Journalists want to report on interesting things which people want to read about or watch. Reporting on things by secret informants and sources is a bit harder, but usually worth is because it gives a better story. But informants who have to be kept secret from the government is another matter – it’s nigh-impossible, even for an expert, to keep such things secret from the NSA and all its collaborators (knowing and unknowing). So these stories are much harder to do, but the story itself is not that much more interesting than other possible stories which does not have the same level of government interest. For this reason, the journalists are incentivized to avoid stories which attract the government’s interest. As the government’s interest grows to encompass all things, the journalist is therefore pressed to nevertheless report on stories within the government’s scope of interest, even though the risk is high for failure. The obvious solution for the government is to provide juicy stories for journalists to report on which are not in the government interest – the more frivolous, the better.
Your theory invokes more than it needs to. I see no evidence that the government needs to exert even a tiny bit of effort to feed journalists silly stories. I'd say the evidence suggests it is simply the natural state of the journalism given the current incentives, most of which are coming from the market as it reacts to the Internet. "Real" journalism, or perhaps rather, "effortful" journalism is really hard to sustain right now even before we consider government pushback, because trying to base journalism on "ads" and "page views" is all but actively hostile to such journalism. (We get reporting on Baltimore not because it's "real", but because it's easy; point camera, optionally bloviate and fit into narrative, done.) Until journalism figures out another funding method, the race to the bottom is the only possible economic outcome.
Old school curated and investigative journalism is expensive.
New school journalism is a tiny professional choke on the shotgun blast of biased, crowd-sourced raw material available on video distribution sites and editorial blogs.
The public interest is now measured after the fact rather than predicted in advance. Stories are steered rather than excavated.
In the olden days of newspapers, the available, verifiable facts of a story might not be sufficient for even one column-inch of print. That left plenty of room for embellishment and editorializing. Later, the quantity of facts might have exceeded the attention span of the reader. Stories adopted the "inverted pyramid" form, to place the most interesting, salient facts first, and fill in lesser details later on.
Now, there are so many available facts for each story--pictures being worth a thousand words, and video worth a thousand pictures--that editorial bias can be introduced merely by selecting a particular set of facts as the important ones. If the story has a preassembled narrative, and only facts that fit into the framework are presented, an entire week of 24-7 television news channel can be filled with sensational material without once including a single contradiction or suspicion.
No one seems willing to pay for muck-raking, in-the-trenches journalistic investigation, because no one with the appropriate capital is selling it. It is more expensive than parrot journalism, and does not make proportionally more money for the company.
In short, news companies are dying because they are not doing the one niche thing that the general wire services and small-time blogs cannot. They are not finding and breaking the difficult stories.
There is no need to invoke conspiracy. The government is not feeding anyone stories. The news distributors are practically begging anyone willing to listen for completed, polished segments that they can air without editing. The prepackaged propaganda could be from a government agency with a media relations budget, or from a corporation wanting to do some stealthy advertisement. Watch your local television news tonight, and try to spot the paid advertisement dressed up like news.
It really pissed me off yesterday, watching Baltimore-based footage, that none of the questions I had were answered by the reporting. It was, as parent mentioned, all dumb camera-pointing and bloviating into microphones.
Does anyone else think there might be less rioting in these situations if people had more trust in their institutions? What if someone could actually count on the fourth estate to keep the government accountable long enough for justice to finally prevail? Would you riot if Respectable G. Newsanchor (the G is for gravitas) solemnly swore to you on air that no stone would remain unturned, until all the worms in the story were revealed and illuminated by journalistic sunshine? I would at least wait until RGN broke that promise, by which time more viable options might become apparent.
> Does anyone else think there might be less rioting in these situations if people had more trust in their institutions?What if someone could actually count on the fourth estate to keep the government accountable long enough for justice to finally prevail? Would you riot if Respectable G.
Newsanchor (the G is for gravitas) solemnly swore to you on air that no stone would remain unturned, until all the worms in the story were revealed and illuminated by journalistic sunshine?
Firstly, rioting isn't that common, at least not yet. That it seems to be becoming more common indicates people are finally snapping out of their apathy and taking action even if it is, at the moment anyway, often compulsive and self-defeating.
