When I was a kid CNN used to do this: they would invite a single climate scientist and a single climate change skeptic and have them make their points on equal time. CNN would then say “who’s right? You decide.” And the program would end.
This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen as a failure of journalism.
Given the lessons learned, I wouldn’t be so quick to replicate that experience with a website.
Sorry, I have to respectfully disagree. This is the model that PBS Nightly News takes: let both sides of an issue talk and treat everyone respectfully.
Compare this to MSNBC and Fox News whose business models are really the same: cater to their viewers’ dogma/bubble and reinforce biases, and don’t try to introduce new ideas because it is bad for their business.
I don’t live in the US, so please take what I’m saying with a grain of salt. I imagine you are a smart and decent person on the other side of this screen.
Usually print media is considered higher quality journalism than TV media. There are numerous studies that show reading print media leads to people being more informed than just watching TV news. Whether this is correlation or causation I can’t really say.
My understanding of both Fox and MSNBC is they are entertainment programs, not so much news programs. I’m not sure it’s fair to compare those to anything in print, nor do I think it’s entirely possible.
A good news article might present both sides of a story, but try to fact-check claims by both sides, and bring in supporting evidence. That’s the key differentiating factor of quality journalism - helping bring facts to the forefront rather than let people on either side spin the facts for their purposes.
Print media is akin to software released on DVDs - a lot more testing (fact checking), approvals (Editorial decisions) need to happen due to the perceived finality of the medium.
TV on the other hand is like SaaS - continious integration and deployment. Release first and apologize later if needed.
I think you've got a witty metaphor here, but after mulling it over:
Doesn't CI rely on robust testing to ensure buggy software doesn't make it into production? I'm not sure the fire-and-forget of the 24/7 news cycle lends itself to a comparison to continuous deployment, as there is a strong bias to 'deliver now' given competition to break the news first, and it's hard to build in 'automated testing' (vetting?) of content.
I think the world would be better off if no one ever referred to anything they watched on TV as “news” any more and kept it that news is something you read that can be cited and referenced.
>> “ Fox and MSNBC is they are entertainment programs”
No, maybe to you, but to vast amounts of people, millions of people, they watch a singular source for news and to them, that is the news.
In the US, since you’re referring to them, the news legally used to have to allow all sides of an issues to present their views. In the 1980s, the laws changed, and that is how news became so one-side.
They are news entertainment not just to him, pretty much all the mainstream sources are news entertainment. They're not objective. This argument seems like calling breakfast cereal breakfast whereas it's marketed as part of a complete breakfast. The differences are subtle, like the WHO is a political organization that covers medical topics. A decent write up of the broadcast transition: https://www.medialit.org/reading-room/whatever-happened-news
I would argue mainstream media is literally propaganda, or at least the US government is legally allowed to broadcast propaganda [1] — either directly via direct government intervention— or like what is now known to be the case in Turkey, for example, where parties buy out the media to gain favor from a given political group.
My point is that the majority of people actually watching these news outlets see it as news, not entertainment or propaganda.
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EDIT: Reviewed your CML link from spring of 1990, interesting read, but really fails to do critical analysis of the specific regulatory changes by name, what impact changes had, etc. Beyond that, stating obvious, it fails to cover all the material events since 1990.
Ah, thanks for the clarification. I see and completely agree with your points. Everybody believing something that's wrong doesn't make it right, critical thinking is down and I believe that there's far too many distractions for people to stay on top of things (it's a full time job following politics).
As misleading as a particular spin of a story might be, those perspectives are still valid in the sense they connect with what is important to their readers.
I'd like to see a news app that has the facts and sensationalism separated, and then a reference to a more relevant fact/story that relates more directly to what a particular spin was getting at. So I guess feed their bubble with more accurate stories.
For example does it make sense to present advocates for science and pseudo-science on the same level, with equal weight?
Putting a Biologist who explains Evolution on the same pedestal on equal time as a Priest who believes in Intelligent Design creates a false sense of balance between these viewpoints, even though these viewpoints are fundamentally different in their very basic quality.
You can spin this further to illustrate this point: racism, religion, false promises, lies, mental illnesses.
We can spin it the other way too: Should people be fed only with information approved by some TV boards or government committees? Are we adults expected to vote, but not allowed and/or trusted anymore to make our own mind on what we believe in?
And even more importantly do you realize that in such world it's far more likely that only a priest will get invited to a TV show, not the biologist? Because that's the "how far" that I'm afraid of, fundamentalism that believes that the only way is to force "the truth" upon people, and it's of course always their truth.
There is a middle ground between presenting one-and-only-one viewpoint or presenting every possible viewpoint with implied equal validity.
