The Worst of the Modern Mass Media

https://www.humantruth.info/mass_media.html

By Vexen Crabtree 2009

#democracy #mass_media #newspapers #politics #USA #western_culture

The mass media, including news outlets and newspapers, are a powerful influence on most people₁_,₂. News media and journalism outlets influence public opinion and therefore democracy itself so their reach and power is not to be taken lightly₃. The press has "responsibilities to the public interest: to respect the truth, to obey the law and to uphold the rights and liberties of individuals"₄. Good journalism is good for democracy₅_,₄, but, unfortunately the most popular news feeds in most Western countries have degraded into poor-quality sensationalism, which is effecting democracy and degrading society₆. Aside from the biases that are to be expected from corporations and editors, tabloids in particular portray the world in an unrealistic way. The warnings of academics about the institutional biases of Murdoch's news outlets are longstanding and the bias is so great that it has a statistically detectable effect. In the USA, a University study from 2011 found that those who watched Murdoch's Fox News channel were less knowledgeable about current events even than those who watched no news at all - in other words, Fox News spreads misinformation₇. Studies have shown that education, and consuming respectable news instead of trash, results in a more sensible appreciation of the world in all matters, including views on the economy and crime rates. This is also about the tendency for people to accept overly negative and foreboding forecasts of societies' declining moral worth. Research reveals that excessive television dulls the mind, causes stupidity, causes failure at school and perpetuates ridiculous and simplistic stereotypes. Social commentator Robert Todd Carroll₈ warns that "a critical reader must not assume that stories we read in the press or hear on TV are true" even when similar stories are repeated by multiple outlets₉. Educating people that TV is fiction, and that violence is wrong, can reduce some of these effects and break the link between TV violence and criminal aggression. Media studies lecturers teach students that by understanding the power and influence of the news and the mass media, and by understanding its failures, "people are better able to resist the power of 'the media'"₁. Read on.

1. Mass Panics Based on Sensationalism of the Printed Press

#daily_mail #mass_media #newspapers #paranoia #the_sun #uk_newspapers #western_culture

Downmarket media publications reflect - and exaggerate - many of the fears of society. News outlets have dropped most fact-checking and critical analysis steps in order to churn out news more cheaply and quicker and as a result daft and untrue stories are appearing in mainstream news₁₀_,₁₁. There are virtually no checks or quality control mechanisms that newspapers have to adhere to, and, occasional outrages against press misbehaviour are quickly forgotten by paying customers. The purpose of it all is (1) sell more newspapers, or (2) influence public opinion. People are all too willing to believe exaggerated claims. People want their lives to be part of historical drama₁₂. The millennium bug, worldwide pandemics, moral panics and fear that society is going wrong all betray humankind's neophobic reactions to progress and change. Newspaper editors pick on this fear and concoct alarmist stories from everyday events and statistics; for example they publish alarmist articles on dangers from mobile phone masts even though there are none, and there are almost no good-news stories about children despite massively improved circumstances₁₃. Many editors and media owners have explained the usefulness of fear-mongering and sensationalism - it certainly sells more copy than balanced news. Fears become amplified and made more real by their appearance in headlines, creating a hysteria about a topic whereas in reality things are much more mundane and acceptable₁₄. Professional broadcaster Fraser McAlpine says "news outlets are behaving like spoof sites, and they're making spoof sites look like sensible news" and people are finding it harder to tell the difference₁₅. Modern newspapers and news outlets are producing low quality, misleading and untrue stories because they are driven by consumers who prefer entertainment, gloom and outrage rather than serious text of reasonable reading. Some news outlets remain high quality, with good fact-checking and little clickbait; but the modern era in which quantity-of-page-views is more important than reputation means that quality appears to be permanently lost from popular outlets. Always remember that after thousands of hyped-up press warnings, on midnight of the 31st of December 1999, nothing happened.₁₆

For more, see:

"Mass Media: Sensationalism, Panics and Exaggeration" by Vexen Crabtree (2016).

My page on this (quoted, above) has the following chapters:

2. The Commercialisation of News

2.1. The Centralisation of News Sources

#UK

A massive series of corporate takeovers has seen, over a few decades, nearly all news products coming under the banner of just a few companies. The shrewdest companies are those that have made massive staff cuts, for example, preferring to obtain news through 'monitoring' of television and through a very small number of wire agencies, rather than directly do journalism themselves.

