https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/leaving-social-media-taught-me-how-broken-the-news-cycle-is/
538 columnist Christie Aschwanden reflects on the effects of reading news through social media versus otherwise.
No surprise. I notice the same thing.
Yeah, same here. I got off of FB almost a year ago and don’t regret it. The posters on both the left and right were not open to differing opinions. Tribalism, definitely.
The problem though is that the news media today are just as polarized. People that call themselves journalists openly show their personal support or contempt. It didn’t used to be this way, even ten years ago.
This is especially true with online news from major outlets (CNN, Fox, NBC, CBS, ABC, NYT, LATimes, WaPo, WSJ). None play it straight anymore. The news that is emphasized, and the wording/tone of the headlines, is clearly chosen to promote pet causes or to express animus, instead of being presented in an unbiased way. Tribalism is just as rampant in the MSM as it is on social media.
I agree that it is everywhere.
The trend with the news has been a long time coming, it started back in the late 60’s when TV news was put under the entertainment division, news divisions for the major networks that had been their own entity and pretty independent (well, as much as any corporate entity could be, read up sometime for example on what CBS did to Murrow for going after McCarthy or for some of his documentaries focusing on issues like racial segregation and migrant farm workers).
Problem was over time people wanted more and more entertainment passing as news, the ‘friendly’ local news broadcasts with the people joking with each other, and it went on from there (“Network” might have been ludicrous at one point, Paddy Chayefsky if he saw CNN and Fox News would feel like a prophet).
Social Media and the net has taken it one step further, blog sites and ‘news’ sites that have no journalistic standards, no concept of reporting and simply claim things are news that may or may not be. Basically news reflects the same thing as politics, where division has become the principal road to achieving success, whatever that is.
D and I were just wondering the other day what they would be talking about on the news if it wasn’t one subject 24/7. Surely there must be other things happening in the world (outside the periodic terrorist attacks). That’s what gets me.
Well, considering what is going on, they sure as heck better cover it.
It may be largely true that “news” is largely covering “one subject” 24/7 - however apparently that is what the majority of the viewership is tuning in for. So it is up to the savvy media consumer to not limit their news consumption to one source. You have a wide range of media/social media venues to consume from print to screen - tailor your consumption to include the news you want to be informed on - be that local, national, international, topic related (to your work or interests). What a gift to build your own menu of news feed!
Another alternative - choose to get daily/weekly summaries from your favorite news sources. My daily NYT summary lets me know what the most recent news is in the areas of politics, education, entertainment, cooking, research, arts, etc. One click on any of these that I want to consume and I find out more. Efficient.
I use both Facebook news and Google news for my sources. Both have left-leaning biases, even though they are simply news aggregators. Google seems to prefer WaPo, Bloomberg, HuffPo, CNN, and Hill. Facebook seldom links any conservative news sites (in fact I’m looking at it right now: CNN, CNN, MSN, HuffPo, SFGate, NYT, NYT, Chicago Tribune).
I avoid getting my news from a single source, and avoid any fringe sources like DailyMail, Breitbart, Mother News, etc. I genuinely want to “hear” both sides of the argument when reading the news.
The problem is that the NYT (like many other news sources) promotes stories that they like and bury those that they don’t. I agree though that reading a buffet of news options tends to cover the bases. I look daily at all of the news outlets I listed above. When you do that, it’s glaring what news events some push and others neglect.
On-line, it can be easy to overlook whether the page is a regular article, or is an opinion or editorial (and opinionated people on social media tend to share the opinions and editorials disproportionately compared to regular articles). It is more obvious in a print newspaper that has a specific opinion and editorial section.
But then on-line is pretty tame in this respect compared to television news, where is mostly opinions and editorials (“discussion with expert on the general subject” speculating about motives and back stories behind a news item) to fill time since describing what actually happened takes relatively little time.
The other thing to consider is whether people actually care whether they are reading or viewing some relatively neutrally reported news, or a heavily editorialized and opinionated embellished version. Perhaps the news market is just responding to reader and viewer desires for the latter.
I like the BBC radio news and website, and the Economist, for reminding me that things of importance happen all over the world every day that have little or nothing to do with Donald J. Trump or ISIS. The New York Times does cover those things, too, but increasingly it’s in between breathless reports of the latest Trumpian dysfunctionality.
For me, the essential tribal division is between news publications that rely on reporters who actually go places and observe things, and who have expertise in the areas on which they report, and that employ factcheckers, and publications that don’t. I am firmly a member of the former tribe, and have only a limited interest in whatever that other tribe (which of course is not a coherent, consistent one) is saying. At the same time, I think true neutrality is probably unattainable, and I probably prefer that articles reveal their conclusions and predispositions rather than adopt the literary conceit that neither exist. I don’t watch any cable news because I don’t have cable TV, and I don’t get my news from Facebook because I’m not on Facebook.
The problem is that all of the sources I respect seem to be defined now as left-leaning. (Even the Economist, which refused to endorse Theresa May for perfectly good, conservative reasons, which they and I defined as “liberal.”)
What conservative publications meet my basic journalistic standards?
But doesn’t “liberal” mean something a little different in the UK versus the US?
I favor certain sources but will skim many, even those I feel are full of crap and slanted. I like to get a feel for what others are hearing and reading and get a sense of where they are getting their biases from. Sometimes, it is easy read a comment someone makes and tell they are only going to X for their news.
Also annoying is when authors inject bias into the headline itself. It’s as if they can’t even wait for readers to read the article… WaPo is notorious for this.
Instead of an objective headline that succinctly addresses the key point(s) of the article, they use a manipulative, opinionated version. Drives me nuts.
@fractalmstr : I don’t get your criticism of that Post headline at all. It’s frankly an opinion piece, not a news piece. The only “news” in it is what Trumps kids recently said in a TV interview, and rehashing a previous Forbes article about one of them. The whole point of the article is to mock them as hypocrites. The headline does an excellent job of telegraphing what you will get if you read the article, including putting the reader on notice that it’s not a news story.
It’s not in the Op-Ed section though, it’s in the politics section, which implies “news”. If what you’re saying is true, then WaPo should clearly label this an Op-Ed piece, which they do not.
It’s labeled “The Fix – Analysis.” I don’t read the Post regularly, but that doesn’t sound like “news” to me. I’m just clicking on your link; I don’t know how it’s presented on their website or in the paper itself.
I have been amusing myself by trying to think of “an objective headline that succinctly addresses the key points of the article.” How about “Eric Trump Calls for Higher Road In Political Discourse, Says Father’s Critics Are Not Even People”? “Eric Trump Complains About Article On Diversion of Charitable Donations To Trump Business”?