For example: Given two commentators, if one is arguing that TV boards and government committees are supposed to be populated by and representative of the general population and the other arguing that TV boards and government committees are populated by crab people secretly supporting the illuminati; the discussion should be about how effectively TV boards and government committees are being filled by the general population and how effective they are at articulating societal consensus related to important issues.
In the "gotta hear both sides" world, rational discussion is dragged off the table by the notion that every issue has two equally valid sides no matter how absurd one "side" might be.
I think that crazy stuff is taking over the TV more because it's purposefully pushed by TV stations in a run to compete with all reality shows than because of giving voice to the both sides. Just look at the History channel that has nothing to do with history anymore, but it's all about aliens, Illuminati, Masons, Hitler's secret weapons (actually that one was interesting), etc. It's a lite fantasy entertainment that is cheap to make and it sells well, TV equivalent of pulp fiction, and channels are pushing it very intentionally.
I agree with your sentiment. There are two sides/extremes to this, both of which are undesirable or even harmful.
But were revealing a more fundamental issue here: Where are the checks and balances of the media?
As it stands now, we've got two possible solutions:
1. Censorship, which I find dangerous and shortsighted.
2. The media itself, which results in a 'who yells the loudest' kind of culture.
This issue bleeds into all kind of problems with propaganda, advertising, fake-news, bias, ideology, lies, scams, click-bait and other kind of bullshit.
In this discussion we've been talking as if there was some kind of sane regulation of these things. But there isn't really.
All of this stuff erodes trust and creates trenches. Sometimes it feels like it is getting worse. People have been talking about how Google Search is getting weaker on this site. There is so much more noise and bullshit today than there ever was, because we're accreting information w/o distinction.
There are projects, which try to make fact-checking easier for example, new kind of platforms and ideas to foster real debate. But those things are still on the fringe.
This is a massive, important and unsolved problem I think.
A number of European public broadcasters have some sort of balance rule along these lines. It can get pretty weird.
A memorable example, in Ireland, during the campaign for the referendum to legalise same-sex marriage, was a radio news article where they were talking to someone in the hotel industry about the potential impact on the industry from wedding bookings. Because of the balance rule, they then had to have on one of the three available complete lunatics they had for all discussions of same-sex marriage to rant about how the gays were going to transgender all the unborn babies or something (due to all political parties supporting the amendment, and the Catholic Church staying out of it, there were a very small number of public figures available to go on the radio/tv for 'balance', and most of them were conspiracy theorists).
Some broadcasters have recently changed the rules around certain subjects; for instance the BBC no longer invites climate change denialists or creationists for 'balance' in most contexts.
I'm uncertain how I feel about it. It can produce truly bizarre results, like the marriage one I mentioned, but it does seem useful in some cases. A major concern I'd have about it is that it certainly _is_ used to spread misinformation and conspiracy theories, especially where one side of the argument is "basically everyone" and the other side is a weird fringe, or where the natural proponents of one side are sitting it out (common on social issues in Ireland, where the Catholic Church is skittish about opposing liberalisation too visibly).
"Of course there are reasons why a gubernatorial election should not be decided by a ski race, but are there also reasons why it should? For the sake of fairness, we’ve brought in two experts with opposite opinions, who will now have equal time to just say those opinions, because that’s what news is."
I mean honestly I think the person advocating for the ski-race should probably get more time since that's the stance I am, and the audience presumably, are least familiar with.
There are some good faith and sound mind tests that should be applied here but if someone wants to genuinely make a case for choosing a political leader via athletic competition (which has no basis in history at all, nope) then why not hear them out? What are you afraid of?
Honestly I'm not convinced. What approach is better then, to invite only the side that you like? If you invite only one side you'll get to hear only one side of the story, it's that simple - and there's far too many subjects that are genuinely still worth a debate - it's not all about climate changes and 5G conspiracies. Journalists are just not proficient enough in the various subjects discussed on TV to be able to counter-argument their guests' theories in a live talk show. So you invite the expert from the other side and expect your guests to do the live fact-checking of the other side's claims for you. It works very good for politicians during the election campaigns, why wouldn't it work for science or any other subject?
It is definitely possible to have reasonable debate where both sides are presented equally.
But ruling out absurd ideas is incredibly important.
If you want to present a discussion on "Selecting sides for the news: How much restriction is too much?" Should the sides be "Industry consensus vs societal consensus" or should you make sure that the "Any censorship is intellectual theft and every news outlet must comply with individual requests for people to state their positions on the topic" side is treated the same as the first two?
The approach needs follow through. If you have both sides just say their sides, and not have arbiters that probe each side, then it’s pointless.
Have them both on, and then probe, and even make a decision. The viewers can still choose, but it is much more of an investigation than politely taking turns.
The current status quo on the internet is infinitely worse than that though.
