Consumer Groups Want To Tax Facebook To Save Journalism (vice.com) 211
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: How to fund ethical journalism in the Facebook era is the multi-billion dollar question of the hour, and a technology-focused consumer group by the name of Free Press believes it has a solution. The group has unveiled a new proposal that suggests taxing all online targeted advertising, then using that money to fund the nation's struggling news empires, big and small. The program would apply a 2 percent tax on companies generating more than $200 million in annual targeted-ad revenues, then use that money to create a "Public Interest Media Endowment." The $2 billion collected annually would then be managed by the government itself, or an outside, existing institution such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Such a tax would most obviously apply to both social media giants, but also the giant telecom monopolies increasingly trying to elbow their way into the online ad space. This endowment, in turn, would help fund local journalism, investigative reporting, media literacy, noncommercial social networks, civic-technology projects, and "news and information for underserved communities," suggests the group. "The problem for journalism is that Facebook and Google control nearly 70 percent of this marketplace," Free Press Director Tim Karr told Motherboard via email. "And neither are news organizations. In fact, only one of the top ten digital advertisers in the U.S. (Verizon Media Group/Oath) is in the news business (HuffPost, Techcrunch), and then only partially so."
Why journalism? (Score:3, Insightful)
Just go do something productive instead.
Even if it was useful, most journalism is political activism.
Like the attacks on Convington students showed.
I could name many more examples, this good reputation is undeserved.
Walter Duranty covered up the Holodemor and got a pullitzer prize for it.
So it was never deserved, only now the people can refute these elites.
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^^^THIS^^^ Journalism over the past two decades has proven it self to be of so little value it wont be missed and it isn't worth subsidizing. What little analysis they provide is hardly objective. I can't name a single Paper or television institution besides *maybe* PBS and NPR that don't have a clearly partisan world views. Even on PBS/NPR various personalities clearly editorialize in what is presented as new content at least at times, although I will say these outfits continue to do better at separating
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Agreed on NPR but they have a habit of not reporting things that are inconvenient
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unfortunately mainstream journalism has been taken over by people of politically liberal idealism. If you really need any evidence of that just watch the people literally crying when Hillary lost. Most of them don't care 1 iota about objective journalism.
I dated a woman who used to work in a newsroom near Boston (about 20 years ago now).
Here instructions for things coming in from AP were this. 'When it come to child molestation or sexual assault stories, catholic priest are always headline news. Teachers an
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They took the word liberal because their own term had become toxic.
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+1 for reference to CSM. Perhaps not perfect, but better than alternatives I've found.
I also like how they don't try to be a 24/7 news service. They publish a few in-depth articles a day, and they are happy to wait a couple days before publishing in order to have a more well-written story that contextualizes the discussion.
I am beginning to suspect that checking the news every minute leads to more intolerance of other viewpoints.
Re:Why journalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Fox News is run by James Murdoch, a very liberal leaning person.
I doubt Fox is the bastion of right wing political views that the Democrats like to make people believe.
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Liberalism and socialism are not the same thing.
Progressives and socialists have abused the term liberal because everyone understood what their own terms stand for.
You've been duped.
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By Youtube, Twitter, ect
Normal people can report and discuss the news just fine.
We don't need university indoctrinated people to push their politics into everything.
It's just a detriment.
I think very few people can be professional journalists, if any, there just isn't a market for it.
Normal people doing their jobs and occasionally reporting/discussing news is a much better way.
Concepts like requiring evidence is just common sense.
Journalists ha
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And then people very helpfully point out that FREEZE PEACH doesn't apply to private co
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Personally I'm in favor of the NAP.
Meaning that if you want to use someone else's property, they can restrict your freedom of speech in any way they want for any reason.
In a society where that was actually implemented government would be impossible.
So people wouldn't be corrupted by government and actually respect each others freedom of speech, even when they don't have to.
Re:Why journalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
The word liberal with a lower case "L" is something all newspapers should strive for. In case you don't realize it, a "liberal arts education" has nothing to do with a Liberal political stance. Perhaps you need one?
Re:Why journalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
The word liberal with a lower case "L" is something all newspapers should strive for. In case you don't realize it, a "liberal arts education" has nothing to do with a Liberal political stance. Perhaps you need one?
