As trust in media hits a new low, the excellent Amanda Ripley proposes an alternative way of reporting news, for actual humans - plus, a new, uncensored stand-up special from Andrew Schulz
I find it horrifying that 42% of Canadians still have faith in the mainstream media. People often lament the fact that “there’s not enough trust in institutions.” The real problem is that there is far, far too much trust. These institutions deserve no trust at all.
“There is a way to communicate news — including very bad news — that leaves us better off as a result. A way to spark anger and action. Empathy alongside dignity. Hope alongside fear.”
Isn’t this sentiment a possible source of the problem? Writing to spark anger and action is activism. How do you prevent political bias in this case? Mostly we all just want the news. Ideally the reader would not be able to discern any political bent of the publication.
When I see my doctor he does not inject political activism into his diagnosis.
Tara's usual inability to actually understand anything about journalism vs the real world:
"people don’t particularly care how the sausage gets made." This is true. They don't.
"If that was ever true, it’s definitely not the case now, years into the rolling crisis that is Covid."
This is nonsense, and how in the universe does covid become the #1 raison d'etre for journalism?
"People very much want to know what’s gone wrong with our news media." Swing and miss AGAIN by Tara. People KNOW what’s gone wrong with so-called "news" media. People want to know how these journalists can stand themselves, never mind the slime they swim in each day.
I just find industry standards are so much lower today than they were even a decade ago. It wasn’t so long ago that farmers who only had a Grade 8 education, would end their day by reading The Hansard…can you imagine that in today’s world? We’ve become lazier in our thinking and our thought process, and our societal institutions have responded accordingly.
I read media to find out what those people over there are wound up about. Their motivation is to manipulate my emotions by telling me how the important people think of something.
Neither has anything to do with informing either myself or themselves. There is infinite interest and fascination to be had by digging deeply into complex subjects, with a good writer describing the journey.
MSM "News" is not news. It is a crafted ' message ' repeated over and over again without evidence or a contrary point of view. It is sensationalized. It is meant to scare. It is an opinion. It is not fact. It is manipulated, cut and pasted, insincere, unapologetic nonsense. It's a travesty.
Pawsative nailed it: "What's missing from the news is truth." But it's not just that simple, because truth is complicated in many ways. As Amanda Ripley beautifully expresses, facts that lack heart will leave us cold. The best art always captures truth that resonates with our emotions, not only our intellects. But the problem isn't only a lack of "human" content. Intelligent people need to know they are being respected, not merely preached at. And the painful absence of strenuous, full-throated, and *respectful* criticisms of the dominant views held by any particular news outlet, *from within that very outlet*, leaves many of us doubting the veracity of the outlet's editorial control. We *need* truth. It's like water to the human spirit. But we also need to be able to make up our own minds about *whose* truth makes the most sense.
This piece resonated. The news(da noose) doesn’t offer constructive solutions, in Canada at least, most newsrooms pander to Ottawa which funds them. So there is serious Liberal bias in the media as they dare not bite the federal hand that feeds them. Do I trust Canadian mainstream media? Mostly not I’m afraid!
Anyone who feels guilty that the "news" no longer excites or inspires her is insecure and just plain ignorant of the underlying issue. It is not "news". It is propaganda and editorial. It is the opinion of people with only average intelligence. It is propaganda. It is propaganda from its conception to its delivery. Why would anyone find it exciting or inspiring. Bizarre concept. Hard pass on Amanda, as on most ... tending to all ... journalists.
I don't believe people don't trust the media. They want to be SEEN as being edgy and independent minded, which is why they report not to trust, but when it comes down to it, they clearly buy whatever the media talking heads are selling. For example, when the Covid "vaccines" were introduced, I literally thought 'no one is going to take these because people don't trust the media, so, like me, they will do their own research instead" ( In April 2021, when researching the 'vaccines' in order to determine whether or not I would submit- because I REALLY do not trust the media, or government, for that matter- I found this article from 2016 in which the CEOs of Moderna and BioNTech describe the LNP that ushers the mRNA particles into cells, " toxic" with "dangerous side effects" especially when given in repeat doses: https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/13/moderna-therapeutics-biotech-mrna/) Why, if 58% of people do not trust the media, do 86% have LNPs coursing through their bodies that the CEOs of the manufacturing companies themselves describe as dangerous and toxic ??