The internet and social media allow you to ignore the correct conclusion because it makes a person uncomfortable with the idea that they could be wrong when everything they read reinforces that incorrect conclusion.
By far the worst actor I've seen is (old media) Rush Limbaugh. It's hard to believe that Rush could believe that America faces any threats (e.g. war, crime, economic, environmental) other than the "Democrat party." You'd imagine that he wants to see a system more like Japan (liberalism with one party) or China (one party, no rights, no dissent.)
More generally I see the problem of "spamming the agenda", combined with the "if it bleeds it leads" tendency of the media.
Before Trump ran for president CNN's ratings were in the toilet, and it lumbered on between school shootings and MH370. To report on things like that you might have to take the Redeye from Atlanta to a flyover state, but today you can sit your ass in Atlanta or Washington DC and just cover 'what trump said', and 'what somebody said about what trump said'.
Since the election, the news has seemed to be "broken" in the way that a "clock" breaks. Arstechnica's Dealmaster always has a sale on Amazon Fire devices, Anker power banks, Xbox Gold, and whatever craptop Lenovo has a surplus over. The banner on CNN often seems to go unchanged for weeks. (e.g. "TRUMP WANTED TO FIRE MULLER")
COVID-19 was the first real news in a long term, but there is an obsession about "what trump said" compared to the other 300 million Americans. Trump doesn't really care if it is good or bad news, he just wants to be in the news, and if he held a press conference and nobody came, that would bring him to tears.
Similarly there is always some article pushed by a right wing group that says there is too much occupational licensing in the U.S (maybe true, but the same editorial turns up every month as if it was fresh) or that there is a trade-off between economic efficiency and inequality. (e.g. the evidence is that if you have too much inequality people tilt the scales, rich people buy T-bills depressing interest rates, and try to keep the action for themselves and their children... One of those reasons why Stalin invented the Purge)
> This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen as a failure of journalism.
Is there data that show CNN debates on climate change correlate with a decrease in belief in climate change? This sounds like folk lore rather than reality to me, but I could be wrong.
You're questioning the conclusion rather than the premise(s). It's problem more helpful to look at the premises rather than extrapolating into an argument about the impacts of a particular debate style on popular opinion.
I didn't want to extend his comment to saying more than it was, or debate his beliefs on what good news is. That's an ethical debate and is always situational on what the news is about, who's watching the news, and when they're watching the news.
I'm amazed how many people responded to you with this broken idea of "let's hear everybody out."
Broken because the talent of listeners to fully evaluate every statement is not distributed evenly.
Germany and Europe learned this the very hard way after WWI and they drew consequences after WWII.
Yes, I fully agree with you: not all opinions are created equal. Because some are scientifically accepted while others are scientifically rejected. Some are philanthropic, some are antisocial.
And we have to take a stance if we want a more humane World, and media have to preselect if we don't want war.
Keep in mind in the old days people were probably arguing this exact point when saying we shouldn't invite people arguing to free slaves or let women into higher education, because "they are so obviously wrong it's harmful to even listen to them, African Americans do not have the mental acumen to survive in the wild, slavery is compassionate! You're arguing for their deaths!"
Anytime people argue about having a authoritarian dedicator style of hard line "DO NOT QUESTION THIS EVER" should remember you might end up on the other side of the fence.
We should always listen to the other side. History has shown people can believe ridiculous things for a long time and treat it as common sense.
I am showing my age when I remember PBS having an entire show where two sides discussed an important issue of domestic or international concern. It was called "The Advocates"[0]. It ran for five years, and included a moderator and two teams that basically had a debate as a TV show. Michael Dukakis, who later was the Democratic nominee for president, was one of the moderators. (Dukakis' Wikipedia page has no mention that he was on national TV for years before running for president, which is pretty odd.) My understanding is that The Advocates was a result of the fairness doctrine, where television licensees had to show both sides of a subject. When the fairness doctrine went away, so did that show. At the end of every debate, viewers were encouraged to write in about which side they thought won. One reason I read for the demise of the show was that the letters received pretty consistently favored the right wing argument.
The modern spin on The Advocates is Intelligence Squared[2].
I used to watch some of these IQ debates in college, they can be really good.
The longer format and strong moderation really lend themselves to interesting discussions, and you can learn a lot. One of my favourite debates of this format (though not IQ) is Peter Thiel vs Eric Schmidt (then executive chairman of Google) arguing about whether Google was still capable of innovation [2012]:
This is literally what news is supposed to do — that is enable multiple & unbiased perspectives on a topic, and if necessary, give equal time to bias opposing views.
Otherwise you end up with the “ministry of truth” — and we all know how that worked out.
I wonder if it’s interesting to collect a ton of article and compare them for similarity and where they deviate. So you get an article that shows agreement and deviation.