OP makes a valid point. By being so left leaning NPR has poisoned the well on broad public support for government funded journalism. When I occasionally listen to NPR it tends to be 98% of the time is spent on a liberal point of view with only a sentence or two that some disagree and a shallow and completely unexplored reason cited. Lopsided reporting shouldn't be publicly funded.
Re:Why journalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that most journalists are not Liberal, they are Leftist. How do you tell the difference? Easy! Liberals believe in free speech. They might disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.
Leftists have no problem with censorship and use it as a method of first resort. "Journalism isn't really journalism when it avoids stories for fear of how some might react." [theguardian.com] Think about that. It's an astounding confession. Ms Hinsliff is a staff journalist who worked at several of Britain's top newspapers for 22 years before she wrote that statement. You would think someone so experienced, who also benefited from a top-caliber Cambridge education, would have had the fundamentals of journalism sorted when she was a cub reporter in 1994. Appears she learned things much more devious. What else has she obscured and concealed during her career?
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Liberals love to polish the gas lighting on conservatives who point out the left-leaning media.
Stop trying. Everyone knows that in the 1960s the left infiltrated universities and that for decades the liberal arts have been run by radical leftists who provide "Liberal" education, as in turning college students into leftist propaganda mouthpieces.
This is precisely why the most harmless man in the planet, Ben Shapiro, weighing in at a total of 95 pounds, requires security guards to speak at college campuses be
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^^^THIS!!!^^^
I'm a liberal as well. Leftism is the antithesis to liberalism, in my opinion, and leads to serfdom; in both body and mind.
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I would say PBS and NPR tend embrace a leftist, rather than a liberal point of view.
Peer review? (Score:3)
MIght as well say, Why have peer review in science. With honest diligent compentent people there's no need.
The whole problem with the cognitive bubble feeding poison from facebook trolls is the lack of journalistic integrity.
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Comparing medicine to journalism is nota a very good analogy. The "professionals" are reserved for things you can not do yourself. If I sprain my wrist, I will just wrap an Ace bandage around it instead of making a trip to the emergency room and paying out the wazoo for a doctor to put an Ace bandage on it and tell me to be more careful.
If I oops and cut my finger, I'll just wash the wound, put some alcohol on it (isopropyl or even Listerine), say the fuck word a few times while it stings, and apply a ban
A tax for journalism? (Score:3)
Start doing journalism that sells and that people will support.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
Re:A tax for journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with journalism being profit driven, especially in an age where news is basically a commodity that everyone gets for free, is that it corrupts it into a toxic mixture of outrage and hyper-partisan opinion.
When you look at the least biased, most reliable source of news and analysis they tend to be the ones that are not dependent on getting views - the BBC, and agencies like Reuters and AFP.
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So it is not having to consider a gov, tax payers, mil, an endowment, some random billionaire, NGO, think tank, Communist government, industrialist for its funding.
Write what people want to read and what people want to pay for.
Why should a new tax have to pay for more gov/mil propaganda?
Re:A tax for journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
forcing journalism to find a money stream has directly lead to billionaires fighting over the news they can pay for
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forcing journalism to find a money stream has directly lead to billionaires fighting over the news they can pay for
Actually the current problem of all news being controlled by a single digit number of owners has more to do with Clinton's sins of the 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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That might be a reason. Here in Europe Clinton did not have any say in anything, but we have the same problem, even in small countries.
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Write what people want to read and what people want to pay for.
That's the exact opposite of good journalism. That's just creating a bubble that people will pay to inhabit. That's just provoking people to anger so they buy your newspaper or watch your channel.
Re:A tax for journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well government funding is extremely well-suited to endeavours that you do not want to be tied to a profit motive. Healthcare, military, and education are perfect examples.
High-quality unbiased journalism fits the same category, and is a "public good". The BBC model is a very good one (not quite perfect). It relies on a "tax" of sorts, but it's legally structured in such a way that it is not beholden to the government in any way and is not a state news service.
(If you're from the USA you might have different views on what government should fund)
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But not well suited at all to an endeavor you want to be completely free of government influence.
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What would be hilarious would be if the journalist agencies got their tax, and then those receiving the tax revenues were required to uphold the Bill of Rights and the rest of the Constitution where applicable, since the tax dollars they are getting are public funds.