Interesting, never realized this but Noah Smith (substack Noahpinion) does this in almost post. I suppose that's why he's now hit 6000 paid (@10 bucks a month, you do the math) subscribers!
What this "read" misses about much of today's media stories fed to the public is the lack of research into the facts by anyone, followed by a fair and reasonable presentation of the researched facts, and the reporting of however many sides or interpretations of the facts there are, rather than slanting the stories to favour the prejudices and dogmas favoured by the writer, the writer's political party and the owners of the media platform.
Once again, solid reasoning. But to go deeper, the philosophical reason why modern news agencies (especially cable news) offers little if any hope, agency or dignity is that they have largely adopted a metaphysical view of the world where everyone is by dint of their biological traits either an oppressor or oppressed. And some forms of oppression "intersect" with each other, making things worse. You as an individual don't matter - only the group(s) you're a member of. Hope is out of the question, since leftist identitarians need the oppressor/oppressed dialectic to maintain their financial, social and cultural capital (witness the rise of a massive woke bureaucracy in corporations, governments, and universities), and thus dig deeper and deeper into the earth to find smaller and smaller deposits of outrage gold. Hence the rise of the "micro-aggression" and the widening of the definitions of "racism", "sexism", "hate speech", "violence", etc. to the point where literally any person, institution or physical object can be accused of one or more of these sins with little or no evidence (just type into Google "is X racist?", substituting for X any common thing encountered in daily life - chairs, trees, dogs, cat, math, etc. - it turns out we all live in a fallen world).
Unlike the Christian message, which at least offers some promise of salvation and thus of hope, the new Cathedral offers no hope, no individuality, no personal dignity. The media simply reflects this nihilism. It's as if the Buddha had only one noble truth - "life is suffering". The big question is, why do so many people worship in this Cathedral, since all if offers is a temporary sense of moral superiority against a background of mass suffering?
I find it horrifying that 42% of Canadians still have faith in the mainstream media. People often lament the fact that “there’s not enough trust in institutions.” The real problem is that there is far, far too much trust. These institutions deserve no trust at all.
“There is a way to communicate news — including very bad news — that leaves us better off as a result. A way to spark anger and action. Empathy alongside dignity. Hope alongside fear.”
Isn’t this sentiment a possible source of the problem? Writing to spark anger and action is activism. How do you prevent political bias in this case? Mostly we all just want the news. Ideally the reader would not be able to discern any political bent of the publication.
When I see my doctor he does not inject political activism into his diagnosis.
What’s missing from the news is truth.
The problem with journalism is journalists.
Tara's usual inability to actually understand anything about journalism vs the real world:
"people don’t particularly care how the sausage gets made." This is true. They don't.
"If that was ever true, it’s definitely not the case now, years into the rolling crisis that is Covid."
This is nonsense, and how in the universe does covid become the #1 raison d'etre for journalism?
"People very much want to know what’s gone wrong with our news media." Swing and miss AGAIN by Tara. People KNOW what’s gone wrong with so-called "news" media. People want to know how these journalists can stand themselves, never mind the slime they swim in each day.
I just find industry standards are so much lower today than they were even a decade ago. It wasn’t so long ago that farmers who only had a Grade 8 education, would end their day by reading The Hansard…can you imagine that in today’s world? We’ve become lazier in our thinking and our thought process, and our societal institutions have responded accordingly.
I read media to find out what those people over there are wound up about. Their motivation is to manipulate my emotions by telling me how the important people think of something.
Neither has anything to do with informing either myself or themselves. There is infinite interest and fascination to be had by digging deeply into complex subjects, with a good writer describing the journey.
MSM "News" is not news. It is a crafted ' message ' repeated over and over again without evidence or a contrary point of view. It is sensationalized. It is meant to scare. It is an opinion. It is not fact. It is manipulated, cut and pasted, insincere, unapologetic nonsense. It's a travesty.
