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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   36206 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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I just don’t understand why the journalist community is just incapable of self-correction here. The reason right-leaning news is growing is that it at least tries to get the facts right, and is open and honest about what it believes in. People like FOX and Joe Rogan because they’re trying to get things right and when they don’t get it exactly right, you at least know where they’re coming from. CNN pretends to be neutral but skews left and everyone is fairly aware of that.

I mostly go with AP and BBC when I’m trying to assess whether or not something is factual. Rogan is at least trying and has the virtue (increasingly rare in traditional news media) of letting the guests actually speak without interruption even when he clearly disagrees with them. And because of that, listeners at least get a full understanding of what that guest is trying to say. I find the practice of constantly interrupting the guests on a show to be annoying. If a conservative goes on CNN, he rarely gets to speak a complete sentence before getting cut off to make the counterpoint.

The reason right-leaning news is growing is that it at least tries to get the facts right

Ehhhhhh....some yes, many others no. The pressure to cater to the consumer's pre-existing beliefs is very strong, and right wingers are just as susceptible to confirmation bias and all the other old, familiar rationalist hobbyhorses as lefties.

Being entrenched in one's own opinions is different from trying to abolish lines of argument since they're -ist

Journalism is a shrinking field, which means you need the respect of your peers to keep working in it, which means ‘impressing other journalists’ is more important than ‘impressing the public’.

I just don’t understand why the journalist community is just incapable of self-correction here.

The incentives don't line up the right way. Both the external incentives (eyeballs, ad clicks, etc) and the internal ones (what bosses, themselves, and co-workers want)

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