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"But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent jou

"But many of the structural pressures that sociologists have long identified shape commercial and state sourced news stories just don't apply to independent journalists, who don't have to rely on continued access state contacts, commercial paychecks, don't have to serve ad revenue and corporate PR aims" I was with you up until this point. Audience capture and the need to sell ads for brain pills etc. are a huge issue for many independent content creators: at least, the ones who are trying to make it their main source of income.

pjc50 4y ago
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformation-supplements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformat... (which of course will be immediately accused of bias, but he's not wrong about the facts of the extent to which those people are funded by supplements) It's a big problem for the regular press too. Peter Oborne resigned from the Telegraph after they suppressed negative reporting on big advertiser HSBC: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/peter-oborne-resignation-senior-writer-quits-telegraph-dramatically-over-hsbc-allegations/ https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/peter-ob...
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  There's quite a few independent UK journalists who are refugees from editors that started spiking their stories. Jonathan Cook and John Pilger both had to leave The Guardian.
- jpadkins 4y ago
  the nytimes link is /opinion/ which is held to a different to a different standard than standard news. I'm glad they at least label it as opinion. I think people reading opinion as news is part of the problem.
bnralt 4y ago
Audience capture is probably the biggest driving point behind media bias, whether the media is commercial or independent. Walter Lippmann put it wall 100 years ago [1]: > A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future customers. One need not spend much time worrying about the unreported scandals of the dry-goods merchants. They represent nothing really significant, and incidents of this sort are less common than many critics of the press suppose. The real problem is that the readers of a newspaper, unaccustomed to paying the cost of newsgathering, can be capitalized only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to manufacturers and merchants. And those whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable asset of its existence. [1] Public Opinion, https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html
- BitwiseFool 4y ago
  I'm not trying to dispute or detract from this point, but I'd also like to add that there is also a simple motivation behind media bias that can't be ignored: people wanting to shape public opinion to their own worldview - be they journalists or people who own the presses.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    I'd go even further and say the the motivation isn't specifically to shape public opinion to your view, but simply to present the content in a way that doesn't create cognitive dissonance with your personal view. If you personally don't believe that a piece of information is relevant, then you leave it out. That piece might not be relevant to your own view of the subject, but could be crucial to an opposing view.
  - bnralt 4y ago
    He actually touches on this as well: > There is a very small body of exact knowledge, which it requires no outstanding ability or training to deal with. The rest is in the journalist's own discretion. Once he departs from the region where it is definitely recorded at the County Clerk's office that John Smith has gone into bankruptcy, all fixed standards disappear. The story of why John Smith failed, his human frailties, the analysis of the economic conditions on which he was shipwrecked, all of this can be told in a hundred different ways. There is no discipline in applied psychology, as there is a discipline in medicine, engineering, or even law, which has authority to direct the journalist's mind when he passes from the news to the vague realm of truth. There are no canons to direct his own mind, and no canons that coerce the reader's judgment or the publisher's. His version of the truth is only his version. How can he demonstrate the truth as he sees it? He cannot demonstrate it, any more than Mr. Sinclair Lewis can demonstrate that he has told the whole truth about Main Street. And the more he understands his own weaknesses, the more ready he is to admit that where there is no objective test, his own opinion is in some vital measure constructed out of his own stereotypes, according to his own code, and by the urgency of his own interest. He knows that he is seeing the world through subjective lenses. He cannot deny that he too is, as Shelley remarked, a dome of many-colored glass which stains the white radiance of eternity. I recommend giving the book a read at some point if you have the chance (there's also a free audio book up on YouTube). It's a very thought provoking journey through how public opinion gets formed, and the myriad of different elements at play shaping them.

pjc50 4y ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformation-supplements.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/covid-misinformat... (which of course will be immediately accused of bias, but he's not wrong about the facts of the extent to which those people are funded by supplements) It's a big problem for the regular press too. Peter Oborne resigned from the Telegraph after they suppressed negative reporting on big advertiser HSBC: https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/peter-oborne-resignation-senior-writer-quits-telegraph-dramatically-over-hsbc-allegations/ https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/peter-ob...

denton-scratch 4y ago
There's quite a few independent UK journalists who are refugees from editors that started spiking their stories. Jonathan Cook and John Pilger both had to leave The Guardian.
jpadkins 4y ago
the nytimes link is /opinion/ which is held to a different to a different standard than standard news. I'm glad they at least label it as opinion. I think people reading opinion as news is part of the problem.

bnralt 4y ago

Audience capture is probably the biggest driving point behind media bias, whether the media is commercial or independent. Walter Lippmann put it wall 100 years ago [1]: > A newspaper which angers those whom it pays best to reach through advertisements is a bad medium for an advertiser. And since no one ever claimed that advertising was philanthropy, advertisers buy space in those publications which are fairly certain to reach their future customers. One need not spend much time worrying about the unreported scandals of the dry-goods merchants. They represent nothing really significant, and incidents of this sort are less common than many critics of the press suppose. The real problem is that the readers of a newspaper, unaccustomed to paying the cost of newsgathering, can be capitalized only by turning them into circulation that can be sold to manufacturers and merchants. And those whom it is most important to capitalize are those who have the most money to spend. Such a press is bound to respect the point of view of the buying public. It is for this buying public that newspapers are edited and published, for without that support the newspaper cannot live. A newspaper can flout an advertiser, it can attack a powerful banking or traction interest, but if it alienates the buying public, it loses the one indispensable asset of its existence. [1] Public Opinion, https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/6456/pg6456.html

BitwiseFool 4y ago
I'm not trying to dispute or detract from this point, but I'd also like to add that there is also a simple motivation behind media bias that can't be ignored: people wanting to shape public opinion to their own worldview - be they journalists or people who own the presses.
- giantg2 4y ago
  I'd go even further and say the the motivation isn't specifically to shape public opinion to your view, but simply to present the content in a way that doesn't create cognitive dissonance with your personal view. If you personally don't believe that a piece of information is relevant, then you leave it out. That piece might not be relevant to your own view of the subject, but could be crucial to an opposing view.
- bnralt 4y ago
  He actually touches on this as well: > There is a very small body of exact knowledge, which it requires no outstanding ability or training to deal with. The rest is in the journalist's own discretion. Once he departs from the region where it is definitely recorded at the County Clerk's office that John Smith has gone into bankruptcy, all fixed standards disappear. The story of why John Smith failed, his human frailties, the analysis of the economic conditions on which he was shipwrecked, all of this can be told in a hundred different ways. There is no discipline in applied psychology, as there is a discipline in medicine, engineering, or even law, which has authority to direct the journalist's mind when he passes from the news to the vague realm of truth. There are no canons to direct his own mind, and no canons that coerce the reader's judgment or the publisher's. His version of the truth is only his version. How can he demonstrate the truth as he sees it? He cannot demonstrate it, any more than Mr. Sinclair Lewis can demonstrate that he has told the whole truth about Main Street. And the more he understands his own weaknesses, the more ready he is to admit that where there is no objective test, his own opinion is in some vital measure constructed out of his own stereotypes, according to his own code, and by the urgency of his own interest. He knows that he is seeing the world through subjective lenses. He cannot deny that he too is, as Shelley remarked, a dome of many-colored glass which stains the white radiance of eternity. I recommend giving the book a read at some point if you have the chance (there's also a free audio book up on YouTube). It's a very thought provoking journey through how public opinion gets formed, and the myriad of different elements at play shaping them.