Ouch. Accounts that post like this get banned here regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and please don't ever do this here again. (We had to warn you about personal attacks once before.)
So they present the facts and let them speak for themselves? Sounds like they had it right. Are you saying if they don't present their opinion its a failure of journalism? I think this new way of defining journalism is a bad standard.
Picking two people on the opposite extremes of a topic with a moderator to stop the conversation, often unsuccessfully, from devolving into a shouting match is not the same thing as presenting the facts and letting them speak for themselves. In fact a 10-minute TV segment is not a great venue for any complex presentation of views.
The level of knowledge needed to adequately parse an expert's opinion, evaluate it, check its assumptions, research the evidence supporting those assumptions, follow up with research on the validity of that research... well, it takes a lot longer than a TV segment. In a TV segment like this, the "expert" with the better grasp on rhetoric and rhetorical devices "wins" in terms of audience agreement, and factual & verifiable basis of opinions is a distant second in terms of influence on audience agreement.
Or strike that: it's probably a distant 3rd: 1st place influence is whether or not it agrees with a viewer's current opinion. 2nd would be rhetorical ability, 3rd would be any actual evidence.
So, by all means let the facts speak for themselves-- just don't let yourself believe that is readily possible in a TV segment like those referenced.
People don’t know what is fact and what is fiction. Giving 50/50 air time to climate scientists and climate change deniers is on one side presenting facts and on the other total bullshit and saying “hey these are both valid opinions- you decide”.
This isn't climate scientists vs deniers this is major news organisations on both sides; both of which are guilty of presenting total bullshit as facts. Allowing them to be viewed side-by-side permits users to to get a better image of who is willing to miss-lead on which subjects and get facts that have been omitted by the other side.
Just because one side might be more willing to mislead doesn't mean that their stance on a topic is more likely to be the incorrect one.
Showing which news sources employ the most underhanded rhetorical devices may be a positive goal in itself, but it doesn't, by itself, help the audience make their own determination on an issue. Even more of an issue is that a viewer's determination of which source is more willing to mislead or omit relevant details is much more likely to be influenced by prior opinion than by the content of either source.
Basically, the problem isn't, in itself, biased news sourced, its that the format is fundamentally ill-suited towards giving individuals enough information to come to a reasonably well-supported position on just about any topic of moderate complexity. Further take any topic that appears to be of simple complexity and scratch the surface a bit and there's a decent chance it will turn out to be not so simple.
Respectfully; it does. Not 100%, but for the most part it does.
The moment you have to lie to make your point you concede that your argument never had a grounding in reality.
Even if putting that aside, the utility of bringing to light underhand tactics isn't meant to be used in and by itself but instead serves as one of many aspects of debate to help decide what is right/wrong true/false.
Regarding the poor suited nature of news for getting the full story across to reader I fully agree but again just because a tool isn't perfect, it doesn't mean it gets cast aside; more perspectives (and these are mainstream organisations) on a subject doesn't hurt at all.
I agree that the side that is more deceptive & manipulative in their persuasive tactics will tend to be the ones with less potential substance, my point was only that such a scenarios isn't necessarily the case. Even an "honest" person can find themselves coming to the correct conclusions for the wrong, faulty reasoning. In such cases They are only accidentally correct. In the hands of someone that understands that facts don't win arguments, but none the less believes their "side" is correct, it is all too easy to justify sensational, emotional arguments, rhetorical flourishes, etc in an "ends justify the means" sort of way.
I don't have an answer on the issue of news organizations being poorly suited here. On the one hand, there is an appeal to your the idea you convey that something is better than nothing. However, that status quo is also what has lead us to the current situation. There is a correlation with the rise of 24-hour news networks and the internet with the increased vitriolic, polarizing, and propagandist tone things. The need to fill air time was a big part of that. I don't wholly think that was the cause. There was some trend in that direction already:
Note to readers: This next part is not intended to cast blame only in one direction. It is simply one concrete example of the type of things that became commonplace.
Around 1990 Newt Gingrich penned a memo for titled "Language: A Key Mechanism for Control" It went on to explain how language could be used to manipulate people, complete with a guide for how to use demonizing dehumanizing language against political opponents. Over the years it was systematically disseminated through his party, and when Newt became house Speaker around 1995 he literally made it required reading. Shortly after is around the time that the term "liberal" went from being a fairly neutral description like "conservative" to being a hated moniker for a political opponent. (Though right-wing, alt-right, etc., fill that purpose. now for the other side)
This was extremely harmful to the overall mission of informing people and created a false balance between sides which are not equally valid. Today, this is almost universally seen as a failure of journalism.
Given the lessons learned, I wouldn’t be so quick to replicate that experience with a website.