
Ask HN: What is wrong with today's media landscape? - rblion
Just curious what HN thinks, reddit is not the place for a question like this if you want thoughtful and well-reasoned answers.
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bediger4000
We allowed too much centralization of news - TV, radio and newspaper ownership
is too concentrated. I don't know that I can make a great case for it, but it
seems like news gathering and dissemination has some similarities to health
care in that economic incentives are the opposite of what we need for accurate
reporting (which includes depth when necessary).

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rblion
Yes, the media landscape is an oligopoly. They all compete for attention and
use whatever psychological tactics they can to get people to click, comment,
share. It was amusing for a little bit but I see through most of it now. I'm
concerned for the impact it has on the future of the world. Attention is the
most valuable commodity today and so much is wasted on bullshit.

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orbz
The removal of the FCC Fairness Doctrine[1].

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine)

~~~
rblion
That would explain a lot.

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davismwfl
I feel there has been a major change in media around responsible and neutral
reporting, media is neither anymore and they are rarely if ever accountable
today.

When I was growing up, it was rare to see a media outlet be so one sided on
any story or political party. I find it hard to find the facts anymore without
having to do my own detailed research. That sucks because so many people won't
do their own research and so just believe what the media has reported, and
when you have researched facts it can be super frustrating dealing with people
who haven't. It used to be you could trust the media to report a neutral
position and show both sides of the story, but that is no longer the case.

Media has always reported on politics, but they never used to participate in
them and they surely did not provide only one sided views (which happens on
both sides). But even beyond politics, it used to be media would give you a
balanced view of a story period, e.g. if there was a report of someone
allegedly doing something, they'd research and give the person a fair chance
to respond and they wouldn't ask questions in such a way the question itself
was acting like a fact, instead they'd ask the question in a neutral way and
let the viewer decide whether to believe the person. It is almost never a good
idea to do media now if you are being unfairly accused of anything because you
will almost never get a fair interview.

I think this partially went wrong when investigative reporting went too far,
and then opinion reporting (which has always existed) became the mainstream
reporting without the caveats of what it is. It pits people against each other
instead of giving people facts to discuss together and work towards a
solution.

I've personally experienced this biased reporting when I went to defend a non-
profit I worked for in how we purchased equipment using donated funds. But
because the reporting slant was already out that we wasted money they wouldn't
listen to any facts. Their questions were, well how long have you been wasting
this money? When did you learn that you had misused donated funds? WTF? How is
that even neutral reporting? In this case, we had a replacement cycle of 5
years for our equipment, and spent ~$3,100 on each item whereas the people
they were comparing us to had a replacement cycle of 1.2 years and spent
~$1,250 on each item. So we were actually using donated funds more
efficiently, spending ~$3,100 instead of the ~$5000 we were being compared to.
Now who was wasting donated funds? But since the story was already launched
that we were wasting funds, we already had lost publicly, and as we tried to
spend a little money proving our case, we got blasted for "wasting" funds on
proving it. This type of reporting made us look bad (even when everyone around
us knew we were in the right), and then the board mandated we move to the same
purchase methodology, so we started spending MORE money for a product that was
less than ideal for our use case. That way when we were compared the next time
we were equal to the others we were being compared to. But that at least
stopped the story from growing. That was when I said fuck it, I'm out, I just
can't support that type of behavior.

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rblion
Thanks for sharing all this. This is a very good overview of all the problems
I can see today from all the major outlets and how even social media just fans
the flames. Mass media and social media seem to work in a feedback loop of
creating stories and spreading them by people identifying with them based on
their politics/opinions. Media companies are desperate to keep readers/viewers
engaged, so they keep catering to their demographic instead of focusing on
being a responsible source of information and a platform for civil discourse.

