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184 Comments
- EatingPie, on 05/28/2008, -13/+92I fully agree, though I think there is more to this than the Internet itself.
News organizations are also highly biased, but it's only been in the last 4-5 years that said bias has begun to affect credibility. Let me do a case in point...
During the Swift Boat Veteran fiasco, George Bush eventually came out and condemned all negative advertising including the Swift Boat Veteran ad. When asked if he meant the Swift Boat Veteran ad, he replied, "I mean THAT AD."
The New York Times ran a headline reporting that "George Bush condemns negative advertising, but fails to single out Swift Boat Veterans." This headline is untrue given what Bush actually said, but when I confronted the editors, they refused to even own up to a mistake, and called this a "nuance" of the news. Their unabashed disdain for the President outweighed their charter to report truthful information. (Every paper is biased, but in this case, the bias became so strong it led to an untrue headline.)
Sites like Digg have compounded this problem. On Digg, if you don't support Obama, your article has no chance of making the front page. And indeed, I've seen untruthful content or untruthful headlines make it to the top of Digg simply because they were popular. The Keith Olbermann "Shut the Hell Up!" commentary was extremely popular, when in fact the President had "shut the hell up" for 3 years, and only said something when asked point-blank. Olberman's attack was based on bad information, but that didn't matter because it was something Diggers in general wanted to hear.
By making such articles popular, and driving more hits to sites, that encourages news outlets to focus on numbers rather than journalistic integrity. As if general bias wasn't enough, now news by news popularity is influencing media outlets, and truth takes a back seat.
-Pie - badqat, on 05/28/2008, -3/+40Wait...there's an obvious Obama bias on digg? Are you sure?
- inactive, on 05/28/2008, -18/+47Yeah well, the corporate media said that Al Gore claimed to invent the internet. He didn't.
The corporate media said Iraq was chock full of deadly WMD. It wasn't.
The corporate media tells me that inflation is low. It isn't.
The corporate media tells me that joblessness is low. It isn't.
Why should they have any credibility? They may as well report on Brad Pitt. That's all they appear to be good for. - GratefulGroover, on 05/28/2008, -4/+31so the msm is not credible... how is this news?
- Felixthecat71, on 05/28/2008, -13/+33I believe in 2000 when the "news" called the Presidential Election and then had to rescind their announcement, begin the era of speed-reporting. The Internet allows the public to obtain news as a super fast rate, hence, if you do not capture the attention of the reader at first glance - forget the story. As we now see, misleading headlines provoke curiosity, which captures the potential reader into the story itself. We then find that the story is not what the headline indicated and worse, at times, it simply is false. The author's interpretation - twisted and switched to fulfill the authors vision, not based on facts, becomes the story. If you continue to read article after article, you realize that at best, you have to read the story written the list of false stories in Journalism. The race to be the first has lead to a careless system, and unfortunately, no one cares. For example, you have the Daily News in NY endorsing Hillary Clinton, but their writers trash the Senator at every turn. Oddly enough, one is a sports writer. Insignificant, but at the same time, tragic.
- Swarms, on 05/28/2008, -3/+19I'd love to digg you up more than once. Digg's users are part of the huge problem with news, and blogs, in general. Bloggers can post a rumor without any evidence and get the story dugg. It is now accepted as fact when it originated with someone's guess. An inaccurate story gets rushed to publish, gets dugg 6,000 times, gets disputed and proven false 2 hours later, but the rebuttal never makes the front page. And it's not really digg's fault, it's the users who have huddled together in a big groupthink tent. People who don't follow the herd here are never heard, so why bother speak up?
How many sensationalist headlines did you see about the RFK comment Hillary made, for example? "BREAKING: Hillary says Planning to kill Obama.!!" It's ridiculous. Sites like this have become checkout-line tabloids that only need to be interesting for a minute, not true. But sites like this also make the big bucks and are getting more attention, so mainstream news is starting to notice and adapt, when they're not exactly following a helpful trend. - CrazedLeper, on 05/28/2008, -2/+17The national media committed "integricide" a long time ago. The only way to get the truth out of them now is to assume that the truth is the opposite of whatever the talking heads say.
- SilverBlade2k, on 05/28/2008, -0/+14News became less credible when they became news manipulators and filters.
- valour, on 05/28/2008, -2/+15As a former journalist, I have this to say: Real news doesn't sell. The stories that take weeks or months to research or investigate have just as much of a chance of success as the ones that take fifteen minutes to write and might not be true. So why spend all that time when you can get a quick story out the door that gets just as much traffic and ultimately ad money?