I don't think solemn promises made by news media types and politicians are taken very seriously by the demographic they are aimed at. How often does a public official solemnly swearing to rectify x, y or z, actually translate into action and meaningful changes being implemented? As for "trusted" news anchors...they are basically just teleprompter jockeys with no real resources or power to do anything other than, well, read the news.
Lastly, as has been discussed, journalism is in the midst of a metamorphosis and investigative journalism isn't a priority for mainstream news organizations. The few journos that do stick their neck out are often harassed, or worse, by the TSA/NSA et al. if they start getting too close to uncovering facts that threaten the status quo.
This. Your comment succinctly sums up the sad state of journalism in 2015. I sometimes wonder how, or even if, journalism school addresses the challenges a serious journalist will face in a market dominated by "clickbait news".
Are we already at the bottom? I just read an article about Baltimore on CNN, and at the bottom the related articles included "TV's hottest news anchors".
“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum....”
As far as I can tell, there's no need to do anything at all to keep people passive and obedient. Most people seem to be born that way. They're kinda zombie like. Don't believe me? Look at the Stanley Milgram experiments.
~ Judging by how they shamelessly manipulate their own parents, I'm sure every last one of those little jerks would have gone all the way up to the maximum pretend voltage. ~
Fair enough. I should have found a better example. But do you really think those obedient people got that way because there's some sort of conspiracy by some elite, like Noam Chomsky alludes to?
Alexis de Tocqueville noted this as a feature of American society in the mid-1800s. Chomsky would be flattering himself to think it was an original idea or that it was imposed from on high.
I chose to upvote you because you make interesting point, but "todays media landscape" cannot be more than weakly-explained by NSA spying on us --- it was a problem back before the war on terror. Media has sucked for decades.
Yes, but before media had a severely limited distribution system compared to the internet and it was media consolidation that led to easy censorship of certain issues. Now it's open and sucks in completely different ways that is probably more to the way people pay for media or don't than spies.
Using your theory as a lens to observe current events in Baltimore (Ferguson, etc.), where the media is really responsible for fanning the flames of outrage to riot proportions -- it seems that the government is either ineffective at this refocusing of media and not really an issue, or so diabolically effective that we should all be shitting our pants.
Fuck. I can deal with it at family reunions. I can deal with it at bars. Most times i can deal with it in the bedroom. But here on HN? This i cannot abide.
When you say "the Media" what in gods' name do you actually mean?
The Media made me do it. I would have known but for The Media. Why does The Media always [x]. I am not that smart; i make a lot of mistakes in a lot of different ways. But i learned long ago that blaming my parents, my gender, my race, etc. for MY STUPIDITY is a huge waste of time and resources.
People are rioting because they are frustrated, or insidious, or bored, or despicable, or bored, or passionate, or bored.
There are absolutely some people looting and raising hell because they are seeing others do it without consequence on television or online.
When I say "the Media", I (in god's name) mean the television news, the online news, twitter, and facebook.
Do you honestly think that people just independently thought to go burn some shit up (in a hive mind sort of way) all at the same time, for no reason other than they were bored?
The TV didn't tell them to do it, it showed them that other people were doing it (stimulating people swaying that way to join in for whatever the reason).
Further, "the media" have been purposely making a habit recently of showing black men killed by white police officers, when in fact, so far just this year 380[1] people have been killed by police -- only a fraction have been black, with the rest mostly while and latino. Also, you will note that some of those black people killed must have also been killed by black officers -- but crickets on the TV and online.
Realistically, why do you think that is? Do you not at least suspect that it is because "they" (tv news, online news, etc) know how people will react? If it was just the act of the police killing someone, how come all the police shootings haven't been front-page news nation-wide?
It is very naive to think that modern day journalists do not know if printing certain stories with sensationalist headlines, or focusing on certain stories will have effects on people. It is also very naive to think that people seeing and hearing these (very focused) stories would not react to them[2].
