Comment by manquer
1 year ago
Sadly I don’t think it will happen.
In previous crises people could depend being educated by mostly responsible media . Today both mainstream and social are entertainment first don’t care for truth or their role in educating the society .
It is more likely they will be taught to blame some boogeymen who have nothing to do with the problem rather address the real one .
Oh no, the medias got actually way more responsible after the World War. Before the war, mainstream media were more like super-biased propaganda machines. Only after the world wars society realized they need more toned-down truth-first analytical medias.
I agree , I elaborated on this in a child comment.
Just a minor point I would say it is ~120 years rather than 70. There was influential journalism through the early 20th century when professional journalism took shape which influenced policy of note the anti trust actions taken under Sherman Act in early 1900s.
Media was never all that responsible.
Media biases and ethics in journalism are masters degrees sized topics of their own.
Very briefly you are not wrong, yellow journalism has a long history is not new. In America from the times of federalist papers through slavery and jim crow and antisemitism of the 30s, to civil rights and into modern times it has been a powerful tool to shape public opinion.
There is nuance to this however, the era of professional journalism has been brief, only 100 or so years. In that time, media had the most impact in shinning the light on the truth, notably with reporting on Watergate, Pentagon papers or Hershey on Hiroshima and so on, that era is coming to an end.
As the cost of publishing drops orders of magnitude in every generation of technology as it happened with cheap and fast printing press, radio, broadcast and then cable TV and finally the internet and mobile, the problem becomes more massive and much harder to regulate, and also drops in the quality of public discourse and nature of truth.
Basically it boils down to we had a good(relatively) 100 year run with media and corresponding improvement in civil liberties and good governance, we can no longer depend on educated public taking decisions sooner or later in the right direction like we have last century or so.
Conceptually regulation is "not very complicated".
1. Bring back those laws requiring fairness of media representation.
2. Force standardized disclosure of sponsored content of any type (total, segments, placement). Many countries already do this. Standardized = big, high contrast "Ad" sign in the corner with mandatory size proportional to content size.
3. Mandate providing sources.
4. Treat all influencers with an audience above NNN followers (10000?) as mass media.
5. Require that widely shared content is fact checked and that fact checking is automatically included while sharing and provide recourse for fact checking up to the legal system.
6. For sensitive topics (politics, primarily) require AML and KYC disclosures of funding, primarily to find foreign funding sources and propaganda.
However, you know, vested interests, the bane of humanity.
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