Re:A tax for journalism? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem isn't that journalism is profit driven. Were that the case, this would have already happened decades ago when the news media was every bit as profit driven. In some ways it already did happen, but we look back at those good old days through a rose colored lens and neglect to remember that there was similar levels of sensationalism and partisanism. Look at something like the National Enquirer and tell me that fake news is a recent phenomena. The term "yellow journalism" dates back over a century. None of this is a new problem.
The real issue is that the internet and a host of other technologies have made it incredibly inexpensive for anyone to do reporting, which means that the traditional news media is being squeezed by independent or small organizations that don't have the added expenses that old outfits have. When something becomes less expensive to produce, you naturally get more of it. Now there's hundreds of people offering hundreds of takes.
If you want a conservative point of view, there are people who will provide that. If you want a liberal point of view, there're plenty of people to provide that as well. There's everything in between and even more extreme. If you're a batshit crazy loon, there's someone out there catering to that as well. They were always there, but it was a lot harder to distribute their little pamphlets or newsletters 30 years ago, whereas today they can broadcast to the entire world and powerful search engines and social media have made it easy for people to find what they're looking for.
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When you look at the least biased, most reliable source of news and analysis they tend to be the ones that are not dependent on getting views - the BBC, and agencies like Reuters and AFP.
Government funded news is going to favor government that funds news. NPR is a shining example. Yes, I love NPR, but they even acknowledge that their listenership skews Democratic, and their coverage reflects that.
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The BBC is accuses of bias by all sides of the political spectrum, by the government and the opposition. I take that as a good sign.
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The problem with journalism being profit driven, especially in an age where news is basically a commodity that everyone gets for free, is that it corrupts it into a toxic mixture of outrage and hyper-partisan opinion.
When you look at the least biased, most reliable source of news and analysis they tend to be the ones that are not dependent on getting views - the BBC, and agencies like Reuters and AFP.
The sources you cite have an agenda, it's just a bit more subtle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] https://www.investors.com/poli... [investors.com] It's not unlike colleges that chased out all of the conservatives. They may not even realize just how biased they and and certainly other viewpoints must be wrong because all their friends and colleagues think the same way. It's like the worst of small town close mindedness but at a professional level.
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You will never create the perfect, unbiased source of news. Compared to commercial offerings though, the BBC is better than most. In fact I can't think of a commercial operation as good as them.
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You will never create the perfect, unbiased source of news. Compared to commercial offerings though, the BBC is better than most. In fact I can't think of a commercial operation as good as them.
Are they? How was their coverage of the Covington Schoolboys story?
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Seems okay.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]
Can't you just google it yourself though?
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Seems okay.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/wor... [bbc.co.uk]
Can't you just google it yourself though?
From the first line in your link:
Nick Sandmann (left) and Nathan Phillips (right) both said they were trying to defuse tensions
From the actual video: Nathan Phillips went right up to Sandmann, clearly inciting him.
That article is trying to spin it as "no one really knows what happened", with every single eyewitness quoted in that article saying the kids started it. The actual video shows the kids as the victims, and the blacks and Indian groups as the aggressors.
That is not a balanced article: they show the snipped video that makes the children look like the aggressors, but don't even link to the wh
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So you really not understand the difference between reporting someone's explanation of their actions and "trying to spin it"?
The reason that the BBC is so reliable is that they don't pass judgement, they don't give an opinion. They give you the facts, what people said, what the video shows,
What people said? They only included the eyewitnesses who blamed the children. That's spin. It may be a fact that all those people were quoted accurately, but it's also a fact that they devoted much, much less of their quotations to eyewitnesses who gave the actual story.
Weren't you the one complaining, after the 2016 election, that wikileaks only spilled (truthful) dirt on HRC and none on Trump, therefore they were biased?
Back to the Covington coverage in the article you linked to: nowhere did they call o
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4th and 5th sentences of TFA:
"However, additional video footage has provided further details of the incident, while student Nick Sandmann has denied mocking Mr Phillips."
""I did not make any hand gestures or aggressive moves," he said. "I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to diffuse [sic] the situation.""
Weren't you the one complaining, after the 2016 election, that wikileaks only spilled (truthful) dirt on HRC and none on Trump, therefore they were biased?
No, you have me confused with someone else.
Re:A tax for journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Start doing journalism that sells and that people will support.