[1] http://killedbypolice.net/
[2] They certainly knew back in the day! See the Spanish-American War as a well-known example of the media "making" people do somthing
>>Further, "the media" have been purposely making a habit recently of showing black men killed by white police officers, when in fact, so far just this year 380[1] people have been killed by police -- only a fraction have been black, with the rest mostly while and latino. Also, you will note that some of those black people killed must have also been killed by black officers -- but crickets on the TV and online.
How many of those whites or latinos were unarmed, not threatening the cops, or were running away when they were shot/choked/beaten?
About half the people killed by US police have a mental illness. Police do need to be careful but shooting people is probably not the right thing to do in most of those cases.
Better training in de-escalation and rapid tranquilisation and psychiatric nurse accompaniment would be better.
Your first point needs a citation. If someone has an adderal prescription, would you say they have a mental illness? that is a rather ambiguous description.
They do need to be more careful. So careful that maybe a human is not up to the job...
This report talks about a "serious mental illness".
Those words tend to be used for diagnosed mental illnesses like schizophrenia and other psychotic illnesses, sometimes major depression or severe bipolar disorder. Very roughly one or two people per hundred meet this definition.
An appropriate adderal prescription would be for a mental illness or mental health problem. It would tend not to be described as "severe and enduring". This "severe" label is in the context of mental illness, not the general population; it's not meant to imply that ADHD etc are trivial.
so...100s of millions of people colluding to foment a riot? CTBP if you ask me
>hivemind lunacy
yes and no.
>' "the media" '
seriously? they all get together at a big meeting and set an agenda?
>on death, blackness, cops, and conspiracies
Do not conflate the issue here. i agree this whole 'spotlight on brutality' is cherry picking by SJWs. i know full well that cops suck for more reasons than one. i also know that, regardless of the undeniable suckage, cops serve an extremely important function in an ordered society. our back and forth is about your laziness in identifying a root cause. there is no 'the media'. i assume you has a facebook (i do not). are you an agent of "the media"?
please understand, i am not mad at you, i am mad at a tendency that you are representing. it is the same as any time someone says "Americans do [x]" or "white males always [x]". The idea that there are monoliths and that they act in informed concert is preposterous.
It is super cool right now to act like what is happening in the US is some giant fucking race war. in truth, things are getting better. that is why individual killings stand out. but journos, pundits, and SJW bloggers are driven by attention. that does not excuse you and i acting the same way.
We all want shit to change, but in different ways and for different reasons. when any opportunity appears to give voice to this seemingly ubiquitous angst, we let loose. when we do, a small group of ne'er do wells take advantage of the focus of LEOs and steal shit.
I do not like the way media works either, friend. i am not opposed to you or your ideas. i just took issue with where you chose to lay they blame.
> i assume you has a facebook (i do not). are you an agent of "the media"?
I do not, however I do think that people either get their news from TV/radio/online or (importantly) from other friends, mostly through facebook posts these days.
My main point (and opposed to your point, apparently) is that there may not be a smokey room where "the media" get together and decide what will be news, but the end effect is just the same if the vast majority of people's news sources are all printing/showing the same cherrypicked sensationalistic stories that are meant to illicit passionate reactions (and views/likes/etc.)
And on this we agree. An echo chamber of ignorance resulting in an excessive amount of stupid.
And i do think there is a grand conspiracy behind it all: the conspiracy to increase profit every year, no matter the method, for the faceless gods of our time... the Shareholders.
Full disclosure: i am a member of "The Media". I'm on the entertainment side, so i sleep a little better knowing that most people know we peddle lies and watch anyways for diversion (as opposed to information ((if someone gets their facts from narrative fiction that is their own failing))). I was drinking away my regrets in a bar in DC one night and i got into an "exchange" with this seemingly intelligent young lady. When i countered one of her statements, she told me she was certain of her facts as she, "had seen it in a documentary". After chuckling into my cup, which in retrospect did not help the situation, i asked her why she thought that made it true. She told me that documentaries were not allowed to lie. At that time i was working on a "science" tv show for the channel that purports to tell the public about historical events. we were doing a bit on "lasers that could destroy [x] from space". not more than a day before we had interviewed a scientist who specialized in focused/directed energy devices. For 3+ hours the director had tried to get the guy to say the line we needed: the blah blah blah could destroy any place on the globe. Of course this scientist never said it, because it was not/ is not possible, at least not how the writers were asserting it. Finally, the poor, foolish scientist said something that the editors knew they could cut into a statement that would we work and we wrapped soon after. I never watched the Episode, but i remember shooting a mock up of the earth, two small mirrors, and a laser pointer simulating a giant death ray.
