26% of US Adults Get Their News From YouTube, Study Finds (venturebeat.com) 139
In a study the Pew Research Center released today, 26% of U.S. adults said they now get their news from YouTube. That includes 23% via videos posted by news organizations and 23% from independent YouTube channels. Researchers surveyed 12,638 U.S. adults for the report. VentureBeat reports: "The study finds a news landscape on YouTube in which established news organizations and independent news creators thrive side by side -- and consequently, one where established news organizations no longer have full control over the news Americans watch," the authors wrote. The report defines "external news organizations" as both traditional media like the New York Times and digital-native outlets like BuzzFeed. Independent channels can include celebrities like John Oliver alongside "YouTubers," the 30% who have built their following almost entirely on the platform.
While the report paints a picture of a thriving news ecosystem, it also notes some disturbing differences between traditional and independent sources. Independent channels, for instance, tend to be built around personalities, rather than a broader news organization. And those independent channels are far more likely to focus on conspiracy theories around subjects like anti-vaccine topics or Jeffrey Epstein's death. The report analyzed 3,000 videos posted from the 100 top YouTube news channels in November and December 2019 and found that 4% involved conspiracy theories of some kind. But among independent channels, 14% of videos were primarily dedicated to conspiracy theories, and up to 21% made some mention of them. Only 2% of videos by traditional news organizations mentioned conspiracy theories. In addition, 37% of videos from independent channels tended to view their subjects through a negative lens, versus just 17% from news organizations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that negativity seemed to drive more views, which has made this subset of independent channels particularly problematic for YouTube.
While the report paints a picture of a thriving news ecosystem, it also notes some disturbing differences between traditional and independent sources. Independent channels, for instance, tend to be built around personalities, rather than a broader news organization. And those independent channels are far more likely to focus on conspiracy theories around subjects like anti-vaccine topics or Jeffrey Epstein's death. The report analyzed 3,000 videos posted from the 100 top YouTube news channels in November and December 2019 and found that 4% involved conspiracy theories of some kind. But among independent channels, 14% of videos were primarily dedicated to conspiracy theories, and up to 21% made some mention of them. Only 2% of videos by traditional news organizations mentioned conspiracy theories. In addition, 37% of videos from independent channels tended to view their subjects through a negative lens, versus just 17% from news organizations. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that negativity seemed to drive more views, which has made this subset of independent channels particularly problematic for YouTube.
Well, it's better than Facebook (Score:2)
Re:Well, it's better than Facebook (Score:5, Insightful)
But these days almost anything seems to count as news, putting the nonsensical garbage and influencer douche tells to their audience on the same level as investigative journalism that at least tries to back up the stuff they present with facts.
Interestingly, I've seen more and more works of investigative journalism being put behind pay walls in the recent years. And while I do think that they deserve monetary compensation for the work they do, this trend may leave the people who don't pay for their news with what's left at the bottom of the barrel.
The obvious solution (to me at least) would be to educate people not to believe all the shit they find in youtube without doing their own investigation that necessitates to look for evidence to the contrary. But I know that won't happen any time soon. Western society has tried to do this since the Age of the Enlightenment, yet here we are still about 250 years later.
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Free broadcast TV?
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Though I see that the modern platforms like youtube can be a lot more seductive to viewers as there's this phenomenon that a lot of viewers tend to form unilateral social bond with the youtube personalities that makes them think of them as an actual friend, who cares for them and has their best interest at heart. A lot of people start to trust such friends and tend to stop second-guessing them.
Many yout
Re:Well, it's better than Facebook (Score:5, Informative)
It sure is basically the same thing. On the internet you often even get the news sooner.
Nothing is more hilarious to me than when I worked at an oil refinery and our power went out. I was in the electrical department so we panicked. We were phoning around the operations, they called the co-gen power plant, they were out too, they said they'll contact the primary energy provider and give us an update shortly, and while we were still on the phone a mechanical graduate engineer who was bored and playing with his phone told everyone that the energy company just tweeted that the power outage in our area was due to a substation fire.
Some dude on twitter found out what happened faster than what the biggest affected customer and major hazard facility did.
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So it was "some dude" but also "the energy company" that publicized the outage on Twitter? I'm not quite sure what that means, can you clarify?
