Back in the late-2000's, I worked at CNN on a 12-month contract. While there, I built a predecessor to the current "Breaking News" website banner.
At least at the time, Turner did not allow contractors to extend beyond the 12-month mark. So when my contract came up, they offered to convert me over to perm. I declined, because my interests lay more on the backend side of the tech stack, and my role there had been far more frontend-focused than I wanted for the long term.
Fast-forward 10 to 15 years, and I've had a lot of experiences that I'm very proud of. I've built concurrent systems that scaled to impressive levels of data. I've built event busses that moved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of financial transactions per year. Etc.
STILL, "my son built the Breaking News banner on cnn.com!" is the thing that my mom tells her friends. It's the only thing that my wife ever understood about what I do for a living.
There is such power in the visual, and in the consumer-side. In a very real sense, this silly thing was the crowning achievement of my career... and it was about two days of work and a few hundred lines of HTML and jQuery.
With the exception of my father I make more money than my entire extended family and partner's family. Doesn't stop them from striking a dismissive and disdainful tone when talking about my work.
My mother, in her 80s, still complains that she can’t tell her friends what I do for a living. This is despite any number of press articles, selling companies and the like. She wants the classic Indian mother straightforward explanation (doctor, engineer, lawyer etc).
I feel ya man. When I worked at reddit I did mostly backend, set up the entire AWS cloud deployment and the datacenter before that, ran the databases, etc.
But when someone asks what I did at reddit, the thing that gets the most interest is, "I made the thing that puts the link title in the URL".
We added titles to the URL for SEO purposes -- Google told us that search terms in URLs rank higher. That's why all the blogging software puts the post title in the URL.
Fun fact that, it's actually optional on reddit. You can put anything you want there and it will still work. These two are the same:
The reason we made you unable to edit titles is to avoid the bait and switch. Getting a bunch of upvotes and then changing it. If you want to say, "well how about in the first five minutes" our counterargument was, "just delete the post and make a new one". It kept the software simpler.
Besides technical reaosns, it could be to avoid bait-and-switch schemes, where a lot of engagement is built around one headline, and then it's changed to something with a completely different meaning.
I think it twitter's case it was architectural. By treating tweets as immutable the could publish them on a pipeline and not worry about duplicate copies around the system being out of sync.
My favorite one was when we knew we had to take the site down for a few hours, so we made a page with curated content a-la-Slashdot where you couldn't vote or comment and it just stayed that way for a few hours. We just picked some of our favorite sites.
But we didn't warn the sites we were linking to and some of them got quite a shock with the sudden influx of traffic!
> There is such power in the visual, and in the consumer-side.
This is, unfortunately, true with managers and execs. Do some backend thing, no one notices as long as the site doesn't go down. But do some flashy thing on the front-end, let's give so-and-so a promotion and a big bag of money. This is even true of tech companies where you would assume more tech-oriented managers exist. But sadly, no. They have to pitch your work to higher ups and the higher ups just have their eyes glazed over when they hear about databases and caching and transactions per second.
Related. I also have a similar experience when I worked as a contractor for [big ecommerce] for simply building a JavaScript loader that loaded ads on their ecommerce platform using JSONP. That ad loader got millions of views and pretty much seen everytime you shopped online at the site and surprisingly that's what gets most people excited when I tell them about my experience thinking it's such a crowning achievement as well.
I've got a similar proud moment. Back in the Flash days, I built the flash player skin for a starwars.com player that sat in their homepage for a while.
Since then, I've built way more complicated things I'm proud of. But nothing beats that during beer time with friends .
Can anyone help me understand why this comment is being downvoted? As a community I thought we were well against over-use of JavaScript, and we should be calling it out as necessary.
I did not downvote this, but I would speculate that factors might include:
1. Poor reading comprehension (i.e. speaking in the present tense, about an implementation that's clearly described as a "predecessor" from 10-15 years ago?).
2. Unnecessary snark (i.e. one "is not surprised" that a web page used HTML and Javascript?).
3. The bizarre possibility that parent might be mistaking the website and the television broadcast, even though the original comment specifies "website banner". See factor #1 above.
4. You are grossly mistaken about there being an overwhelming consensus against Javascript? Or that snarky parent comment "calls it out" in an effective manner?
[Discovery CEO] Zaslav and mentor and investor John Malone have been public about their push to bring CNN back towards hard news coverage, and away from progressive commentary.
I had missed that. That's very welcome - I hope they succeed. I imagine it could be very hard to pull this off after a ~decade of whatever CNN has been doing though.
More context: Discovery and WarnerMedia (former CNN parent company) merged back in April. The resulting entity "Warner Bros. Discovery" is led by David Zaslav, Discovery CEO since 2006.
But if they're moving away from commentary (progressive or otherwise), how are they going to fill their schedule with "hard news" while also not over-hyping? Lack of real news is the whole reason they started over-hyping and also why they pad out their schedule with commentary.
The announcement reads like "We're going to have our cake, and eat it too." Sounds great! But is that actually possible?
There's never a lack of relevant news. There is a lack of news that's interesting as a form of entertainment.
That's why it would be such a challenging turnaround. I don't think a competent and serious news channel can work as a profit center.
I guess CNN worked really well economically in the 80s/90s when there weren't many options for people to get news fast, and then gradually declined after people got online.
Some news is relevant to everybody, but I think most news is not relevant to most people most of the time. And most news that is relevant to some people won't be relevant to most people. "Six-car pileup on I-whatever" might be very relevant to me if I'm commuting on that road, but it's irrelevant to most people.
There's nothing wrong with the media running this kind of news story, a story that's relevant to some but irrelevant to most. The problem occurs when the decision is made to sensationalize the coverage of the incident, to make it interesting to everybody it isn't relevant to. And since very little is relevant to everybody, just about everything ends up getting sensationalized.
There's plenty of news sources internationally that provide interesting articles without "progressive" commentary, with instead say maybe an editorial and some explainer: Financial Times, The Economist, amongst other local sources.
Or perhaps I'm just dull.
You're right. There is plenty of subject matter for news.
What I think there isn't much of is the above in easily mined form. Serious news consumes resources (reporters, investigators, supporting crew, etc).
What passes for news today (opinion from Twitter) is virtually free and pretty endless so it's the option most go for because the other option costs serious money.
Really? Unless you're using a much broader definition of "relevant" than I use, I'm struggling to remember the last time I saw something on mainstream media that had any impact on my life whatsoever.
> I'm struggling to remember the last time I saw something on mainstream media that had any impact on my life whatsoever.
I'm in Germany. Just this week, the news have been full about new policies that went into effect on June 1 to reduce cost of living amidst inflation and energy price hikes in particular (a tax rebate on fuel, and subsidized public transit passes). There is also news about shortages of particular food items like sunflower oil and mustard. (I actually wanted to purchase mustard last week and was confused why there was so little of it. Turns out that Ukraine used to be a major supplier of mustard seeds.) Also, Coronavirus policies for the next winter are being discussed, which admittedly does not have impact on our daily lifes right now, but there will be an impact when the policies go into effect.
I don't disagree with your notion. There really is a lot of news that is non-actionable and can therefore be considered superfluous, but "I can't remember the last time" is taking it way too far in my opinion.
Agreed, but apparently not completely impossible, depending on your definition of news. C-SPAN somehow manages to have three channels of content, while mostly avoiding the hype and bias that CNN has.
> But if they're moving away from commentary (progressive or otherwise), how are they going to fill their schedule with "hard news" while also not over-hyping? Lack of real news is the whole reason they started over-hyping and also why they pad out their schedule with commentary.
Yeah. IMHO, one of the major contributing factors to America's problems is there's too little news, and too much time and space to cover it. If they're not going to fill the time with news, they'll probably just fill it with obsessive coverage of scandalous crimes (which will, in some cases, probably create conditions for more scandalous crimes by giving people ideas).
Though I suppose there's a third option that might work, but it's not news: documentaries. Air stuff that's not news, but has some newsworthy aspect (e.g. Vladimir Putin's political career, the Russian military).
Unfortunately, this seems to be something that will go the way of the JCPenney CEO removing the constant never-ending sales banners.
If this were a winning strategy, most organizations would be coalescing around it already. The question is whether CNN will be able to stay the course _despite_ the hits to revenue/growth/viewers they will take with this approach.
There are a lot of people out there, myself included, that would prefer another option for traditional journalism. For now we're stuck with only a few options when it comes to television. I'd love it if they actually stuck to this principle and covered news in an unbiased manner (or as unbiased as possible). Maybe they could even invest in the dying art of investigative journalism.
I don't have much hope that they'll make a ton of money doing this, but I also don't know how they're making money now. It seems all of their advertising is for snake oil.
>" push to bring CNN back towards hard news coverage, and away from progressive commentary."
I'd be weary about this. I don't sense CNN was somehow compelled to present progressive commentary and they now want to confront that market pressure, but rather, they employ mostly progressive journalists and that is how they choose to cover the news.
I suspect the execs will try to tone it down but progressives aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their causes. Activism and "everything is political" are fundamental aspects of their worldview.
> progressives aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their causes. Activism and "everything is political" are fundamental aspects of their worldview.
I'd agree with this 100% if it didn't pretend that this is only true of progressives. This is undeniably true about the hard right as well.
Indeed it is, but the 'hard right' doesn't exist on CNN. I wouldn't expect people to bring up the problems with progressive commentators on a thread about, say, Fox News, because they don't exist over there.
To me, in this thread with this topic, this reads as whataboutism.
The GP presented these properties as if they are unique to progressives. It's not whataboutism to point out that they aren't.
If they'd simply attributed activism and an "everything is political" attitude to CNN, that would have been reasonable since this discussion is about CNN, but they decided to expand this attribution to to "progressives", which is a very different thing.
>"The GP presented these properties as if they are unique to progressives. "
I genuinely wasn't trying to do that. The article, and discussion, was around progressives when I shared my observation and thoughts about them. Wanting to stay in focus, I kept my comment and observation about them only.
I'm genuinely surprised that by not bringing up a contrast with other political ideologies I'm perceived as believing it is unique to them.
To be honest, I think using "people" rather than "progressives" would be less insightful and would ignore a genuine perception that I, and probably many others, have with progressives as a whole. They are insistent, they are vocal, and they seem particularly driven and uncompromising when it comes to fighting for what they believe. I wanted to present this in a neutral or matter-of-fact way. It can either be seen as a negative (progressives are pushy and obstinate), or it can be seen as virtuous (progressives are relentless in the pursuit of justice).
After reading through all the comments in this thread, I get the sense that many commenters want to dismiss any perception that is remotely negative about the behavior of progressives by attributing the alleged attributes as something that, one, other groups do more, and two, something that everyone does. But in so doing, progressivism becomes something you can only ascribe unquestionably positive attributes to.
I'm not sure how to reconcile "I want to present this as neutral" with "but I also want to say, without supporting evidence, that progressives do this more."
I make absolutely no claims about being able to objectively say which side does this more, but it is clear to me that both sides do it a ton, so trying to attribute it more to one side in any significant way requires some evidence that hasn't been offered.
And for the record, I'd have made the same objection if in some alternate universe comment thread you'd tried to claim this was a particularly conservative trait too. There are unlimited examples of either side being egregiously bias-driven, insistent, vocal, uncompromising, hyper-partisan, activist, etc. There is remarkably little news on either side that's free of it. Note also that this isn't an "I will ignore that because both sides do it" argument. It's deeply disappointing in all cases.
I'm not equipped to provide the sort of evidence you're seeking. In fact, I don't know where to start. If I cited examples in recent memory, they would likely (and possibly rightly) be dismissed as anecdotal, or potentially unrepresentative (along the lines of: so and so isn't actually a progressive). I'm not sure a there is a peer reviewed study available out there, somewhere, that relates to my observation. And I don't feel like hoping on JSTOR to find one!