We tried that model and the problem is that stops being journalism and starts being sensationalism. Eventually, it diverges from reality completely at which point it's like a tabloid. Fox News is the greatest example of this.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
Because it's not a normal job. An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.
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Want to a new tax to look after many of such jobs?
Re: A tax for journalism? (Score:4, Insightful)
2). Yes, government is needed for certain functions. Regulation, infrastructure, international policy,
Re:A tax for journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with state-sponsored media is that for every BBC there are a dozen Russia Todays.
And I don't even know if BBC is unbiased when it comes to British politics. As an American, the BBC's famed neutrality seems based on its view of the USA.
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How's that going to work? I mean, operationally, who gets to decide when there is enough bias for a penalty? Someone who might also have a bias? Seems difficult to do it well.
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An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.
Sure, sensationalism sucks but this alternative is far worse. Do you really want whoever is currently in power deciding which outlets receive funding?
For news to be worth anything it can't be controlled by the government and if the government is collecting the money and distributing it then they effectively control the media. Would CNN receive some of this tax money? What about Fox News? What about Breitbart? What about Wikileaks? What about the National Enquirer? How can anyone fairly decide who ge
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And a PROPERLY informed public is even more essential! People hearing about things that Top Men think are unimportant is something that needs to be squelched ASAP!
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Because it's not a normal job. An informed public is elemental to a healthy democracy.
You do realize the danger of the government controlling the media directly right? If they were serious about this they would take pains to ensure a level playing field and that the all viewpoints were represented by people that actually understand them. More akin to this: https://heterodoxacademy.org/ [heterodoxacademy.org] What I, and probably many others, suspect we would get is a left leaning America hating "official news" organization that shuts out all cisgender white males while loudly accusing others of discrimination.
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k.
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Most people are too lazy to seek out the truth and don't have any interest in trying to find out why the truth matters
Most people don't care and they are more concerned with the direct impacts of their daily lives. If you want to interpret that as "too lazy" or "don't have interest" then go for it.
We have a society that choose highly cultivated echo chambers on social media passing off everything from Neo Nazi to anti-vax fantasy conspiracy theories rather than actually thinking about the facts that are presented to them.
The internet is a megaphone and people talking politics are a minority. It's easy to find a random tweet about anything if you search for it. It's easy to extrapolate that and blow it out of proportion.
That's why the US population and legal system has proven to be so susceptible to the merchants of doubt.
No more so than any one else with any respect to free speech. The US has historically had more "susceptibility" or at the least t
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That's how we got Fox News...
Not such a crazy idea (Score:2)
If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Why do you think that? They never have. Most journalism in the last 100 years was not primarily paid for by the end consumer but by advertisements. Most journalism that has tried to bill the end reader directly hasn't worked out because the economic model doesn't work very well.
Think about it for a second. How do you assign a value to information you don't have yet? That's what selling stories It's impossible both for buyer and seller. I don't know what a piece of information is worth until I actuall
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If people like journalism a lot they will pay for it.
Start doing journalism that sells and that people will support.
Why should a new tax have to look after any normal "job"?
That's the problem.
They've spent so long printing crap that sells that none of them know how to practice real journalism. An investigative piece on an important issue gets buried down at page 78 between the personals and the classifieds because it isn't as gritty and hard hitting as the latest celeb sex scandal which makes the front page.
News agencies that have for so long been nothing but political mouthpieces for their owners (Murdoch, Rotherham, et al.) have made such a mockery of news, conflating
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Quite true. The point at which it all falls apart is assuming that well-researched investigative journalism is necessarily "journalism that sells". Journalism that agrees with what the audience already thinks regardless of the evidence is journalism that sells.
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The newspaper had other content that "sold" to cover the costs of its "investigative journalism".
While a few skilled and smart people did investigative journalism for months, other workers at the newspaper had to sell newspapers everyday.
With ads, car reviews, local sport, international news, sport, politics, puzzles, hobbies, local crime stories, good news stories, financial news.
Sections
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That is indeed a very good description of how the system worked and why it broke. So now we need to figure out how to fix it (government funding for journalism is absolutely not a good idea on how to fix it, alas).