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What I mean is our local power utility posted on twitter that a substation had caught fire and caused a power outage within minutes of it actually happening. And one of our bored engineers found this "internet news" faster than we manage to identify that the power outage was both external, and find out what happened.
The cogen plant did call us back about 5 minutes later to tell us that the power utility said SSMTL had a fire and was automatically shutdown, and even they were shocked when we said "we know, a
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The obvious solution (to me at least) would be to educate people not to believe all the shit they find in Youtube without doing their own investigation that necessitates to look for evidence to the contrary.
Only a tiny minority of people would do that. And this includes intelligent people in technology or science jobs.
I have been doing quite a lot of investigation about terms like "fascist", "communist", "right wing", "left wing", and so on. Those words get bandied about without much thought as to what they really mean, or maybe used to mean. I admit to using Wikipedia for much of this research. Is Wikipedia any more reliable than Youtube? I think there is a moderation mechanism that makes Wikipedia more relia
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I just don't care about the evening news.
I never listened to the crackhouse blues.
They say the city is the place to be.
I want to dance with Emily.
Adam Green, "Emily"
Re:Well, it's better than Facebook (Score:4, Insightful)
We used to watch the news on TV. Watching video from news organizations is basically the same thing.
Right, the lie is "from." Nobody gets their news "from" YouTube. They get their news via YouTube.
Explains a Lot (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Explains a Lot (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're getting your news from a social media platform then you are part of the problem. If you don't understand what I mean by "part of the problem" then you need to recognize that QAnon and other bullshit don't run advertisements or put out a newspaper, they infect people on social media. Honestly, it's a failure of critical thinking on the part of the conned but I don't blame the wind for blowing or the sun for rising.
Re:Explains a Lot (Score:4, Insightful)
If you're getting your news from a social media platform then you are part of the problem. If you don't understand what I mean by "part of the problem" then you need to recognize that QAnon and other bullshit don't run advertisements or put out a newspaper, they infect people on social media. Honestly, it's a failure of critical thinking on the part of the conned but I don't blame the wind for blowing or the sun for rising.
Ah yes...all those "professionals" at CNN and MSNBC. THOSE are the ones we should trust to not "infect" the masses, right?
Learn to macro a little harder before you chastise next time. You'll realize you are part of the problem too by failing to understand that even our bought-and-paid-for "professionals" consuming 90% of the televised spectrum are just as good at selling Clicks, Likes, Hype, and Bullshit. They don't deliver news. They get ratings. THAT is their job now.
Our problem, is the elevation of narcissistic ratings over facts, no matter who is slinging it.
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Ah yes, the old we know these guys are bad but those OTHER guys that I do not like are worse.
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Ah yes, the old we know these guys are bad but those OTHER guys that I do not like are worse.
Sorry if your bias doesn't like it when I call "your" guys liars too.
They're all selling clicks and delivering whatever (mis)information their handlers tell them to.
The OTHER guys, would be all of them. I don't like bullshit peddlers. Go ahead. Tell me which one isn't. Then prove it.
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So what's the solution? What, who, or where, in your view, are the outlets for narcissism-free information? I'm looking for some.
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I don't think there is one as long as current "pay per click" system of motivation is in place. You'd have to either begin penalize things like calling people who burn down buildings "mostly peaceful" or pretend that just because Joe Biden is trying to read a question from the teleprompter so he can answer it, "he's demented" to the point where monetary gains from this would turn to monetary losses. Or you have to just start censoring, which leads to what we're seeing in many nations happening, where just w
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I don't think there is one as long as current "pay per click" system of motivation is in place. You'd have to either begin penalize things like calling people who burn down buildings "mostly peaceful" or pretend that just because Joe Biden is trying to read a question from the teleprompter so he can answer it, "he's demented" to the point where monetary gains from this would turn to monetary losses. Or you have to just start censoring, which leads to what we're seeing in many nations happening, where just writing online that you support protests against lockdowns gets you arrested in places like Australia and UK.
Main problem here appears to be natural human tendencies interacting with novel invention that is social media on the internet.
