Do People Still Believe The MSM?

[RubyWinehouse]

Just that really, I haven't watched the news on ITV, BBC etc for years, I follow New Media and citizen journalism as I can see what is happening for myself.

What's MSM?

Yes, broadly, because I'm not a conspiracy theorist.

Main-stream media. I.e. the bog standard way of getting the news, rather than watching some American crackpot's podcast.

No, I'm not saying there's never any bias, but essentially terrestrial TV news is trustworthy.

Of course I do. I watch the BBC, read the Guardian, NYT, and Financial Times. I believe in the profession of journalism.

New media? Is it 2007? What makes you think a random individual posting videos on YouTube/tiktok is more trustworthy?

Literally anyone can post anything online with absolutely no fact checking or comeback whatsoever -how do you decide who to believe or not?

Easy. If you're an anti-vaxxer, you believe people who claim that vaccinations cause autism; if you think Princess Di was killed by lizards (to conflate two conspiracy theories) you believe someone who posts about reptilian plots to bump off inconveniently popular members of the royal family. If you believe 5G is going to give everyone cancer you follow the ramblings of an ex oncologist who was struck off for pedalling utter alarmist bullshit. And so on.

Edit: Meant to be a reply to @Changingplace.

Btw, OP, AMA is supposed to be a platform for people to ask you questions on a particular topic, not for you to pose a question to anyone on the site.

So maybe yours should be, I'm a conspiracy theorist: AMA.

Yes because they are run by professional journalists who are regulated and held accountable. Whereas citizen journalism has none of these safeguards.

I follow the headlines from a media news source. Allowing crazies to have their say has lowered the intelligence all around. It's not news if it can't be fact checked and verified. Yes the media corporations have their bias but you can see through that.

You are a brainwashed member of the sheeple! Of course Tim from Kettering is more accurate, the corrupt establishment is out to get is

And why is this in Ask Me Anything?

Do I believe everything - no, of course not.

But people who say “the MSM is all lies” are idiots. And there’s actually a lot more scrutiny and accountability for specific lies than there is elsewhere.

MSM is generally fact checked, so yes, I trust the specific facts from MSM more than I trust "facts" from unverified sources.

However, I am much more aware l than I used to be about the amount of bias in the MSM, and the degree to which facts are curated to support a specific editorial stance. So I no longer take MSM at face value.

The day during covid the bbc reported love from a fucking morgue I gave up. Morning radio is pretty much a list of things you need to be worrying about. Fear is a vibration.

I believe it to a degree but I always find myself questioning it a bit. I wonder about why they have taken a certain angle on a topic and what they aren’t saying much more than I used to.

Every method you have of keeping abreast with current events will be tinged with some sort of bias by the organisation / person delivering it. It only took me about 50 years to work that out!

This is why it’s a good idea to read reporting from outside the U.K. I’m always curious how the French and Australian media are reporting news over here.

It’s ama so:

1. Do you think this makes you a better person?
2. Why do you think random people generating content for clicks are more reliable than trained and regulated professionals?
3. Are you any of the following: anti-vaxer, flat-earther, evangelical Christian, prepper, think that covid was manufactured, opposed to 5g, think Diana was murdered, disbelieve that climate change is happening and is due to human activities.
4. Do you end up following US content more than UK?

“New Media and citizen journalism”? I can just imagine the drivel they spout. Actually, I can’t, I’m too busy trying to dodge the Jewish Space Lasers.

I do get my news mainly from actual journalists with some kind of regulation and standards, yes. That doesn’t mean I ‘believe’ without question, or that what they say is the whole story or what the people involved would necessarily tell me. I’ve watched BBC and Sky reporters on camera in my own street and what they said was both true and a mild but nonetheless unhelpful distortion. I bear that in mind.

Thinking that ‘citizen journalists’ are much better than that is, kindly, naive.

I believe most of the day to day stuff. But I believe a few of the so called conspiracy theories.

Which ones?

I like to watch / read things from organisations that operate within the legal and ethical guidelines of this country, or if they don’t are held accountable, or at least the threat is there.

Yes I can imagine the sarky comments and I know the flaws (used to work for a paper) but genuinely, I’d rather read or listen to stuff where there is a consequence for it not meeting the guidelines and the people involved are regulated and have signed up for a code of conduct, and there is for one to complain about it.

I follow right and left wing outlets and make up my own mind.

Filter out possible bias and some of the MSM is maybe ok on many topics for getting the general picture.

Sadly pretty much all the outlets these days can be utterly dire, at least initially when covering anything that needs specialist and/or technical knowledge.

This is how I feel. Do I believe every single word at face value? No because all papers have a point of view. But do I generally believe the facts and read a range of sources to get different viewpoints? Yes.

I worked in the industry for 20 years. I know what journalists have to go through to ensure what they print is fair and accurate. They are held to incredibly high standards.

Bloggers, tweeters, YouTubers etc can say what they like and are often relatively extreme to get clicks which translates into money for that individual. Inherently untrustworthy.