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newspaper screwed themselves (Score:5, Informative)
all the job sites, ebay and craigslist functions were originally controlled by the newspapers. if you wanted a job in NYC, you bought the Sunday NY Times. if you wanted to hire someone, you advertised in a newspaper.
They acted snobby when the internet came and watched their revenues vaporize
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People found better things to do and read.
The money stopped.
Now we need a tax to support something people stopped paying for?
Who else can get tax support like that?
Snobby? (Score:2)
It's hard to unwind your bussiness model, snobbery or not. To compete with free craigslist ads? TO compete with nearly free e-bay ads? they'd have to go to no revenue almost overnight. How do you do that and support the NEWS function which isn't free? The were caught in a jam.
No, thank you. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Public subsidies for journalism are wrong on so many levels. As wrong as public financing of political campaigns, though those are very popular.
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Re: No, thank you. (Score:4, Insightful)
The 'free market' exists to permit the free flow of goods and services. Many participants pander to emotions:
- Automobile sales
- Clothing
- Beverages
- Food
- Electronics
- Pharmaceuticals
Virtually every product or service has an emotional appeal. Which of these should be restricted, and how?
Your complaint is with the human beings so easily swayed by their emotions. Redesigning man is a futile exercise. Giving our government the explicit power and authority to manage and direct our emotions is worse.
Information is the only antidote.
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Therein lies the motivation to institute some level of public subsidy for journalism.
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That means you let the government be the prime decider of what "information" is. Is that what you want? I'd think very carefully about the answer to that one if I were you.
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No, that just gives government power over journalism, which is the last thing you want. The whole point of having a free press is that it's free to criticize the government. The press can no longer do that if the government is controlling its purse strings.
The real solution here is actually the same as the solution to the anti-vaxx movement and to fake news. Educate the public. Teach people how to think critically a
Re: No, thank you. (Score:2)
"Fox News is not really "news."
Umm, please do not insult me. As virtually every main stream media outlet, Fox offers 'news' and 'opinion'. Letting your own emotions guide you into discrediting one or another outlet based on perceived biases only proves the point that emotionalism can rule us.
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Yes, government control of the press is indisputably worse than what we have now. There's ample historical evidence for that. We have a real problem here, but the first step in solving it is to not make it worse. This would make it worse.
Consumer Group? (Score:2)
Scrolling down the NYT and WAPO Twitter timeline.. (Score:5, Insightful)
... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...
I think I found the issue with "Journalism".
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... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...
I think I found the issue with "Journalism".
It's saturation. Even with global connectivity, there's really not enough stuff happening that is newsworthy enough to fill content 24/7. The only way to generate that content is to start loading up on opinion pieces or editorials. Used to with newspapers, you had the opinion or editorial pieces in their own section. Now you have opinions mixed in with actual reporting articles, blurring the lines between personal opinion or reported fact. Sure, the opinion pieces always (well, should always) have disc
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Scrolling down the NYT and WAPO Twitter timeline... I see : Opinion, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective, Why X is Y, Opinion, Opinion, Perspective...
I think I found the issue with "Journalism".
You do know the Twitter timeline is curated based on what you engage with? What does this tell us about what you engage with on Twitter?
Ethical Journalism? (Score:5, Insightful)
Better to address fake news (Score:5, Insightful)
Journalistic standards have become nothing more than an idealistic concept. Take the Covington kid was tried and convicted in the media for what was effectively face crime. Even a basic check of the facts would have quickly shown that the kid was innocent of the accusations laid against him. Unfortunately it took a $250 million dollar lawsuit against the Washington Post to get them to correct their previous coverage.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Their journalists finally remembered their 'standards' and wrote up a much more accurate story. Too bad it took a $250 million defamation lawsuit in order for it to happen.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Fact of the matter is that journalism is dying because people don't trust journalists.
https://www.cjr.org/the_media_... [cjr.org]
If you don't trust someone you don't value them. If you don't value someone you will try to avoid paying for their services.
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Fundamentally, people don't like getting bad news and are all too happy to shoot (financially) the messenger.
Re:Better to address fake news (Score:4, Funny)
OTOH, Trump is effectively subsidizing the liberal press by giving them something to sensationalize every day.
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The overwhelming majority of news coverage of Trump was negative (92%).
https://www.westernjournal.com... [westernjournal.com]
Even Fox news had more negative (52%) coverage than positive (48%).