No, the main problem is contained within your first sentence. Is the "natural human tendency" to continue to allow greed and corruption to create a pay-per-click "business" model of broadcasting the news? There's nothing natural about that. It just seems that way because it's so damn popular.
We allowed this shit to happen the instant we tied ratings to news.
Get the Greed motivator, out of the news business. Then, we don't have to allow this shit to happen.
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Ah yes...all those "professionals" at CNN and MSNBC. THOSE are the ones we should trust to not "infect" the masses, right?
Those organisations are genuine news media. They are responsible for the content they publish. You may disagree with what they publish, but they can theoretically be held accountable for publishing falsehoods and incitements to hatred.
Social media organisations host content, but do no create it. So they do not have editorial control, like a regular news outlet would. Say a local council runs a big public park, where people regularly have debates, or maybe have demonstrations. Is the local council responsibl
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Ah yes...all those "professionals" at CNN and MSNBC. THOSE are the ones we should trust to not "infect" the masses, right?
Those organisations are genuine news media. They are responsible for the content they publish. You may disagree with what they publish, but they can theoretically be held accountable for publishing falsehoods and incitements to hatred.
What utter bullshit.
No one is doing "responsible" journalism. No one. Everyone sells "news" based on clicks and ratings. Everyone.
The only thing that is "genuine", is the MSM bought-and-paid-for liberal mindset that creates massive bias and censorship of the "news".
And CNN can incite hatred just as easily as QAnon. They're certainly slinging enough vitriol.
Re: Explains a Lot (Score:2)
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QAnon are mostly gone from popular public platforms. Youtube's largest independent political clique according to last data on influencers that I saw is the realm of breadtube, a communist clique that takes their name from proud acceptance of "capitalism sometimes doesn't have bread, communism sometimes has bread". They're powerful enough and have enough insiders in the Silicon Valley companies to get people who criticize their views demonetized and even banned on youtube and other Silicon Valley platforms t
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Not sure about QAnon; never been there. Never see much Facebook either, except technical how-tos.
My recent investigations of Facebook indicate that it can be a valuable way of raising and debating issues. Mind you, my circle of Facebook friends are intelligent folks. I think I scared off one of the lefties. I will not kow-tow to the current orthodoxies.
--
Join the Trotskyite Anarcho-Capitalist Party now! You know it makes no sense!
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If you're getting your news from a social media platform then you are part of the problem.
Posted in a comment of a news story on a social media platform.
You can pretty easily find channels with searching (Score:3, Informative)
YouTube's lack of recommendations was meant to stop the rabbit holing that was turning people into white supremacists, and like everything YouTube does it was undertaken with all the grace of Gallagher laying into a Water Melon.
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What is a good combination? CNN + Fox + NBC + BBC? Is there a better combination that gives the far left, the far right, som
Or, you could, I don't know (Score:2)
Everyone is going to shop around to find things that fit with their world view. That's what humans do. But this doesn't mean your world view is static.
I started out a big fan of Secular Talk. A real rah rah rah Bernie Bro type. Then Bernie lost. Badly. By like 30 points. And the polls were clear why, old people showed up and young ones stayed home.
This changed my world view. Meanwhile Secular Talk kept doing non stop anti-DNC/anti-Biden coverage
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>One of the reasons Trump is "Teflon Don" is that the mainstream won't say anything much bad about him.
Let's see. He was a traitor (for Russians, Ukrainians, Chinese), rapist (grab her by the pussy, massive amount of random accusations, supporter of mass rapist Kavanaugh among many other things), broke (he wrote down corporate losses to avoid paying taxes, just as is legal and encouraged to do by law, therefore he must be in debt because basic math is 2+2=5 and we don't need to know how much he's worth,
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Tip: Don't bookmark or visit the "home page," instead visit your subscription page.
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Is that really so bad? (Score:4, Insightful)
My natural impulse is to be critical of that, but honestly; is it any worse than the major "respected" networks? How many times have the "Professionals" been wrong enough to warrant a retraction, or even a settlement? Face it; "journalistic integrity" was thrown out years, if not decades, ago.
Youtube at least has a greater breadth of opinions.
Yes, this should be horrifying to any sane person.