Pawsative nailed it: "What's missing from the news is truth." But it's not just that simple, because truth is complicated in many ways. As Amanda Ripley beautifully expresses, facts that lack heart will leave us cold. The best art always captures truth that resonates with our emotions, not only our intellects. But the problem isn't only a lack of "human" content. Intelligent people need to know they are being respected, not merely preached at. And the painful absence of strenuous, full-throated, and *respectful* criticisms of the dominant views held by any particular news outlet, *from within that very outlet*, leaves many of us doubting the veracity of the outlet's editorial control. We *need* truth. It's like water to the human spirit. But we also need to be able to make up our own minds about *whose* truth makes the most sense.
This piece resonated. The news(da noose) doesn’t offer constructive solutions, in Canada at least, most newsrooms pander to Ottawa which funds them. So there is serious Liberal bias in the media as they dare not bite the federal hand that feeds them. Do I trust Canadian mainstream media? Mostly not I’m afraid!
Anyone who feels guilty that the "news" no longer excites or inspires her is insecure and just plain ignorant of the underlying issue. It is not "news". It is propaganda and editorial. It is the opinion of people with only average intelligence. It is propaganda. It is propaganda from its conception to its delivery. Why would anyone find it exciting or inspiring. Bizarre concept. Hard pass on Amanda, as on most ... tending to all ... journalists.
I don't believe people don't trust the media. They want to be SEEN as being edgy and independent minded, which is why they report not to trust, but when it comes down to it, they clearly buy whatever the media talking heads are selling. For example, when the Covid "vaccines" were introduced, I literally thought 'no one is going to take these because people don't trust the media, so, like me, they will do their own research instead" ( In April 2021, when researching the 'vaccines' in order to determine whether or not I would submit- because I REALLY do not trust the media, or government, for that matter- I found this article from 2016 in which the CEOs of Moderna and BioNTech describe the LNP that ushers the mRNA particles into cells, " toxic" with "dangerous side effects" especially when given in repeat doses: https://www.statnews.com/2016/09/13/moderna-therapeutics-biotech-mrna/) Why, if 58% of people do not trust the media, do 86% have LNPs coursing through their bodies that the CEOs of the manufacturing companies themselves describe as dangerous and toxic ??
Interesting, never realized this but Noah Smith (substack Noahpinion) does this in almost post. I suppose that's why he's now hit 6000 paid (@10 bucks a month, you do the math) subscribers!
What this "read" misses about much of today's media stories fed to the public is the lack of research into the facts by anyone, followed by a fair and reasonable presentation of the researched facts, and the reporting of however many sides or interpretations of the facts there are, rather than slanting the stories to favour the prejudices and dogmas favoured by the writer, the writer's political party and the owners of the media platform.
Once again, solid reasoning. But to go deeper, the philosophical reason why modern news agencies (especially cable news) offers little if any hope, agency or dignity is that they have largely adopted a metaphysical view of the world where everyone is by dint of their biological traits either an oppressor or oppressed. And some forms of oppression "intersect" with each other, making things worse. You as an individual don't matter - only the group(s) you're a member of. Hope is out of the question, since leftist identitarians need the oppressor/oppressed dialectic to maintain their financial, social and cultural capital (witness the rise of a massive woke bureaucracy in corporations, governments, and universities), and thus dig deeper and deeper into the earth to find smaller and smaller deposits of outrage gold. Hence the rise of the "micro-aggression" and the widening of the definitions of "racism", "sexism", "hate speech", "violence", etc. to the point where literally any person, institution or physical object can be accused of one or more of these sins with little or no evidence (just type into Google "is X racist?", substituting for X any common thing encountered in daily life - chairs, trees, dogs, cat, math, etc. - it turns out we all live in a fallen world).
Unlike the Christian message, which at least offers some promise of salvation and thus of hope, the new Cathedral offers no hope, no individuality, no personal dignity. The media simply reflects this nihilism. It's as if the Buddha had only one noble truth - "life is suffering". The big question is, why do so many people worship in this Cathedral, since all if offers is a temporary sense of moral superiority against a background of mass suffering?
I don't think journalists have realized that their profession has been made obsolete by the availability of information on the internet.