More broadly, one of the things I am feeling dismayed about is the increasing expectation of 'evidence' on personal observations. I have formed an opinion based on what I have seen, and I wasn't keeping track of everything that informed my perception. Indeed, even if I had, it would not be in an acceptable format because it would be too easy to dismiss for lack of academic rigor. There's something demoralizing about having ideas that you share dismissed so readily because they're not presented with a myriad of citations to back them up. Especially considering I am not sharing them in an academic setting. It also feels stifling because I want to write a few sentences without having to compile a bibliography in an attempt to rout potential naysayers.
I hope this doesn't come across as an attack - I'm just feeling very worn out.
Well, ok, that's perfectly fair, and if you want to make statements about what you personally perceive about progressives, then that's one thing, but it seemed like you were arguing fairly hard that this is "well-known" to be a fundamental part of progressivism, which is why you got some push-back. If you're just offering your personal opinion, I'll go ahead and revise my original response to, "nuh-uh." :)
Edit: would you have accepted a suggestion of changing "progressives" to "partisans" instead of changing "progressives" to "people"? That seems pretty fair to me.
I vouched for this comment when it was flagged. I assume it’s flagged because of the last couple sentences? but I don’t find them all that inflammatory and frankly, it seems kinda accurate to me.
Whether or not the assertion is correct overall? Dunno. I don’t find CNN “progressive” but I suspect the term is being used to refer to more sensational, polarized content, not actually very progressive content.
I wasn't trying to be inflammatory or derogatory towards progressives or progressivism in general. I wanted to go back and edit my comment with a little more detail, mainly that I sensed the "progressive commentary" as mentioned in the article itself is likely a result of CNN having hired so many progressive journalists, rather than some directive to cover the news with more progressive commentary that is now being walked back.
By extension, progressives by-and-large tend to be very active and vocal. This is, I believe, a key component as to why their positions and worldviews are so well known and so frequently seen. Activism is a virtue for progressives, and they place a serious emphasis on making sure their voices and perspectives are heard. I don't think it's wrong or disparaging to say that and I suspect I'm not the only one with this observation. I'm commenting on their approach, not condemning them for it.
it does come off as a bit one sided becuase the implication is that when you say "progressives do this" you are also implying that non-progressives don't--even if its not explicit. As someone who sits squarely in the middle, I see this heavily on both sides. A better formulation would be "partisans aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their causes." If they had hired more conservative journalists they'd have the exact ssame issue but in the opposite direction.
(full disclosure--I haven't watched CNN or any other new channel since the Iraq war, i.e. 19 years ago. The all burned their bridges with me then, and I've never been back, so I'm assuming its true that CNN has a tilt left. I've never seen it myself.)
In my view, I have two critiques about mainstream-ish progressive liberal politics.
1. Insistence that everything is political and politics is everything. I’m sorry, sometimes folks are just reading into things too hard. From poorly shoehorned diatribes about sexism in second-rate Vox articles, to tirelessly policing vocabulary to avoid impure etymology, progressives outpace conspiracy theorists in their desire to pattern-match everything into their own personal political causes.
2. Intolerance to tolerance of other viewpoints. Again, it feels like a purity thing: “I can’t be friends with someone who is friends with someone who said something problematic once.” I’m not saying cutting people out of your life based on their bad behavior is bad, but the guilt-by-association to judge other people’s friends and acquaintances I find detestable and very cult-like.
I don’t think these are fringe behaviors on the left right now. I think they’re widespread in fairly mainstream, if not quite the most mainstream, of media, and common among heavy social media users. The closest right-leaning analogues very fringe and much less influential.
Of course, there’s another thing that’s tiring, which is having to constantly reassure everyone that I am still very liberal even though I critique left-leaning folks.
>From poorly shoehorned diatribes about sexism in second-rate Vox articles
This got really bad during the Trump presidency. One could be reading the least "political" article imaginable, and suddenly see something condemnatory about Trump that smugly assumes that everyone reading surely agrees. Nowhere was safe: Film reviews, book reviews, articles about cooking, travelogues, minor human-interest stories, you name it.
>Of course, there’s another thing that’s tiring, which is having to constantly reassure everyone that I am still very liberal even though I critique left-leaning folks.
During the aforementioned Trump years I thought at times about creating /r/ihatetrumpbut, a collection of articles/posts/comments in which the author felt the need to declaim "I hate Trump, but [something Trump/US government did may not necessarily be 100% fascist/evil/a bad idea]". Hey, maybe I'll get more motivation to pull the trigger in November 2024!
You're right when you divide the population into the extreme ends, but this doesn't prove symmetry.
I don't have the link at hand but studies demonstrate that progressives in general are far more politically interested and active versus anybody center to right of center, minus the far right.
In that group center to center-right, there's less idealism and more pragmatism, and sometimes plain indifference.
this has more to do with the “ Intolerance to tolerance of other viewpoints”. The right isn’t gonna come to the discussions until the left calms the argumentative behavior. I’m center right and any discussion with someone on the left almost always gets pushed into argument territory.
Yeah i dont see how you can get CNN back to neutral when the staff is not. Not unless you are willing to fire basically everyone. Even the IT and non journalistic staff probably lean that way sense they dont pay exactly great for those roles.
Is anything you're attributing to "progressives" not a quality of "conservatives" as well? Attributing flaws in a system to one particular group is a common rhetorical attack.
People that choose a career journalism are likely motivated by thinking these issues matter, in which case having an opinion is hard to escape, or by self promotion, in which case they'll say anything that draws attention. I suspect TV leans toward the latter because it's such a shallow medium.
>"Is anything you're attributing to "progressives" not a quality of "conservatives" as well?"
I'm going to go out on a limb and speculate - keeping in mind I am not talking about all conservatives or even trying to estimate a percentage of them who fit this observation.
There are many conservatives who hold an "I just want to be left alone" or "the free market will fix it" mindset. The result is that when they are upset about something, they tend to act individually and "vote with their wallet" while hoping that the silent majority will follow suit. This is not to say that conservatives don't organize protests or mass boycotts, just that it seems like they don't do so as readily because they expect the free market to produce the pressure that brings about change. Again, this isn't true for every conservative cause and certainly not the major ones like the 2nd Amendment or overturning Roe v Wade.
I contrast that with how progressives tend to see problems as structural or systemic. In this worldview, they have to be active and vocal to dismantle these systems in order to bring about change. If they don't, the system will continue functioning because that is how it was designed. Because it takes much more energy to reform or replace a system than it does to maintain one, I sense progressives necessarily have to be active and vocal.
Broadly speaking, I believe that conservatives expect that "system will fix it" while progressives expect to "fix the system".
You seem to be thinking of a libertarian wing of conservatism? My impression is that this is a relatively small portion of the American right.
The loudest parts of the conservative movement in my lifetime have been religious conservatives, tea partiers, and now Trump nationalism. All of them have used protest, partisan media, and boycott to push their ideals.
Perhaps you're comparing the conservative community you are in with progressives on TV? In which case I'd suggest that liberal communities have a mirror impression when looking at conservatives on TV.
> The end game for many progressives is things like Mao China.
Doesn't that smack of demonization to you? It has nothing to do with progressivism, any more than all doctors lead to Joseph Mengele. Get out there and read some progressive things; go to the source; stop reading what others say about progressive ideas. It's nothing at all like what you imagine; progressive people are primarly just people, with common sense and opinions, like you.
I know a lot of progressives and I've not met one that idolizes Mao's China, Venezuela, or the USSR. When other countries are brought up as examples to learn from it's Nordic countries and other industrialized, capitalist democracies.
> The end game for many progressives is things like Mao China.
This is less true then “the end game for many conservatives is things like Nazi Germany”; sure, Maoists (and, if one takes “like” that somewhat more broadly, Leninist and other authoritarian Communists) exist, but even among the radical Left they are outnumbered by Anarchists, Libertarian Socialists, and other anti-authoritarians, and the whole of the radical Left is outnumbered by DemSocs and SocDems within the “progressive” space (really, the radical Left and progressives both generally view themselves as different groups, but I suspect “progressive” is being used more broadly as “people to the left of the center of the Democratic Party”.)
OTOH, fairly overt authoritarian White Nationalists/Supremacists (and overlapping but not identical authoritarian theocrats) make up a lot bigger share of the local right (Republican and further right) than authoritarian Communists do of the local left (Democratic and further left.)
But, while we should not ignore the dangerous agenda of certain extremists of either side, and while extremists actions may occasionally merit a particular focussed response, it doesn't really make sense to judge either side by its radical fringe alone.
This is very weird comment. You are talking about progressives as if this is the only large grouping that is vocal or active. Insert conservatives, environmentalists, fundamentalists, jihadists, etc. and the statements remain equally valid. Your point essentially boils down to saying water is wet. Your comments pertain to all politically, philosophically, and religiously motivated groups.
>"You are talking about progressives as if this is the only large grouping that is vocal or active. "
I'm surprised it is being received this way, mainly because I specifically tried to avoid making comparisons to other groups so that the topic doesn't get more heated. I also wanted to avoid having my observation about progressive vocality and activism invalidated or diminished because [group xyz] is perceived as more vocal and active.
This has been a wild thread, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness of all your comments.
It's pretty interesting to me the difference between how your comments are seen vs a comment with "progressives" replaced with "conservatives". In my experience, a reply saying "well progressives do that too" (just like every response to all of your comments but about conservatives) would very quickly have several replies claiming it's just whataboutism, or just flagged (like yours was!).
You should try an experiment one day to show the bias of this site. Or don’t as your proof is already in this thread. Speak ill, even slightly, of someone on the left on HN and prepare for the onslaught, speak ill of the right and prepare for the praise.
I suspect the execs will try to tone it down but progressives aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their causes. Activism and "everything is political" are fundamental aspects of their worldview.
I have no reason to believe that CNN or FoxNews or any other media outlet is doing anything other than trying to corner whatever part of the market they are going after. Occasionally they have to shift emphasis and direction. In X years when FoxNews starts to lose its audience will people say the same thing but replace progressives with conservatives? If the employees don’t follow the corporate directives they can hire new people. It’s a business that does not have a shortage of people wanting to get rich/famous.
I would like to go back and edit my comment in order to provide more context and word my post more thoughtfully. The terseness of it was a downside, to be sure. Unfortunately it was flagged relatively quickly and I lost the opportunity to add an Edit: at the bottom.
Particularly because your quote of "If the employees don’t follow the corporate directives they can hire new people" is along the lines of something I wanted to get across but failed to do so. I believe that if CNN wants less of a 'progressive stance' they would have to hire more conservative journalists because I don't see the progressive ones as wanting to 'be less progressive', so to speak.
I try to give a generous interpretation to what people are saying but I just don’t see how your statements can be taken as anything other than derogatory to progressives.
You make the baseless claim that progressive views are well known because progressives are vocal and active. This implicitly disavows the notion that progressive views are well known for other reasons; for instance by being what people desire without said desire being the product of brainwashing. You sort of imply that their worldview (as if there is a singular worldview the majority of progressives agree with) is popular because of propagandizing. This might the the case but it need to be backed up with some convincing evidence.
You are framing the issue of CNN wanting to shift its business focus as something that will hard to do because progressives are obstinate and obsessed with being vocal and staying on message. This is demeaning and quite frankly stupid.
Tucker Carlson used to work for CNN. He found a more lucrative niche catering to right wing news junkies. He’s a showman, an entertainer. He can shift emphasis on a dime because he is a professional and likes the money/attention. The same goes for most people in show business. Framing things in terms of how progressives or conservatives are in this instance is…well, I’ll say it’s weird.
He could written the same exact point, but with extra padding, instead:
> I suspect the execs will try to tone it down but progressives aren't known for wanting to be neutral or muted about their deeply held principles, and issues critical to our democracy. They are too thoughtful, and intellectually consistent.
There is one line in the article that mentions progressive commentary. The article is talking about how CNN leadership wants to get back to “hard news” and less commentary. The comments about how “progressives” are this or that is weird and orthogonal to the article. As if CNN or any other media outlet can’t shift focus because too many of its employees are progressive. This needs a lot more justification than what has been given.
