With all the talk about fake news I thought a dedicated thread to the media, its motivations, and the role it plays in society would be useful. The US president constantly derides the media and it doesn't seem to do him any harm. A free press is crucial to a free republic because governments have used media to control the flow of information but just because the media is separate from the government doesn't mean someone wants to use that influence for their own ends.

To start off CNN recently had to retract a story about Russia. Three journalists had to resign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busin...=.075a2d95c1d2

I always wonder how much oversight goes into some of the articles that are posted. Even Comey, who is no fan of Trump, said some of the articles being posted were false. If giant media conglomerates lie who call them out?

I see people parading this around as proof that CNN is "fake news" or something. It seems quite the contrary to me. CNN actually has the integrity to hold its people accountable and its journalists take it so seriously that they step down in shame if it happens.
How many times have news media like Fox or Breitbart been proven patently wrong but they keep the information out there?

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I recently learned that the founder(?) of Fox News, the one who died recently, said of his mission that "People do not want to be informed. They want to feel informed."

And doesn't that just about explain everything, eh?

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Do you have a source?

Hey forum, can I get a source for this?

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I think I know what your source is but it sounds made up when I looked it up.

Are you the one that wants to feel informed Anansi?

If you think you know what my source is, you know more than me. I heard it from someone who heard it somewhere.

But yes, I'm enough of a people to want to feel informed.

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Sounds like you actually heard it from someone who heard it from someone who heard it from the source then.

So are you going to tell me what really happened?

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Feels like a thread just fishing for affirmation that the media is bad

But I'm more with Kakwa, It's important that folks hold their people accountable, I trust them more than folks who'd sweep things under the rug for years

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I don't think anything really happened.

I think Fox just wanted report on things other media companies generally didn't and that is what draws them ire to what otherwise be a monopoly on information. They aren't always right nor do I always agree with them but I am glad they exist. Any sort of inconvenient truth would be ignored by CNN and MSNBC.

To me this is what is so awesome about things like the internet. There can be so much more diversity of views now that doesn't only represent a narrow segment of the population. People that relay information tend to filter it through their own ideological lens. The easier it is to spread information the better. If contrary views weren't so threatening people wouldn't try to squash them out. People still choose what they read and ultimately how they vote. Who understands the Iowa farmer better than himself?

And now we have a million ideological lenses, clumping together into violently polarized factions.

In the long run I agree, but for now, with the internet so vast and open to anyone who seeks only those views which satisfy their preconceptions, there can be no dialog, which is the crucial factor which transforms an easy spread of information into an easy spread of truth.

What are you even trying to say here? Do you think you don't try to squash out contrary views?

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I don't think controlling the flow of information would prevent that. It would only hide it under the surface.

Truth is a lot rarer than many people are willing to admit. Sometimes you just have to build a consensus. That consensus should involve more people than just the ones who can disseminate information.

Do you think I am trying to squash you? I can't prevent you from speaking and I wouldn't if I could.

To be sure! But you can't celebrate violent anarchy as a triumph over oppressive monarchy!

Truth, indeed, is an ideal. One I can't fully believe in. I used the term liberally (in a rhetorical rather than political sense).

But consensus is not the foundation of science. Reason and empiricism is. There was a time when the 'consensus' was that slavery was perfectly fine.

Say what you will, but I know what you did to that spider.

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I don't think it is that anarchically. Words aren't like using violence against one another.
A lot of people think science expands upon so many of their personal pet peeves that it is ridiculous. There are so many things that are called science that shouldn't be simply because it gives it this dogmatic sense of authority that it shouldn't have. It only makes people less open to contrary views when they think something clearly unscientific is science.

I don't think the consensus was ever that slavery was fine. They were always a minority. Slavery wasn't abolished because 'science' said it was wrong. It took a lot of political maneuvering, a war, and an occupation. It was action and more results based skill than someone's simple belief.

I did nothing!

All speech is power, and all power can be used destructively.

Reason transcends what you think of as science, and is not beholden to consensus. That's my point.

By 'minority,' are you referring to a 'minority of humans on the planet?' A 'minority of American citizens?' A 'minority of slaveowners?'

But I agree, it wasn't belief alone that changed the hegemony. It was a bloody and horrific war and its grisly aftermath.

That doesn't change my point, of course, which was that slavery didn't stop being wrong as soon as the majority agreed it was wrong. It didn't stop being wrong as soon as a war was fought and all slaves ordered to be released by law. It didn't stop being wrong after any milestone of human progress. It was ALWAYS wrong, from the very start, and just because a consensus agreed for awhile that it was okay, that consensus did not change the fact that it was NOT.

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Consensus isn't reason. It is just life. Reason is something different but there isn't many things more unproductive than two people shouting at each other for being unreasonable. Do you think any one person or institution has a monopoly on reason? Can I tell people that don't capitulate to my reasoning that they don't believe in logic and sound reasoning? Would it be fruitful and would it work?
Yes a minority of humans on the planet. In the US the slave class had outsized political power because slaves counted a 3/5th of a person. They wouldn't' have gone along with the revolutionary war if they had their slaves taken away. The north was far more populous than the south was by like a factor of three. Even then the actual people that owned slaves were a minority but were politically powerful.

No one is defending slavery here so I don't know what your point is. An elite group thought it was. Even then that doesn't justify why only an elite group should be in control of the information we get to consume. That sounds like some 1984 Ministry of Truth stuff. That is how a lot of despotic regimes control their people. That is why we have the 1st Amendment. I don't find the current people that disseminate information to be uniquely qualified to influence and control as many things as they do.

If you think I think that, then I suppose I have well and truly muddled my point, which is simply this - consensus is not a valid foundation for truth.

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I didn't say it was the foundation for truth. I said objective truth is really rare. It is like mathematics and hard sciences but it isn't like those can tell you what to believe or how a society should be run. Nazis were really good at those things but they were awful. Some people mess up on the intellectual humility part and become too deep in their own propaganda that they become dogmatic. Knowing what you don't know is very useful. Life is just full of so many ambiguities and subjective preferences that to prevent us from always fighting and sabotaging each other we have things like rule of law and social contracts.

To me what you propose is just a lack of faith in democracy. Instead we end up with whomever is the most powerful setting the dialog and information and controlling everyone else. I think what underpins your sense of reasoning isn't some higher authority. It is the people that can disseminate information selling a story that is beneficial to them. That is pretty much their soft power triumphing over quieter voices. Stuff like that happens when certain powerful groups feel apart from the rest of society. It is a risk inherent with a standing military too. When the Thai military took over their government they pretty much thought the people were too stupid to decide for themselves and while many other groups probably think that they had the guns to back it up. To me this is why law and order is important because otherwise it just comes down to a power struggle. Anyone can rationalize and justify to feel smarter than everyone else. There is more to that when it comes to running a society and I think expertise should be tied to something more tangible.

Touche.

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How do you feel about David Hume?

Who?

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A Scottish philosopher.

One that said genuine knowledge comes from objects from experience or abstract reasoning between objects from experience. The rest was just sophistry and illusion. That reason alone doesn't give a normative conclusion of what ought to be done.

Normative values are ultimately subjective to the ends one wishes to achieve. Insofar as this is the case, they can be rationally determined.

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How do you feel about the CNN producer who's said the Trump Russia thing is about narrative and ratings and theres nothing there? and that reporting on that is from orders from CEO types?

CNN responded by saying hes entitled to his opinion, but im wondering what others is.

*Yes, veritas needs to release the full tape.

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