The process is: (a) commercialisation, (b) efficiency-drives (drastic staff cuts), which lead to (c) churnalism. As the giants gobble up local, smaller, media and news outlets and apply their staff-cutting regime to them, news becomes more and more centralised. In 1992 in the UK, locals were owned by about two hundred companies. There had already been a decline. "By 2005, according to the media analysts Mintel, ten corporations alone owned 74% of them"₁₇.

“Journalism in the world's most powerful country is deep in the same trap. The American media critic Ben Bagdikian has traced the corporate takeover. In 1997, he wrote about the corporations producing American's newspapers, magazines, radio, television, books and films: 'With each passing year... the number of controlling firms in all these media has shrunk: from 50 corporations in 1984 [...] to less than 20 in 1993. In 1996 the number of media corporations with dominant power in society is closer to 10.' By 2004, he found, the US media were dominated by just five companies: Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch's News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany and Viacom.”
"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)₁₇

“In 1982, fifty corporations owned almost all of the major media outlets in the United States: they owned 1,787 daily newspapers, 11,000 magazines, 9,000 radio stations, 1,000 television stations, 2,500 book publishers, and seven major movie studios. Five years later, ownership of all these media outlets had shrunk to twenty-nine corporations. By 1999, nine corporations owned the lot (McChesney 1999).”
"Unnatural Acts: Critical Thinking, Skepticism, and Science Exposed!" by Robert Todd Carroll (2011)₁₈

“The five leading providers in global news are Al-Jazeera English, with 100 million viewers globally (but not in the US); France 24, with French and Arabic versions; CNN, (double Al-Jazeera's audience and presenting an explicitly American news agenda); Russia Today, often state-biased, according to commentators but never conceded by the organization itself; and BBC World, viewed by analysts as the most impartial.”
"Media Studies: The Basics" by Julian McDougall (2012)₁₉

Now that investigators and journalists have been massively reduced in number, where does news come from? The answer is more centralisation. The UK now gets most of its news via a centralised depository known as a wire agency: the Press Association. This body gathers news, and shifts it on to broadcasters at high speed. Although its job isn't to check facts or investigate stories, papers tend to merely accept and rewrite wire copy. It's not just the UK - as we have seen, the commercialisation of news is a global affair - "most of the newspapers and broadcasters and websites in the world rely for most of their international news, pictures and video on just two wire agencies - Associated Press (AP) and Reuters"₁₇. Dr Chris Paterson used software that was initially designed to spot plagiarism online, to trace the flow of global news. There is an ever-increasing quantity of news that flows automatically, without human editors. He found that by 2001 the most popular media websites were duplicating 50% of their material from the two big wire agencies and a smaller one, Agence Grance-Presse. Half was duplicated word-for-word! On half of these mass media outlets, over half was routinely copied from wire. This doesn't even include output that comes from wire agencies but is rewritten: in all cases, these sources of information are simply not checked for truth or validity. Pure disinformation can flow straight into the public consciousness. An article in The Economist on the future of news services notes this automation:

“The Wal-Marts of the news world are online portals like Yahoo! and Google News, which collect tens of thousands of stories. Some are licensed from wire services like Reuters and the Associated Press. [...] They are cheap to run: Google News does not even employ an editor.”
The Economist (2009)₂₀

2.2. Churnalism

The new brand of commercial owners transformed journalism from an investigative enterprise that sought to uncover truth, raise issues and debate politics, turned into an industry of mass-produced "churnalism", operating as cheaply as possible. News speeds through news factories manned by overworked journalists who have little time for research or investigation. The total number of stories processed by journalists in a day always exceeds the number of actual human beings talked to about those stories. Workers rarely get out of the office, and, the numbers of phone calls made are scrutinized by time- and money- conscious bosses.

This process has affected all normal newspaper titles, even the 'qualities'. The best-quality titles still had PR and/or wire copy in 80% of their stories (although in 20% of those contained substantial additional commentary). Yet only 1% of these stories admitted their true source. Even the best titles could only produce 12% of their stories themselves.₂₁

In the best papers, 70% of the important facts relied upon by stories went completely unchecked, and only 12% were checked properly. This isn't just an issue with newspapers. The Cardiff researchers who done this investigation for Nick Davies, over half of all mainstream broadcast news is also wire (via the PA) and public relations material. The attraction of PA and PR, writes Davies, is not that they are better sources, but that they are cheaper. "It is no longer a matter of independent newspapers competing with each other to produce the best stories, but of mutually dependent newspapers working in tandem to produce more or less the same stories - stories which may or may not be 'the best'. Or honest. Or accurate".₂₁

2.3. Profit Seeking: Quantity, not Quality

Most news outlets purchase news from news agencies. The most well-known of them are The Associated Press and Reuters. Even if they often intend to supply unbiased news to the world, social scientists know that multiple human factors come to distort the process. A selection bias leads to agencies only collecting news which they think meshes within the commonly accepted protocols of what news should be, and, even worse, news is selected because it is sellable.

