
Elon Musk’s attempt to discredit the media is dangerous, even if he’s joking - evo_9
https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/elon-musks-attempt-to-discredit-the-media-is-dangerous-even-if-hes-joking-about-the-whole-pravda-thing.html?via=recirc_recent
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mancerayder
The profit motive, when it gets into a fighting stance against something with
a very different agenda, will usually come out ahead. The original purpose of
the 'media', or journalism and the digital and print press which is its media,
is to disseminate information.

The direction/bias of the authors can be one of many things: \- state actors
attempting to disseminate ideas of the state and influence readers in its
favor \- state actors with a directive to attempt to be a place for different
voices to be heard \- private actors attempting to promote the spread of their
ideas \- private actors attempting to promote the spread of unique / diverse
ideas .. skipping further down the muckraking hole \- private actors
attempting to promote eyes on their ideas, no matter what they are, because
pairs of eyes have become more profitable thanks to programmatic advertising
and the brokering of digital space next to the ideas.

The word journalism conjures up the image of a flak-jacket-donning hero
risking life to get to the truth to dissemminate it to the masses. That's how
the word journalist is understood in the context of an article like this Slate
article. But journalism also has one writer who actually writes the article,
and someone(s) who write numerous headlines and tests them out
programmatically in order to get the most clicks, and selects that headline
for the article in question. It's all done very quickly. Thus, clickbait.

Thus, the profit motive.

Does TV Media suffer from that? Of course - it's been well documented how
uncomfortable stories on the lines of CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and such can lead
to advertisers pulling revenue.

But one major difference is that in the by now old days of TV media
journalism, YOU go TO the information (by flipping to the channel). Today,
stuff goes FROM the Internet TO you because they know you better than you know
yourself. Facebook news feeds, personalized news search results, programmatic
'click here' type imagery in our periphery -- all of that seriously questions
what journalism has become. Or perhaps, how it's packaged.

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loggedinmyphone
I used to get frustrated reading clickbait journalism and say "this isn't
_real_ news, the kind I used to watch on major network television in the 20th
Century". Then I realized there never was any such thing as real news. It's
all clickbait. It's all muckraking. It has value but it requires as much of a
critical eye to parse as the personalities it covers.

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ardent_uno
It's interesting, while different media has different bias, the internet has
made this bias more apparent than it ever has been in history. We can see
everything, so the bias reveals itself in whichever direction it leans.

People are frustrated by this, and Trump, Musk et. al. are speaking for many
people when they voice their frustrations.

The media is an essential part of democracy and effective capitalism, but the
media must look inwards and focus on ridding itself of bias, otherwise people
will continue to protest.

Of course that's a massive challenge. Bias stems from foundational beliefs we
hold about the world. How do we/media purge ourselves of bias if it means
purging ourselves of foundational beliefs that make us who we are as much as
anything else?

~~~
cmurf
Of higher value would be ridding ourselves of liars.

The solution to bias, is triangulation. People who don't know about it, or
don't want to do it, just want to be spoon fed. And that's a spectator, not a
citizen.

~~~
ardent_uno
Liars who hold the attention of millions are few and far between. Skew and
bias is ubiquitous and allows small groups with an agenda to direct people
away from the raw truth and towards their sanitized or corrupted version of
it.

~~~
cmurf
65 million people voted for someone with a life long habit of lying about
ostensibly rather important things, and who's rate of lying continues to
increase, and continues to hold the attention of millions. Few and far between
taken literally applies to one. But few and far between taken in connotation:
that they can't meaningfully affect the lives of many others, and therefore
they can be ignored as edge cases, is provably wrong.

If you're talking about tinfoil hat nuts, e.g. Alex Jones, sure that's an edge
case that doesn't matter and we really can't do anything about it anyway,
whether you categorize them as liars (which they are) or bias (which they
have). Bias does not imply malice, where lying generally implies either
deception or malice or both.