The solution is to write a quick and probably untrue story, then to update it three to five times over the course of the story's evolution. How many times on Google News do you see "UPDATE 3: Stupid Headline Here" or a pile of addendum UPDATE headings at the end of an article?
Lastly, content is no longer king. Or at least, the quality of content is no longer important to anyone. Quick and crappy stories that say either what people absolutely do or do not want to hear are what sells these days. See the front page for details. - sodade, on 05/28/2008, -2/+15"The Death of News Credibility" - It was dead long before now...
- jaxomlotus, on 05/28/2008, -3/+13Yay for trolling!
- DaDrake, on 05/28/2008, -3/+11First, I don't think this is true for large news outlets. Because of the internet, mainstream media is being watch like a hound dog and the message can spread quickly; the Dan Rather story highlights how blogs and other groups can keep the mainstream media in check. While its true that the internet often spreads rumors and falsehoods... that is more of a problem with our education system then the media. Students should be taught that ALL MEDIA is biased.... in fact, you won't find a phd that saids peer-review journals aren't subjected to bias.
Children should be taught that all media is bias... they should learn how to view a debate from both sides. Instead of reading one article about the GI Bill in the WSJ ... they should read one at the huffingtonpost (liberal bias) and then one at the national review (conservative bias). While the majority of americans won't fully agree with either position... it allows them to form their own position. You can ONLY understand a debate when you have actually listen to both sides. If you watch only Olbermann or Rush Limbaugh .... you are not going to be a well rounded individual. - repick3, on 05/28/2008, -1/+9How do we know this article is credible >_>
- Equinox1, on 05/28/2008, -1/+9News lost all credibility with the Mass Effect story.
- aargh01, on 05/28/2008, -4/+11Speaking of Digg bias, it's entirely likely that before long, although your comments are (as far as I've seen) intelligent and though out, you will get dugg down simply for the incredibly pretentious act of signing each post with a short version of your username (so, I assume, that people know who wrote the post) despite the fact that it is quite visible right next to each post (and is there so that people know who wrote the post).
The fact of the matter is that people like to hear what they want to hear. Part of the problem with news being a commercial enterprise is that it will pander to its audience, because otherwise it won't make any money. That's simple economics, and whoever thinks news corporations are any different than other corporations doesn't understand basic capitalism. (i.e. FOX lives on, despite its blatant and horrific news biases, because lots of people watch FOX.) Strangely enough, here in Canada, the government-funded news service-the CBC-is often the most unbiased and accurate news service. Who would have thought government control would equal actual news?
That said, though your point is valid, Digg also creates another effect: that of consumer awareness and grassroots movements. Though, for example, FOX gets a bunch of hits on a news story that is eggregiously anti-truth (because it hits the front page on Digg and people click to satisfy their need to be outraged), it also means that they may get hit by a huge slew of critical email, their sponsors may get hit with boycott letters, and their news anchors and CEOs may get hit with whack-loads of hate mail.
You may not see the direct results of these kinds of responses as of yet, but corporate entities are notorious for their sluggish response to new technologies, and the world of social news sites is very young, as is the understanding of the importance of internet economics. Give it a little time and the pendulum may move away from encouraging biased/untruth news as the response of the masses becomes more visible in economic terms (which, in the end, are the only terms corporations can understand). - banthis, on 05/28/2008, -0/+6ABCNNBCBS= BS
right? - PhilLesh69, on 05/28/2008, -0/+6I witnessed, firsthand, how the media has become less credible in 2000 - 2001 while working for Kiplinger Washington Editors. They laid off all the copy editors and alot of the research reporters.
During that recession, they laid off a lot of the people who worked hard to ensure that the stories being reported were published accurately, grammatically correct and factually verifiable.
You can see it if you read Newseek or Time, the stories are riddled with errors, ranging from missing words to convoluted sentences that you have to read three times just to figure out what the author was trying to convey, to erroneous statistics and figures.
The media has always been biased. Humans write the stories, after all. Everyone has their own biases, and it is impossible to write without inflecting your own bias into a story. The real problem nowadays is that the media has eliminated the people who attempted to prevent blatant bias from completely overrunning their reporting. - cmost, on 05/28/2008, -0/+6This article seems to be a little late...the credibility of "the news" (i.e., mainstream media outlets such as local newspapers, network television stations and the like) died years ago!! Anything that's reported these days by such outlets has spin galore; based on the political or other views of a few elite who own the vast majority of these outlets. Do your research and follow the money. You'll see.
- OriginalLucid1, on 05/28/2008, -2/+8I don't think the news was any more credible before the internet. Dan Rather and his ilk have been making up ***** for years. They can't do it now, because of the internet.
