[HN Gopher] CNN cutting back on over-hyping everything as "break...
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CNN cutting back on over-hyping everything as "breaking news"
Author : asplake
Score : 359 points
Date : 2022-06-02 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.axios.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.axios.com)
| aruanavekar wrote:
| Good decision. I smile with this decision.
| rvz wrote:
| So it has been finally admitted.
|
| 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.
|
| So it really unsurprising.
| trothamel wrote:
| This is long overdue... I'd have hoped that they would have done
| it in 2014, when this bit of classic overhype aired.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/2y3K1w2.png
|
| "Breaking News: Titanic Sunk 102 Years Ago Tonight"
| anm89 wrote:
| I've never seen that. That's amazing
| billti wrote:
| 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.
| omoikane wrote:
| Came here to look for this exact example, was not disappointed
| :)
| Vladimof wrote:
| That's far from being the only (or worst) problem with CNN but I
| guess it's a start...
| mdeck_ wrote:
| Next perhaps they can get Wolf Blitzer to stop shouting literally
| every sentence that comes out of his mouth as if it is all
| "BREAKING NEWS."
| the_biot wrote:
| I just hope they take Don "pandering propaganda" Lemon off the
| air. Hard to take them seriously as a news source when you see
| that show.
| adamrezich wrote:
| 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?
| robonerd wrote:
| 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.
| babypuncher wrote:
| I guess us Millennials are stuck feigning conversations
| with our morning avocado toast.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| This story makes me smile.
|
| 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.
| deckard1 wrote:
| > 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.
| brightball wrote:
| Related, I've often thought a resume site like LinkedIn should
| include a "What does your mom tell her friends that you do?"
| section. :-)
|
| It would probably be pretty entertaining.
| gumby wrote:
| 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).
| jdhawk wrote:
| this is an awesome idea. a newer title for an executive
| summary for less traditional companies.
| Karawebnetwork wrote:
| Ask HN: "What does your parent(s) tell their friends that you
| do?"
| txbuck wrote:
| "I spend all day getting pissed at my machine for doing
| exactly what I told it to do."
| IncRnd wrote:
| Thread created! I wonder what replies we will get?
|
| Ask HN: What does your Mom tell people about your work or
| employment?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31601004
| baisq wrote:
| "He spends all day on his computer"
| symfoniq wrote:
| My daughter used to think--and tell people--that her
| father "makes money."
|
| Then one day I figured out that she thought I literally
| created paper currency at my day job.
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| 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.
|
| Oh well. Whaddya gonna do.
| lostphilosopher wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/722/
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| spoils19 wrote:
| 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.
| StevePerkins wrote:
| 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?
|
| If I were to downvote, it would have been for #1.
| stevage wrote:
| Wait, you can dovnvote? The app I use only upvotes
| sofixa wrote:
| Depends on your karma too, past certain amounts you can
| downvote, flag, vouch (anti-flag).
| tpmx wrote:
| That's for the web.
|
| For TV, something like the software solutions listed here: ht
| tps://www.reddit.com/r/broadcastengineering/comments/s6s7m...
| jedberg wrote:
| 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".
| monksy wrote:
| oh so you made the "reddit is down" page. :)
|
| (Just kidding.. I appreciate your work and I've been using
| reddit for a long time)
| disiplus wrote:
| i remember those days, reddit was a lot down, and you did a
| lot of maintenance in europe time, so i would be productive
| at work.
| jedberg wrote:
| Ha! Sorry bout that. We just did it at the lowest traffic
| times, and I'm a night owl.
| jedberg wrote:
| I did actually make one of them. :)
|
| 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!
| danillonunes wrote:
| "You broke reddit :("
| greyskull wrote:
| I always wondered why reddit decided to make that
| inextricable link. Any insight on why post titles aren't
| editable?
|
| I thought maybe it's a database optimization, but it could
| also just be an unfortunate design decision.
| cultartawayyyi wrote:
| A lot of MVC sites do this - it's descriptive to both
| humans and robots.
|
| If a URL ends with something like "/1234-content-goes-
| here", you can often shorten it to "/1234" and get a
| successful redirect.
| markstos wrote:
| 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.
| TwelveNights wrote:
| I've always thought that Twitter adopted the same line of
| thinking, preventing tweets from being editable.