Perhaps the point should have been backed up more, but I don't see that it would have helped to remind us that conservatives and Jihadists can also be vocal or active.
That’s not my point. Bringing up how conservatives are or how any other group is would not be germane to the article without giving evidence that it is appropriate. By asserting that progressives are a certain way and inserting this into the discussion is a form of framing that is not appropriate. It is sort of like a complex question in the logic sense as it assumes a conclusion not established.
Instead of talking about how the company will shift its focus we end up talking about how hard it is to get progressives to change or to be compliant. This then establishes in some peoples’ minds that it is well known and assumed that progressives are hard to deal with. They are pig headed one might conclude. I believe the intentions are underhanded and without merit. I could be wrong.
The comment (unintentionally?) singles out progressives when the statements apply pretty equally to journalists on both sides of the spectrum. That is why it is controversial.
To quote "Stephen Colbert" (in character): "Reality has a well-known liberal bias." If you discuss racism as existing, it's liberal. If you discuss homophobia as existing, it's progressive. If you discuss the income gap, it's socialist. If you discuss gun fatalities, it's communist (somehow). It's literally impossible to discuss any social issue in the news in the context of non-white or non-male perspective without being called any sort of those phrases.
Are you saying that CNN's only problem is they've been reporting the truth too much?
Because that's not what CNN was doing. They're a mouthpiece for the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party. Maybe that's changing now but it's certainly not an accidental bias.
That's not the case at all though. Conservatives don't deny racism exists, they call out things that leading progressives say such as:
“The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” ~Ibram X. Kendi
So a conservative reads that and thinks it's not only crazy, but literally racist in the context of how Kendi proposes it should drive current policy. Whereas a progressive reads that and says yes, we need to discriminate against "privileged groups" to solve past discrimination. Those are two very different worldviews, and has nothing to do with believing whether or not racism exists. In fact, it requires progressives to use a completely different definition of the word racist to not eat their own tail.
>If you discuss homophobia as existing, it's progressive.
Again, nobody denies homophobia exists. But progressives are known to paint with a very broad brush (ie. "everyone who doesn't agree with me is a Nazi"). Similar with trans issues, where many people who say maybe biological males shouldn't compete against biological females, will have progressives brand you transphobic (and probably a Nazi).
You see this same overshooting across the board on many issues that would actually have wider support, but they go off the deep end with their craziness.
Yes, and this division makes it difficult for those of us who are economically left-wing, but feel that the modern incarnation of progressivism has lost the plot somewhat.
Especially because there is barely any representation anyway for the economic left. Instead, we have two right-wing to centre-right parties fighting over a socially conservative / socially progressive battlefield they've constructed instead. It's very frustrating.
Yes, they almost unanimously do, at least as regards anti-black racism; as of 2021, “A 53% majority of Democrats say White people benefit from advantages in society that Black people do not have. [...] Just 6% of Republicans now say White people benefit from advantages that Black people do not have.”
That's weird, because 69% of republicans said they believe more needs to be done to ensure equal rights regardless of ethnic background in the same poll.
Pew was being disingenuous, that's why. From their own data, it's actually 45% that now saw White people benefit from advantages that Black people do not have. Only 34% of republicans don't think white people benefit from advantages Black people do not have at all. (That's still a ridiculous number to me, by the way)
6% say "White people benefit a great deal from advantages Black people lack"
If you were applying for a job at a Fortune 500 company or to get into a top tier university (with equal skills and qualifications), would you rather be a black candidate or a white candidate?
Saying advantages don’t exist and saying racism doesn’t exist are two different things. I don’t believe I have an advantage as a white person with no degree. Even if I had a degree I don’t see the disadvantages PoC supposedly have (I’m told this is because I’m white). I grew up poor just like these disadvantaged people. Yet I still believe there’s racist people. And believe it or not, I know a democrat who is very racist. Literally moved states to be around more white people. Also confirming that racism still exists.
This is where you get conservatives who will point to every single Fortune 500 company putting out job searches with a preference on minority candidates, affirmative action policies that disadvantage white and asian people etc. And speaking of asian people, they make more money than white people and get arrested at lower rates, so then conservatives will say maybe those sorts of "systemic differences" are not so much based on race, but rather on culture.
CNN has such a bad image for multiple reasons. Initially it was just poor news coverage and lazy reporting( I remember so many jokes on reddit bashing them), this was in the 2000's.
Then for whatever reason in the 2010's they started to fork to the hard left and covering every story with a level of bias I would associate with Fox News(but left facing). Some of their news stories were so bad it was comical, ie. saying Joe Rogan had taken horse tranquilizer stands out as particularly egregious(a Dr. prescribed him ivermectin a perfectly safe drug with dubious effectiveness against covid).
This change is like Jerry Springer leaving his trashy TV show and trying to run for Senator(and backing out), his reputation like CNN's is so tarnished that no one would ever take it seriously again.
I actually think most reporters are fairly objective in their reporting. I think bias shows up in editorial decisions on what news to cover, how prominent it should be, and the headlines used to sell it (which journalists don't usually write, if I understand correctly).
Also, the prominent place of opinion "journalism" and talking heads that try to rile people up, especially in visual mediums. Yes, I'm talking about Fox and Friends et al. and some of the hosts on CNN. People spend more time, I think, getting riled up on entertainment, than actually learning about the world. More hard journalism will be a good thing.
Why are you calling out this behavior like it's unique to progressives? Screaming that the sky is falling is the M.O. for Fox News executives. It's just how the mainstream media operates.
seeing CNN and "progressive" in the same context befuddles me - these guys are center-right in almost every sense. I guess that's just where the Overton window is nowadays
They put CNN, and Democracy Now! , in the *same bucket*. that is insane. NYT opinion also has Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd, Bret Stephens for chrissakes, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, I dont know how they can put NYT opinion in "left" without putting it in "right" as well.
As far as CNN's audience, certainly they would be slightly left because right leaning viewers are sucked into the FOX news vortex.
is any of this "far left"? absolutely not. if you dont see "abolish the police and all prisons" and "forgive all student debt", you aren't looking at far left content.
> NYT opinion also has Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd, Bret Stephens for chrissakes, David Brooks, Thomas Friedman, I dont know how they can put NYT opinion in "left" without putting it in "right" as well.
Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens, and David Brooks are the NYT's token "palatable to liberals" conservatives, meant to keep their opinion pages from being a complete echo chamber. They are in no way a justification for placing the NYT opinion section on the "right," just like Alan Colmes didn't put Fox News on the left.
> Ross Douthat, Bret Stephens, and David Brooks are the NYT's token "palatable to liberals" conservatives, meant to keep their opinion pages from being a complete echo chamber.
What is that based on? Can you provide evidence? The evidence so far says otherwise; dismissing it with a characterization doesn't change the facts.
IMHO, it covers a wide range, from Douthat (certainly not palatable to liberals) to Brooks, more centrist. Bret Stephens was the WSJ editorial page editor before coming to the NYT, and you will see almost zero non-right opinion on the WSJ (seriously, find one opinion piece that supports Democrats and post it here).
> What is that based on? Can you provide evidence? The evidence so far says otherwise; dismissing it with a characterization doesn't change the facts.
The contention was that they make the NYT editorial page somehow "right wing," which is obviously false to anyone who actually reads it. It's clearly left wing, and if it feels to you like it isn't, you might be one of those people who is so far to the left that everything else is to your right.
IIRC, all three that I listed are Never Trumpers. Douthat is probably the least palatable to liberals, but he's often pretty indirect and soft in his columns (compare to the more liberal columnists, who can regularly put out red meat for liberals). The impression I get is he's also probably the least capitalist of the bunch. IIRC, Stephens openly voted for Biden and is strongly for gun control. Like you mentioned, Brooks is quite centrist, probably to the point of being a moderate Democrat. I'd be extremely surprised if he hadn't voted for Biden. For conservatives, they're all fairly moderate with at least some prominent heterodoxy, and I don't think anyone right-of-center would get hired as an NYT columnist without those qualities.
IMHO, the tension created by their positions makes them far more interesting than most opinion columnists. Columnists that are on friendly ground (e.g. conservatives on WSJ opinion pages, liberals at the NYT) are usually just boring and predicable (especially the WSJ).
> The contention was that they make the NYT editorial page somehow "right wing," which is obviously false to anyone who actually reads it. It's clearly left wing, and if it feels to you like it isn't, you might be one of those people who is so far to the left that everything else is to your right.
I don't recall that contention, but certainly the NYT opinion pages aren't right wing. However, you dismissing anyone who disagrees without as having a distorted, extreme perspective isn't evidence - other than evidence of your perspective.
I think the NYT's opinion page is diverse, but feel free to support your claim: Count up the columnists and their positions.
> Douthat is probably the least palatable to liberals, but he's often pretty indirect and soft in his columns (compare to the more liberal columnists, who can regularly put out red meat for liberals).
I think this characterization of Douthat is way off. Douthat is direct and puts out absurd BS 'red meat'. I think he puts out more brazen BS than any other columnist I've read there, but I seldom read any opinion pieces. And note I say 'brazen' BS; there's plenty more that is just less brazen. The opinion pages are an embarassment of deceit and manipulation to the NYT and other publications; the deceit, from all parties, is obvious if you are informed. I can predict what many will write based on the political navigation: e.g., for Stephens, 'how do I attack Dems without supporting Trump or sounding irrational?'
It is just a little bit disingenuous to demand people not take demands at their face, plain English value, and instead to somehow infer that something less extreme is meant.
Defund doesn't mean zero. Defund means -10%, -20%, -50%. I think many police departments could certainly use a haircut. When you get stopped and 6 cops show up, it's because they have nothing to do.
EDIT: Wow, I didn't think a rational person would think defund meant completely getting rid of police. There are plenty of examples of where defund doesn't mean 100%. During the Reagan administration, the federal government greatly defunded state colleges and universities. Politicians talk about defunding medicare. People talk about defunding the military. To get states to adopt the minimum drinking age of 21, they threatened to defund highway federal highway funding. None of these are 100% removal of funding.
I do not understand the attachment to the slogan "Defund the Police". If a slogan requires a much longer explanation essentially explaining "what we really mean is", then it isn't a good slogan. Especially considering there are better word choices such as "Demilitarize the Police".
Ultimately, 'defund' - to most people - doesn't mean reform. Insisting that the vernacular is incorrect is just fighting an uphill battle.
It' probably because "Reallocate and reduce police funding to other resources," isn't as catchy. But yes, I agree, "defund the police," is obviously too vague and means different things to different people. That's the problem with most political slogans like, "Make America Great Again," "Build Back Better," "We Are the 99%," "Black Lives Matter," "Back The Blue," etc. Not really sure what any of those really mean.
Black Lives Matter is absolutely clear and means what it says. When cops roll up and just gun down a 14 year old kid playing with a toy gun based on a whim and "I know I wont get in trouble so who cares" in their heads, that's an organization that does not value Black Lives. It could not be more clear, people just choose to look away.
> By Mariame Kaba (Ms. Kaba is an organizer against criminalization.)
> ...I’ve been advocating the abolition of the police for years. Regardless of your view on police power — whether you want to get rid of the police or simply to make them less violent — here’s an immediate demand we can all make: Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half. Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people. The idea is gaining traction in Minneapolis, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities.
> ...People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice.
That was published a couple weeks after George Floyd's death.
In the sense that outside the United States by and large it is center-right. What is considered ‘left’ in the United States is often times a right leaning view in other countries. The politics of the U.S. have shifted very much to the right over the last 50 years in the U.S. Consider that it was Nixon who approached China, established the EPA and wanted to solve the healthcare issue in the U.S. Eisenhower built the interstate highway system and Regan believed the tax on labor should be less than the tax on capital.
