This is interesting to me. In central Europe, or at least my country, the serious media keep very high standards.
Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.
I find our independent media to be a key element of our democracy and I am worried when I hear the US media don't work quite the same.
Edit: I thought I might as well reply with our solutions to your bullet points
- Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist. The newspaper as an organisation is equally hostile to all the politicians.
- The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society. (+ ads ofc)
- If one wants power to change things the far superior strategy in my country is to do the actual politics and not to report on it.
A very eye-opening event for me was when I visited Berlin in 2003 (?). We watched ZDF (government-financed German TV) news and saw a huge crowd protesting against Bush’s war in Iraq. Wanting to join them, we found a mostly empty square with a much smaller group of protestors standing in a triangle-formation in front of the cameras, which were setup such that the crowd would appear massive on TV.
So if you think European media are free of political bias and distortions, think again.
Independent objective media are the lifeblood of democracy. You literally cannot have a healthy democracy without a strong and independent fourth estate.
For a long time I underestimated how much of a bedrock requirement this is. It's easy to dismiss the media as entertainment at best or noise at worst.
But at best they model fairness, balance, and rationality, and if you have no one doing that in public the quality of discourse soon crashes.
> The newspaper as an organisation is equally hostile to all the politicians
The news (public service) I consume from time to time does this too. However while they try to not favor a particular political side they often instead fail towards trying to find dissent where there is none.
They invite some people with supposedly “opposing” views and then spend the time trying to provoke a fight. Usually it’s just people highlighting different perspectives with no interest in representing some kind of conflict over the matter.
Would you mind sharing which country are you talking about? I'm from another country in central Europe and the situation is same as in the USA or western Europe.
Out of curiosity, for Central European media, how many of them reported on the damning half-dozen OPCW leaks[0] that create turbulence for Central European foreign policy in Syria?
I don't wish to be uncharitable, but this line indicates to me that there's likely bias involved in the media you described:
>Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.
Something that seems to be quite common in modern media is to paint anybody who disagrees as a conspiracy theorist or fascist. Are there truly no other groups who have grievances with the news? Communists? The opposition party? Another news outlet that is partisan? It seems unlikely to me that only the groups that modern (left-leaning) media likes to blame everything on would have a problem with it.
On another point, I wish to address this:
>Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist.
You don't need to control what a journalist writes to create biased news. You simply need to control who you hire. Want a news organization that's biased towards right wingers? Hire a bunch of right wingers to be your staff. They will naturally gravitate towards stories that are biased.
>The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society.
The same is true for a lot of biased news outlets elsewhere. It still doesn't change that people like reading news that affirms their view of the world.
I don't wish to be uncharitable, but I believe based on this that perhaps you don't notice much of the bias. I could be wrong, but it just seems very difficult to believe that Europe has such a gem hidden in it. The news in my European country aren't quite as bad as in the US, but they're certainly not unbiased and politics certainly involves the media.
> What if every hospital had an overt political stance and forced doctors to make diagnoses based on those politics?
At least in the US, this is standard. Try getting your local Catholic hospital to deal with complications with your IUD and this isn't a "what if." There are plenty of stories of people who discover that their primary care network has an avowed ideological stance on certain procedures and they need to switch doctors and perhaps go out of network for full care.
> What if the hospitals had a financial incentive to sensationalise public health?
Don't they? There is no shortage of for-profit hospitals, and thanks to insurance, Medicaid, etc., they can often increase profit at no cost to the patient by just seeing the patient more and treating them kn more ways that might be strictly speaking unnecessary.
> What if independent doctors only got into medicine in the first place to make decisions based on their own partisan politics?
Isn't this approximately the backstory of Planned Parenthood?
Basically, everyone has an ideology, a reason to do what they do. Sometimes it's based on their view of the world and a desire to make it better in some way. Sometimes it's profit. Neither of these is necessary nefarious.
The other requires more than half a decade of intense education, internships, tests and further verifications. (Not to mention thousands of Euros in education costs, if not state sponsored)
I cannot think of a larger difference in terms of barrier to entry.
Doctors are heavily regulated. Journalists aren't.
I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous.
Professional journalism has a long, long track record of opposing any consequences to their actions whatsoever.
I love the idea of professional journalists. But the reality of them just does not work in practice in our current media industries.
>I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous.
Unfortunately expectations do not match reality. 10% of deaths are due to medical errors [0]. Then look at how the rest of the medical establishment are failing us. CDC is prohibited from naming the hospitals that have this error. The only thing they report on is trends [1]. If you have a hospital in your neighborhood, can you find out anything about it? From the medical error rate, to the spread of Candida Auris[2] is there any dangerous news about your local hospital/healthcare system that is public?
* What if every hospital had an overt political stance and forced doctors to make diagnoses based on those politics?
* What if the hospitals had a financial incentive to sensationalise public health?
* What if independent doctors only got into medicine in the first place to make decisions based on their own partisan politics?
Unfortunately all US media, and most international media, is equally bad and built on bad intentions for varying levels of nefarious purposes.
This is interesting to me. In central Europe, or at least my country, the serious media keep very high standards.
Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.
I find our independent media to be a key element of our democracy and I am worried when I hear the US media don't work quite the same.
Edit: I thought I might as well reply with our solutions to your bullet points
- Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist. The newspaper as an organisation is equally hostile to all the politicians.
- The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society. (+ ads ofc)
- If one wants power to change things the far superior strategy in my country is to do the actual politics and not to report on it.