| jedberg wrote:
| 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.
| mattnewton wrote:
| That and early on it used sms as one of the interfaces,
| which is not editable.
| jedberg wrote:
| They could always send another SMS with the edit. :)
|
| But yes, that too. The whole system was designed around
| SMS which couldn't be "unsent".
| fortran77 wrote:
| It's to prevent tweeting "LIKE this if you like Ice
| Cream" and then editing it to say "LIKE this if you like
| pedophilia"
|
| Nobody would ever Like/Retweet anything if it could be
| changed later.
| jedberg wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/v3ae16/rantiwork
| _...
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/antiwork/comments/v3ae16/grayskull
| _...
|
| 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.
| blahblarblar wrote:
| Great example of how the market doesn't really care about the
| how, just the what.
| westoque wrote:
| 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.
| xtracto wrote:
| 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 .
| user3939382 wrote:
| 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.
| keewee7 wrote:
| 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.
| drewcoo wrote:
| This knee-jerk slander really ought to stop. Especially here
| on HN.
|
| Just because someone doesn't hold mainstream views doesn't
| make them whatever your version of evil or insane or ____ is.
|
| I would hope that people here were attempting to be better
| informed instead of merely shouting down otherness.
| [deleted]
| root_axis wrote:
| 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".
| user3939382 wrote:
| 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.
| kingTug wrote:
| Jimmy Dore championed Ivermectin last year, to name one.
| Everyone on that list is a bit of a quack, imo.
| user3939382 wrote:
| The NIH says that although it's not approved for COVID,
| more trials are needed for Ivermectin: https://www.covid1
| 9treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapies/ant...
|
| "[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".
| root_axis wrote:
| 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.
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| havblue wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| uoaei wrote:
| 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".
| carnagestorm wrote:
| 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.
|
| 1) https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilen
| s/fi...
| user3939382 wrote:
| 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > 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.
| hammock wrote:
| The Economist, the Atlantic, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair...
| you were saying?
| meowface wrote:
| 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| 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.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| > 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.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| user3939382 wrote:
| > 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.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > > 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.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31599240
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31600009
| pvg wrote:
| Most of these people, in their current incarnations, are highly
| dependent on 'corporate news' to get actual news to comment on.
| muaytimbo wrote:
| 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.
| smt88 wrote:
| 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).
| user3939382 wrote:
| > 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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.
| smt88 wrote:
| "Corporate media" never said Ukraine was winning in
| Mariupol. It was always given as a counterpoint.
|
| Sometimes I think people understand the mainstream
| narrative only through the lens of the contrarians, which
| is sometimes accurate and sometimes not.
| keewee7 wrote:
| >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.
| drewcoo wrote:
| I'm not going to read these for you:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Greenwald
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Hedges
|
| You can look up the others if you like.
|
| 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?
| keewee7 wrote:
| >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.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kissinger_Associates
|
| 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?
| robonerd wrote:
| 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?)
| robonerd wrote:
| 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.
| j_walter wrote:
| 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.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| 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".
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| 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.
| j_walter wrote:
| 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.
| bena wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| AlbertCory wrote:
| One time I was on the Lifecycle at the gym and CNN was playing on
| the big TV. So I was a captive audience for 20 minutes.
|
| This was a Monday. That coming Thursday, James Comey was
| testifying before Congress about something or other.
|
| _The entire 20 minutes_ they talked about Comey 's upcoming
| testimony and what he might say.
|
| Something that was _going to happen_ in 3 days. And that was the
| most important news item right then?
| ncann wrote:
| 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."
| kringo wrote:
| finally!
| drewcoo wrote:
| That only took what? 30? 40 years to figure out?
|
| Talk about fast news cycles!
| froggertoaster wrote:
| > [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.
| datalopers wrote:
| cnn sucks. fox sucks. msnbc sucks. local news is all managed by
| sinclair to say the exact same thing.
|
| what's worth consuming? ap, reuters, npr?
| forinti wrote:
| I find Aljazeera, DW, and TV5 to be the most serious news
| channels lately (although I barely watch anymore).
|
| I really liked the morning news on TV5 because they kept it
| light (my local news channel thinks I want to watch murder
| scenes while I eat my cereal).