It is when lies dress up as truth and all people do is ignore it or rationalize it that we get the horseshit that passes for news these days.
Double disclosure: I'm an hour south of Bmore. I love that city. The cops are horrendous, both black and white, and many of the citizenry ignore it until a camera crew rolls up.
I hate that the city is burning, but only because i am certain no one is going to learn anything from this.
> or so diabolically effective that we should all be shitting our pants.
Buncha rioters looting cities. Nothing better to prove your "tough on crime" attitude or to activate military powers... (yes, I know, calling in the National Guard is commonplace in the US, but virtually unthinkable in Germany)
Someone from the Maryland National Guard was in front of cameras this morning emphasizing that their presence was not under a declaration of martial law (which is a perhaps pedantic interpretation of "activate military powers", but there you go).
The situation in Baltimore (a city of 600,000, a metro of several million) looks to me like it is limited to at most a few thousand people. The idea that the media fanned these people into action is silly. They see large crowds of people (that are not rioting or looting) engaging with the police and see it as an opportunity to do whatever they want while hiding in those crowds.
The most common type of small riots in the US are sports related, those riots are certainly not the result of the media fanning flames, they are a result of small numbers of people feeling like they can hide in a crowd.
Baltimore is a city that has extreme poverty, very poor social services, and a tax structure (city/county border) that prevents regional economic growth from benefiting the poorest residents.
As a result, there are a lot of opportunistic criminals. The protests just tied up enough of the police force to create an opportunity.
Those riots are a great way to increase racial tensions and racial divides. When you have the races blaming each other for all their woes, it is much harder for them to get together and notice where their economic trouble is really originating.
I see most 'us vs. them' clashes in much the same light. Take the notion of the wage gap. It focuses on a relatively small wage gap with far more attention than that which is given to the gap in economic gains post recession.
The initial events in Baltimore, Ferguson, etc. happened independently of journalists. Any “fanning” done by journalists is presumably done because because it’s probably easier to do that than to find other, juicer, stories (where such stories might also be of such a nature to attract government interest).
380 such events have happened so far this year, however only a few have had national reporting. Journalists are very clear what makes a story "juicy", I think.
380 killings of unarmed people by cops under circumstances similar to those that existed in the stories that have been widely covered aside from the issue of race?
Not all 380, but certainly some[1]...and I can find many more, but leave that as an exercise for you.
Linked story is of an unarmed teen, with hands outstretched being killed by police. Also there was a video. However, teen is white officer is black. Officer cleared of charges. Very similar to Ferguson, but no riots, no fanning of the social injustice flames by the media, etc. No national story.
I point this out to show that police are doing this sort of thing all the time, however the media (defined as TV news, online news) are very selective of the ones they promote because they know they will get a reaction.
> and I can find many more, but leave that as an exercise for you.
Its not really my job to support your argument. If its not important enough for you to present evidence, its not important to me to go look on the off chance that you might not be exaggerating again.
I wrote
> 380 such events have happened so far this year
You took that to mean that they were all identical in every way. I wrote it to mean that cops are killing people all the time and it only gets national news when it is a white cop killing a black person, because the media knows that plays very well.
I did take the time to show to you that there are practically identical cases (which you ignored) and that the ones causing riots are not special snowflakes but selected to foment a reaction.
So I have submitted my case, argument, supporting evidence, and a clearer explanation of my points -- you have presented nothing but vitriol.
I can see from your responses that you were not interested in an answer, just to be argumentative for some unknown reason. Fair enough.