Re:Is that really so bad? (Score:5, Interesting)
What's bad is having Youtube as a primary source of news. The study didn't find that. It found that of those 26%, 13% said Youtube is their most important way [journalism.org] of getting news. Overall, that's less than 4% of people surveyed.
But things that happen in real life have video evidence. It's important to see the actual protests going on, to hear the actual word salad the President uses in his incoherent rants. The easiest way to find these clips without filter or minimal commentary is Youtube.
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But things that happen in real life have video evidence. It's important to see the actual protests going on, to hear the actual word salad the President uses in his incoherent rants.
Yes and no. You do yourself no favours with clips of the president using words completely out of context, or better still videos of protests in one city with Hannity laid over talking about completely different cities. Hell Fox News ran the same video feed for multiple stories on multiple cities, any lesser person would have thought that all of America was getting burnt down.
Even video and audio evidence can be incredibly misleading if the context is changed.
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YouTube is the best and worst in that regard. They're not limited by time and there's multiple sources for everything. It just takes a critical eye too find the many angles and distill the truth.
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any lesser person would have thought
Lesser than what? Than you?
This is the fundamental disagreement I have with all you sort of people. You seem to want to silence sources of information that you don't like, not because they have an adverse impact on you. You are too sharp to be fooled by that stuff. You want to prevent other people who you see as weaker than you from seeing it so they aren't fooled, and you use their disagreeing with you as proof that they have been.
This is all over the language you use.
You do yourself no favours
I don't think I will ever trust
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Lesser than what? Than you?
Yeah. Lesser than people who could see that they were re-running the same footage while talking about different cities.
You seem to want to silence sources of information that you don't like
Considering I said nothing of the sort have you considered not taking hallucinogens?
You are too sharp to be fooled by that stuff.
I have the deepest hope that most of humanity is, but unfortunately they aren't.
You want to prevent other people who you see as weaker than you from seeing it so they aren't fooled
Yes we have developed entire legal systems to protect people from nefarious actors, be it people who are stronger than them, smarter than them, or just clever enough to perpetrate fraud. Society functions on protecting those who
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LOL I literally just saw your username. Yeah I guess my assessment of your crazy was on point.
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Experttip: I wasn't even talking about Youtube, but of audio / video in general.
Go look up "Manufactured Consent" (Score:2)
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I think it comes down to the AI, the way platforms push a feed of content at you. Without human intervention there is no care given to the quality of the content, only if it gets you watching and engaging. If it turns out that most of us engage with garbage then it will keep feeding us garbage. It's like the machine can get to the heart of what's really messed up about us as a species and tap that quality to keep us watching. When a human editor has to make that decision at least there is a chance that they
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Are people watching clips from legitimate sources or random assholes doing commentary?
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Our natural impulse regarding any news source should be skepticism.
What's great about YouTube is it has enormously expanded the points of views presented, which makes it much easier to be properly skeptical. When one is only getting the official feed, it's a lot harder to apply the smell test.
YouTube's recommendation system is obviously trying hard, but it's just way too over-targeted. If one consumes a lot of different content from different publishers, the system winds up recommending just the last thing
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Yes.
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How many times have the "Professionals" been wrong enough to warrant a retraction, or even a settlement?
That demonstrates accountability. Being wrong is not some mortal sin. It is a fact of life, if you take risks. Journalistic integrity does not mean always being right. That would be an impossible standard to meet. Journalists take risks that their sources are truthful, and cross-check when they can. Sometimes, the info was duff. So apologise for the error. I admit it may take a law suit to extract the "sorry", but most times, news media would prefer not to be viewed as sloppy or untrustworthy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Except for a tiny number, there is no "sex trafficking" in the US. That is just a "Big Lie" the FBI and DHS and others keep going to justify their existence and size. And when you consider that they usually lock the "victims" up, they know that what they primarily do in this area is fighting entirely voluntarily prostitution. (Well, as voluntarily as any other job.)
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Plenty of these "crimes" being manufactured by the ICE is more like it. Like "claim you are forced into prostitution or we will deport you immediately".
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Vague baseless accusations work in your world?
"Plenty" is an opinion. Is it 1% or 99% or some number in-between?
"Crimes being manufactured" is something that is amusing at its core. Crime is defined by statute, and the only manufacture of statute is the Legislature, not the executive branch.