| selecsosi wrote:
| 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
| xoxxala wrote:
| I've personally found the BBC, The Guardian and Aljazeera to be
| less awful than the rest. (Websites, at least, I don't TV).
| clamprecht wrote:
| 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.
| rabuse wrote:
| 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.
| dageshi wrote:
| 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.
| icelancer wrote:
| 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.
| wccrawford wrote:
| 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.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| cowmoo728 wrote:
| 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.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Agreed about Newshour. they may have a left bias but they
| report facts and not just mostly opinion like most other
| channels.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| Trump indirectly ruined NPR they put a good faith effort into
| acting impartial before but they gave that up.
| Grim-444 wrote:
| 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'.
| sn0w_crash wrote:
| The Information has been pretty good Try it
| ultramegachurch wrote:
| > what's worth consuming?
|
| Nothing.
|
| 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.
| buzzert wrote:
| Some great reading material on this:
| http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
| [deleted]
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| 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.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/29/us/cnn-and-foxs-supreme-c...
| One time they were so desperate to be first, they reported the
| wrong result of a supreme court ruling.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Can't be scooped if you make up the news yourself
| ModernMech wrote:
| > I don't recall the last time that CNN broke any news.
|
| They just broke some news today, it's on their front page:
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2022/06/02/politics/meadows-texts-januar...
| pessimizer wrote:
| /s?
| [deleted]
| jsemrau wrote:
| Finally. I hated when every Trump tweet was "breaking news".
| dcdc123 wrote:
| I feel like you missed an opportunity.
|
| > Breaking News: CNN cutting back on over-hyping everything as
| "breaking news"
| kosyblysk666 wrote:
| too little, too late
|
| they lost credibility long time ago...
|
| bye, Felicia
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| anm89 wrote:
| 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.
| ntoskrnl wrote:
| 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.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| CNN is political commentary, not journalism.
|
| Journalism is serving as witness for who was not there.
|
| CNN is about interpreting stories to mold your opinion, instead
| of reporting what happened in a neutral way.
|
| Also, this: https://youtu.be/FK3vpdmEFow?t=35
|
| CNN should not exist, or at least, you should avoid it like the
| plague.
| dpio wrote:
| Almost feels like a The Onion headline.
| [deleted]
| tragictrash wrote:
| It really does feel satirical.
|
| Better headline: 'Breaking news: CNN cutting back on over-
| hyping everything as "breaking news"'
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think most things will sound satirical if you rewrite a
| non-hypocritical statement to sound hypocritical.
| thamer wrote:
| 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.
| cheriot wrote:
| 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.
| meatsauce wrote:
| Breaking news: cnn is full of shit
| gossamer wrote:
| I wish they had prepended "Breaking News: " to the title of this
| story.
| kyleblarson wrote:
| 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?
| ozzythecat wrote:
| 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.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| 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. Jose 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| How do you feel about Joe "nothing will fundamentally change"
| Biden?
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Very negative opinion of president-elect Joseph Biden.
|
| 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 bitchvictim 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.
| [deleted]
| guerrilla wrote:
| So, either there is a reason this (whole thing) became less
| profitable or this is going to fail. Which one is it?
| [deleted]
| lame-robot-hoax wrote:
| 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.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Yeah, that's one idea I had... maybe centrist (or eventually
| right-wing) politics benefit the owners more at this point. I
| guess we'll see.
| rightbyte wrote:
| My feeling is that "clickbaits" chew on reader and viewer trust
| and eventually you churned it down until it doesn't work
| anymore.
| pmmertens wrote:
| The current "BREAKING" News story on cnn.com: "Queen pulls out of
| jubilee service at St Paul's Cathedral due to 'discomfort' during
| Thursday's parade"
| egberts1 wrote:
| Well, that made me laugh.
|
| Thanks for the chuckle, CNN.
| racl101 wrote:
| 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.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I saw it when Phil Hartman died, where were you?
| brycewray wrote:
| At least one of them did it, finally. I griped about this in
| 2019:
|
| https://www.brycewray.com/posts/2019/11/curmudgeonish-2019/#...
| UberFly wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| adamrezich wrote:
| 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?
| VonGuard wrote:
| 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.
| tqi wrote:
| You don't think the fact that newsrooms are overwhelmingly
| college educated people with Liberal Arts backgrounds has
| anything to do with it?
| oaththrowaway wrote:
| Being compassionate isn't the same thing as being progressive.
|
| Totally illogical to think that giving the reigns to the
| government to solve all injustice is silly. But I guess that
| makes me inhuman.
