Do you believe mainstream media?

[jujiju]

I don’t. I used to and I miss being in that safe bubble. I still have a look to see what is being reported, but I’m no longer in that place where I just assume what I’m being fed is correct without doing my own research.

Yes absolutely. You can say the same thing in three different ways, each of which is factually correct, but each lead the reader to a very different response or interpretation.

Probably nearest to what @notwavingbutsinking said. I trust that the BBC, Channel 4 news, the NYT, the Times and other major papers and paid for news sources like Prospect won't publish lies, because they are legally liable for what they publish and have a reputation to protect. I also subscribe to the Afghan Times.

But I try to be very clear in my mind whether I'm reading a factual report or an opinion piece (or God help us a feature), I look out for stories or more often angles that are not being written about, and I look for the jarring joins in a piece where the journalist has wedged something in that makes a potentially misleading link.

I find the World Service very good.

I see you think the whole organisation is corrupt because some people didn't report him? The NHS didn't report him either, are they corrupt? Lots of people knew about Savile.

They really don’t. The BBC paid the child of a senior Hamas figure and made a faux documentary pretending he was someone else. It was basically terrorist propaganda and they refused to take it down for weeks. That’s just one of the many things they’ve done yet we’re forced to pay for them.

i used to believe the mainstream media was fairly reliable but I’m very sceptical of what they say now. They definitely push an agenda

Yes but don't be naive.

The BBC or any other news organisations can sift through available stories and choose which ones they report and which ones they conveniently don't. Then they can build on this day by day, creating a narrative.

They also choose how they word it, the spin on it, the provocation of emotion, the bias.

A lot of it Is actually in what they don't print or opinions they dont bring to the forefront, rather than what they do say. It's all in the omissions.

This ^ is my approach as well.
Im absolutely sure that none of them report the whole truth. I try to think logically about their arguments but it’s very tricky.

Don’t trust or like the NHS either. All my experiences have been appalling (apart from the nursing staff). Management though, utterly disgusting and immoral.

I look out for stories or more often angles that are not being written about

Yes, exactly. Fact A may be true, but if Fact A needs to be understood in the context of Fact B and Fact C, then only reporting on Fact A may be highly misleading.

Are all institutions corrupt?

All of those sources publish lies from time to time. And it’s what they don’t publish that matters too. Bear in mind that our defamation laws only stop media lying about identifiable people in certain ways. There’s no legal recourse if a newspaper just prints nonsense

Do you know what corrupt means?

Most likely. Humans in power are highly corruptible beings and to think otherwise is naive.

Belonging to an establishment does not mean it’s immune to corruption.

So you don't trust anyone because humans are corrupt? Life must be very difficult for you.

The corruption in the NHS is the cover up culture & wanting to protect your own job. Look at the maternity scandals & unnecessary deaths.

No, but I do trust science, education and tolerance.

On a related note, there are circumstances in which I now trust anecdotal evidence and collective experience (especially Mumsnet) more than 'the establishment", particularly on issues like women's health.

Life is not any more difficult for me than anyone else, but the fact remains that a small percentage of humans are corrupt which messes things up for the vast majority who just want to live their lives free of complications.

A small percentage? So not entire institutions. Therefore the BBC is not corrupt but some people in the BBC may be?

I think it depends what you mean.
On one end of the scale: you might believe that all of the news stories are entirely and purposefully fabricated (ie. Trump didn't just raise tariffs and then lower them again, Covid didn't exist, 9/11 didn't happen, etc). On the other end of the scale, you might be taking issue that some small details or facts within a story are incorrect, and this could either be on purpose or by mistake. You may believe that a story contains certain biases, either on purpose to manipulate the minds of the reader, or because people aren't robots and it's hard to write without a certain level of bias. You may believe that this is down to the journalist, or that it's being directed by the various editors. Perhaps you believe that the media is intentionally leaving out entire news stories, either because they're not 'newsworthy' enough or because there's an intentional conspiracy to cover up information. You may believe this happens occasionally, or you may think it is endemic. You may think this applies to one news outlet, most, or all of them.
My point is, it's far too simplistic to ask if we 'believe the mainstream media' and suggests a worldview where everything is very black and white, friends and enemies, good and bad - exactly the type of thinking that is vulnerable to conspiracy style thinking. The world isn't like that. There is plenty of nuance, grey areas and complexity.

The vast majority of news reporting decisions aren't made by people in 'power' - they are made by teams made up of hundreds of different journalists. All very ordinary people just like you and me. And the majority of those people are not trying to mislead anyone.

Reporting the news in a timely and accurate manner requires a set of skills and there are dozens of team meetings throughout the day discussing what to do, how best to cover a story, how to spread resources across the different needs of the day, the legal department are on call 24 hours a day to check what can't be said or published.

When there's a breaking story the journalists are dealing with trickles of information coming in from various sources and have to work out what is real, false, how to get their reporters and photographers on site to get their own first person info, often the first several hours they rely on pooled agency copy which most main stream media have paid subscriptions to, so AP, PA, Reuters etc.

Eye witnesses to big events are often very unreliable - not deliberately but trauma events do weird things to people's memories so you end up with misinformation being reported for a while.

It depends where the corruption lies. If it’s at the top, yes absolutely- but it if it’s at the bottom, it can be eradicated. In the BBC’s case it’s definitely at the top. I used to love the BBC so I’m devastated.

Invariably people who ‘do their own research’ haven’t got the first clue what research actually is. Mainstream media has a bias and operates within a system where facts can be obscured and framed in ways that we later find misleading. But there are press standards and fact checks and they cannot just post complete bullshit unlike people on X.

Do you have proof that everyone at the top of the BBC is corrupt?

There are certain things which are undeniable facts and it doesn’t matter who reports them they are correct. The Queen died, Trump is President - that doesn’t matter where you read it it is true.

then there are news pieces who are far more subjective whose reporting is skewed by personal beliefs or lead by the beliefs of the publisher - Fox News/GMB/Daily Mail/The Mirror all have political leanings and all offer a bias subjective viewpoint. Propaganda has existed for years this isn’t new.