"claim you're forced into prostitution" could literally be a ploy to stay in the states by immigrants who are taught what to say to stay here legally by the No Borders crowd.
I doubt you'll agree. But there are two sides
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It's more common than you think. They like to tell the clients that it's all voluntary like any other job, but in reality it's not.
The FBI and DHS just make it worse by lacking up the victims and deporting them, because the threat of that happening is exactly what the pimps use to control them. If instead they got immediate citizenship and assistance the problem would go away overnight, although of course it would create other problems.
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It's more common than you think. They like to tell the clients that it's all voluntary like any other job, but in reality it's not.
The FBI and DHS just make it worse by lacking up the victims and deporting them, because the threat of that happening is exactly what the pimps use to control them. If instead they got immediate citizenship and assistance the problem would go away overnight, although of course it would create other problems.
There really is no credible basis for that claim. Here, working as a prostitute is legal, even on a tourist visa or via EU citizenship. There are quite a few sex-workers from eastern Europe and some from Asia. None of them are doing this involuntarily. Unless they are all lying when under absolutely no pressure or threat. They are telling the press (with strong assurances of anonymity) the same thing as they tell social workers and the police. The whole thing about "forced prostitution" is a complete non-st
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It still happens in the US - the latest trends according to the https://www.state.gov/reports/... [slashdot.org]">2020 trafficking in persons report says the trend is toward trauma recruiting (Stockholm Syndrome) and addiction dependency. And yes, sadly the victims often get locked up, often on both prostitution and drug charges..
That said, most of the FBI bloat is to fight terrorism - in fact it is #1 on their web site: "domestic and international terrorism, foreign counterintelligence, cyber crime, public corruption,
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oops, bad link - 2020 trafficking in persons report [state.gov]
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Generally, you are right. But the specific use here was "to sex traffic somebody". That form cannot really be used for normal prostitution, I think.
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And why the old "instead of worrying about XYZ"? Can't we worry about more than one thing at a time?
Fpr example the effects of climate change aren't going away despite the current pandemic having more immediate effects on the lives in our near future.
As far as Epstein goes at least a lot of popular corners of the internet frequently repeat the "Epstein didn't kill himself" mantra. It's not just YouTube where you find these sentiments.
From my perspective, given all the w
Youtube should allow a NO NEWS option (Score:3)
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I'd love a "no news" option. I find the best way to deal with bad recommendations is to periodically go through my recommendations on desktop and use the "not interested" option on them. It takes a few days but it gets there eventually.
For finding new content one of the best options is to look at your existing subscription's subscriptions. YouTube tries to show you them as recommendations but it's too stupid to do a good job,
John Oliver Rocks (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:John Oliver Rocks (Score:4, Funny)
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He's good and has a good team of researchers/writers, but I miss The Colbert Report. Satire takes a lot of research too.
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I get my news from comedians. I trust them.
The Daily Show is pretty good, too.
Just keep in mind that John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Samantha Bee, Seth Meyers, etc. have their own biases and are at least as willing to select the facts they present and slant their presentation as the overtly biased mainstream media. One difference is that their bias is less overtly political and more about finding the facts and the angle that create the best opportunities for humor. It's important to double-check, though, especially when what they say feels obviously tru
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Support your local comedian. They are having a really hard time lately, because every time they try to lampoon a politician, the politician goes one better, with more lunacy. Sad. So sad.
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Also a much better choice than my first thought before I fully read the headline.
I was worried 26% of Americans get their news from PornHub.
not American... (Score:2)
The only current affairs or 'news' I watch on YouTube is BBC Mundo and that's just to get my fix of Pommy colonialism while practising my Spanish!
Local news? I'll stick to the telly or RSS feeds - showing my age...
Well that and technology news (unboxing the gadget etc) but generally about something I'd otherwise read in Ars/Verge.
