- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.
Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.
It’s actually crazy how low the percentage of people under like… forty is now that actually gets their news direct from a news site. Seriously, i don’t know a single person from like 20-35 who actually just goes on the NPR or C-SPAN app or whatever.
It kind of sucks. So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now. And I just feel like there’s something bad about being able to see a comment section on Twitter or Reddit or even Lemmy now on every news event. Makes for a lot more group think rather than just reading the news and going “huh”
I think the bigger issue is how bad news sites have gotten. I’m sure part of the reason for that is people getting news online from alternative sources, but mainstream sources are significantly worse than they once were which just pushes things further in that direction.
That said, I don’t know which caused more group-think. Was it having a few mainstream sources and that’s it or having many worse quality but more diverse sources? People relate to the new version more probably, which encourages them to follow along and not think for themselves, but I don’t know if that’s better or worse than not really having any dissenting opinion available at all.
Having everyone see the same news didn’t mean there was no dissent and no discussion.
The facts shouldn’t really be all that controversial. A quote from a political leader is a fact. Everyone sees this quote. People have different opinions about what the politician said, feel different ways about it, talk about whether they actually trust that politician.
Now with more “diverse sources” those source often decide to report or not report on something depending on whether it fits a narrative they are promoting. The alternative sources decide what people’s opinions should be then determine which facts should be reported that align with those opinions.
The existence of these alternative sources allows people to choose sources that align to their feelings and never be challenged by inconvenient facts. A mainstream source that reports the facts regardless of whose politics it helps or hurts is seen to be biased relative to one’s chosen source that always conforms to how they feel.
There is more groupthink now because people are never challenged with inconvenient facts. Sure there’s multiple groups (that hate each other) but people within these groups have less real discussion and conform to the group more because they never get information that challenges how they think.
Most facts aren’t really controversial. Ship loses power and hits a bridge. Bridge collapses. Poltiician says X in response. These are things that happened. Why would there be a variety on how this story is reported? It’s only if there’s a need to push an agenda that there would be diverse sources for this story. And most news stories are actually like this.
I highly prefer getting my news from independent journalists/investigators. You think everyone reading the same news sites is going to be better for groupthink?!
None of your independent journalists / investigators are independent.
Right, news corporations owned by oligarchs are for more independent. of course, how silly of me
You’re going to have to tell me what oligarchs own NPR, C-span, and the associated press
I see, let’s just all get our news from 3 sources. That’ll definitely help with the groupthink
I think you might be an idiot my man.
Wow you get backed into a corner and resort to middle school name calling. Like, maybe you need to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you need to put on your big boy pants and accept that your original premise is incoherent
No I stand by my statement lol
I’m guilty of doing this (just reading the headlines) as well. I usually do it for these reasons:
I don’t care enough to want to read more. For example, news about US politics. I don’t live in the US. I feel that reading the headlines is enough to keep me informed about what’s happening, but I really don’t care any more than that.
The details aren’t valuable to me. For example, the Apple anti-trust lawsuit… Is it important? Yes. I’m already well aware of the horrible anticonsumer practices of Apple. But do I need to know all the particular details about the lawsuit? Not really. In fact, the only thing that matters is the final verdict, which hasn’t happened yet.
I care, but I already know enough details.
I don’t feel like the article would bring a lot of value, especially if the title is click-baity. I’ve encountered too many articles that are void of content, just the title repeated in 10x more words.
I don’t like visiting news sites because, in addition to all of them being obnoxious and ad riddled, I feel like I’m wasting a lot of time reading long articles that could be rewritten as 3 bullet points. On platforms like lemmy, users will highlight the important bits in the comments which saves a lot of time.
Sometimes there’s good discussion though, and it’s good to hear different takes.
Having comments also gives less power to the writer, like could you imagine if we all took Fox News or CNN headlines at face value and didn’t discuss them?
Yea, you can’t just read the news and go huh. anymore, because the news is no longer “this is what happened.” Now it’s “OMG YOU WON’T BELIEVE THIS YOU’RE GONNA HATE THAT this happened AND EVERYONE IS PISSED”
Actually it’s really not at all. You’re probably just thinking about Reddit/lemmy/twitter posts when you write that.
Go on like NPR or C Span and actually read the news. It’s fine.
The number of those news outlets is shrinking, though. It used to be that every city had a local paper with real news. Now they’re all part of a media conglomerate and do the bare minimum of actual journalism.
You can literally just read news from less overtly biased news sources. There are scant few articles that I can think of where I really need a redditors interpretation of it
It’s not so much what their interpretation is of the specific article is, it’s more that you might find more information from someone who has info that was left out, or maybe another source that has conflicting information.
Could you show us a few not so biased news sources? I suppose this will also vary wildly by topic. A news outlet might be narrative/propaganda driven on one topic, but not about another.
It’s so much mess (through corporate ties or money) to sort through, it’s hard to trust any of them anymore
Have you heard of Ground News? It’s basically a news aggregator that shows multiple stories on the same event, but with a bias rating and a factuality score, as well as a ownership category. Also, a blindspot category which shows articles being shown predominantly by one side and not the other.
I’d read more articles if they weren’t paywalled.