"
AllSides was founded in 2012 by John Gable, a former Republican political aide turned Silicon Valley manager working at Netscape, and Scott McDonald, a software developer.[7][1][8][9] AllSides uses a "multi-partisan" methodology first developed by conservative professor Timothy Groseclose and his collaborator Jeffrey Milyo.[10]"
Founded by Republicans and using methodologies developed by conservatives to arrive at the outrageous conclusion that the NYT and CNN are "left of liberal". No bias there of course
For me, personally, the nonstop rotation of defense lobbyists and uncritical parroting of anything put out by the Pentagon makes CNN appear pretty right wing to me. Especially since it’s a bunch of intelligence community apparatchiks doing the parroting.
Everything else they report comes from PR NewsWire, and to me that union of corporate power and media also seems very right wing
I think CNN is definitely allied with the Democratic Party. Both parties are hawks when it serves their interest, so not having intelligence propaganda showing wouldn't be an option.
For those that downvoted him, many of the CNN "war contributors" have ties with the defense industry that are not disclosed, and those are all pro-war/intervention.
EDIT: I just noticed but I think it's funny that the WaPo has an article showing that the defense industry has infiltrated our news organizations in the lifestyle section. It's almost as if the editors are trying to hide the fact. I would think it would be a front page thing. Pretty significant assault on the democratic process, particularly on a subject as immense as war.
What do you mean by “almost every sense?” In say Germany, abortion is illegal after the first trimester, riots are stopped by police, I can get Christian classes for my kids in a public school, and the government doesn’t make eligibility for benefits dependent on people’s skin color. CNN is to the left of Germany on each of those issues.
Eh, the German government will pay for abortions in first trimester, rape/abuse, or an important danger to mother's mental/physical health, or if the fetus is disabled (Yay Nazis?).
Germany allows nudity, sex work, and prostitution; bans Nazi imagery; and has socialized medicine.
> Eh, the German government will pay for abortions in first trimester, rape/abuse, or an important danger to mother's mental/physical health, or if the fetus is disabled (Yay Nazis?).
The Mississippi law that supposedly violates Roe also allows abortions after 15 weeks in case of danger to the mother’s health and fetal abnormalities. And unlike in Germany, there is no mandatory counseling or waiting period. The Mississippi law is more similar to the German law than different—certainly much closer to each other than to Roe, which requires legalized elective abortions for two months after nearly all other developed countries ban the practice.
I’ll certainly grant you that, when it comes to the government paying for things, CNN is definitely in the center. But that’s just one of many issues.
I'm convinced that whenever people feel the need to say a news source is right, left, or center, they're usually trying to redefine "the center". The way that someone classifies a news source politically is almost always a perfect indicator of their politics
I am used to Cuba, Venezuela, Kerala as examples of places where far-left ideologies can be found. CNN has a materialist capitalist free-market POV as far as I can tell but since it became the missing child network with Nancy Grace I stopped ever watching it because its annoying, not because its far left.
Besides your comment being some broad generalization, it fails to assert the reality of the 'world' and in its place takes a group of progressive first world countries which align with liberal politics.
The world includes such places as India, Pakistan, Africa and China, oh my, where liberal ideology is a far cry from what you are describing
or...from the perspective that much of Europe views it. American politics is bunk, bought and sold by corporations that think of nothing but profit, by design. literally a country where bribery is legal and encouraged
Is one on the "radical left" if they think LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that the non-religious / non-Christians should have equal rights? This is a serious question, not a troll. I ask it because the "conservative" party in the US explicitly is against such things in their platform documents.
It's rather strange to me that it is so hard for the term "radical left" to be defined in any sort of objective way, often it seems no definition is available at all which makes discussions about the topics hard to have.
LGBTQ people can get married federally, and there is no serious effort to reverse that. It is disingenuous to use marriage rights as a litmus test because whether one morally supports it is irrelevant under the law.
>Is one on the "radical left" if they think LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that the non-religious / non-Christians should have equal rights?
Globally, supporting marriage equality puts you in the minority, both in terms of # of countries as well as per capita. [0] Personally I think it's an obvious right, but that doesn't make it popular.
> Is one on the "radical left" if they think LGBTQ people should be able to get married, that the non-religious / non-Christians should have equal rights? This is a serious question, not a troll.
No, that is not “radically far left.”
In 2019, according to Pew Research, 44% of “Republicans and Republican leaners” supported same-sex marriage.
As for your question about equal rights for “non-religious / non-Christians”, I’m not sure what you’re referring to. Can you elaborate?
> I ask it because the "conservative" party in the US explicitly is against such things in their platform documents.
I assume you’re referring to the Republican Party platform document? It’s quite large; can you identify the portions you’re specifically referring to?
P18 in the PDF (p11 as per the included numbering) condemns and calls for the reversal of both US vs Windsor & Obergefell v Hodges as well as calls for marriage to be between one man and one women only.
P 19/12 calls for special rights to worship "God" which is the Christian god in this context, it doesn't call for the same rights for other religious beliefs. It all calls out for special rights to display the Ten Commandments but not other religious artifacts / documents.
Polling doesn’t seem to suggest that the positions you’ve represented are held by moderates, so no, I wouldn’t label opposition to them as “radically far left”.
I’d suggest this recent piece as a very cogent breakdown of the lost ascendancy of the religious right in conservative politics:
How about letting men takeover woman's sports?
Forcing people to pretend that men are woman or one of 86 other things.
Reparations is now a thing?
Forcing people promote things they don't believe in.
Grooming 5 year olds with deep sexual content.
Schools taking away basic rights of parents.
Or the last few years where random government agencies can just make up whatever rules they want to fully control peoples lives.
Constantly attacking anyone that disagrees on any topic.
It’s telling that when the favored side has protests fraught with arson, destruction, violence, and even multiple deaths, it’s “mostly peaceful” and “the vast majority didn’t commit crimes”.
Whereas when a single act of violence occurs on the disfavored side, that’s used to paint the entire protest as violent, and indeed, the entire disfavored political demographic as irredeemable.
"Far left" in America is "center right" in a sane country.
Card-carrying communists sit in the parliaments of some Western democracies. Yet they somehow still get on as democracies, without many of the problems that plague the USA like wars of resource appropriation, rampant racism, and school shootings.
Since you are talking about western democracies, I assume you are referring to Europe? In which case, I'm sorry but what? Racism is as much of a problem in europe, if not more. The difference is that it's not really seen as an issue in Europe, and is swept under the rug.
The mainstream rhetoric around North Africans, Africans and Roma people in europe would be totally unacceptable in the US and make the American right look downright tolerant in comparison. Remember, "blood and soil" political parties such as the FN in france that literally advocated for kicking back north Africans and openly calls for discrimination against Muslims can get up to 40% of the vote. Prejudice against the Roma people is so insanely prevalent and violent too that it's just disturbing. So much so that it would be worthy of an entire thread on its own.
The difference is that American issues get worldwide coverage and tons of internal debates. That's not the case in europe, especially on the internet where there's a weird complex of inferiority that pushes people to reflexively downplay or deny local issues whenever they get brought up.
As for resource appropriation, I guess the Libyan war never happened? And maybe you should look up what Francafrique is. Neocolonialism is still a very European hobby.
Yes exactly. The US is also at the forefront of Western discussion about colonial repartitions (yes the British Crown still owns the biggest diamond in the world, the Kohinoor, from India) and discussions on sexual minorities.
The only context where GP's sentiment makes sense is a purely economic one. Left economic parties, like social democrats and communists, do a lot worse in the US than in Europe. But this Europe good, US bad meme by folks who identify as progressive is an incredibly shallow reading of politics and history.
Sorry to slow down the AMERICA BAD train, but this seems pretty naive. These are incredibly complex, long running issues, and comparing the US with much smaller and less diverse countries is pretty pointless.
Every country falls somewhere on the political spectrum, implying that they are all insane because the aren't Sweden or something is revealing some heavy bias.
Definitely not on social issues, the vast majority of Europe consider American left wing identity politics batshit insane just like your christian fundamentalists.
From economic side probably yes, but that's not straightforward either. Conservatives in Eastern Europe often hold power by generous social programs and benefits while liberals want to cut it down.
I’m a (non-American) outsider unfamiliar with either of those, but a quick reading leads me to believe that your description is so reductionist as to be intentionally misleading. There’s more nuance to it than “attempts to overturn civil rights”.
Just my opinion.
Also, it’s not clear from the links (or I missed it) but are you calling these “Democratic” initiatives because they were the official position of the Democratic Party or simply because they are occurred in mostly left leaning states?
> There’s more nuance to it than “attempts to overturn civil rights”.
These are repealing civil rights laws in order to recreate government bigotry. Factually, that is what they do.
You can feel that institutionalizing racism is a good idea — the “nuance” you say I’m omitting — but that doesn’t change that these are attempts to repeal civil rights laws which ban discrimination on the basis of protected class.
> are you calling these “Democratic” initiatives because they were the official position of the Democratic Party
Yes — re-creating institutionalized racism is part of the Democrat party platform, using euphemisms like “equity”.
Can I just say how absurd it would be to reduce music, art, cooking, literature, sexuality, religions, or fashion down to a simplified one-dimensional spectrum, so maybe we should think twice about doing this with politics, which is equally complex and nuanced as any of those other fields of human endeavor. To do so is to invite confusion, and synthetic arguments not about policy, but terminology.
That transition is not only impossible but absurd.
Hell will freeze over before CNN will air bad coverage about, say, a Democratic Presidential nominee in October of an election year. But what do you think leads a "news" source to switch to commentary?! There's no distinction.
I recall one day seeing the red banner on the top of the CNN site that read, “BREAKING NEWS: No update on the…” followed by whatever was the hot story at the time. For real. It was both comical and tragic.
They're really desperate for clicks and that has made the quality of their news really decline. Their pages are overrun by ads and even pop-ups now and that makes them really look like a tabloid.
Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, and that really cheapens the brand of news delivery they had.
In a highly competitive market, the key to winning is not to imitate competition, it's to decrease overhead costs and to deliver a higher quality product, but in the age of social media, everyone is losing sight of that because of the allure of instant virality and it's getting really toxic to normal human beings more and more every day.
They regularly forgo important local and international stories unless they're comical or sensational and it's contradictory to provision of news, and that makes them competitive with every single commentator in podcasts and on social media, which is silly because CNN has far mor resources than that competition. Too many of their stories are subtle ads for big industry products as well, which also erodes trust in their brand and increases potential for conflicts of interest in reporting objectively.
It's a terrible tragedy that they really watch reddit mostly to determine what is newsworthy, because Reddit and users there all have agendas of their own... The downvote/upvote system is not transparent and it has been totally compromised by brigading. News stories, especially online should not be competing with each other for noteworthiness, because everyone has a different set of things that are relevant to them... Now we simply have one pipeline for everyone, which is taken over by commercial or sensational interests, and quickly put on mute once it becomes boring or too repetitive, despite lives being deeply affected (e.g. Water pollution in Flint, Michigan).
This is why CNN is suffering a decline in revenue and spikes in hype during a time they could really shine most... They're wearing social media blinders instead of returning to the traditional book on news coverage.... That and all the pharmaceutical ads perhaps... (I am not a journalist FTR).
> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links, and that really cheapens the brand of news delivery they had.
We lost some real valuable metadata about news from the print era, opinion pieces were limited to Column 1 and the last few pages of section A in most major publications. They were sometimes even in a different font. You knew instinctively that the content you were reading was held to a different standard than the main content.
It would really help if we somehow bring that metadata back in a video and online environment.
I like the FT's color cues: opinion pieces are marked with blue quotation marks on the homepages, the author's name in blue for shorter links (contrasting with the dark red category label used for regular articles), and a blue header with the author's photo on the article itself.
Not just that, the newspaper edutorial staff might strongly disagree with the content on those pages. They published it as someone's opinion, not necessarily their opinion.
That seems to be a lost art. When Tom Cotton wrote an opinion piece for the NYT, the editor who ran it was gone in a few days. Yikes.
I think this is why some people have made whole successful careers in sub-niches of curated news: John Oliver, Fareed Zakaria, etc. etc.
When you watch something that one of them makes, they (or someone connected to them) have creative control over the curation, and it gets attached to their reputation.