> other possible stories which does not have the same level of government interest. For this reason, the journalists are incentivized to avoid stories which attract the government’s interest
What other possible stories are these? Most stories journalists have reported on are government stories in some way, not counting entertainment/sports, business PR, and other such fluff. The "other possible stories" of interest that don't involve some form of government are those of big businesses, i.e. the people who control the allocation of advertising revenue for most major media outlets in the world. It's been a long time since journalists have routinely researched stories on the generally corrupt practises of these businesses. Reporting on governments and politics has always been a safe diversion for journalists, and most of them use such stories as a resume for a PR role at big biz anyway.
I would put that title even more pointed: Surveillance makes us all criminals before the fact. We're being made suspects 24/7, from birth to death. It's only a question of time until avoiding surveillance will be a criminal act in itself.
I'm curious if the author actually reached out to ask the opinion of the people he cites, or just pick and chose quotes to support his premise. The author cited the Grugq twice in the article; the Grugq's response to the article was "They always acted like spies, sans security."[1]
...where the media is completely unable to fend off relentless attacks on its sovereignty?
And in many cases, unwilling to do so. God forbid they lose the opportunity to attend the White House Correspondent's Dinner or be prevented from conducting a fluff interview of a person in power.
How many times in the past year have you had to go to non-American press services to read about something going on in this country?
Much of the Fourth Estate in the U.S. has rolled over and ceded any 'sovereignty' or moral authority. They have brought this upon themselves, by failing to call it out again and again and again.
The media don't have "sovereignty". What they do is provide information to the public so that the public can exercise sovereignty. There's a reason that freedom of the press is part of the first amendment (in the USA).
Worrying, indeed. Support your local ACLU and EFF, etc.
"Somebody — was it Burke? — called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time no doubt. But at the present moment it is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, the Lords Spiritual have nothing to say, and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by Journalism"
- oscar wilde
It lost it's sovereignty when the gov stopped communicating directly with the people and started using the media as a mouth piece. This connected the two, giving more editorial influence to the gov due to its control over who could have access to source material.
Surprisingly there was a complete volte-face when it emerged GCHQ were spying on journalists too, perhaps "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" isn't as convincing when you're the one being targeted.
An 'interesting' thing might happen in the future if this forces people to censor themselves. In Iran, for example (according to part of a documentary I saw), journalists and writers have to be creative in order to say what they want w/o actually saying what they want (ie, they let their audience read between the lines). While far from ideal, constraints can breed creativity.
While far from ideal, constraints can breed creativity.
Hey, that's right! If the FBI gives you a National Security Letter, make National Security Lemonade!
I think that habitual hinting (which is what "let their audience read between the lines" ultimately comes down to) would lead to destruction of communication. Everybody ends up spending a lot of time on deciding which alternative meaning is merited, which words are code words, and communication ultimately becomes impossible. Take a look at http://www.kcna.kp/kcna.user.home.retrieveHomeInfoList.kcmsf for an example.
I'm the last person to be for surveilance/censorship but in such a situation as I described one would have to become creative or leave the country. That's all I'm saying.
While I in no way condone censorship or dictatorship I can remember a few pieces.
Triumph of the Will is still looked at as a millstone in cinema, and the soviets produced very memorable sculptural works such as The Motherland Calls to name two. Both regimes also had some of the most memorable (propoganda) posters ever made, that are still awesome visual works to this day (even though the content they communicate is abominable).
Point taken, the Nazis had hilariously bad taste in art. But what about Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn, and the rest of the great Soviet dissident literary canon?
Journalists want to report on interesting things which people want to read about or watch. Reporting on things by secret informants and sources is a bit harder, but usually worth is because it gives a better story. But informants who have to be kept secret from the government is another matter – it’s nigh-impossible, even for an expert, to keep such things secret from the NSA and all its collaborators (knowing and unknowing). So these stories are much harder to do, but the story itself is not that much more interesting than other possible stories which does not have the same level of government interest. For this reason, the journalists are incentivized to avoid stories which attract the government’s interest. As the government’s interest grows to encompass all things, the journalist is therefore pressed to nevertheless report on stories within the government’s scope of interest, even though the risk is high for failure. The obvious solution for the government is to provide juicy stories for journalists to report on which are not in the government interest – the more frivolous, the better.
And thus we can explain today’s media landscape.