“However, you won't be surprised to read that analysts and academics take a sceptical view of this and argue that, although the news agencies do not explicitly share the news agendas of the Western networks, because they know that Fox, CNN, Sky and the BBC are their main 'clients', they will provide news that they perceive to be 'customer facing'. If that's the case, then news provision becomes circular, and the concern is that non-Western events are marginalized by never even becoming news.”
"Media Studies: The Basics" by Julian McDougall (2012)₂₂

Combined with the dwindling numbers of journalists and the much greater volume of news that the produce (churnalism), this means that our news is more decentralized and biased than ever, but in a system where each individual player cannot do much about it nor even see the selection bias in order to avoid it if they wished. Not only does this bias reduce the style and scope of news sources, but, when the news story makes its way to a news outlet, it then has to content with the editors and policy of its news sponsor.

Analysis of 32 news articles by researcher John McManus found that over half of them (18) were misleading. Not only that, but they were misleading in a certain way: "to increase the story's appeal, help cut down the cost of reporting or oversimplify a story so it could be told in two minutes" (Carroll 2004)₂₃.

Sensationalism replaced critical thinking in a race to halt the declining sales of newspapers. In abandoning truth-seeking as the cause of story-telling, journalism became a source of misinformation. Nick Davies quotes the news editor of the Sunday Express in a leaked memo from 2003:

“We are aiming to have six sex stories a week. In an ideal world, we should have a "cabinet minister affair" story. Sex and scandal at the highest level of society always sells well [...]. We must make the readers cross: the appalling state of the railways, the neglect of the Health Service, the problem of teenage pregnancies, the inability of bureaucrats to get enough done properly, etc, etc.”
Jim Murray, Sunday Express news editor (2003)₂₄

The combination of commercialism, staff cuts, and profit seeking leads to sensationalist reporting without regards for whether the underlying story is true. It has seen news change focus from accurate exposés and public engagement, to cheap stories and PR along "if we can sell it, we'll tell it" lines. It makes news desks easy to manipulate, as long as you send them something hot or easy to broadcast. The job- cuts and efficiency-drives of commercialist owners has meant that overworked staff do not have time to check stories and commercialist owners will run lines for commercial gain without caring about spreading lies and disinformation.

“Markets do not have democratic intent at their core. When markets fail or come under threat or simply become too bullish, ethical journalistic practice is swept aside in pursuit of competitive gain and financial stability.”
Fenton (2011)₂₅

This loss of journalistic rigor is affecting all of society, as much of the populace (as we will see) gain their knowledge of politics and current events from such sources.

3. The Press Freedom Index: Which Countries are Most Censored? Which Countries are Most Free?₂₆

#democracy #freedom #Good_Governance #mass_media #politics #UK

Press Freedom (2013)₂₇
Pos.		Lower is better₂₇
1	Finland	638
2	Netherlands	648
3	Norway	652
4	Luxembourg	668
5	Andorra	682
6	Denmark	708
7	Liechtenstein	735
8	New Zealand	838
9	Iceland	849
10	Sweden	923
11	Estonia	926
12	Austria	940
13	Jamaica	988
14	Switzerland	994
15	Ireland	1006
16	Czechia	1017
17	Germany	1024
18	Costa Rica	1208
19	Namibia	1250
20	Canada	1269
q=178.

Press Freedom (2013)₂₇
Pos.		Higher is worse₂₇
178	Eritrea	8483
177	N. Korea	8390
176	Turkmenistan	7914
175	Syria	7853
174	Somalia	7359
173	Iran	7340
172	China	7307
171	Vietnam	7178
170	Cuba	7164
169	Sudan	7006
168	Yemen	6922
167	Laos	6799
166	Djibouti	6740
165	Equatorial Guinea	6720
164	Bahrain	6275
163	Uzbekistan	6039
162	Saudi Arabia	5688
161	Sri Lanka	5659
160	Rwanda	5546
159	Kazakhstan	5508
q=178.