So, if I hear something on CNN, I have near zero indication about its quality. As a result, I don't read or watch CNN literally ever, unless some other curated source refers it to me for some reason.
But if I watch John Oliver or Fareed Zakaria, I know there's going to be a much higher than usual standard for quality of curation, analysis, interest/relevance, etc.
While I don't necessarily agree that either of those examples are free from having an agenda, I would absolutely agree that they present a clearer picture and are of a higher quality than CNN or most news outlets in their comprehensiveness.
What I find concerning is the way, through omission or contrivance, these 'full picture' opinion news media organizations can manipulate the storyline for their agenda and also leave you feeling fully informed. Zakaria and Oliver being in reality organizations and not a sole, independent report. NPR being the most notable version with a distinct slant on the news. To the extent that through a day's listening, a recognizable story arc is defined. Often with tension and resolution, so that the audience feels they have challenged their beliefs, but have ultimately been proven correct in their presuppositions.
Oh, I just reread what I wrote. I didn't mean to suggest they were neutral sources! Just that they were examples of when you watch something they make, you know what you're getting! That was supposed to be analogous to the opinion section in a newspaper or something.
> To the extent that through a day's listening, a recognizable story arc is defined. Often with tension and resolution, so that the audience feels they have challenged their beliefs, but have ultimately been proven correct in their presuppositions.
Good observation. Even if there's nothing nefarious going on, this is not a great situation.
CNN’s is the worse of the three, with respect to switching from the full site to the text version. With NPR and CBC, you look at both URLs for the same story and what needs to change is clear. With CNN’s, no clue.
Sometimes I wonder if folks want nutritious food, or just potato chips.
It's the same sort of thing, I think. There's what we say we want, and there's how we behave, but (what is often lost on advertisers) how we behave is not always an indication of what we actually want. I'll eat potato chips, but I really do want nutritious food.
99+% of news is useless or redundant to most people so it’s only really consumed as entertainment either way.
Imagine if they keep reusing headlines “Trump made a tweet that offended someone news at 11” could have been run hundreds of time slanted to the left or right but was it ever actually important for either side?
There is plenty of news that is relevant and important. It's just that people simply don't care. How many people here know the name of their state representatives or city councillors, let alone what they vote for? I certainly don't.
If people don't care, then by definition it's not relevant...to them. This lack of interest may not be in their best interest, but that's on them.
I'm not anti-news but at the same time acknowledge that you can ignore 99% of news without it directly affecting your life. Even if you'd go on this news diet, anything of real importance will find its way to you anyway.
Fairness doctrine made sense at the time because broadcast spectrum was a very scarce resource. When cable and Internet are available to disseminate a broad range of viewpoints, it's no longer necessary for the FCC to be involved in regulating speech.
> When cable and Internet are available to disseminate a broad range of viewpoints, it's no longer necessary for the FCC to be involved in regulating speech.
This opinion is more modern than the legacy "ill listen to any news even if it offends me"
FCC Fairness in boardcasting was not regulating speech by the way, it is closer to defining guidelines for the meaning of libel in the context of authoritative news broadcast on airwaves that at the time were federally regulated.
That brings in the assumption that there will be a perfectly heterogeneous and broad range of viewpoints and not perhaps just a handful of viewpoints that serve to enrich a few people. Looking at the world today we really don't have that broad of viewpoints despite all of our connectivity. Comment sections play out identically when a given topic comes up on different forums. You can predict what the positions will be without even opening the thread, and if you offer an opinion that runs counter expect to be snuffed out by the majority opinions that have real marketing dollars fueling them.
To be honest, the fairness doctrine mostly meant that:
1. Every issue had exactly two sides (same as current dogma).
2. Every "bad" take from the "wrong" side would be aired to nobody, in the middle of the night.
It was a political weapon just as much as removing it was a political weapon.
Way back then there tended to be the same news, more or less, on every channel. Sure, you might prefer or avoid Walter Cronkite's "unhinged" op-eds on Vietnam, but that was about as different as it got.
Then there's also what's readily and apparently available to us... We know we don't want potato chips all the time, but we only have one store, and it offers two brands of potato chips, and no other food.
So not only can we choose to eat potato chips while saying we want better, but we can be forced to either eat it or starve.
This is a great analogy. I'd like to unnecessarily add that the store then tells us that potato chips are from potatoes, which is a vegetable and therefore healthy. It's important to stay informed! (with our product). Democracy dies in darkness! (buy our product to prevent democracy from dying?!).
I think this is the difference between two kinds of "wanting", the id kind and the superego kind. We want the chips because they taste good. We want the nutritious food because we understand on a conceptual level that it is healthy. What we choose to eat in the end depends on how we balance these desires in the moment.
Actually, I think the real reason there are so many opinion pieces is because they're much cheaper. They don't require resources for discovering the story. Personally I skip right past opinion pieces that are labeled as such, but I find so much of CNN's stories are so slanted they all read as opinion pieces.
I don't watch CNN much, but the format typically is, "story story story," (this is ok), then it's followed by, "here's so and so for more information." (this is a cut to opinion right after the story). I stop there.
Most political positions are really about group membership and we want to read things that re-affirm that we belong to those groups. The easiest way to do this is to attack some "other".
This is a platitude that gets parroted way too often. It's like saying the highest function of humanity is eating and shitting
The point of a political position is catalyzing political change, developing consensus, and holding interest groups accountable. Reducing news or politics in general to sensationalism just encourages disengagement
To complicate things further, CNN customers are not necessarily a cross section of "folks". So what works for CNN may not work for Fox may not work for the Wall Street Journal may not work for your local news.
Cable news rots brains. CNN, FOX, MSNBC, OAN... trash in, trash out. Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated. You don't get call yourself news when you're really an entertainment faux outrage machine.
The fairness doctrine never applied to cable in the first place, and would be fairly likely to be held as violating the First Amendment if you tried to expand it to do so (it would be a reasonably likely outcome merely from bringing back the old broadcast-only one, too).
> Personally I'd like to see the fairness doctrine reinstated
That's not going to help at all with online media as that's only broadcast licenses which to my knowledge only affects operators of a broadcast TV, Audio Radio (as in AM/FM/SSB/etc), or other radio station - meaning the internet, cable, and satellite (not sure how satellite broadcast licensing works) are unaffected by this. Also it only affects the holder - ie DishTV - not the channels themselves that DishTV is transmitting
And I have no idea how you adapt this for the internet - broadcast licenses were relatively hard to get, relatively expensive to operate, and generally unavailable to most people, edit: and had limited availability. With the internet anyone can make a blog for free in 5 minutes.
EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here. To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it. To my knowledge the FCC cannot enforce this for cable/internet - I think that would have to be the FTC. But I really doubt this be found to not violate the 1st amendment with the internet.
EDIT 2: > The courts reasoned that the scarcity of the broadcast spectrum, which limited the opportunity for access to the airwaves, created a need for the doctrine.
It looks like the supreme court at the time ruled that because of the limited number of broadcast stations it made sense for the FCC to regulate it in this manor. Because of the lack of scarcity of resources for the internet, I highly doubt the FTC would be allowed to do the same.
> EDIT: I think you'll have a lot of 1st amendment problems here.
> To be honest I'm not sure how the FCC was allowed to do it.
Amateur Radio Extra here. I have a tiny bit of insight into this.
Back in WW1, the radio spectrum became the property of the US military and the DoD actually "leases" spectrum to the federal government through the FCC.
The Fairness Doctrine was a handshake agreement with the political parties of the day and enforced by FCC policy. The FCC is the regulatory body for airwaves.
So the spectrum is a public good in the sense that it is 100% owned by the US military for military purposes and it only grants radio spectrum to the rest of the FCC that it doesn't care about. You can actually go to prison for using radio spectrum that you're not allowed to use (I have never actually heard of it happening...but it is theoretically possible).
Edit: I should also add, that 1st amendment rights DO NOT APPLY on the airwaves. The FCC has 100% control of regulating what you can and cannot say or do on them.
Using reddit as a gauge of public opinion blows my mind, especially coming from CNN whose industry means they should know better. People in entertainment and marketing love reddit, but they will tell you flat out its not because of it being a measure of public opinion, but of it being an excellent marketing tool with many opportunities and successes. Its not hard to get a few posts viral in a niche interest subreddit, and have your product practically ordained by the community as a result. It's a marketers forum, and has been that way since the digg migration brought in plenty of fish, if not earlier.
I honestly doubt that social media has anything to do with it, but rather the consolidation of ownership of news sources over this same period of time and an ongoing desire to have very high ad sales rates while having rock bottom news room costs.
This is simply the result of that financial calculus playing out over the past two decades.
Dopamine mattered less in the paper age, with the exception of the frontpage headline, but not even that mattered as most people had a subscription. Once this paper is in your possession, it frankly doesn't matter much which articles you decide to read, it's a package deal. Interestingly, and this behavior is important, you'd probably read a few articles you weren't super enticed to read, but you'll read them anyway since you paid for them. And thus your world view expands across topics, organically and almost accidentally.
That package deal is now cut up into tweet-like snacks, where each snack needs to entice you to read it. Unfortunately those playing on our weaknesses work best.
A cute cat performs better than a breakthrough paper on climate science.
Updates on the Kardashians outperform...anything.
Opinions outperform dry facts, both agreeable and disagreeable opinions.
Bad news outperforms good news.
Naturally, news adjusts to whatever people read the most. Which wasn't needed before (to this extreme degree), but it is now. Even very competent journalists that write excellent articles need to go on Twitter and with screenshots package the most triggering paragraph of the article, otherwise nobody will read it.
The other tragedy is the demise of truth or accuracy. As this doesn't matter on social media. The unreasonables always win and things move fast.
It's all part of the same attention economy dynamic that has infected every corner of digital media, from cable news to Web to mobile. It's a dopamine loop stuck on DEBILITATE
"Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links"
This is one of my biggest pet peeves too.
I still only really enjoy reading the FT consistently overall, and The Hill for political news reporting (their op-ed section is 76978726435278 trash fires converging, but their actual journalism stays solid) and a handful of others sparingly, but every major cable news outlet (and certainly all the overtly partisan outlets like Breitbart and Palmer Report) I simply have avoided for years due to its insufferability.
> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links,
So, like that entertainment channel with "News" on the name that was on judicial record saying that, for one of their commentators, "his audience doesn’t expect him to report facts"?
But for some reason it's not seen as a negative there by its main audience? (whereas for CNN it is seen as more negative?)
Who's saying it's not seen as a negative? This is just whataboutism and it doesn't even make sense. We are talking about CNN
By the way, most opinion/commentator shows aren't expected to report facts. They are by design an opinion piece, where conjecture and "analysis" (as bad as it can be) are normal. It's just not the "own" you think it is, especially since it's a standard defense against claims of defamation.
Of all the things to criticize and dislike Fox News or Tucker Carlson for, this one just isn't it. I don't get why this "gotcha" in particular is so often used when there is no shortage of actually valid arguments against Fox News.
just because someone doesn't explicitly say something is bad doesn't mean they think it's good, you are just assuming that for some reason. the thread is about CNN, so he commented on CNN.
Reddit has been trying to go public, right? (or have they already?)
I guess the quality of the site will drop even lower at that point, probably past the threshold where they can even be misunderstood as being good for determining what is newsworthy.
>They regularly forgo important local and international stories unless they're comical or sensational ...
I don't know how to tell you this but that's probably because CNN targets an American audience and most Americans don't care about either of those things outside of very narrow circumstances (such as if they're funny or relevant to the individual's concerns). It's not a failing to focus on coverage people will read.
>> They regularly forgo important local and international stories
Is there still a bifurcation between CNN and CNN International? It often felt very different to watch CNN in the US compared other countries when I actually watched any TV news (~1990-2005).
CNN had very bullish years for business with the Trump administration, now the times have changed and also people, many are exhausted, and want to feel less anxiety when reading and watching the news
What I always found interesting is that the AP actually provides other news outlets a "score" on the significance of a new story in their newswire, but because outlets are competing for attention - this score never gets acknowledged and instead, everything is just marked as "breaking news" by the other outlets.
