Is mainsteam media irrelevant today?

[dismal]

The media's pro-Trump bias pretty much created the Trump presidency.

Dude, if you think the media had a pro-Trump bias, you are clearly living in an alternate reality.

But, dude, they supported him by being against him.

Actually a case can be made they were in the tank for him in the Republican primary. According to the wikileaks Hillary was telling the media to hype up Trump because they wanted to face him.

 

[Trausti]

The media's pro-Trump bias pretty much created the Trump presidency.

Dude, if you think the media had a pro-Trump bias, you are clearly living in an alternate reality.

The media never reported that he drinks the blood of human babies, slices kittens into sashimi, sings the Rebecca Black Friday song while bathing in urine, and is the true murderer of Laura Palmer. The media were clearly covering for him.

 

[zorq]

The media is doing what it's supposed to do: earn money through advertising.

What's all this high minded public purpose stuff?

Those two birds can't be killed with one stone.

But they can only do that if people read them. And people will only read them if they find them trustworthy.

But people weigh the trustworthiness of the news media based on how much it agrees with their perception of reality, not it's actual correspondence to objective reality. And when a big chunk of people's perceived reality is an imaginary construction formed from other media they have consumed over the years, they will reject objective news.

Nah, I don't think it's that easy. They have an incentive to be correct. and right now they're not. The top journalists don't know any better what's going on than the rest of us. Right now they've lost their function.

As I've argued, their real incentive is to appeal to the biases of their consumers. Actual facts used to appeal to a broad audience but I think the consumers of media in the US have become just as polarized as the political parties so top journalists can't appeal to everyone anymore. It's not that the journalists are necessarily wrong. It's just that they just can't appease the biases of to two alternate realities.

I think both realities are deluded to some degree but one of them is a little farther off the scale. The media favored the one a little more down to earth but they guessed wrong.

This is a seismic shift in the power dynamics of our world. I'm sure the media will adapt eventually, but it will be a different media landscape than what we're used to... whatever is the result.

I agree. Change is certain.

 

[credoconsolans]

I think Michael Moore summed the election up the best.



I'll admit that I was stunned and shocked about the Trump victory, so I was obviously living in a liberal middle-class bubble. It's hurts to admit it. But there you have it. It happened and I'll have to own up to it. I blame the sources for my information. The moderators of knowledge, the media. They gave me faulty information. Probably due to them wildly overestimated their importance. All the polls were obviously shit, because they all indicated a walk-over victory for Clinton. So the way we (ie society) inform ourselves about public opinion today is wrong.

To me, that is terrifying. It's like we can't be sure of anything anymore. How are we supposed to inform ourselves in the future? But I don't think the media created Trump. I think social media did. So that cat is out of the bag. So the future belongs to demagogues? No less terrifying.

Where do you get your information and how do you know it's reliable?

Coming from the rustbelt, I know very well the frustrations that Moore talks about. But I don't think Trump will do anything for those people.

And I'm surprised they think so. They not only won't get any factories or jobs, but their costs will go up. Further deregulation will cost working people. In the end, they'll be worse off.

Some are saying Trump will distribute goodies, but he has to go through Congress. I doubt they'll pony up, unless there's a recession(which is a good possibility).

Really?

They criticized Obama (wrongly) for 'free' shit he gave people and now Trump supporters are expecting the same 'handouts'? I thought they said only Democrats were freeloaders...

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

The media's pro-Trump bias pretty much created the Trump presidency. The American media is more than useless, they are a threat to democracy.

Honestly, I hope Trump goes through with his treat to put journalists in jail. That would be poetic justice, wouldn't it? They put Trump in the White House, and he rewards them by throwing them in jail. It would be perfect.

Congrats on your guy winning.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Anyway, the main stream media pretty much poo-pooed Trump and lead people to believe that HRC was a shoe in for the Whitehouse. They (and Clinton's campaign) just weren't paying attention.

The difference is that paying attention is their one job. It's what they're for.

My argument is that if they are clueless, then the rest of us are of course all the more clueless.

 

[couch_sloth]

So many of the pollsters got it wrong too. e.g. If I remember correctly, going into election day only 2 of the 11 major polls predicted that Trump would most likely win.

 

[jonatha]

Now we have stories getting wide coverage that would normally be suppressed.

The main problem with that is the low signal-to-noise ratio.

 

[bilby]

So many of the pollsters got it wrong too. e.g. If I remember correctly, going into election day only 2 of the 11 major polls predicted that Trump would most likely win.

That's not a failing. Unlikely results are quite common.

Nate Silver had Clinton about 2:1 vs Trump. A one in three chance coming up should not surprise anyone who understands statistics.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Oh they knew. It was just going on to a greater extent than anyone realized. And not by all that much - but enough. This was not landslide.

If they know, why didn't they write i? What possible incentive could they have had not to write what they know? The only explanation I can think of, is that they didn't know.

I don't think fringe racist groups here are a serious problem. If they are in Sweden, that's the difference. Other than that, I wouldn't know.

The problem isn't the racism. It's how they reached the racist opinion. I put fringe racist groups together with radical militant feminists, chem-trailers, communists, conspiracy theorists, tin-foil-hatters and creationists. It's all the people who think that their own personal pet theories, that goes against all known science, is correct, while everybody else is wrong. Apart from being laughable (ie having hubris to the point of insanity) they create noise. This is nothing new. It's an ancient problem. But today it's noise that drowns out more reasoned and sensible discussions.

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."
/Bertrand Russel