- oldgal, on 05/28/2008, -0/+6This short TED lecture gives a good explanation: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/248
- jecruzs, on 05/28/2008, -8/+14Why do you sign all of your posts?
- flipcritic, on 05/28/2008, -0/+6Really, it's the same reason why the quality of movies produced by the film industry is also suffering. News, like movies, is now under the direction of corporations, whose sole function is for profit. Sure the public and watchdog organizations can still monitor its quality, but it will still be driven by who owns it.
- Kajico, on 05/28/2008, -0/+5I'm surprised how fast people now analyze news articles, I just saw that pop on CNN not so long ago and somebody is already tearing it apart. Though I pretty much the same thing as the article after I read the story.
- EatingPie, on 05/28/2008, -1/+6Just to be clear, 0xABADC0DA, I read the New York Times for 12 years.
The NYT has a liberal bias, and became very very anti-Bush as his presidency progressed. I know this because I saw it happen on a daily basis, not because I'm buying into some propaganda. More importantly, I didn't care! Every news source is biased. Every single one (which makes the Iranian government forming an "unbiased" news site simply layered with hilarity!).
The trick is to KNOW the bias, and read the articles with this in mind. For example, the NYT was pro-abortion. They would run articles leading with pro-abortion information (quotes from Planned Parenthood appeared first, etc.), and then run the anti-abortion information late in the article. Because of the "inverted pyramid" of journalism, most people don't read beyond the first two paragraphs of a newspaper article, and this is the most influential section to put information. But on these "hotbed" issues, I always read the WHOLE article to make sure I had a more well-rounded view of the news.
I find it foolish that we try to prove news agencies are unbiased, or 60% this or 40% that. You should read the news agency you like, know their bias, and make sure you take that into account when you read their articles. THAT is the only way you'll ever get close to a truthful representation of events.
However, as I said before, it became a problem when the NYT abandoned truthfulness ENTIRELY in certain situations. They twisted the news to the point that you could not get "well rounded" out of it no matter how hard you tried. THIS is where they crossed an ethical line for me.
-Pie - pidgas, on 05/28/2008, -2/+7The object drawing the blogger's ire is a supposedly "misleading" headline on CNN.com. He says they deliberately titled the article, "6 year-olds forced into sex for food, group finds" inaccurately. He says the article was about a 15 year-old. He accuses CNN of sensationalism and pulling a cynical audience-grabbing "bait-and-switch." Although he's probably right that the standards of professionalism are deteriorating, he's embarrassingly wrong in this instance.
This article is about the report from the Save the Children UK group entitled, "No One To Turn To." As the CNN article says before any 15 year-olds are mentioned, "Children as young as 6 have been forced to have sex with aid workers and peacekeepers in return for food and money, Save the Children UK said in a report released Tuesday." So, indeed, the headline is accurate.
It's a nice reminder that although the MSM appears to be in a race to the bottom, bloggers aren't necessarily holding up a higher standard for accuracy. - moocow1452, on 05/28/2008, -0/+5"If you watch only Olbermann or Rush Limbaugh .... you are not going to be a well rounded individual."
But if you watch both, your brain would explode, along with the collective universe. - LeadOffMan, on 05/28/2008, -0/+560% pro-conservative? You're kidding right? What are you smoking?
- buckrogers1965, on 05/28/2008, -1/+5The news has been total BS my whole life. They lie about everything, and if they are caught they just say, "Get over it. Move on. It's over." As far as I can tell the media has been completely right wing my whole life, but people think it has a liberal bias, which is laughable.
The only news I watch now is Democracy now and what I look up for myself on the internet. I fact check everything I read or hear before I believe it.
It is amazing what you can find out yourself if you try, look at opinions on every side of an issue, and then think about it and come up with your own conclusions as to what happened. - fuZ1on666, on 05/28/2008, -0/+4The News on Television isn't even news half the time? Why do all the networks cover American Idol? How is that news? Where's the news that might actually be of use to know?
- SpikeLee, on 05/28/2008, -2/+6The mainstream media are still the ones that give us the news. CNN.com, MSNBC.com, ABCNews.com, etc. Other 'alternative' news sites that give news are laiden with opinion. Those sites include The Huffington Post, Daily Kos and NewsMax.com. And sites like InfoWars are so full of ***** and misinformation that they aren't even listed in Google News feeds. The positive thing the internet has done is it has led to a repository of news. That is the great thing about it, but the news still comes from mainstream sources. Of course the greatest site to fact check is Lexis-Nexis news detabase. Of course, you gotta be in a newsroom or a college campus to acces those.