If only all outlets adhered to the significance score.
I get my news from Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Kim Iversen, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Matt Tiabbi, Katie Halper, Viva Frei, Louis Rossmann, Alexander Mercouris, among others.
That doesn't mean I believe or agree with everything they say, they all have blind spots and biases. But the quality of the news from these sources makes all corporate news look like complete garbage, because it is. I would be shocked if there's anything any corporate news network could do that make make me trust them for one second. Surprisingly, the closest thing to mainstream news coverage worth its salt that I've seen in a very long time is from Buzzfeed News, and on some issues, especially war-related, Tucker Carlson.
I am positive that I will live the rest of my life talking to a majority of people primarily informed by corporate news networks (and their fake-populist analogues like reddit) whose raison d'etre is to prop up the same corrupt donors and establishment organizations that have hijacked our government and economy.
> But the quality of the news from these sources makes all corporate news look like complete garbage, because it is
I don't follow all of those, but the ones I have seen a lot from (especially Greenwald and Taibbi) seem to have abandoned even the pretense of doing news for pure commentary, and commentary that is usually pretty predictable in content from just the subject matter and the current alignment of political factions.
I can understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach but mistaking them for quality news sources is... surprising.
> I don't follow all of those, but the ones I have seen a lot from (especially Greenwald and Taibbi) seem to have abandoned even the pretense of doing news for pure commentary, and commentary that is usually pretty predictable in content from just the subject matter and the current alignment of political factions.
The parent post seems to be conflating punditry with news. Ironically, the very issue CNN et al are so incredibly guilty of...
Pundits can be interesting, entertaining, and at times even informative, but using them as a primary source of information seems suspect to me. Their worldviews are (usually, not subtly) skewed towards their ideologies, and they market and sell themselves to people who enjoy confirmation bias.
Parent poster may be a more informed consumer of punditry than most, but regardless this seems like an incredibly poor replacement for factual reporting.
> finding them comforting if your ideological biases align
Actually this group’s political positions are all over the map. The thread that connects them is a lack of influence from DC/Wall St/arms industry. So in other words the comfort is to the extent that I completely distrust those institutions. For someone who does trust those institutions, corporate media is probably fantastic.
> Actually this group’s political positions are all over the map
So?
What I said is I understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach, not if you happen to share their exact (especially superficial) ideological position.
> The thread that connects them is a lack of influence from DC/Wall St/arms industry.
That (substantively or superficially) is certainly an angle that can appeal to a particular set of ideological biases, yes.
> What I said is I understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach
I apologize for being argumentative, but originally you didn't say "approach" you said "ideological biases" which I interpret on its own as a synonym for political views.
> mistaking them for quality news sources is... surprising
This statement you didn't really support with anything, though of course you're not obligated to. In the absence of that I'm not sure why you would find it surprising that people with Pulitzer prizes for their work in journalism are considered quality sources. I'd be very curious what you consider a quality source to be.
> > What I said is I understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach
> I apologize for being argumentative, but originally you didn't say "approach" you said "ideological biases" which I interpret on its own as a synonym for political views.
No, I said both (one referring the the reader and the other to the writer) the first time [0], exactly as I did the second time [1]. “I can understand finding them comforting if your ideological biases align with their approach.”
I can forgive being argumentative, but a selective quote of a partial sentence in one response followed by a straight-out lie about the same material excluded from that quote in the next is... more than just argumentative.
For many who are just getting comfortable with the concept of media criticism more broadly, the wordiness and detail of writers like Greenwald and Taibbi can be enchanting, but that's exactly how reactionaries drive engagement -- by seeming like the heady adult in the room, despite their very predictable arguments and abandonment of "journalism" per se, toward "political commentary".
Maybe not following news or not caring so much about politics is the right approach?
It is not exactly a conspiracy theory, unfortunately, that "elites" have the last say in political decisions[1].
Having said that and gleaning over past human history, I think the oligarchs or "elites" of our "dynasty" allowed us to enjoy more freedoms than we ever had before.
I also doubt that WarnerMedia or CNN has our best interests when "reporting the news".
CNN lives off of sensationalism, and it appears to be a convenient tool for a set of oligarchs to persuade folk over a political topic.
Who are these oligarchs, you say? Rich people who abuse their wealth for lobbying on any matter.
That’s a very condescending position, that only those with a lack of exposure would find these sources compelling because they’ve been hoodwinked by their writing style. You go on to cite Glenn Greenwald as an example of not a real journalist, who has a Pulitzer Prize and founded a gigantic news organization.
Glenn Greenwald doesn’t “seem like” the adult in the room, he is. The corporate media meanwhile almost exclusively provides commentary on stories from news wires, and where they do break stories, have many times turned out to be false, politically motivated, and never retracted.
Chris Hedges spent years of his career in active conflict zones. Max Blumenthal, Aaron Mate, Matt Taibbi — these guys have done tons of original investigative journalism. Your criticism doesn’t land.
> You go on to cite Glenn Greenwald as an example of not a real journalist, who has a Pulitzer Prize and founded a gigantic news organization.
Greenwald clearly was a real journalist, but also fairly overtly quit real journalism specifically over journalistic integrity standards (standards which, even prior to his departure, he had, somewhat unusually, left to others when founding a “gigantic news organization”, fairly overtly because while he at the time recognized their importance to journalism, they were not what interested him about it.)
I would never accuse Greenwald of being incapable of real journalism, only as having, after building a career in it, decided his calling is in building a personal brand in ideological commentary unconstrained by the norms of journalistic integrity.
> unconstrained by the norms of journalistic integrity
I cannot imagine how you arrive at that conclusion.
He sacrificed his position and salary at the organization he founded because he was the one with integrity. He refused to have his anti-Biden article about the Hunter Biden laptop blocked by The Intercept's editor:
https://nypost.com/2020/10/29/glenn-greenwald-quits-the-inte...
Which the New York Times 17 months later quietly comes out and admits was real
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...
"The email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation"
What it sounds like to me -- is that you disagree with Greenwald's political positions so are attacking his integrity with no evidence.
His leaving The Intercept apparently consumed all of his "integrity" stores because he hasn't demonstrated a single bit since that departure, in my measure.
I don't lump Hedges, Blumenthal, or Mate in with Greenwald. Greenwald excised himself from that cohort by turning away from journalism and toward primetime tantrums on Fox News.
Who is a good independent journalist/blogger? (I'm not even going to ask "who are some" - I'd be happy with just a single person.)
I've also found myself disappointed by those two, even if they're not as bad as CNN/Fox or whatever. They're "independent journalists" as a profession, rather than journalists who happen to be independent.
I think independence can be greatly overrated. Real news requires resources to investigate, gather, corroborate, etc. An truly independent blogger has little ability to do that.
I'm glad you have the freedom to choose your own news sources, but some of your listed sources are just as bad or worse information quality than CNN (e.g. Jimmy Dore, Viva Frei, Tucker Carlson). It's fine for all of us to have our own opinions about which news sources are reliable, but just because someone isn't on cable news doesn't mean they are reliable or free from the influence from "corrupt donors and establishment organizations".
I said Carlson on war issues. Show me where Jimmy Dore or Viva Frei have been wrong. Dore had one major mistake in years of coverage, that I’m aware of, and he posted an apology for it. In the same time span that he exposed dozens of unretracted flat-out lies and falsehoods from major media organizations.
Carlson is a corporate establishment media host, yet you're willing to cherry-pick particular news items you find reliable from him, yet your framing doesn't offer other corporate establishment media figures the same benefit of the doubt.
I prefer not to get into the weeds on the particulars about who is exposing or responsible for "flat-out lies and falsehoods" - we won't agree, and that's ok, I'm not trying to dissuade you on that front, I am just pushing back against the rhetoric of your comment which suggests your news sources are inherently superior to those you malign, rather than they simply being a reflection of your political biases like everyone else.
If there is a corporate media figure who is reporting with integrity on even a single issue, I would be happy to hear any recommendations, and follow them if only to hear them on that issue.
At this point my standard is way below finding people I agree with. My standard is that I have some level of trust that they’re reporting things they believe to be true. Versus the opportunists we have throughout government and media who apparently have no personal beliefs or values and are willing to say or do anything to get ahead and appease the people signing their multimillion dollar checks.
why shouldn't you cherry pick the best coverage from all of them? I fail to see how that's a bad thing. A reflection of diverse and opposing political voices across and around the spectrum sounds pretty healthy, yet here you spit because of some pompous notion that the sources are worse than mainstream propaganda outlets? You are a silly person with silly opinions.
One should seek out the best coverage, my point is that the "mainstream propaganda outlet" framing is selectively applied with respect to one's political bias, not with regard to any consistent meaning for the description "mainstream propaganda".
>yet here you spit because of some pompous notion that the sources are worse than mainstream propaganda outlets? You are a silly person with silly opinions
I won't deign to judge the silliness of your opinions and I didn't attack any of the sources, just compared them to others. Ironically, your "mainstream propaganda" key phrase is actually a popular propaganda tactic meant to poison the well rather than encourage critical thinking.
"[The] Panel recommends against the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19, except in a clinical trial (AIIa). Additional adequately powered, well-designed, and well-conducted trials are needed to evaluate the effect of ivermectin on COVID-19"
So in other words, it has been approved for clinical trials, which are ongoing. So how does believing in its efficacy make him a "quack"? That characterization is more inline with the highly misleading, and in some cases outright false, stories about ivermectin being "horse dewormer".
All of the properly done trials have already shown no effect. That statement is them saying "It's not dangerous, so we won't recommend against trials, but you would need to do more studies to prove it's effective, because the current data shows that it's not."
I have no idea who half the people you're talking about above are, but anyone who says Ivermectin works is either being lied to or lying to you.
Which of those people are investigative journalists? The names I know from the list are just writers of opinion pieces, even if they used to actually do their own investigative work.
They wouldn't be a source on, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at the moment (which is the kind of thing I consider "news" rather than commentary).
> They wouldn't be a source on, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at the moment
Alexander Mercouris has posted blow-by-blow updates on every battle and political move of the war once or twice a day for months. He called, for example, the Russian capture of Mariupol a month before it happened, while the entire time corporate media was running non-stop propaganda about how well the war was going for Ukraine.
> He called, for example, the Russian capture of Mariupol a month before it happened, while the entire time corporate media was running non-stop propaganda about how well the war was going for Ukraine.
This claim conflates the overall war with Mariupol. I didn't see any serious media that claimed that Mariupol would end other than it did. Everyone called it the same way, that I saw (though I don't read opinion pieces).
Many opinion writers create strawpersons; they say 'the corporate media did X' and then contrast themselves with it. When that happens look at some mainstream media (which is not one thing, but many, many independent publications) yourself and corroborate it. It's almost always false, IME.
> He called, for example, the Russian capture of Mariupol a month before it happened, while the entire time corporate media was running non-stop propaganda about how well the war was going for Ukraine.
The entire corporate media was reporting the likely impending fall of Mariupol for long before it happened, while still covering how much Russia had been forced to pivot in their war aims, was taking enormous casualties (in general and in senior officers) by historical standards, and all kinds of other negative indicators.
Alexander Mercouris is the most blatant pro-Kremlin propagandist on your list, he always repeats what the Kremlin says - you could just get the same talking points from Lavrov or Zakharova.
If the war was going poorly for Ukraine, then it would be over and Russia would have won.
If the war was going so-so for Ukraine, half the country would be under Russian control.
IMO as long as Ukraine doesn't lost any substantive amount of territory over the summer and stalemates the Donbas/etc, they are winning the war and Russia will falter in the winter.
IMO strategically Ukraine is winning the war, they are getting better weapons, gaining experience, getting supplies, Putin is weakening, the World will adapt to the economic disruption, and Russian troop morale will continue to falter.
The West obviously loves Ukraine draining Putin of all his might. The risk of nuclear war is still ominous.