A very eye-opening event for me was when I visited Berlin in 2003 (?). We watched ZDF (government-financed German TV) news and saw a huge crowd protesting against Bush’s war in Iraq. Wanting to join them, we found a mostly empty square with a much smaller group of protestors standing in a triangle-formation in front of the cameras, which were setup such that the crowd would appear massive on TV.
So if you think European media are free of political bias and distortions, think again.
4 replies →
Independent objective media are the lifeblood of democracy. You literally cannot have a healthy democracy without a strong and independent fourth estate.
For a long time I underestimated how much of a bedrock requirement this is. It's easy to dismiss the media as entertainment at best or noise at worst.
But at best they model fairness, balance, and rationality, and if you have no one doing that in public the quality of discourse soon crashes.
2 replies →
Same here but eastern Europe. Heck, American newspapers even endorse candidates which I find insane, it's like psychiatrists encouraging suicide.
> The newspaper as an organisation is equally hostile to all the politicians
The news (public service) I consume from time to time does this too. However while they try to not favor a particular political side they often instead fail towards trying to find dissent where there is none.
They invite some people with supposedly “opposing” views and then spend the time trying to provoke a fight. Usually it’s just people highlighting different perspectives with no interest in representing some kind of conflict over the matter.
Would you mind sharing which country are you talking about? I'm from another country in central Europe and the situation is same as in the USA or western Europe.
3 replies →
Out of curiosity, for Central European media, how many of them reported on the damning half-dozen OPCW leaks[0] that create turbulence for Central European foreign policy in Syria?
[0] https://thegrayzone.com/2020/02/11/new-leaks-shatter-opcws-a...
4 replies →
I don't wish to be uncharitable, but this line indicates to me that there's likely bias involved in the media you described:
>Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.
Something that seems to be quite common in modern media is to paint anybody who disagrees as a conspiracy theorist or fascist. Are there truly no other groups who have grievances with the news? Communists? The opposition party? Another news outlet that is partisan? It seems unlikely to me that only the groups that modern (left-leaning) media likes to blame everything on would have a problem with it.
On another point, I wish to address this:
>Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist.
You don't need to control what a journalist writes to create biased news. You simply need to control who you hire. Want a news organization that's biased towards right wingers? Hire a bunch of right wingers to be your staff. They will naturally gravitate towards stories that are biased.
>The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society.
The same is true for a lot of biased news outlets elsewhere. It still doesn't change that people like reading news that affirms their view of the world.
I don't wish to be uncharitable, but I believe based on this that perhaps you don't notice much of the bias. I could be wrong, but it just seems very difficult to believe that Europe has such a gem hidden in it. The news in my European country aren't quite as bad as in the US, but they're certainly not unbiased and politics certainly involves the media.
> What if every hospital had an overt political stance and forced doctors to make diagnoses based on those politics?
At least in the US, this is standard. Try getting your local Catholic hospital to deal with complications with your IUD and this isn't a "what if." There are plenty of stories of people who discover that their primary care network has an avowed ideological stance on certain procedures and they need to switch doctors and perhaps go out of network for full care.
> What if the hospitals had a financial incentive to sensationalise public health?
Don't they? There is no shortage of for-profit hospitals, and thanks to insurance, Medicaid, etc., they can often increase profit at no cost to the patient by just seeing the patient more and treating them kn more ways that might be strictly speaking unnecessary.
> What if independent doctors only got into medicine in the first place to make decisions based on their own partisan politics?
Isn't this approximately the backstory of Planned Parenthood?
Basically, everyone has an ideology, a reason to do what they do. Sometimes it's based on their view of the world and a desire to make it better in some way. Sometimes it's profit. Neither of these is necessary nefarious.
Me, sure. From then on they'd have to earn my trust - not just get it because they're doctors...
If you buy a frozen pizza and it tastes terrible, should you continue buying and eating them for a week until you have enough data points?
If a single sample of corn in a shipment is contaminated with aflatoxin should you keep testing it and trying to find the good corn?
If a program corrupts your data on first use should you keep trying it on different data before rejecting it?
Would you trust a hospital with a reputation for employing doctors that never get pulled up or fired for their bad work?
The bar to be a doctor is higher than having internet and a blog.
Not that much higher.
One of these things requires 20 minutes and €5.
The other requires more than half a decade of intense education, internships, tests and further verifications. (Not to mention thousands of Euros in education costs, if not state sponsored)
I cannot think of a larger difference in terms of barrier to entry.
3 replies →
How many bad doctors do you need to meet before deciding that they're also human? As the saying goes, "trust, but verify".
Can you find any recent examples of good journalism?
Doctors are heavily regulated. Journalists aren't.
I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous.
Professional journalism has a long, long track record of opposing any consequences to their actions whatsoever.
I love the idea of professional journalists. But the reality of them just does not work in practice in our current media industries.
>I'd expect a doctor that failed to maintain professional standards to be struck off, and I'd expect the professional management services to proactively get them struck off before they could do anything dangerous.
Unfortunately expectations do not match reality. 10% of deaths are due to medical errors [0]. Then look at how the rest of the medical establishment are failing us. CDC is prohibited from naming the hospitals that have this error. The only thing they report on is trends [1]. If you have a hospital in your neighborhood, can you find out anything about it? From the medical error rate, to the spread of Candida Auris[2] is there any dangerous news about your local hospital/healthcare system that is public?
[0]: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su... [1]: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db118.htm [2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-can...