The freedom to investigate, publish information, and have access to others' opinion is a fundamental part of today's information-driven world, and is linked with Freedom of Speech and Good Governance. Scores on the Press Freedom Index are calculated according to indicators including pluralism - the degree to which opinions are represented in the media, media independence of authorities, self-censorship, legislation, transparency and the infrastructure that supports news and information, and, the level of violence against journalists which includes lengths of imprisonments. The index "does not take direct account of the kind of political system but it is clear that democracies provide better protection for the freedom to produce and circulate accurate news and information than countries where human rights are flouted". The rankings are used as one of the datasets of the Social and Moral Development Index₂₈

It must be noted that press freedom is not an indicator of press quality and the press itself can be abusive; the UK suffers in particular from a popular brand of nasty reporting that infuses several of its newspapers who are particularly prone to running destructive and often untrue campaigns against victims. The Press Freedom Index notes that "the index should in no way be taken as an indicator of the quality of the media in the countries concerned".

For other international statistical comparisons, see:

"What is the Best Country in the World? An Index of Morality, Conscience and Good Life" by Vexen Crabtree (2020)

4. The Worst of Society

4.1. Trash Culture & Mass Media Products

There is a massive market for mass media products aimed at low-attention-span types. Male-dominated trashy tabloids depict female nudes, fictional short stories of the most banal and stupid kind, advice columns designed to shock rather than educate, and news stories that are widely known to be entertaining rather than true. The Sun, The Star, The Daily Sport, for example, are three of most popular "news" papers. Television has become the resident priest of Trash, nearly all programs cater for people with short-attention spans. Adverts are quick and shocking, programs are simplistic and moronic. Although more educated content exists, it is unpopular.

British soap operas are famously violent, angry, shocking, melancholic tragedies depicting casts of characters that are all short-sighted, utterly dumb, emotionally-challenged failures who seem allergic to honest, good relationships and intellectual pursuits. The masses are taught every way to fail a relationship and shown none of the compassions or developed attitudes expected of responsible adult relations. Petty crime, short-tempers and stupidity on the TV soaps reflect perfectly the mentality of trash culture, the self-perpetuating cause-and-affect cycle of this coupling is hard to break without serious top-down change.

For more, see:

"UK Trash Culture" by Vexen Crabtree (2020).

4.2. Enslavement - TV Causes Stupidity

#new_zealand

“It's too bad that stupidity isn´t painful. Ignorance is one thing, but our society thrives increasingly on stupidity. It depends on people going along with whatever they are told. The media promotes a cultivated stupidity as a posture that is not only acceptable but laudable.”

LaVey (1987)₂₉

One of the reasons I highlight the effect on mass media on democracy is that the media is a big influence on most of us, frequently greater than both peer pressure and parental controls. How many parents sit their children in front of the TV in their most formative years just to keep them from being a 'nuisance'? It thoroughly informs all of us with specific cultural mores that are stoic, commercialist, short-term, thrill-seeking, unintelligent and moronic. Not only that, but sociologists have found that we all watch more TV than we think we do₃₀, and, it influences us and our opinions even when we are guarding against it.

“The chief problem of human beings is passivity [...]. If you watch television all evening, or read too long, you feel a 'freezing' of your mind; it congeals; your eyes become capable only of a blank, dull state.”
"The Occult" by Colin Wilson (1971)₃₁

Some hold that this effect of passive light entertainment is cultured by the powers that be specifically for the purpose of pacifying populaces. As "modern free time" tends to lend itself to citizen activism and the size of the overall population increases, it is necessary to keep people occupied, and TV is ideal for this purpose. There are many sociological investigations into finding out the effects of the popular press on peoples and groups. "One view, that of Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt school, is that the popular media exist to dull people's minds and get them to accept the work and consumption patterns that are needed to sustain capitalism"₃₂. They argue however that people are not taken in by such a simple ploy. People 'take their own meanings and pleasures from the popular press'; people may seem passive whilst watching and reading, but, their imagination and subconscious form their own interpretations. I imagine the same process happening when people imagine what the 'real meaning' is behind obscure song lyrics. You can nearly always construct a more interesting story than the songwriter hirself was telling. Yet such passivity still numbs the mind's creativity, and the effects of this make for more docile and dumber citizens.