People like Jimmy Dore don't claim to be investigative journalists, fwiw. Then again, most "news" is fed to us by pretty actors, talking heads, and not active investigative journalists (who should not be judged on prime-time attractiveness).
"What's happening in Ukraine" that most people are worried about is actually the geopolitical machinations that might lead to WWIII. The situation is so messed up that Chomsky and Kissinger are both publicly advising everyone to seek peace! When did you ever think you'd see those two on the same side of anything?
When America accuses some nominally left-wing tyrant of crimes against humanity, Chomsky sees fit to proclaim their innocence for no better reason than because it's the opposite of what America is saying. He's even gone as far as proclaiming Pol Pot a victim of American propaganda. Chomsky and Kissinger are both relics of the 20th century and I hope to soon drink to their demise (assuming they even can die, did these guys make pacts with devils or something?)
>The situation is so messed up that Chomsky and Kissinger are both publicly advising everyone to seek peace! When did you ever think you'd see those two on the same side of anything?
Kissinger was a hawkish warmonger in the 60s and 70s.
But since 1982 he has been a lobbyist and his lobbying firm, Kissinger Associates, is currently owned by the U.S.-Russia Business Council.
As for Chomsky, he will compulsively oppose whatever the West does. Is he still opposed to the Western interventions against genocidal Serbian forces in the 90s?
>They wouldn't be a source on, for example, what is happening in Ukraine at the moment
Unfortunately they pretend they are. Half of them make a living being contrarians so for the past few months they have been spewing pro-Russian lies and propaganda.
I think just the fact that Glenn regularly exposes the government spy to corporate media talking head pipeline makes him have more credibility, to me, than all those networks. These "analysts" are literally trained liars with insane conflicts of interest but instead of noting that the networks instead frame them as experts. Nothing that is spoken by the majority of their guests or contributors is in any way uninfluenced by hidden agendas and, probably, secondary government salaries.
I will also say that Tucker may or may not be good on war coverage but the rest of his show is so toxic I'll never know.
While I like a lot of the people you mentioned, I think an issue with them is they don't create enough original news and comment more on why existing news sucks. (Which it does) Greenwald might be an exception though.
> I get my news from Glenn Greenwald, Chris Hedges, Kim Iversen, Jimmy Dore, Max Blumenthal, Matt Tiabbi, Katie Halper, Viva Frei, Louis Rossmann, Alexander Mercouris, among others.
You don't like the mainstream media so you have decided to follow contrarians and "alternative" media. Half of the people you have listed have reduced themselves to unhinged pro-Russian propagandists in the past four months. They went from claiming that Russia would not invade Ukraine to "Here is why Putin is the good guy!" grifters.
> [Discovery CEO] Zaslav and mentor and investor John Malone have been public about their push to bring CNN back towards hard news coverage, and away from progressive commentary.
Laudable, and I hope they succeed. The progressive angle on everything has really undermined a lot of their credibility - and assuming they're able/willing to make the requisite changes internally to make this happen, it will still take years to regain that trust from their audience across the entire spectrum of viewers.
The problem with crying wolf all the time is that people stop believing you have anything important to say. I don't recall the last time that CNN broke any news. Probably early nineties or so. It would be news worthy if they did.
The natural, normal, expected behavior is to have big spikes of viewership when something major happens. Then a radically lower level of ongoing viewership, because well-adjusted productive people just check the news briefly every day.
This is not compelling at all from a business point of view, hence the relentless search for any and always to drive constant viewership.
It goes back to that old adage of "if everything is urgent nothing is urgent".
This may have started over at CNN but it's filtered through to all media outlets. Even the humble BBC News is a victim of it. My wife has the BBC news app on her phone and some of the inane things it'll ping her about under the banner of "breaking news" astounds me.
They have a long ways to go to earn back my trust. CNN is outright just sensational commentary posing to be news. The broadcast outlets don’t focus on commentary, but the selective coverage and specific questions in interviews peak their obvious agenda. Then you have Fox News, who is unashamedly doing the same thing on the right.
The pandering to selective political ideologies and pushing particular agendas is pervasive across the American media landscape. I don’t know if it’s better in other countries.
I do think think social media gets a lot of criticism and disdain from these outlets, and sure I’m not a fan of FB or Twitter. But traditional American news media in my mind has been stirring this pot for decades, and they seem to get a pass. We talk about breaking up FB, but these American news outlets seem to get a pass.
The big thing about CNN is telling people politics is hopeless, and therefore not to vote. And it does this selectively, it sells this as a capability. Sells diminished voter turnout. And broadcasts weaponized racism/rapism accusations, including Inter-Continental Ballistic Rape Accusations, ICBRA's, like (I'm not sure cnn.com partook in this but still, nytimes.com did) those affecting the owner of Techcrunch, Mike Arrington, where he was literally two states away from the victim at the time of the rape (allegedly obviously, being sarcastic, but the media did NOT say allegedly, in effect claimed he was thousands of miles long--at the calf, or at the thigh, whatever, standing in Washington but penetrating in California--rather than question the bitchvictim). So even the editor of a medium-sized newspaper can get slandered in the worst possible way across continents?
At that point, I just stop listening to rape accusations in the media no matter what, like you can accuse anybody, at any time, of anything, provided he has a penis[1]. Nowadays, if "they" are white. White male, basically. Just accusing white men of being white men, frankly. Mike Arrington is a white man, news at 11.
And let me say something else.
I will never vote for a man who has not been accused of rape in the media.
If he has been accused of rape, maybe he has my vote maybe he doesn't. Probably does.
If he hasn't been accused of rape on the media, he's not a threat to bad people and I will flat out not vote for him.
I actually acted on that recently. José Antonio Kast, though I would have normally voted for him, I saw he had no accusations so I didn't go to vote in the Chilean Presidential Elections for him. Obviously because that in a presidential candidate that candidate had strategies to dodge or diffuse or dislodge or discourage rape accusations, nobody that well-known can possibly have a clean record. His opponent, Boric, didn't.
It's the most basic form of mudslinging, rape accusations. You can always get some female confidence artist to "come forward," always, it costs like 2000 USD in Chile, if that. It's cheap, it's trivial, there's no cross-examination, victim never gets named in public, if nobody's done it it's because the candidate planned it all out for it not to happen, ie premeditated that same crime. Pretty much is a rapist for real if he's never been accused.
And Kast lost the election, due to thousands of votes like mine. Every vote can break a tied election, in fact I tied an election 126 to 126, in high school. Kast lost in part because he had that suspicious clean slate. It's counter-reliable, whatever the media says, the truth is almost exactly to the opposite.
[1] I still judge rape accusations made in person to me, or what I witness in person, as I see fit. "He says she says" has no weight, but in the moment, it's a totally different ball-park. I have taken suicidal levels of risk to defend women who asked for help in person, risks I've never seen anybody else take. But not for an accusation in the bitchvictim media.
Very negative opinion of president-elect Joseph Biden.
Not going into politics on this site, limiting it to media coverage.
Frankly with the amount of slander he had going in his favor he could rightfully be called a victor of the election--if and only if he got more than 60%. The ballots were I think--not sure as time goes on, but I think--correct, but the slander was absurd.
To the point the media had many bad weeks trying to figure out what to talk about because Trump was no longer president, meaning they couldn't make 4 out of the 5 biggest daily headlines about him in varying levels of directness. Him, his past, his family, his nepotists, his administration, his legacy, his apocalyptic nuclear monarchy, his impeachment, his craziness, his uh coup I think they called it, literally ad nauseam.
Couldn't read the news, it was literally "ad nauseam", to the point of total disgust, and even then I bought into the bullshit to some degree. It was so copious, so much shit, you can't keep your mind clean of all that shit any more than you can keep your shoes clean if you're surrounded by dog feces like a foot of snow. Better to do what Thomas Jefferson said and not read any news at all, ever. It's back to the point it was in in the Spanish-American War, yellow journalism, shitty rags full of slander. Not even that, that would be better than this, just blogs manipulating every reader individually, visible A/B testing in eg Financial Times ("Larger" vs. "bigger", they let me see both versions of the same headline, incompetence), generated news...
Yellow bits. Yellow ones and yellow zeroes. Gray Lady? Not in the least, not gray at all. Haven't read what she says in many years, just too gross.
And guess what? If you refuse to let them in to your mind, in a way they stop existing. It's weird, it's a quantum-mechanical thing, just stop reading and they sort of just die. It's like applause in a theater, one person stops clapping and then there's four more clappings, that's it, dies very rapidly.
what if we all just agreed that "teevee news presenter personalities" were a dumb cultural relic of the pre-internet era & as a society moved on from accepting the validity of their entire schtick?
It won't happen. There's a lot of demand for media personalities, particularly from lonely people who like to form parasocial relationships with these celebrities. Pithily put: cable news personalities are to lonely boomers what twitch streamers are to lonely zoomers.
First CNN the way it is packaged and broadcast isn't really news, it's entertainment.
In this case, "Breaking" really just means - "latest development" so I don't really mind the word - the problem is the accompanying music and banner font and color scheme used make it seem like it's 9/11. So they say "Breaking", but make you think "Groundbreaking, earth shattering".
Hopefully the next things to go will be
* when they are interviewing someone that actually made a sacrifice to be on their program, like a civilian from a war zone, etc.. but you can tell the anchor is getting nervous because they have to go to commercial - I can't stand that.
* the news you must hear after the break where it took longer to tell you it was coming up after the break than to just tell you the news
All these cable channels probably have great reporters and news staffs but getting you the news is secondary to advertising, which is fine, I understand that, it's just the medium is not that well suited since it requires frequent interruptions and baiting you into staying through the break. If it has to be broadcast, the news hour with Judy Woodruff on PBS is the best in the US. Yes, it's curated, can't possibly cover everything, but they make decent editorial decisions.
> First CNN the way it is packaged and broadcast isn't really news, it's entertainment.
I think this is a problem with all cable news, and is more or less directly responsible for the dramatic polarization of US politics over the last 30 years. Politics looks more like sports now. Irrational fandom and support for one's "team" is fine when it is over something trivial like moving a ball from one end of the field to another. It becomes detrimental when it's over things that actually impact our lives.
Hell, before cable news, Republicans and Democrats didn't even get consistent colors on electoral maps. It used to be that blue meant "incumbent party" and red meant "challenging party".
"I think this is a problem with all cable news, and is more or less directly responsible for the dramatic polarization of US politics over the last 30 years. Politics looks more like sports now. Irrational fandom and support for one's "team" is fine when it is over something trivial like moving a ball from one end of the field to another. It becomes detrimental when it's over things that actually impact our lives."
that is probably true. And reporting about politics like sports brought out the worst of the US two party system. The talking head format did a lot of damage too.
I came to the US in 2000 and when in 2004 they philosophized for hours about whether people would prefer to have a beer with Bush or Kerry I thought "WTF? What does this have to do with anything?".
Pretty sure 'breaking' meant 'late-breaking' and the colour etc were meant to inflect urgency (also a bit of a sales tactic, but different intent) rather than particularly large news. It's just old newsy lingo.
Not a native but for a good while I thought that "breaking news" was TV specific term meaning "we need to break the regular things that were about to be shown because we've got this last minute urgent thing to tell" (think: 9/11, president died etc)
> the problem is the accompanying music and banner font and color scheme
I hate the flashy animated bumpers they (all of them, all American television) use to segue everything. Stars and color gradients swooping around the screen, computer animated robots throwing footballs at each other like howitzers, animated channel logos exploding in fireballs, it's all completely insufferable.
> First CNN the way it is packaged and broadcast isn't really news, it's entertainment.
I first started noticing this in 2016, when their promotions for their presidential debate coverage reminded me a lot of how boxing matches are promoted.
Pretty sure 'breaking' meant 'late-breaking' and the colour etc were meant to inflect urgency (also a bit of a sales tactic, but different intent) rather than particularly large news.
Ted Turner's CNN was a news network. But then he fell in love with Hanoi Jane and she told him to sell it 'for a good cause'. Once the sale went through, she dumped him.
