-21/native-american-harassed-maga-kids-exposed-outrage-culture-grifter

And CNN's "opinion" piece on MAGA hats doesn't reflect reality either. 

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Without regard to what some "news" outlets have claimed, I disagree that the MAGA hat is per se "racist".  This is just a convenient way for one side to marginalize or demonize the opposing side.  Certainly not everyone who embraces our president is racist.

In reply to RevRico :

Not quite accurate, it was Ronald Reagan who did this as president, this, and the gift of citizenship to a right wing Australian news maven, gave birth to Fox News & all that entails.

GameboyRMH said:

bobzilla said:

there was no detour. But again, you've made up your mind these were terrible people. 

Even if the groups ran into each other or the indigenous people's group approached the pro-life rally group (which is how the pro-life-rally group described it), the only way to fully exculpate the pro-life rally group is to ignore the symbolism of the MAGA hats.

Best case scenario for them: they displayed a message with undertones of racism on their bodies and caught flack for it, and then the media ignorantly portrayed them as pushing that message aggressively rather than just passively displaying it.

Wow.  Don't let things like facts sway your opinion.

In reply to alfadriver :

There videos out that that are a full two hours long.

In reply to alfadriver :

From reading through some actual reporting on that story, there really was no 'news' there. The video was created, edited, and promoted with a purpose. Maybe the news organizations were trolled into giving it air and credibility. Maybe they did it with intention.

"Various groups of demonstrators in the vicinity of the Lincoln Memorial are rude to each other" is not a story unless you add spin to make it polarizing.