“They don't call it the idiot box for nothing. Three studies suggest that watching too much TV makes you stupid, at least as measured by school grades and test scores. In the longest-running study [by Bob Hancox's team at the university of Otago in New Zealand, ] children who watched the least TV between ages 5 and 11 were the most likely to graduate from university, while those who watched the most TV at ages 13-15 were most likely to drop out of school. [...] Two US studies [...] draw similar conclusions. [...] Persuading children to watch quality TV is easier said than done, says Barry Milne, who worked on the New Zealand study. "The type of TV kids actually watch is not good for them".”
"Too much TV is not that smart" in New Scientist (2005)₃₃

The counterculturalist and founder of the Church of Satan, Anton LaVey, explains how TV has replaced the modern dark ages Church:

“In previous centuries, the Church was the great controller, dictating morality, stifling free expression and posing as conservator of all great art and music. Today we have television dictating fashions, thoughts, techniques but doing it so palatably that no one notices. Instead of "sins" to keep people in line, we have fear of being judged unacceptable by our peers (by not wearing the right running shoes, not drinking the right kind of beer or wearing the wrong kind of deodorant), and fear of imposed insecurity concerning our own identities. Borrowing the Christian sole salvation concept, television tells people that only through exposure to TV can the sins of alienation and ostracism be absolved.”
"The Devil's Notebook" by Anton LaVey (1992)₃₄

4.3. Violent Films and Violent Actions

There is an on-going debate in the popular press about whether violent TV causes violent behaviour. This study is one of the classic areas of study in sociology, and findings have largely found that viewing TV violence does indeed cause aggressive behaviour.

“Leonard Eron and Rowell Huesmann (1980, 1985) found that violence viewing among 875 8-year-olds correlated with aggressiveness [even after checking for other causes]. Moreover, when they restudied these individuals as 19-year-olds, they discovered that viewing violence at age 8 modestly predicted aggressiveness at age 19. [...] Aggression followed viewing, not the reverse. They confirmed these findings in follow-up studies of 758 Chicago-area and 220 Finnish youngsters (Huesmann & others, 1984). [...] They found that at age 30, those men who as children had watched a great deal of violent television were more likely to have been convicted of a serious crime. [...]
The convergence of evidence is striking. 'The irrefutable conclusion', said a 1993 American Psychological Association youth violence commission, is 'that viewing violence increases violence.' [...] This [effect] is strongest when an attractive person commits justified, realistic violence that goes unpunished and that shows no pain or harm (Donnerstein, 1998).”
"Social Psychology" by David Myers (1999)₃₅

Educating children that TV is inaccurate and fictional reduces the aggression that children display as a result of violence programs₃₆. The psychologist Richard Gross confirms this in his overview of the types of studies involved:

“Field experiment [studies are those] in which children or teenagers are assigned to view violent or non-violent programs for a period of a few days or weeks. Measures of aggressive behaviour, fantasy, attitude, etc. are taken before, during and after the period of controlled viewing. [...] Almost without exception, they confirm the results of laboratory studies - in general, children who view violent TV are more aggressive than those who do not. [...]
The longitudinal panel study [can] tell us about cause and effect and which normally uses sound sampling methods. The aim is to discover relationships which exist over time between TV viewing and social attitudes and behaviour and so it is concerned with the cumulative influence of TV - [...] for example, in a 20-year follow-up of 400 children, heavy exposure to TV violence at age eight was associated with violent crime and spouse and child abuse at age 30, at all socioeconomic and intelligence levels (Huesmann and Eron, 1984). Sims and Gray (1993, cited in Newson, 1994), in a paper presented to the House of Lords Broadcasting Group, pointed to a vast world literature linking heavy exposure to media violence to subsequent aggressive behaviour. [...]"
[In contrast:] "According to Gunter and McAleer (1990), studies have shown that portrayals of kindness, generosity, being helpful and socially responsible can exert both short-term and longer term influences on similar behaviours among children.”
"Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behaviour" by Richard Gross (1996)₃₇

4.4. The Embrace of Ignorance

#afghanistan

We have a social instinct that inclines us to tell interesting stories. Cognitive processes in our brains tend to make us hear the more exciting and out-of-the-ordinary aspects of a story. People automatically attempt to tell a story in a more exciting, immediate and entertaining way than when they themselves were told the story originally. This inclination towards entertainment is described by the social psychologist Thomas Gilovich:

“Our appetite for entertainment is enormous, and it has a tremendous impact on the tales we tell and the stories we want to hear. The quest for entertainment is certainly one of the most significant sources of distortion and exaggeration in everyday communication.”
"How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life" by Thomas Gilovich (1991)₃₈