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| _Looks at BBC News app_
| [deleted]
| tiffanyh wrote:
| 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.
| lapcat wrote:
| It looks like CNN just replaced "breaking news" with "live
| updates".
|
| There are currently 4 "live updates" on cnn.com, including "Biden
| to deliver speech on guns tonight", which is obviously _not_
| live.
| winslow wrote:
| When everything is breaking news, nothing is breaking news.
| vikingerik wrote:
| They kept breaking the news and now it's broken. What did they
| expect?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| 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.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Sounds cool, except: look at CNN's frontpage right now.
| winternett wrote:
| 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).
| zerkten wrote:
| >> 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).
| [deleted]
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| FYI, to your first point about ads and pop ups, you can use the
| lite version. It's much faster.
|
| https://lite.cnn.com/en
| madars wrote:
| >Their pages are overrun by ads and even pop-ups now and that
| makes them really look like a tabloid.
|
| True, true! But some engineer there still maintains
| https://lite.cnn.com/ :-) Also relevant: https://text.npr.org/
| https://www.cbc.ca/lite/news
| [deleted]
| latexr wrote:
| 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.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway92394 wrote:
| > 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.
| agiacalone wrote:
| > 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.
| zerocrates wrote:
| 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).
| raverbashing wrote:
| > 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?)
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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.
| colpabar wrote:
| 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.
| askin4it wrote:
| Great insight, thanks. Until they get to the heart of the
| matter and cut out the rot there, nothing will actually change.
| [deleted]
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| secabeen wrote:
| > 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.
| chmod600 wrote:
| "held to a different standard"
|
| 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.
| resfirestar wrote:
| 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.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| 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.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| 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.
|
| Fascinating and terrible things.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| 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.
| titzer wrote:
| 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
| r6fyhrc5 wrote:
| fleddr wrote:
| We don't want quality. We want dopamine.
|
| 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.
| 0des wrote:
| > Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links
|
| Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just something
| to confirm their biases.
| l2silver wrote:
| 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.
| Clubber wrote:
| 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.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| 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.
| tablespoon wrote:
| >> Opinion pieces are strewn throughout regular news links
|
| > Sometimes I wonder if some folks want news, or just
| something to confirm their biases.
|
| Many people just want their biases confirmed, which is pretty
| clear if you ever take a look at newspaper comment sections.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| 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".
| rabuse wrote:
| It's really just exploiting our biological tribal
| mentality. It'll never go away.
| 0des wrote:
| The most uncomfortable of ignored truths
| [deleted]
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| 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
| [deleted]
| drewcoo wrote:
| Well if it confirmed someone else's biases it wouldn't be
| news, would it? It would be "propaganda."
| tunesmith wrote:
| 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.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| It's funny, I would phrase it as I really want potato
| chips, but I'll eat nutritious food.
| pc86 wrote:
| I swing violently between the two, and it has little
| bearing on what I _actually_ eat.
| Retric wrote:
| 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?
| Aunche wrote:
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| 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.
| 0des wrote:
| > I certainly don't.
|
| Are you a physicist? Because _surely you 're joking_.
|
| Dear downvoter: Your book collection sucks. https://en.wi
| kipedia.org/wiki/Surely_You%27re_Joking,_Mr._Fe...!
| 0des wrote:
| It used to not be this way...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FCC_fairness_doctrine
| housel wrote:
| 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.
| 0des wrote:
| > 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.
| [deleted]
| munificent wrote:
| Human attention is still a scarce resource.
| asdff wrote:
| 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.
| 0des wrote:
| > we really don't have that broad of viewpoints despite
| all of our connectivity
|
| If anything, it is now easier to chop down any tall
| poppies or non conformists.
| drewcoo wrote:
| 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.
|
| Here's a liberal view of Cronkite:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdXVWsTpSM
| ldoughty wrote:
| 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.
| Clubber wrote:
| 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?!).
