It’s a mistake to believe that conservatives would move to the left if they just had better information. Great journalism is out there. If an algorithmic echo chamber prevents people from seeing it that’s hardly the reporter’s fault. I’d go further to say that the algorithms can’t be blamed for giving us what we want.

What we learned from the documents made public during the Dominion lawsuit against Fox News was that the hosts, producers, and executives were terrified of upsetting their audience. After all these years of liberal commentators telling us that Fox was radicalizing Memaw and Poppop, when we got a peak into the sausage factory it was the opposite. The viewers were radicalizing Fox.

Conservatives don’t become deplorables because they’re misinformed. Conservatives get misinformed because they’re deplorable. Don’t get it twisted.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
    11·
    4 months ago

    I’d argue that news orgs have an obligation to not be misleading and they do so in ways that make it hard for the uneducated to catch.

    For example this story from Reuters was recently posted and reported in World News:

    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-military-says-troops-raid-gazas-shifa-hospital-2024-03-18/

    “Israeli forces kill 20 gunmen in raid at Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital, army says”

    and the first line of the article:

    “JERUSALEM/CAIRO, March 18 (Reuters) - Israeli troops raided the compound of Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital early on Monday, saying they killed over 20 gunmen…”

    Your average reader is going to skip over the fact that the “20 gunmen” statistic is being self reported by the military taking the action.

    Were they ACTUALLY “gunmen”? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯
    Were there ACTUALLY 20 of them? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

    We don’t really know because the reporting is being done by the guys doing the shooting and that’s been a problem before.

    It really needs to be more clear that the source of the story is biased even if the reporting is technically accurate.

    “JERUSALEM/CAIRO, March 18 (Reuters) - Israeli troops say they killed over 20 gunmen during a raid of the compound at Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital early on Monday…”