“The billions of people who rely on the mass media for information have suffered the worst injuries of all under a bombardment of falsehood, distortion and propaganda.”
"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)₃₉

The West's popular press generally divides publications into those aimed at the realists and intellectuals ('qualities'), and those designed to titillate the masses. Not all journalists or papers are about churning out crowd-pleasing entertainment and crowd-stirring negativism about the world. Many outlets still aim to educate and inform their readers, and to reject untruth by doing investigation into stories, rejecting public relations spins, and above all, trying to give a balanced picture of the world. However, this is not what the public wants. The newspaper industry is in trouble. High-brow and quality newspapers are faring far worse than downmarket titles - the three worst-quality tabloids (The Daily Star, the Daily Express and The Sun) were the only papers to increase their sales between 1990 and 2002₄₀ (the latest date for which I have statistics).

The increase in sales of trash tabloids is indicative of a cycle: they sell more, because trash culture is growing, and, trash culture is growing because of the successful marketing of trash-targeted mass media. Marketing expert Winston Fletcher said in 1998 that what wins readers is "scandals, misfortunes and disasters"₄₀. This trend is also the third-biggest problem facing democracy in the West, as the shallow issues that the press whip the public into a frenzy about become the ones people vote on.

So, what about outlets that represent the better end of the mass market media? A funny story from Nick Davies serves as a warning to us not to trust in their ability to break this cycle. Two insiders argued for more meaningful content:

“The BBC's occasional media critic, Raymond Snoddy, in a review of week's BBC output in Jul 2006 [began] by querying the fact that the deaths of two British soldiers in Afghanistan had been knocked into second place in the news by coverage of the tearful resignation of the England football captain, David Beckham. The former BBC war correspondent Martin Bell condemned the decision, saying: 'The BBC has set itself adrift in a whirlpool of trivia.'”
"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)₄₁

Snoddy then highlighted a viewer...

“... who had complained that, by comparison with ITV news, the BBC was spending too much time on each story and going into too much detail, and as a result, she said, it had failed, unlike ITV, to run an item about a new film, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. There you have it: Martin Bell, the veteran journalist, speaking up for editorial judgement; and the consumer speaking up for less information and more entertainment, even if it is nothing more than PR. In a commercial culture, the viewer has more power than the journalist.”
"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)₄₁

For how long can media outlets survive with their integrity intact if they have to rely on sales, and what sells is low-quality sensationalism? Thankfully, the BBC is state-sponsored so can resist such pressures. Other outlets survive through specialisation, by catering to specific audiences who already seek what the newspaper specifically sells. Unfortunately, this means that consumers can (and do, en masse) choose to involve themselves only in the shallowest news and entertainment, and remain completely ignorant of the actual true events and debates of the world.

5. Politics and Democracy

#democracy #mass_media #newspapers #politics #UK #western_culture

The worst culprit of the last few decades has been the Murdoch empire's outputs, complete with secret political deals that have made and broken entire governments₄₄. Already by 1985 historians warned that these "powerful engines [of] misinformation [have] "political implications [and] fears that an irresponsible trouble-making press, given enough rope, might become a danger to political stability and public order, seemed fully justified"₄₅. One of the UK government's former chief scientific advisers, Sir David King, pointed out that 'the threat of terrorism is likely to be far less significant than climate change' but that climate change is too complicated and doesn't sell well, whereas terrorism 'fits the requirements of our news culture perfectly'₂. The result is a populace that don't understand the risks facing them, and who vote accordingly on the issues that the press bother to report. Sensationalism, drama, shallow argumentation and a concentration on frivolity make it hard to appreciate the complexities of the world. The effect "is not merely to mislead its readers about the state of the world but to distort the whole political process"₄₆.

For more, see:

"The Mass Media and Democracy" by Vexen Crabtree (2017).

6. Abusing News Outlets With Fake Science and Fake Lobby Groups₄₇

#alcohol #democracy #environmentalism #fake_lobbies #health #mass_media #obesity #smoking

“Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.”