| jamesmaniscalco wrote:
| 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.
|
| Insert analogies for the news as appropriate.
| tehjoker wrote:
| True and what we want is in part conditioned by what is
| produced.
| mourinhoalex wrote:
| 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
| zeruch wrote:
| "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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > but in the age of social media,
|
| 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.
| ginkgotree wrote:
| lol... about time
| leach wrote:
| Are they doing anything to restore their credibility though?
| lapcat wrote:
| Did they ever have credibility?
|
| CNN came to prominence during the first Iraq invasion, because
| of their live coverage from inside Iraq.
|
| What are the important stories that CNN broke? I can't remember
| any. They don't seem very big on "investigative" reporting.
| foobarian wrote:
| 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?
| monetus wrote:
| She interviewed a Taliban leader a week ago maybe, runs her
| own company I guess. Great YouTube presence.
| lapcat wrote:
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| 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.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "I still think that, "
|
| You shouldn't think this anymore. At least since the 2016
| campaign CNN turned into the left wing FoxNews.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Go look at clips of CNN from the early 80's to see what they
| used to be like. It was very quaint compared to today.
| ridgered4 wrote:
| I thought CNN became a big deal for it's 24 hour news
| coverage of a kid getting stuck in a well.
| lapcat wrote:
| That too.
| avodonosov wrote:
| In your opinion, what US news channels or web sites are of good
| quality?
| leach wrote:
| I like to read the WSJ
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Maybe NPR. It has a left bias but at they report facts and
| don't have all these opinion talking heads.
| 0des wrote:
| Probably going to have to wait for an opposing party candidate
| to get voted in to know for sure as the true litmus test of
| their resolve.
| bloodyplonker22 wrote:
| 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.
| 0des wrote:
| How was this comment [dead] immediately right out of the
| gate? Is there a word filter or does everyone just see red
| when certain topics come up?
| kylecordes wrote:
| The fundamental challenge for all news channels:
|
| 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.
| bigmattystyles wrote:
| 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.
| babypuncher wrote:
| > 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".
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "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?".
| eternalban wrote:
| 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):
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDopY5dMD8 (short)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWhgKuKvvPE (long)
| robonerd wrote:
| > _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.
|
| Typical examples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz0efQ5uuYk
|
| https://youtu.be/Ou_9snb91lc?t=137
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I basically can't and don't watch US TV. Everything is about
| raising the blood pressure of people.
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.lexico.com/definition/late-breaking
| 52-6F-62 wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.lexico.com/definition/late-breaking
| jakub_g wrote:
| 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)
|
| Wikipedia seems to agree:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breaking_news
| [deleted]
| philwelch wrote:
| > 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.
| Melatonic wrote:
| 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
| robonerd wrote:
| 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.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| 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.
| bsedlm wrote:
| if all news are breaking news, then there are no breaking news
| [deleted]
| atlgator wrote:
| Now cut back on the gaslighting, hyperbole, and dog whistles.
| lazyeye wrote:
| The mainstream media has no business model anymore, its been
| destroyed by the internet.
|
| So now they just generate provocative content as cheaply as
| possible to attract eyeballs for advertisers.
|
| And no content is cheaper to produce than opinion...
| SurgeArrest wrote:
| 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.
| tpmx wrote:
| _[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.
| robonerd wrote:
| 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?
| tpmx wrote:
| 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.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _There 's never a lack of relevant news._
|
| _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.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > There's never a lack of relevant news.
|
| 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.
| majewsky wrote:
| > 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.
| pavon wrote:
| 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.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| 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.
| tpmx wrote:
| They're primarily in text (print/web) though.
|
| I'd watch a news channel with FT/The Economist style
| content translated to TV, I think...
| brentm wrote:
| I agree that they could use improvement but compared to MSNBC
| and Fox they're still probably the nearest to the center out
| there.
| [deleted]
| egberts1 wrote:
| No, CNN is closer to National Enquirer than MSNBC is toward
| the left.
