

Modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to manipulate - xssbitch
http://thenextweb.com/video/2013/05/11/american-apparels-ryan-holiday-rails-against-the-media-says-its-broken-and-about-page-views/?fromcat=all

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georgemcbay
PR gaming aside, I'm always a bit horrified when I read a general media story
about something that I know a lot about (like, say, computer programming)
because the articles are often a very superficial treatment of the subject
while trying to not seem so superficial, and in a lot of cases they are either
so simplified that the information they present is misleading or in some cases
they are just spouting completely incorrect nonsense in a soothingly
authoritative tone.

The reason I am horrified is not because I'm offended that they don't
understand computers, but because I realize that the articles that they write
in fields I'm _not_ intimately familiar with are almost certainly equally
stupid sounding to people who are, and thus I'm likely woefully misinformed on
a great many things.

~~~
hga
From [http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
gel...](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-
amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you), a quote by Michael Crichton:

" _Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case,
physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause
and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a
story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read
as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than
the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know._"

Nowadays I only follow the conventional media to know what they think is
important, since that drives a lot of important things.

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onemorepassword
The main problem is not that it's easy to dupe an individual journalist. This
can never be completely avoided, and making it less easy is a solvable
problem.

The big red warning sign is the lack of corrections. This shows how little the
media actually cares.

It's like a web service being hacked and having their plain-text passwords
exposed, and openly and blatantly refusing to improve their security
practices.

And unlike most other industries, there's no force to correct them.
Democracies are understandably reluctant to regulate media strongly, and
exposing this problem is traditionally the role of... the media.

Other than the business model falling apart because people are no longer
willing to pay for media, they are untouchable.

~~~
Fargren
What's more, should any power try to correct this, it's in the hand of the
media to demonize this power in the public eye. We are currently living such a
situation in Argentina, where the greatest agglutinant of the opposition to
the current government is Clarin, the greatest media group of the country.

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jstalin
My own experience shows this on both sides of the issue. I have been involved
in some local government issues and it's easy to get coverage in local media
by just sending a press release out to a few dozen contacts. They rarely (if
ever) do any fact checking. That's not to say that I make things up. In fact,
that's the other side of the issue. I pride myself in researching local
government issues through the use of the Freedom of Information Act, and then
compiling that information into something the media would be interested in.

The flip side of the coin is that if I release some FOIA data and then the
reporter goes to the government entity for a comment, the government
representative will often times make things up or just lie about the facts.
The local reporter just takes that person at his or her word, despite the fact
that I have produced documentation directly from that government agency which
contradicts its talking head.

It's become clear that local reporters (for the most part) don't do any
independent research. They regurgitate AP reports or whatever they're told.
Most reporters have no expertise or clue about what they're reporting on.

One sign of this degradation in local (and national) media quality to watch
out for: online articles that are composed entirely of paragraphs that are one
or two sentences each. Here's one randomly chosen example:
[http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/11/justice/texas-explosion-
probe/...](http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/11/justice/texas-explosion-
probe/?hpt=hp_t2)

~~~
tsotha
Part of the problem is the internet has taken a lot of the money out of local
news. They don't check things because they don't have time. Where I live all
the local papers, which were going bankrupt, were bought by a conglomerate and
90% of the staff was laid off. They're more like stenographers than reporters,
and it's not their fault, either. They simply do not have the time to do
anything buy bounce from one story to the next, getting the facts mostly
right. Nothing that's the slightest bit complex or subtle gets the treatment
it would have a decade ago.

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UVB-76
It's all about incentives. Most major news organisations are private, for-
profit entities. Profit is the primary incentive.

What turns a profit? High-brow commentary written by proper journalists, that
only a small subset of your readership will fully understand and appreciate,
or photos of the latest Hollywood B-list celebrity doing something
embarrassing, churned out en masse by pseudo-journalists whose only
qualification is being able to plagiarise content without being detected,
generating far more page views and ad revenue?