This stands is sharp contrast to his approval rating by the public which ranges from 38% to 48% based on which poll you want to use.
https://www.realclearpolitics.... [realclearpolitics.com]
Having that large of a disparity between the media and the masses shows that the public isn't buying what the media is selling. My point stands that the public doesn't trust th
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Fact of the matter is that journalism is dying because people don't trust journalists.
It's equally dying because people blindly trust random people on the Internet despite not trusting journalists.
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When internet randoms have a better record of truth-telling than legitimate journalists, what are you going to do?
Here's something from an internet random that I bet you would never hear from the mainstream media: Your Complete Guide to the N.Y. Times' Support of U.S.-Backed Coups in Latin America [truthdig.com]
"What should be a conversation about American military and its covert apparatus unduly meddling in other countries quickly becomes a referendum on the moral properties of those countries. Theoretically a good co
Free !== Freedom (Score:4, Interesting)
Online magazines need to think harder about how to monetize their websites. Perhaps they could write up a Terms of Service that explicitly charges for sharing their links? It fits their argument - journalists as content creators are what add actual value to social media sites. Perhaps the social media sites should be following the same rules that newspapers and magazines have been for decades.
Re:Free !== Freedom (Score:4, Insightful)
of coarse if they don't take government hand outs they are beholden to either advertisers or rich benefactors who make large donations. Every review stream comes with some possible compromise of objectivity. Until the penalty for reporting things that are factually wrong is so high that it negates any benefit to money, the problem will probably not be fixed.
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Perhaps they could write up a Terms of Service that explicitly charges for sharing their links?
Cutting down on link sharing will only make them less popular. Also, it's not clear that you could even enforce such a ToS in most countries.
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"A Free Market = Free Press" -- wow, I guess reality must be a huge disappointment then.
Government financed news can possibly be fair, or at least non-commercial, but as soon as you put something out that is "free" the customer is the advertiser and the person consuming that media is the product. That's why Fox could run for a loss for ten years and pay to be played to build a market. And Wapo runs at a mega million loss each year. We have to wonder what's in it for the charitable backers to throw money at
Investigative Journalism. (Score:2)
Well, I think things will be coming full circle.
In days gone by, I remember the news (the big news anyway) being something a journalist worked away on for some time, following up leads, evaluating, and getting to a truth (or at least a stab at being impartial) of the matter. That's how they won big awards, and gained reputation, for uncovering things that needed to be uncovered, and for spending weeks, months, or years tracing stories, going through all kinds of data, analysing and filtering out the extran
Who Picks Which Journalists Get Money? (Score:2)
YES! Government-funded News! (Score:2)
That's an awesome idea. Some might argue this would be opening the doors to propaganda. I say that's fine. The more we bolster and amplify the current corporate propaganda machine, the less ignorant the populace would be. Fixing Facebook's journalism problem in this manner could ultimately fix the citizens in fly-over states by snuffing out their propensity to question authority or, worse, their desire to live lives free from authoritarian reality warping. With a Ministry of Truth amply funding news outlets
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*LOL* I wish I had some mod points for that :)
"Consumer Group" (Score:3)
It is better propaganda than "special-interest group for corporate welfare for the media."
The People it's for won't use it anyway (Score:2)
Yeah, that'll work (Score:3)
We can save independent journalism by making it depend on government funding! Uh, wait...
Relavant Robert A. Heinlein quote... (Score:2)
There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to the public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals not corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of
Worst idea ever! (Score:2)
Sounds like a money-grab scheme to me. The last thing in the world we need is a government-sponsored Ministry of Propaganda. Imagine what it would look like if Trump controlled the news (or Obama, or Bush, or Clinton, etc.). Worst idea ever!
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"Government funding for the press easily and quickly turns to government control of that press." - Citation needed
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How many people see and buy the lies of a random facebook page?
One of the main reasons I stopped using Facebook was a bunch of my friends constantly posting and sharing crap that was blatantly false, misconstrued, or taken out of context. And it's not just an American problem. In India, for example, multiple people have been killed due to misinformation spread through social media. So, to answer your question: a lot.
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How many people see and buy the lies of a random facebook page? The only glaring flaw you pointed out was that a random facebook page != CNN/WaPo.
Something tells me you haven't been on Facebook lately or have your feed very heavily filtered.