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| This is wildly off the mark.
| [deleted]
| daveslash wrote:
| It's been a stretch for me to consider _any_ Cable News as "
| _News_ " for a while.
| drstewart wrote:
| 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.
| bink wrote:
| 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.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >" 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.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| > 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.
| Karunamon wrote:
| 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.
| heleninboodler wrote:
| 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.
| SllX wrote:
| Only if you flatly ignore the context.
|
| BitwiseFool's original commentary was not just about
| progressives, it was also about CNN's staffing choices.
| dymk wrote:
| 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.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| 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.
| subsubzero wrote:
| 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.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Then they'll diversify their reporters, a most welcome
| change.
| ShamelessC wrote:
| rajup wrote:
| How exactly is this flamebait?
| colpabar wrote:
| turn on showdead and just vouch the now-flagged-and-dead
| comment. people who flag stuff like that aren't
| interested in discussion.
| jchw wrote:
| 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I don't think you'll find many - or possibly any -
| progressives who say that CNN is progressive.
| babypuncher wrote:
| 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.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| 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.
| abruzzi wrote:
| 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.)
| jchw wrote:
| 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.
| fleddr wrote:
| 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.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| amen.
| cheriot wrote:
| 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.
| worker_person wrote:
| It's not equal.
|
| The end game for many progressives is things like Mao
| China. Where millions died due to bad polices. Also
| Venezuela, USSR, etc.
|
| Conservatives mostly want to avoid that path, or things
| that take us down that path.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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.
| rfrey wrote:
| The end game for many progressives is policies
| commonplace in _every other western nation_ , not
| duplication of authoritarian atrocities.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"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".
| suture wrote:
| 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.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| >"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.
| colpabar wrote:
| 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!).
| mistermann wrote:
| > would very quickly have several replies claiming it's
| just whataboutism
|
| I was thinking exactly this (I find that magical word
| fascinating), and I also think this thread is
| interesting.
| suture wrote:
| I have hard believing this given your statements:
|
| _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.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| 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.
| suture wrote:
| 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.
| MockObject wrote:
| 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.
| MockObject wrote:
| Why would anyone discuss the characteristics of those
| other groups when discussing CNN?
| suture wrote:
| 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.
| MockObject wrote:
| 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.
| suture wrote:
| 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.
| cguess wrote:
| 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.
| ameister14 wrote:
| 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.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I make personal observations and share them, you are
| correct!
| linkingday wrote:
| 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
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| 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
| zmgsabst wrote:
| If you think CNN is "center right", you're revealing your
| own far left biases.
| MrMan wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| How are you using "far left" in this instance?
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| To the left of progressive Democrat and then farther
| still
|
| Edit: clearly the down votes don't seem to see the
| context wherein OP has described the commenter.
|
| My post is not an opinion, it's the contextual position
| given by the OP.
|
| But by all means downvote away per your bias.
|
| Thanks Mods
| linkingday wrote:
| what if I told you that Democrats aren't even on the
| left, when it comes to the rest of the world?
| [deleted]
| upsidesinclude wrote:
| The rest of the world isn't leading the world.
|
| 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
| MockObject wrote:
| It's irrelevant, because we're discussing an American
| network.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| It'd suggest that you're viewing the world from a
| radically far left perspective.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| 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.
| worker_person wrote:
| 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.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| > 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?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Source is here https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Par
| ty_Platform,_2020
|
| 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.
| teakettle42 wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/01/opinion/republicans-
| relig...
| bitcurious wrote:
| >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.
|
| [0] https://www.hrc.org/resources/marriage-equality-
| around-the-w...
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| You would think the idea that gays should marry is a
| conservative position.
| PraetorianGourd wrote:
| 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.
|
| What rights do Christians have over others?
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Please see my response to teakettle42 in this thread.
| linkingday wrote:
| 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
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Too the left of progressive Democrat and then farther
| still
|
| CNN is not to the left of progressive Democrats.
|
| It's not even to the left of the neoliberal wing of the
| Democratic Party.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| > calling leftists rioting and committing arson "mostly
| peaceful"
|
| What they said was "FIERY BUT MOSTLY PEACEFUL PROTESTS
| AFTER POLICE SHOOTING" according to the link you
| provided.
|
| The vast majority of those involved in the protect didn't
| commit crimes, correct?
| teakettle42 wrote:
| 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.
|
| The double standard is exceedingly clear.
| scarmig wrote:
| [deleted]
| arrrg wrote:
| That's partisan, not left.