Of course, people need to talk about the darkside of the Internet. How many believe that Obama is a Muslim? - bdbr, on 05/28/2008, -0/+4Employment rates, inflation rates, and home sales are reported by the government. The "corporate media" just tells you what they said. They'll even tell you who said it. They won't verify it, of course.
- inactive, on 05/28/2008, -3/+7asshat? hahahahaa!
- inactive, on 05/28/2008, -2/+6When you trust your Television, what you get is what you got, cause when they own the information, ohhh, they can' bend it all they want.
- UnbiasedDigger, on 05/28/2008, -1/+5which is probably the most cited website on digg.com
- inactive, on 05/28/2008, -0/+4No one with any semblance of intelligence trusts the media anymore. Journalistic integrity has been completely perverted by the drive for ratings and advertising income. If you want to hold a job in news television these days, you must compromise your ethics.
Writers and "news" anchors had better be gorgeous and wealthy and ready to crank out crapola worthless trash for corporate propaganda
If you believe the sh*t you see on Ameikan TV is the "news", history will prove you are the dumbest waste of sperm and egg to walk the planet - masterm1nd, on 05/28/2008, -1/+5Lol, "It would only make sense if you wanted it to; but not in the real world."
Seriously though, I don't know what your point was. - buckrogers1965, on 05/28/2008, -1/+5They should only report on verifiable information. Otherwise, it isn't news, it's propaganda.
If they insist on reporting on what the government says without any proof then all those reports should be given by a sad clown to clearly indicate the bias in the source. The clown should often snort and laugh cynically and say, "Yeah, right, like the politicans aren't lying to us again." at the end of every report. - stonewaljacksn, on 05/28/2008, -3/+7news credibility ended with the huffington post
- inactive, on 05/28/2008, -4/+7No one with any semblance of intelligence trusts the media anymore. Journalistic integrity has been completely perverted by the drive for ratings and advertising income. If you want to hold a job in news television these days, you must compromise your ethics.
Writers and "news" anchors had better be gorgeous and wealthy and ready to crank out crapola worthless trash for corporate propaganda
If you believe the sh*t you see on Ameikan TV is the "news", history will prove you are the dumbest waste of sperm and egg to walk the planet - CleverDan33, on 05/28/2008, -5/+8News lost all credibility when they gave Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 a 10/10.
- nixfu, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3Agreed, news organizations used to be run by individuals and families who took themselves seriously.
Now its all just 3-4 different corporations who all run the same poorly written news read to you by retards with straight hair.
Not to mention that newspapers are full of content that most people have read about 2 weeks ago on the internet, but re-written and dumbed down for 5 year old level of reading ability. - tehWyman, on 08/19/2009, -1/+4So insightful. I'm glad I have you on my friends list. Your comments are always a good read.
- wannapiece, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3makes me question so many articles that I come across.
- badqat, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3News (separate from opinion, which has its own place) should be, to quote Jack Webb, "just the facts, ma'am."
- rowlodge, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3the news media teaches their reporters to put as much emotional attachment into their stories as they can, it's just like they almost can't contain their emotions and are ready to explode with their own biased idea of anything they report.
- Fl4sh, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3In my opinion, the news never had any credibility.
- fyngyrz, on 05/28/2008, -1/+4Digg's problem is that it relies on the public's taste; when the public, in point of fact, has none.
- inactive, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3Why you are being dugg down can only be attributed to astroturfing. You're dead on.
- Hangly, on 05/28/2008, -0/+3I think the death of the mainstream news media will follow the same pattern as the death of the big record labels in the music industry. The MSM's demise is about ten or fifteen years behind, but the general trend to me seems similar.
That is to say, both the MSM and the major record labels are turning out a greater percentage of crap because their market is shrinking.
There was a time there between the 1950s and the 1980s where mass media went virtually unchallenged. What they sold was what everyone bought, and if the media didn't pick something up it may as well not exist.
Indie labels and the internet changed/are changing that in music, and now already the more intelligent and discriminating media consumers no longer look to the big record labels or the Top 40 to tell them what to listen to. Because of that, around the late 1980s the labels found themselves having to market ever more aggressively to the passive-listener Brittany Spears demographic (this demographic does not represent anywhere close to a majority of people, but it is somewhat stable.)
Now the same thing is happening in the news. It's taken longer to get decent news over the net, but right now that there are many good alternatives and the intelligent people are starting to wander off. As this trend continues, the MSM will not try to recapture these viewers. Instead, they will continue to fight over the demographic that remains, which is the same small but stable crowd of marginally-informed viewers who want to know about Brad and Angelina and love a good shark attack story. -
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