Legendary broadcaster Ed Murrow (1908-1965).
Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations₄₈

“Several industries have been caught out producing fake and heavily biased science reports, orchestrating so-called "grass-roots" movements that cast doubt on science, producing endless reams of misleading public-relations material and manipulating news outlets with fake think-tanks. They have well-practised and efficient methods for influencing the news and swaying public opinion, and the money and effort that goes into these channels of deception are great. They produce "manufactured doubt" using scientific-sounding organisations as fronts, to try and discredit the mountains of evidence that stand against them. They are expert at getting their content on to broadcast media. In every success they maintain their own profits, but cause long-term harm.
The worst culprits in spreading mass-lies in this way are: (1) the tobacco and smoke industry₄₉_,₅₀_,₅₁, (2) the fast-food and junk food industries₅₂, (3) those who sell most nutritional supplements₅₃ and (4) the petrol and oil industries₄₉_,₅₄_,₅₅_,₅₆.The worst outlets for promulgating rubbish without checking sources are the sensationalist, downmarket and popularist news bodies.”
"Abusing News Outlets With Fake Science and Fake Lobby Groups" by Vexen Crabtree (2017)

7. Which are the Best and Worst Newspapers in the UK?

#mass_media #newspapers #the_sun #UK #uk_newspapers #western_culture

UK popular newspapers are infamous for their daft stories, political bias, poor fact-checking and skewed reporting, combined with a concentration on celebrities and entertainment-value news. By comparing all newspapers to common criteria, including academic judgements of their quality and the number of complaints raised against them, it is possible to score each one of them. As a result of their low quality, only 7% of the population rate printed news as the best source of "accurate and reliable" information₅₇, and across Europe the UK's written press is the least trusted, by a wide margin₅₈. It is also clear that this problem is largely self-imposed - the lowest quality newspapers are some of the most popular, and the highest-quality ones rate as some of the least popular. The overall effect troubles British culture, creating a cycle of misinformation and there have been many calls for the UK government to regulate the industry using similar methods to those used in most of the rest of Europe. For now the only control is a self-regulation body (IPSO) which is staffed by the papers themselves and is widely considered dysfunctional.

The Best:
5
The Guardian,
3
The Observer,
2
i.
The Worst:
15
The Daily Mail,
13
The Sun and
10
The Daily Express.

For more, see:

"Which are the Best and Worst Newspapers in the UK?" by Vexen Crabtree (2019).

8. The Crabtree Scale of Sources: Who Can We Trust?₅₉

#mass_media #truth

The world is awash with misinformation, exaggeration, hyperbole, well-intentioned confusion, popular mistakes in thinking and delusions about facts. These filter into our mass media and social media outlets and the scale of the problem makes it difficult to select good, high-enough quality and trustworthy sources of information. Here is a scale of reliability, going from zero out of ten (unregulated and anonymous internet websites) through to regulated and quality news (5/10) and on to those peer-reviewed, well-established and independently verified outputs of academia.

For more, see:

"The Crabtree Scale of Sources: Who Can We Trust?" by Vexen Crabtree (2018).

9. An Industry in Trouble and the Rise of Internet News

Between 1990 and 2002 newspaper sales decreased by 20%. The three worst-quality tabloids were the only papers in this period to increase their sales: The Daily Star, the Daily Express and The Sun₄₀. There is overall talk of the failure of the newspaper business model, as advertisers that used to pick newspapers find that the online world is more appropriate for their types of adverts. The Economist ran an article on this in mid 2009:

“Most industries are suffering at present, but few are doing as badly as the news business. Things are worst in America, where many papers used to enjoy comfortable local monopolies, but in Britain around 70 local papers have shut down since the beginning of 2008. [...] This crisis is most advanced in the Anglo-Saxon countries, but it is happening all over the rich world: the impact of the internet, exacerbated by the advertising slump, is killing the daily newspaper.”
The Economist (2009)₂₀

The Internet is hurting newspapers and to some extent, other sources of mass media output. No-one who wants to know something waits until a programme appears about it on TV. And few people who want to find a service, local or distant, turn to their newspaper. Advertising has moved online along with information-seeking customers. Whereas newspapers and TV provide tidbits, any specific needs are best met through internet searching. Sports fans go to sports news services, current-event enthusiasts go to online news portals. The newspaper has become a default purchase for those who either do not want anything in particular - hardly a sturdy model to keep an industry going. Only the most catchy, the most trashy, and the most sensationalist popular papers are increasing their sales. Other specialist papers (like the Financial Times) have a chance as they, like the internet, can provide particular information so they have a captive audience. The rest of the printed press needs to change, but it is not clear how.

“The only certainty about the future of news is that it will be different from the past. It will no longer be dominated by a few big titles whose front pages determine the story of the day. Public opinion will, rather, be shaped by thousands of different voices, with as many different focuses and points of view.”
The Economist (2009)₂₀

This predicted future sounds familiar. Before the commercialisation of news in the 1980s there used to be thousands of local news agencies, local investigators, and many specialist (small) journalism firms: all investigating stories and writing on them. The Economist writes about the future of news on the Internet as if it is a new concept. Actually, what we are seeing is the demise of the commercial-news model, and the resurgence of the multitude-of-voices model.