~~~
mixmax
In Denmark we have "denmarks Radio" which is basically a state owned tv, web
and radio media outlet whose purpose it is to educate the populace. This
changes the incentives, because the income is from the state whose goal is to
have educated and smart voters, not to make money on headlines. I believe the
BBC works in a similar fashion, and it shows in their news coverage.

~~~
dsego
In Croatia we have national tv and radio. If you own a TV set or radio you are
obliged by law to pay a monthly fee. This in theory means that they should be
objective and impartial. However, the top heads there are appointed through
political connections. So they're mostly a propaganda machine for the
political parties in power. Since the politicians here are only puppets in the
service of big money and foreign power, their agenda is mostly to serve their
interests. Except for some small independent web sites (such as advance.hr),
all other private newspapers and sites sell cheap infotainment, often poorly
translated articles from english and american yellow-press.

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ExpiredLink
Ok, you can spoof media. But the real manipulation happens in the selection of
topics that become newsworthy. Only the - for the target audience - most
sensational happenings are 'reported'. This sensational funnel is inherent to
the system and much more manipulative than any individual and deliberate
forgery. BTW, Hacker News also works this way. By giving readers the ability
to immediately respond it creates at least some counter balance to the
sensational funnel.

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calibraxis
Modern media? This is at least as old as 1928. Take Edward Bernays (the
"father of modern PR" <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Bernays>), whose book
"Propaganda" said things like: "There are invisible rulers who control the
destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words
and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons
operating behind the scenes. Nor, what is still more important, the extent to
which our thoughts and habits are modified by authorities."

And: "For this reason there is an increasing tendency to concentrate the
functions of propaganda in the hands of the propaganda specialist. This
specialist is more and more assuming a distinct place and function in our
national life."

Does awareness immunize you? "Undoubtedly the public is becoming aware of the
methods which are being used to mold its opinions and habits. If the public is
better informed about the processes of its own life, it will be so much the
more receptive to reasonable appeals to its own interests. No matter how
sophisticated, how cynical the public may become about publicity methods, it
must respond to the basic appeals, because it will always need food, crave
amusement, long for beauty, respond to leadership.

"If the public becomes more intelligent in its commercial demands, commercial
firms will meet the new standards. If it becomes weary of the old methods used
to persuade it to accept a given idea or commodity, its leaders will present
their appeals more intelligently."

A terribly amusing read, from a pre-computing programmer of people.
(<http://www.whale.to/b/bernays.pdf>) When guys like Ryan Holiday talk about
the "modern media", they're stirring nostalgia for lost days of yore — which
didn't exist. At least not in the timeframe they seem to imply.

 _[Disclaimer: I'm only halfway through the video before writing this. I'll be
embarrassed if he delves into the 20th century history in the latter half. And
keep in mind that "Propaganda" had a more neutral connotation then. Later, it
got associated with the Nazis, who were actually inspired by the success of US
propaganda.]_

~~~
ryanholiday
Actually, in the book I go much earlier. Upton Sinclair wrote a book of media
criticism in 1912 that was the genesis for my theories. Yellow journalism
predates Bernays by more than a few decades.

~~~
calibraxis
Thanks, I'll get a copy of your book. BTW, you might be interested in the work
of media historian Bob McChesney
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._McChesney>), if you haven't checked
it out already.

One thing he argued is that before professional journalism, the media was much
like today's blogs; everyone knew their content reflected the owner's biases.
Then with the consolidation of newspapers (due to economic reasons), to the
point where a city might have only a couple dailies, overt bias "stank like
old fish", so professional journalism arose. (And journalism schools along
with it.) With it came a neutral-sounding objective tone, which hid a number
of biases (like what's covered — and what's not, reliance on "official
sources" who are elites, and so on). But of course, the content reflects the
owners and advertisers' general interests, as we'd expect from media
corporations which like staying in business.

Given that, I'd wonder if good, carefully-researched professional journalism
is more insidous than yellow journalism. I'll look more closely at your (and
Sinclair's) work.

~~~
ryanholiday
He wrote the intro to the republished edition of The Brass Check believe it or
not.

(But to address your other point, it may be. Chomsky's media criticism
focusing heavily on this)

~~~
gruseom
In a recent interview, Chomsky expressed ambivalence about the propaganda
model that became so successful with _Manufacturing Consent_. It seems that he
disagrees somewhat with the analysis of media content as a function of
corporate interests, but is uncomfortable saying so too bluntly because it was
largely the work of his friend Ed Herman. Chomsky's real opinion is that
economic interests alone can't explain why intellectuals overwhelmingly serve
power, since many intellectuals hold safe positions (e.g. in academia) that
aren't subject to corporate bosses. I got the impression that Chomsky sees
media propaganda as a special case of this more general pattern which he
considers more fundamental. Don't have the link handy but can dig it up if
anyone cares.

~~~
calibraxis
Do you have this in mind?
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I&t=22m18s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I&t=22m18s))

Some context:
([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I&t=16m30s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0D0E42AA4I&t=16m30s))

~~~
gruseom
Yes! Thanks.

The whole interview is worth listening to if one can tolerate the (at times
considerable) douchiness of the interviewer.

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ilamont
This trend has a significant impact on Wikipedia, which relies on press
coverage to determine what articles are suitable for inclusion, and what
"facts" can be used for Wikipedia articles.

Press coverage tends toward the sensational, visual, beautiful, controversial,
current, language-specific, and easily explained. If a topic doesn't meet
those criteria, it probably won't be covered by the press -- unless the topic
in question has some well-connected PR firm or publicist pushing for it.

~~~
ryanholiday
It goes the other way around too. Most reporters and bloggers get their basic
facts from Wikipedia. So it's a feedback loop. Wikipedia frames reporting
which can then be used to "support" or cite that very same framing.

Almost every public figure has seen some inaccuracy from their Wikipedia page
come up in a news story or an interview at one time or another.

~~~
FreezerburnV
XKCD explains this effect quite nicely, I think: <http://xkcd.com/978/>

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mcdigman
Does anyone else find it strange that the page containing this video also has
a "send anonymous tip" link, which claims "we don't track anything, not even
your ip address."

And of course the headline "modern media is often wrong, vapid, and easy to
manipulate" is a little more sensational (and click generating) than, say,
"Ryan Holiday claims some media outlets have biased incentives"

Which leads me to the amusing possibility that Ryan Holiday did not actually
do those things, but is manipulating the media into thinking he did, which of
course would prove his point.

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mariuolo
These days there's also less time to verify facts.

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rbzn999
Extremely interesting, thanks!

