![]() Then you feel justified in extending that "mistrust" engendered from Vox authors writing articles you don't like to pieces of real journalism providing real facts with which you also disagree.Īnd so the whole field of journalism is sullied in your mind, simply because (in this case) you don't like the fact that some people think black mermaids and elves are kinda OK and want to defend their casting against those who don't. You are providing a perfect example of my point, which I'll endure the downvotes to point out: rather than see an opnion article with which you disagree and just accept is as an inevitable result of large populations of people living together, you feel the need to explain the disagreement as some kind of existential flaw with the whole field of journalism. Oh, come on! The title of that article is, verbatim: "The racist backlash to The Little Mermaid and Lord of The Rings is exhausting and extremely predictable"Īre you seriously arguing in good faith that you were fooled into thinking that this was a piece of objective journalism? "He Just Tweeted it Out" is a meme for a reason. Trump said lots of weird stuff and it got reported, but it's not like someone went around filtering his otherwise-not-notable tweets for juicy stuff. Except the occasional circumstance where someone specific says something notable and it happens to be on twitter. In a world where truth (about climate change, election results, disease impact, etc.) is a partisan thing, those whose job it is to report the truth become part of the war.īut reporters today are doing the same thing reporters have always been doing. IMHO the real reason for "collapse in confidence in journalism" is that this is itself a meme driven by people who, for partisan reasons, simply don't want to have confidence in media reporting things "their side" doesn't want to be true. I'd be beyond shocked if "twitter" appeared even once. Go pick up (figuratively) a newspaper and read the front page stories carefully, and make note of how the sources are identified. No one writes stories for major organizations based only on tweets. ![]() Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying". See: īut in other cases, especially where something's being sold, it's at the very least deceptive. ![]() It's much easier to have something prepared than to start from scratch as the event occurs, and these in particular have predictable deadlines.įrom the 1980s through the aughts, the term "fake news" applied to VNR and ANR (video and audio newsreels), which were pre-packaged "news" segments for television and radio prepared by corporations and/or PR firms. Similarly election outcomes and major technological events (e.g., space mission launches / milestones). For particularly notable names, they're updated regularly. ![]() The practice isn't entirely bad or unethical - obituaries in particular are frequently written in advance with details filled in on publication. This is a very poorly-kept secret in journalism, with certain genres (entertainment, politics, business press-releases, fashion industry) being especially prone. It included a bunch of pre-written filler and included several slots for Twitter responses to be filled in prior to actual publication. Preaching to the choir is one of the biggest causes of our echo chambers and widening divides, and it's directly caused by counting likes.Ī few years ago there was a mild dust-up when a pre-written "response" piece to a pop musician's latest release was leaked (possibly early). If, instead, you wrote a story framed in a way that might change a few people's minds, you won't get nearly the number of likes, because the very angles you'd approach the story at would be ones that would be less comfortable to your core audience, your choir. But the story won't be impactful because you're preaching to the choir. For example (taking as a premise that even plain factual reporting is essentially political at this point) if you are a New York Times journalist and you write an environmental story that appeals to the emotions of the people who already understand the dangers of climate change, you'll get thousands of likes. The issue is that it subtly, though completely, changes how you write a story. It's so buit into our minds, we can't not use Likes as a proxy for how engaging our story is. He says that as a journalist on twitter (which almost every journalist is) it's nearly impossible to get away from measuring your worth/impact by the number of likes you get. Thi Nguyen about Twitter's Like button's effect on journalists. There's also an excellent Exra Klein podcast where he talks to game-philospher C.
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