The declining viability of the commercial newspaper industry in the hands of the internet is hailed by some as a good sign for global democracy. Dr Indrajit Banerjee, a political theorist, argues that as critical reporting moves online and citizen investigators can publish their findings for all to see, it puts pressure on public-sector propaganda departments of governments around the world. This pressure serves to make distortion and spin look ridiculous, forcing governments (and national news outlets) to be more realistic with their own press releases and media departments, otherwise, no-one in their own country will look to them for information.₆₀

10. Fixing the Press

There are two main difficulties when combatting the issue of high-volume misinformation online. Firstly, news outlets are international. To fix them with a top-down approach, you need multi-national agreements, regional and global, in order to make legislation effective, as it is easy for international news outlets simple to host content in a different country when one location imposes quality controls₆₁. Secondly, the worst elements of world disinformation is over social media platforms; direct peer-to-peer communications. This is intensely difficult to manage, and so far, there is no good way for corporate entites to be engaged to improve the situation. The only possible answer at the moment is for each nation to ensure that laws governing personal responsibility are updated for the internet era - i.e., making sure that slander, libel, and communications that intentionally cause injury or violence - are covered by law.

10.1. Consumer Behaviour

Always question what you see, and question why you think the things you do. Spend more time thinking about the plausibility of what you read. Only accept sources of information carefully₆₂.
Education and selectiveness. Michael J. Mazaar, after analysing many of the studies on the media's effect on mass belief, highlights the fact that greater education pushes people towards more educated papers. For example, those who read downmarket titles have skewed views on the economy and crime, but those who read the quality papers have beliefs about society that are closer to the statistical truth. So, educate yourself, and read proper news! By exercising consumer-power and avoiding buying low quality news, you help the industry fix itself.

10.2. Politics and Legislation

#mass_media #newspapers #poland #slovakia

Stronger international laws against the public spreading of disinformation. Broadcasters should be placed under extra legal obligation to check facts. Many journalists avoid legal trouble by claiming that they don't know what stories are true or not. So, if it is scandalous and it will sell, then, they publish it without checking (or admitting) their sources. There needs to be an international body that specifically deals with mass-media outlets, proscribing to them a greater responsibility to check their facts, with the ability to suspend printing or publication once a certain amount of abuse has built up.
Journalists should be required to be a member of a journalist association, which they get kicked out of if they produce very low quality information. Many developed countries, especially in Europe, have such associations. It should especially be the case in wire agencies, from which most other news outlets get their news.
Outlets need a system that rates their typical accuracy, in a simple-to-understand way. A highly inaccurate media product gets one red star, medium ones get an orange star, and accurate ones get a green star. General broadcasters should only be allowed to reach a certain ratio of violence to educational material (or otherwise be labelled as an advertising or adult channel). These ideas are presented merely to highlight the fact that there are ways to dissuade the production of harmful (but popular) rubbish.

Some methods of curbing the press's abuses are good-hearted, but occasionally dysfunctional:

"In 2008 the Slovak parliament introduced one to guarantee the subject of a story the right to reply, of the same length and prominence as the original"₆₃ - this sounds good, because the idea is that the press will have to print criticisms of itself in its own papers with such frequency that they will be compelled only to publish accurate information. There is however a very unfortunate second part to that law - the right to reply stands even if the facts were correct₆₃. This would seem to me to lead to a barrage of responses from politicians and lawyers that abuse the right-to-reply principal, in effect, ending the ability of the press to be critical. In a healthy democracy, the press must free to be critical of governments and institutions.
In Poland, an old law gives sources the authority to withdraw or edit quotations right up until the point of publication₆₃. So when a paper tries to quote someone out of context, as they are often eager to do, the subject can withdraw their quote. Unfortunately, it seems like it can again be abused by officials to ruin newspaper stories in order to hide truth.

In short, it appears to be very difficult to concoct laws that allow individuals to protect themselves against ridiculous press stories, but where institutions and democracies are still subject to critical journalism without fear of recriminations. What would be an ideal is a world where consumers, as pointed out above, avoid the more outlandish papers, and where editors and journalists only try to produce responsible pieces. Unfortunately, neither is likely to happen.