| sbf501 wrote:
| linkingday wrote:
| holy moly lmao
| [deleted]
| bozhark wrote:
| Only in America*
| mardifoufs wrote:
| This is totally false. On social issues It would be
| comfortably to the left even in europe. Probably not on
| foreign policy though, I'd agree
| bitwize wrote:
| "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.
| vlunkr wrote:
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| 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.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| As a fact, Democrats and leftists are the party of racism
| in the US, such as attempting to repeal civil rights laws
| in WA and CA.
|
| They're also viewed as "extremists" because they engaged
| in mass rioting, arson, and occasional murder before an
| election -- and seem to be engaged in what some view as a
| modern "cultural revolution".
|
| Attempts to overturn civil rights laws:
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affir
| mat...
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal
| _Pr...
| mthoms wrote:
| 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?
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| MockObject wrote:
| 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.
| rayiner wrote:
| 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.
| treesknees wrote:
| In which senses are they center-right? This is the first
| time I've ever heard someone refer to CNN as anywhere near
| the right.
|
| AllSides Bias Rating puts them on the left,
| https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
|
| Pew Research shows a significant slant toward the left in
| terms of CNN's audience,
| https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/interactives/media-
| po...
|
| Searching CNN in this bias chart shows center-left,
| https://adfontesmedia.com/interactive-media-bias-chart/
|
| From 2014 but still showing CNN toward the left,
| https://guides.lib.umich.edu/c.php?g=637508&p=4462444
| suture wrote:
| 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.
| pueblito wrote:
| 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
| Clubber wrote:
| 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.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/news-
| networks...
|
| https://jacobin.com/2022/04/defense-industry-ex-military-
| off...
|
| This has been going on for decades.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html
|
| 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.
| zzzeek wrote:
| > AllSides Bias Rating puts them on the left
|
| 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.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Honestly, left/right is not really a useful tool for
| arranging political opinions on a scale beyond jerking,
| at which it excels.
| SllX wrote:
| Yet we continue to suffer under the tyranny of the French
| National Assembly's seating chart.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > 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.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > 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).
| Clubber wrote:
| >if you dont see "abolish the police and all prisons" and
| "forgive all student debt", you aren't looking at far
| left content.
|
| I never took the "defund the police" movement as "abolish
| the police." I thought equating it to "abolish the
| police" was just a right wing hit-job.
| Karunamon wrote:
| 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.
|
| I mean, "reform" is right there...
| Clubber wrote:
| 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.
| dbrueck wrote:
| Most dictionaries (at least from a cursory Googling)
| disagree with you:
|
| "prevent from continuing to receive funds."
|
| "to stop providing money for something"
|
| "To stop the flow of funds to"
|
| "to withdraw financial support from"
|
| "to deplete the financial resources of"
|
| But Cambridge at least gives you your 2nd meaning as an
| alternate:
|
| "to stop providing money or as much money to pay for
| something"
|
| EDIT: Oof, and the Cambridge definition was changed
| sometime after Dec 2020 to give it that more broad
| definition:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20201207142418/https://dictio
| nar...
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I never took the "defund the police" movement as
| "abolish the police." I thought equating it to "abolish
| the police" was just a right wing hit-job.
|
| No, not really. Some on the left actually took it that
| far.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-
| abol...
|
| > Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police
|
| > 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| Maybe they'll manage to un-break news.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| _The Correspondent_ used that pun when they promoted their
| ill-fated English-language edition.
| theonlybutlet wrote:
| I hope they succeed too, I feel its vital to their success in
| the long term, although their success in the short term may be
| difficult.
| hereforphone wrote:
| Does anyone outside of an airport still watch CNN?
| TedShiller wrote:
| False news would be more appropriate for CNN
| iepathos wrote:
| Can they just generally address over-hyping and sensationalism in
| their articles? Would be nice to see a return of some
| journalistic integrity.
| productceo wrote:
| Lost opportunity to ironically call this news "breaking"
| slackfan wrote:
| I'll believe it when I see it.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| 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.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I just searched "Breaking news" and CNN International is the
| first result. It will take them a while to rebrand.
| simonswords82 wrote:
| 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.
| sefrost wrote:
| Also, I'm sure about half of the BBC News notifications are
| about the USA.
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