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.

I hope you can find out the answer. I've asked several people where they get their information from if they don't trust MSM and have never had an answer.

I do for the main part, but I'm aware that what they choose to print carries a lot of bias. E.g. On any given day the news in the Telegraph will be significantly different to that in the Guardian, both in terms of the stories they want you to see and the way in which they're reported.

I love the news, but I try to get it from lots of different sources.

The gossipy stuff, I'm sure is mostly made up, often by those in the stories, for the press coverage.

Of course you're allowed to have an opinion. But equally, those of us who do consume information relating to current events, are allowed to assume it's ill-informed and stupid.

Tone has a lot to do with it

They went with the scare, bully, fear campaign in Aus - Pollies and media
There was such hate in the media, from hosts, from pollies, from everyone if you didnt fall into line
There was no incentive to listen when so much hate was being put out

It had lasting affects - now no news is watched by me.
I mean, in a way i should be thankful, i saw how much happier my life is with no news.

Unfortunately that's the way with some news outlets. They try to fearmonger and scare people and whip up hate. We have papers in the UK who do exactly the same thing.

Im in Aus, they did it here too
Even dob in a business who serving the unvaxxed or not enforcing masks

So much unnecessary hate and division so I chose not to engage, i switched off

I like to think I am reasonably well-informed about what is happening in the world so I read several broadsheet newspapers and listen to Radio 4. I also read op-ed pages. I take "news" from social media with a lot of salt.

You seem to be confusing government advice with the media. They are different things. In this instance the media reported on government advice.

I am completely on the same page as you about this strategy. They did not go this way in Ireland and I’m glad. It just created division

It makes sense. A lot of content is designed to provoke, hook you in and cause an emotional reaction.

I think the media found the success of this with Covid particularly.

The news cycle is pretty brutal in the U.K. and I recall a piece by a psychologist talking about the best way to get up to date would be once a week not constant. It’s too much.

I find BBC WS a bit better in tone but so much else is ramp with whatever they can.

Yep
and it really does nothing good long term

It's dreadful. We had racist riots last year and asylum seekers are currently being moved because of far right activists and racists. The gutter press are partly responsible for it.

No confusion
The way the pollies would speak to media 'to the people', the tone was full of hate. How they would 'ask' people to enforce the advice was very us v them

TV hosts, journos would then add their dose of hate and bullying
It was multi-layer

It very much failed in Aus, there is a whole heap of us who just DGAF anymore, dont engage, dont trust

See, I said NOTHING about lizards.

Re Bill Gates, I said I know people who think he wanted to use vaccines to control us (they were hilariously vague on the details but reading between the lines I think they thought the vaccines were introducing something that could be turned off/on to make us sick or not sick).

You seem to have very little ability to read and understand what's actually being said.

They really did

The constant of it was why i had dialed back before 2021, i would pretty much do just that once, maybe twice a week catch up on news
The constant news cycle was just too much doom and gloom

Now i just have a couple Aussie rules news related pages and follow a guy on FB for weather who is 10x more reliable than tv news and the bureau of meteorology

the next division war
I wont say new, cos this one tried and tested way to divide

But hey it gets clicks and sells papers - heavy sarcasm lol

No, each has their own agenda and preferred narrative. Sometimes I wonder if we’re all in the Truman show. Our world is batshit currently according to the media.

Sigh. I used to be a journalist in the “MSM”. Journalists are actually just normal people (professionals) doing a job, not part of some big conspiracy. The industry has its bad apples and varying levels of dysfunction, like any other industry. Jimmy Saville wasn’t a reporter and had nothing to do with news reporting, if we’re talking about that specifically.
Any established, quality outlet like the BBC, the Times, Guardian etc. doesn’t just hire anybody to be a reporter and let them loose to write or say any old thing they’ve made up, unlike “influencers”, YouTubers and randomers on X (who all have their own agendas and biases too btw).
Even the tabloids can’t print outright lies (or if they do they can be sued and/or hauled in front of an inquiry), although they do sensationalise.
Also unlike “citizen journalists” and YouTubers/influencers/people writing for unverified independent news sites, professional journalists for the “MSM” have studied for their job, sat professional exams, passed difficult interviews, gone through rigorous on-the-job training.
During a standard work day you check various sources including various reports and data, you talk to people who are knowledgable sources (often experts in their field), then you sit in an editorial meeting where you have to show how you’ve done your due diligence to fact check and you talk about who your sources are.
Then the story goes through several layers of editorial checks (including legal if needed) before being published/broadcast.
I, and most of my colleagues, went into the job because we wanted to keep people informed about important topics and I can’t tell you how demoralising it was to do all this work, then get abusive phone calls/social media abuse calling us liars and citing whatever conspiracy source the person’s been consuming.
Bullshit like this is partly why I threw in the towel and decided the low pay wasn’t worth the hassle, it was such a thankless job in the end.