Tim Pool (Score:5, Informative)
Could be worse (Score:2)
You could get 100% of your news from 10 year old documentaries. (e..g Michael Moore's "Sicko")
So if Youtube is bad, what's a good source? (Score:2)
Youtube and others are, I think, good if you are looking for something specific. I do use the likes of Youtube or Reddit for information about specific topics (say, movie trailers, or the latest SpaceX launch), or s
Re:So if Youtube is bad, what's a good source? (Score:4, Informative)
Use the world, NHK, I24, DW, France24, BBC, CNN, Fox. Admittedly, USA focused, but, it does help filter out the bullshit. If any headline has emotional words, the story is fact checked.
Re:So if Youtube is bad, what's a good source? (Score:5, Informative)
Globally I would suggest that public broadcasters do a very good job. I go to the BBC for a global perspective and here in Australia we have the ABC. Of course like every news source they have their critics but in terms of browsing for day to day factual news I think they are trustworthy and the general public tends to agree. Money corrupts, I think that's unavoidable, and so any publicly funded media outlet avoids much of the conflict with a fixed budget and a decent charter. The compromise is that a publicly funded broadcaster is an inherently left-wing concept and so anyone who works there and believes it to be a worthy institution would naturally buy into more left-wing ideas. This doesn't automatically mean the stories are all editorialised with marxist undertones, it just means a lack of diversity in the views of the people who work there. A good charter and editorial policies helps, you have to evaluate each news source on its own.
This might be more challenging in the US, I don't think PBS quite has the financial muscle to be effective in such a loud and competitive space.
Reuters does an annual review of news sources around the globe, rating them on various scales. It makes interesting reading, definitely worth browsing. What strikes me is how different the view of news sources is within the US vs other countries around the world. It's also pretty striking that the BBC is actually one of the most trusted news sources in America. That's kind of nuts.
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DW is very good. Their "normal" newscast/channel could be criticized with having a left-wing focus of what to cover, although it's still broader and more relevant than any of the US media. (Particularly coverage of South America, Africa, and eastern Europe.) Once they've chosen what to cover, the actual coverage is done in a very neutral and focused way. Making it, overall, as good as you can possibly get when dealing with humans.
But the real gems are the full-length documentaries. On YouTube they g
What's new? (Score:4, Interesting)
Is it any wonder? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look what has happened to "news" over the past few years. Stories are no longer reported on they are editorialized. Every news story gets a political spin that advances the agenda of the station broadcasting it. The exact same story will be reported on Fox exactly the opposite of how it is reported on CNN. And vice versa. 100% propaganda.
Personally I have given up on network news because I don't feel like they are telling me the truth - any of them. I would rather watch Tim Pool or Joe Rogan on YouTube. They seem to be a lot closer to the truth than anything on network news.
Network news anchors are nothing more than prettied up actors. When was the last time you saw an unattractive person anchoring the news? Why do you think that female anchors always wear dresses and skirts? It's all about ratings. The only real journalism left is on YouTube. Everyday people telling it like it is.
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If you think Tim Pool is telling you anything based in truth, you're mistaken. Rogan makes mistakes sometimes, but he honestly tries to get it right, and he isn't afraid to apologize if he doesn't. Pool, on the other hand, is a grifter like Dave Rubin. Both of them understand there's a lot of money to be made by pretending to be a "reformed" liberal who has gradually come to realize the conservatives are right. There's other grifters going the other way, of course. David Frum and a few other Bush backe
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David Frum is not a "born again" liberal, he's a conservative never-Trumper.
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I basically see Tim Pool as a news aggregator. He reads a lot of different news outlets and reports on it. Most of the time he is reading the exact text that is printed on those sites. While he reads it he interjects his opinion. Is his opinion something I always agree with? No. He is simply one of the many news sources I review.
Rogan makes mistakes sometimes too but I give him credit for at least having civil conversations with people he might not agree with. He has both liberals and conservatives on his s
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There's more to life than just Fox or CNN. I rarely watch videos from either, but I read them sometimes. It's amazing how Fox leaves out key details. There was no mention of the fact that the soccer player recently executed in Iran was convicted of murder. Nor did they mention of the bruises on Brad Parscale's wife. And when they ran a story about Mumia Abu-Jamal getting a new trial they completely left out the part about the first judge saying he was going to "fry the [n-word]".
I haven't noticed this f
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I think you've hit upon the main issue here. Both sides of the political spectrum leave out key details. Details that help them to frame the particular narrative they are trying to sell you.