(Watch for Turner's speech on why he made CNN - below CNN's first day on air):
And there’s no reason to take anything on CNN seriously when they do that. I moved back to printed newspapers and magazines, and don’t regret it, although nothing is instantaneous anymore. I can skip over shenanigans and ads.
CNN was turned in to a cartoon version of itself once warner acquired it from turner in a quest for more profit. Everything became an important news break and the anchors reported it that way. Great to hear they are racheting it down. I hope this is the first of many changes that brings it back to what it used to be.
Well they don't even do that any more. Where is Christiana Amanpour live in Ukraine ducking artillery shells? Where is the live video from a Maverick missile approaching a target?
I suspect the web has changed that a lot. It used to be that CNN was all video, on television. Now people have shifted their news consumption to mainly online text. You can still have web video, of course, but the video/text ratio has changed dramatically in the past 30 years for CNN.
Also, anyone with a smartphone can take video and post it online, so video is not as much at a premium anymore. Professional reporters have been obsoleted somewhat by amateurs.
I used to tell people that CNN was the most neutral of all the cable news channels. The channel a business can have running in their lobby or waiting room without signalling a partisan allegiance (unlike Fox, or MSNBC.)
I still think that, but I usually keep that thought to myself these days because everybody laughs at me cruelly when I say it. I'd say they've lost a lot of credibility.
Right, like when Trump got voted in and they went absolutely nuts and lost all of the little credibility they had left with outrageous out of context articles. I am a centrist who doesn't think Trump has the best platform out there at all (especially with his extreme isolationism and nationalism), but even I was astounded by how crazily they could make things up, out of context, in order to make him and his administration look bad in any possible way to weak minded headline readers.
Was following CNN on Twitter in 2008, out of an old habit mostly. Then it was only breaking news feed, and they were posting mostly relevant things. One day they posted something about Britney Spears there and then again. Stopped either watching or following CNN from that point on. Lots of good news sites were still at that time like BBC (which took the same path as CNN in later years) and still follow Reuters and Al Jazeera.
Really hope CNN one day will become a news source, like CNN International that is a joy to watch when traveling outside of the USA and Canada (at least it was the last time I watched a few years ago). Will follow CNN once Harry and Meghan or some pop stars will not appear in the headlines for at least a year.
I remember before 9/11 you'd rarely see that banner.
It truly meant serious shit. Like explosions or shootings.
Now you see it for stupid petty (in the grand scheme of things) shit like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard's court battle.
And before some of you get your knickers in a knot not saying Johnny Depp's suffering ain't important, but before you'd only see the banner at the end of the trial, not during every fucking court event.
Heck, I remember only seeing the banner at the end of OJ's trial and during the white bronco chase.
That's it. And that's for a murder trial. Not for a spousal abuse trial. Motherfuckers had to literally die to see that banner.
That banner had serious gravitas.
Now, I'm conditioned to ignore it most of the time.
Zaslov and Discover got to where they are with low budget reality TV and "hard news" means expensive up front investigation. My skeptical take is that this is more about brand positioning.
> "It has become such a fixture on every channel and network that its impact has become lost on the audience."
Banner blindness makes sense as a motivation. If authority to use it is too decentralized then it's a tragedy of the commons situation. Every reporter / section editor wants their story to get visibility.
It's amazing to think that some McKinsey consultant convinced CNN to launch CNN+. No one is watching CNN for free and they thought that people would pay for their content?
Good to see they are at least making an effort to move in the right direction. I'm guessing they have a long way to go before they can deliver on the higher level goals here.
I don't think I'll ever be a consumer of television news in my life even if it were to improve. I think they have alienated a large group permanantly but maybe they can make it a better medium for the next generation.
Chris Licht was previously the executive producer and showrunner for The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.
One of his first major decisions as the new CEO of CNN was to cancel CNN Plus, and it looks like the review of things that need to change is still ongoing.
It's not too surprising to see him introduce this no-BS mentality at CNN, the over-hype of minor events is something they would have mocked at The Late Show.
Glad to see they're changing for the better. CNN's reputation has gone down a lot in the last decade or so. Reminds me of Obama's joke:
"Even reporters have left me. Savannah Guthrie, she has left the White House press corps to host the Today show. Norah O’Donnell left the briefing room to host CBS This Morning. Jake Tapper left journalism to join CNN."
This is great news (no pun intended), but I have to cynically wonder if it's too late. It feels like TV in general has already fully lost younger generations. Other than watching live sports, nobody I know watches cable/broadcast TV. They stream shows/movies from Netflix, and get their news from the internet.
Probably people became desensitized to it, and new leadership wants them to pivot back to the middle and sit in between MSNBC and Fox. This then fits within their new more serious, investigative, fact based image they’re trying to portray.
I sometimes wonder about CNN's relevance as the media world changes. 380+ comments and top of HN suggests it still holds mind share, at least with this cohort.
anyone else just completely done trusting talking heads—many whom "formerly" worked for intelligence agencies—on the teevee telling you what's important anymore, and, looking back on it, kind of baffled why anyone ever went along with it in the first place?
No wonder many people didn't realise that they just got fooled and manipulated back in 2016 and on wards.
Perhaps that's why CNN needed so many clicks at the time and this is why they lived up to being the tag-line that they have always hated as being 'fake news' media.
I really think that "TV News" aka the current format (either on TV or streaming or anywhere) is going to drastically decline as Gen X and the Boomer generation age out.
Do we really want or need a "personality" to deliver us information? Reading just seems so much easier and more efficient
They're being replaced with twitch streamers who opine on news articles in-between thanking simps for donations. Reading news written by other people, being a personality for lonely people who want parasocial relationships, taking frequent breaks for a word from their sponsors.. it's fundamentally the same thing.
It may change but it won't get better. I don't see the currently 20 year olds better informed or more moderate. They just get manipulated by different media.
I don't even hear "break news" anymore. It just means "you are watching CNN".
The bigger problem with CNN is the excessive focus on attracting eyeballs. I understand the need for that, but CNN takes things beyond reasonable limits.
"The aliens have declared war on earth ... oh, hang on, we interrupt this program to show you an hour of Donald Trump riling up a crowd in nowheresville".
When the jury reaching a verdict in the Depp/Heard trial is "breaking news" like it plastered across my TV screen the other day...then all hope is lost.
The problem is that it is breaking news. It is news about an event that is happening as they speak. The fact that it is frivolous news has no bearing on whether or not it is breaking.
But the whole concept is from a time when communication was slow. The news that traveled the fastest was the most important. So when something was denoted as "breaking news", you'd know that it was important enough to be told right now.
But today? We practically know of events before they're covered by news organizations. And communication is so quick and cheap that even the most banal information can be bandied about without care. So we can be notified of everything. All news we hear is "breaking". So the term has lost its cachet. We don't need it anymore.
I'd say it's breaking information...but far from newsworthy. Breaking news is an update on the war in Ukraine, a school shooting or other major impact. A defamation trial between two celebrities is not and should not be news.
News is recent information. That's the only qualifier. What's happening in Ukraine is just as much news as the fact I'm drinking another cup of coffee.
And while I agree that a defamation trial between two celebrities is not noteworthy, I treat it as such by not reading news about it. If I see an article about it, I just scroll past it. But it is news by the very definition of the term. Not all news needs to be of grave import.
Considering it's been a top story for weeks I think "breaking news" is fitting when the verdict is reached and available. What isn't fitting, is "breaking news: the jury has gone to deliberate".
The fact that its been a top story for weeks is exactly the problem with modern news. There are big serious problems both locally and in the world, then there are these gladiator performances they put on for us to watch instead.
Honestly, I'm so burnt out from the sensationalizing of everything, I don't even care about news anymore. If it doesn't affect me directly (although, even it if does, the hell can I realistically do?), then I just don't care anymore.
I think the uncharitable self-interpretation of this feeling is "burn out" or "not caring" when it might be more accurately described as more responsible information consumption. It's not like we've always had this unfettered access to global heartbreak and problems we can't do anything about plus a responsibility to consume it. The idea that we have to pay attention to everything in the world every minute of the day else we're terrible civil servants is a relatively new phenomenon... and not one that I think is particularly productive, or valid.
But it's coupled with the problem that you either consume all the news as the media wants you to, or you cut yourself off almost completely. It's hard to find any news sources that only bring you relevant news, instead of attempting to flood you 24/7 with literally anything that's happening.
The closest I've come is to ignore standard news media and be informed via things that filter in through friends, co-workers, and non-standard news sites like HN. I'd love to be better informed of what's going on, but I refuse to subject myself to the firehose.
IMO its good to consider what is personally relevant to you. For example if you are into local news, maybe instead of following the local paper you read city departmental press releases and other information they put out to the public instead. The stuff the journalist would be reading themselves when they are writing out the story on that stuff. A lot of this public info stuff can be followed via rss or email newsletters too.
Especially in politics, when everything is blown up to be the end of the world then the actual stuff that might be worth taking note of is buried in the noise.
I came to the conclusion the only time it's probably worth checking up on news or historic news is before an election, that has some value.
Otherwise ignore it. Anything truly important will reach you anyway.
I'm a firm believer that even checking the news daily is a waste of time and energy. I'm a former news junky but had a change of heart when I realized it was worsening my anxiety and depression with actually zero return on investment.
Everyone is different, of course. But if you haven't tried it before, quit the news for two weeks. It might change your life.
There just isn't enough important news to fill up 24 hours. I prefer PBS Newshour because they carefully pick and research the stories they do to maximize what they can cover in 1 hour per day.
I came here to ask this in a different way. I'm willing to pay for accurate news. What do rich people or companies use as a news source? People who really need/want to know what's happening in the world, and how it affects them, but without the clickbait style news.
Democracy Now I've always found to be one of the highest quality daily news sources, presented with an open but transparent bias and large swath of international news coverage not covered by more traditional broadcast platform
Interestingly there's what I perceive as a large percentage of people that would argue that NPR is overall very unbiased.
One thought experiment I would propose for those people is that if you find yourself overwhelmingly agreeing with nearly everything that a source presents, that itself is proof of extreme bias in that source.
An impartial, unbiased, source would present you with different, and often conflicting opinions. It would give a -good faith- attempt to present both/all sides of an issue. It would cover the grey areas of issues and not just make every issue binary, black and white. You would find yourself agreeing with some content and disagreeing with other content. Every story shouldn't be you just nodding along in agreement as they bash your political/societal 'opponents'.
Good if true, but I'll believe it when I see it. As long as they're doing the 24/7 cable news channel format, they'll inevitably be drawn back into hype and sensationalism to keep that schedule filled.
Television news programs done right should be an hour or two a day, like PBS's NewsHour.
Well the mid-terms are on the horizon and they've got candidates to support and others to attack. I don't know how they're going to resist their own DNA.
As a retired journalist, I'm just gonna say it: The reason that journalism and reporting a news media tends to become left wing over time is because the people writing the news and trying to stay neutral are paying attention. You cannot possibly pay attention to the real world and not become progressive. To not become compassionate while listening to people's tragedies and injustices all day is inhuman.
Back in the late-2000's, I worked at CNN on a 12-month contract. While there, I built a predecessor to the current "Breaking News" website banner.
At least at the time, Turner did not allow contractors to extend beyond the 12-month mark. So when my contract came up, they offered to convert me over to perm. I declined, because my interests lay more on the backend side of the tech stack, and my role there had been far more frontend-focused than I wanted for the long term.
Fast-forward 10 to 15 years, and I've had a lot of experiences that I'm very proud of. I've built concurrent systems that scaled to impressive levels of data. I've built event busses that moved hundreds of millions of dollars worth of financial transactions per year. Etc.
STILL, "my son built the Breaking News banner on cnn.com!" is the thing that my mom tells her friends. It's the only thing that my wife ever understood about what I do for a living.
There is such power in the visual, and in the consumer-side. In a very real sense, this silly thing was the crowning achievement of my career... and it was about two days of work and a few hundred lines of HTML and jQuery.