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More and more people are tuning the news out: 'Now I don't have that anxiety

(www.theguardian.com)
126 points giuliomagnifico | 2 comments | 07 Sep 25 12:57 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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alexjplant ◴[07 Sep 25 14:02 UTC] No.45158230[source]▶
This is really rich coming from The Guardian, a publication that, while not nearly on the same level of degeneracy as the usual rags, is hardly a bastion of factual reporting [1] (and, to be clear, I'm talking about factuality, not political bias, but downvote anyhow I guess). The last story I read from them was linked from here on HN and riddled with bad facts in a naked attempt to support the author's narrative. News flash (pun intended): if something is dire enough to be newsworthy then it doesn't need editorial embellishment. It's the metaphorical equivalent of a reporter making airplane noises while zooming a spoon of food around their readership's head like they're a hungry baby.

If you want hard hitting public interest pieces then ProPublica [2] and Democracy Now! [3] are both far better choices. I can't say that they'll make you feel better about the wacky world we live in but at least they treat you like an adult.

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-guardian/

[2] https://www.propublica.org/

[3] https://www.democracynow.org/

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csallen ◴[07 Sep 25 14:21 UTC] No.45158362[source]▶
A democracy is only as effective as its people are educated.

When people are not well educated, they have more trouble than they should discerning real from fake, objectivity from bias, quality from trash. (Obviously there is some subjectivity here, but there is also some ground truth, and I'm talking about the latter.)

The result is that they're more likely to click, read, believe, and share pieces that are sensationalist and low in quality. Consequently, the media companies that write that kind of stuff get all the views and most of the revenue, which they use reinvest to grow and write more of what they're writing. This also incentivizes other media companies to go the same route, and the ones that don't remain largely irrelevant. It also normalizes sensationalist low-quality writing.

To wit: SimilarWeb says the Daily Mail gets 230 million views/month. ProPublica gets 3 million and Democracy Now gets 1.5 million.

I have no idea how a society gets itself out of this downward spiral, besides better educating its people. Or restricting its people's ability to decide what rises to the top (which ofc has its own obvious downsides).

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1. mrangle ◴[07 Sep 25 14:45 UTC] No.45158616[source]▶
>A democracy is only as effective as its people are educated

I missed that part of the Western Constitutions. It is likely missing because it is a false and self-serving axiom, as well as flirting with being the opposite of democracy. Mostly, it is totalitarian regimes that invoke education as being necessary for their citizens.

Is it only democracy and not a downward spiral when democracy moves in the direction that you prefer?

You might have to accept that democracy works, and that if nothing else democracy is the individual freedom to decide on what is true.

The second that you start restricting that freedom of information and individual decisions pertaining to it, impacting elections for example, you can no longer appeal to democracy.

Personally I think that more subjects are deceptive than either they or you likely know. But I'm not so debased as to call for restrictions on your information. You're free to believe in and seek out your deceptions, as a matter of democracy.

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2. csallen ◴[07 Sep 25 15:02 UTC] No.45158799[source]▶
You are somehow confusing education with indoctrination.

The goal of education is to give people (ideally at a young age) valuable knowledge, critical thinking skills, and the ability to question and make independent judgments. There's nothing anti-democratic about that. Quite the opposite. And all evidence suggests this is far more common in democracies than it is in totalitarian regimes.

The goal of indoctrination is to instill a fixed set of beliefs or loyalties and to discourage doubt or alternative perspectives. Totalitarian regimes do this to create obedience and ideological conformity. And although many competing parties in democratic countries would like to do the same for their cause, that doesn't make it the definition of education.