I guarantee you that 99 per cent of the mainstream media have done their research much more effectively than you have.

If you think 'doing research' is going on Twitter/X, listening to random people's podcasts and reading random people's Substacks, you don't really understand what 'research' means.

Most newspapers do have some political leanings. But they don't try to hide this. If you read the Times or the Telegraph, you know you are getting a right-leaning slant on the news. If you read the Guardian, you know you're getting a left-leaning one. But the facts of the story will be fundamentally the same.

No news outlet is perfect, clearly. They're all staffed by human beings and human beings are fallible. Having worked in media relations for many years, I can say I would trust the BBC more than another news outlet in the world to report the news fairly and accurately.

It is absurd to cite the safeguarding failures around Jimmy Savile 40-50 years ago in one area of the BBC as a reason not to trust BBC News, a completely different part of the BBC, decades later.

and those of us that have concluded the MSM news is not a trustworthy source would be tolerant of people that we may privately think are very naiive and a bit thick. maybe try that attitude?

I'm a leftie, but I've noticed the left are far more prone to sneering at people on the other side of the political spectrum than anyone else. They're supposed to be the nice guys, right?

I mixed you up with another poster who mentioned lizards so apologies ( despite you being so rude yet again)

yes, they're always the most tolerant of people who are more than happy to acknowledge people have different opinions

It’s somewhat naive to think in terms of whether you ‘believe mainstream media’. Everyone has their biases & prejudices, including journalists. All big organisations have their blind spots, including media companies. We have to be aware of them and to consume media from a variety of outlets to get a genuinely balanced view.

The big public service broadcasters, eg BBC, Sky, ITV all bend over backwards to be truthful, trustworthy & objective. The problem is that their idea of objectivity may be different to yours or mine.

These organisations are made up of people recruited disproportionately from a very limited range of backgrounds. They are younger, more urban, more liberal, more middle class and much better educated & informed than the general population. Their education is disproportionately in arts & humanities. There are very few journalists / editors/ producers with STEM degrees which is why most media science coverage is dumbed-down, innumerate & trivial. Many BBC people have never worked in the private sector, which is why they don’t understand how businesses work or why profit isn’t a swear word. Most political journalists have never had to make a big decision which affects the lives of anyone outside their own family, which is why they don’t understand the difficult choices & trade-offs politicians face when every major decision they make creates winners & losers. Most society journalists are so terrified of offending certain minority groups that they turn a blind eye to large scale abuses happening in plain sight, eg illegal sweatshops in Leicester, grooming gangs, FGM, forced marriage etc etc.

They are obsessed with ‘diversity’, but only in very narrow terms of ethnicity gender & sexuality. What about diversity of age? Social class? Education? Accent?

The mainstream media presents a worldview which, if you’re a young, liberal, London based graduate makes sense to you. If you’re a retired miner or steelworker or a struggling young mum in a minimum wage job in Mansfield or Middlesbrough it feels like they live on a different planet.

@SpottedDonkey
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"They are obsessed with ‘diversity’, but only in very narrow terms of ethnicity gender & sexuality. What about diversity of age? Social class? Education? Accent?"

you make a very good point there; I've never really thought of it in those terms

Sure. You can do what you want, that's the point. I happen to think it's a foolish perspective that I don't respect and don't see why I should pretend to in the name of 'tolerance'. I'm not implying you're not free to hold whatever opinion you want, whether it's that I'm thick or naive or made of cheese, I really don't care.

I do think it's a shame when ill-informed people vote, but it's your legal right.