<story><title>Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them</title><url>https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/trust-in-media-low-misinform-mislead-biased-republicans-democrats-poll-gallup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jawns</author><text>I formerly worked as a news editor at a metro daily newspaper, and before that I worked at various other news outlets and magazines.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s the reality: The average journalist values the truth and desires to report on the news with accuracy and fairness.  I worked with a bunch of really talented reporters and editors throughout my career, and almost without exception, they highly valued those things.  Moreover, many have an anti-authoritarian bent, and that leads to a desire to expose corruption, rather than protect it.&lt;p&gt;But ...&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen publishers kill stories because they thought it would make advertisers unhappy.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen senior execs put pressure on editors to downplay stories that painted the region in a bad light.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen a political campaign refuse to permit a certain reporter to attend their campaign events because they didn&amp;#x27;t like that the reporter wasn&amp;#x27;t acting like a PR tool.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen budgets for &amp;quot;watchdog journalism&amp;quot; become slowly starved, in favor of clickbait.&lt;p&gt;And unfortunately, most of the public doesn&amp;#x27;t see the difference between the reporters on the ground (who are, by and large, genuinely trying to do a good job) and the publishers and other people running the business (who are really trying to make money and exert influence).&lt;p&gt;Granted, there are certainly news orgs where objectivity and accuracy are not ideals that are valued, and unfortunately that&amp;#x27;s where a lot of eyeballs end up these days, because so many people just want their existing biases to be re-inforced.&lt;p&gt;But what America really needs is more media literacy, so we can better distinguish the former from the latter.  We, as a society, are SO BAD at this.  Our B.S. detectors have lots of false positives and false negatives.  We look to the wrong signals to determine whether a news report is trustworthy.  We fail to evaluate information critically as long as it validates our pre-existing views.  We have a hard time separating facts from opinions.&lt;p&gt;This lack of media literacy is worrisome enough, but now we&amp;#x27;ve got political leaders capitalizing on the fact that we&amp;#x27;re bad at this and actively trying to delegitimize the media (as if it&amp;#x27;s a single thing) because it serves their own purposes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fidgewidge</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; The average journalist values the truth and desires to report on the news with accuracy and fairness&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;The average journalist &lt;i&gt;thinks&lt;/i&gt; they value the truth, accuracy and fairness. Observed behavior is very different to this flattering self portrait which is why they aren&amp;#x27;t trusted.&lt;p&gt;Actual behaviors of real journalists that create distrust which can&amp;#x27;t be blamed on advertisers or editors:&lt;p&gt;- Accepting large grants from billionaire foundations that are tied to pushing specific agendas and views. Example: look at how much money the Gates Foundation gives out in journalism grants tied to his personal agenda.&lt;p&gt;- Publishing stories that contain obvious &amp;quot;errors&amp;quot; (invariably convenient for their pre-existing agenda). Example: the NYT published a front page that consisted solely of the names of 1000 people who had supposedly died of COVID. It was meant to scare people and it took some rando on twitter about half an hour to notice that the 6th name on the list was of a person who had been murdered.&lt;p&gt;- Refusing to admit when they&amp;#x27;ve misled people in the past, disinterest in publishing post mortems of their failures. Example: the lack of contrition over the Russiagate conspiracy theory.&lt;p&gt;- Point blank refusal to challenge certain types of sources because they think it&amp;#x27;s immoral to do so. Example: the BBC decided some years ago that climate change was &amp;quot;settled science&amp;quot; and that it was morally wrong to report on anything that might reduce faith in the &amp;quot;consensus&amp;quot;. This is the opposite of the classical conception of journalism (challenging authority, digging up scandals, get both sides of the story etc).&lt;p&gt;- Relying heavily on sources that are widely known to be discredited. Example: Fauci stated early on in COVID that he lied about masks in official statements to the press, specifically to manipulate people&amp;#x27;s behavior. This did not stop the press using him as a trusted authoritative source. Another example: the way the press constantly cites academic &amp;quot;experts&amp;quot; whose papers are known to not replicate or which have major methodology problems.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s way more.</text></comment>
<story><title>Half of Americans now believe that news organizations deliberately mislead them</title><url>https://fortune.com/2023/02/15/trust-in-media-low-misinform-mislead-biased-republicans-democrats-poll-gallup/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jawns</author><text>I formerly worked as a news editor at a metro daily newspaper, and before that I worked at various other news outlets and magazines.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s the reality: The average journalist values the truth and desires to report on the news with accuracy and fairness.  I worked with a bunch of really talented reporters and editors throughout my career, and almost without exception, they highly valued those things.  Moreover, many have an anti-authoritarian bent, and that leads to a desire to expose corruption, rather than protect it.&lt;p&gt;But ...&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen publishers kill stories because they thought it would make advertisers unhappy.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen senior execs put pressure on editors to downplay stories that painted the region in a bad light.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen a political campaign refuse to permit a certain reporter to attend their campaign events because they didn&amp;#x27;t like that the reporter wasn&amp;#x27;t acting like a PR tool.&lt;p&gt;* I&amp;#x27;ve seen budgets for &amp;quot;watchdog journalism&amp;quot; become slowly starved, in favor of clickbait.&lt;p&gt;And unfortunately, most of the public doesn&amp;#x27;t see the difference between the reporters on the ground (who are, by and large, genuinely trying to do a good job) and the publishers and other people running the business (who are really trying to make money and exert influence).&lt;p&gt;Granted, there are certainly news orgs where objectivity and accuracy are not ideals that are valued, and unfortunately that&amp;#x27;s where a lot of eyeballs end up these days, because so many people just want their existing biases to be re-inforced.&lt;p&gt;But what America really needs is more media literacy, so we can better distinguish the former from the latter.  We, as a society, are SO BAD at this.  Our B.S. detectors have lots of false positives and false negatives.  We look to the wrong signals to determine whether a news report is trustworthy.  We fail to evaluate information critically as long as it validates our pre-existing views.  We have a hard time separating facts from opinions.&lt;p&gt;This lack of media literacy is worrisome enough, but now we&amp;#x27;ve got political leaders capitalizing on the fact that we&amp;#x27;re bad at this and actively trying to delegitimize the media (as if it&amp;#x27;s a single thing) because it serves their own purposes.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cm2187</author><text>None of the reasons you mention cover what I observe every day in news (tv and printed) from all sides: stories not fitting the narrative being sinkholed, hit pieces on political opponents, puff pieces on friendly political figures, half of the truth always being presented (never both sides of an argument). The ideological bias is obvious and I don&amp;#x27;t believe this is honest journalists being coerced into this behaviour. In fact things like the various NYT drama spread over twitter when someone writes anything that deviates from the dogma shows this seems to be coming from the newsroom, not the editors or advertisers.&lt;p&gt;Journalists are welcome to burn their own reputation, it is theirs. But don&amp;#x27;t blame others.</text></comment>