Objective journalism reports ALL of the facts of the story, without editorializing or otherwise injecting personal opinion into the story to sway the opinion of the listener. I honestly don't see any of the major TV networks doing this, and it's getting worse.
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I looked at tonight's TV schedule as determined by my MythTV scraping the ATSC guide data. ANBCBS each had a full 2-hour slot listed, but the local Fox station only had 1 1/2 hours, followed by the local news. Sure enough, the debate is actually 90 minutes long. Hmm, I wonder what that extra half hour is for? Yep, it's so they can spend half an hour editorializing and spinning the debate. (To be fair, local news on the big three is normally after 3 hours of prime time, while Fox is after 2 hours of prime ti
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Precisely. The talking heads just can't get out of their own way. Personally I find it kind of insulting being spoon fed an opinion that I am perfectly capable of arriving on my own. I'm sure that the TV networks have access to better data than I do and have determined that reporting "just the news" is not a ratings winner. Hannity and Tucker Carlton have the top rated shows on Fox and are 100% opinion.
It's all so scripted and predicable and I just got tired of the format. If all you are looking for is an e
I see what you did there... (Score:2)
"And those independent channels are far more likely to focus on conspiracy theories around subjects like anti-vaccine topics or Jeffrey Epstein's death."
So based on what we know, how many people here are anti-vaxxers? OK, now how many people believe Epstein might have had a wee bit of help with his "suicide"?
If I were a betting man, I would put a lot of money down on the second group being significantly larger (and more rooted in reality) than the first.
25% of people have an IQ no higher than 90. (Score:2)
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Reading the three local TV news sites is an embarrassment. Each "story" is one or two sentences at most and longer ones don't even use paragraphs but one sentence per line. I've seen claims that they are written for a third grade reading level and that is sadly correct. I'm married to a Canadian citizen and the stupidity and anti science bias in this country has me looking at job opportunities there. I'm no fan of winter but the quality of life is much better.
I've become a recent convert. (Score:3)
MSNBC has become too biased with a propaganda agenda for me to tolerate its network product at this point. I find I really like The Hill channel with its program, Rising. Its the punditry news program which comes closest to matching my political perspective. Also, there are less accessible news services like Al Jezeerah (English) and South China Morning News. Finally, there are tiny, startup(?) focused news content programs like China Uncensored, which I enjoy.
This explains so much (Score:3)
Good! (Score:2)
I read 4 newspapers every day. I still rely on youtube for about 20% of news stories, and 100% of any kind of intelligent commentary.
Re:Derp derp (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Derp derp (Score:5, Funny)
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49% of people are below average.
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You can access all sorts of corporate media on YouTube.
It's not just random people making casual observations that blow apart NPRs media narrative.
Re: Derp derp [is frightening?] (Score:3)
Okay, I'll bite. What's the joke? Must not be too funny, since no one's given it a funny mod yet.
Considering the overall quality of the YouTube videos, and especially the abysmal quality of the comments, I found the story quite frightening. Even worse that I have to plead guilty as charged, though I have excuses. One is that I don't actually watch the videos, but usually listen to them in the background, and my other excuse is that I'm pretty selective about my sources and also make heavy adjustments for th
Re: (Score:2)
Okay, I'll bite. What's the joke?
"Idiocracy"
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Ah, thanks. I've heard of it, but never seen it. By reputation I think I understand the relevance, if not the full context.
Re: Derp derp [is frightening?] (Score:2)
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How? If you donâ(TM)t know what plants crave?
Eh? Guessing it's another Idiocracy joke tortured by Slashdot's lack of Unicode support.
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Considering the overall quality of the YouTube videos, and especially the abysmal quality of the comments, I found the story quite frightening.
News on the TV that is also broadcast on YouTube... is the same in both places.
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Yes, that's true, but even for the broadcast news from legitimate sources controlled by the broadcasters that appears on YouTube (which is most of what I watch), just cutting it out of context can be potentially distorting. Or in the case of CNN, it's still mostly disaster porn and I rarely watch it. However the frightening stuff is some of the other stuff that passes for news on YouTube.
Let me focus on one particular category because I have a theory to share and I'm curious if anyone agrees with it. Have y