Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by basch | Hacker News Reader

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>any amount of fact checking in politics don't change political views.

That is what I was thinking.

Paul is writing as if credibility stems from reality. When in reality, the reverse its true. Fox news is credible, its viewers believe that, and whatever those credible people say, is reality. As long as people keep tuned in only to Fox News, that reality wont shatter. Their credibility exists because of their reach, its strength in numbers, its entertainment factor. Calling Fox News news and not entertainment is quite a leap. Most of what they have to say exists to keep people hooked, not to educate them into being more capable of performing civic duties. Fox News wants people to vote in a way that benefits Fox News, not the voter, and the same principal applies to all their coverage of everything. Coronavirus skeptic was a contrarian position to take, it divided their people from other people. Now that they are divided, they can switch sides and still maintain the artificial divide, and keep their viewers isolated from "alternate" realities.

This was a really good article by Kara Swisher of ReCode, who at the end finally convinces her mom to heed medical warnings about being out and about, cant convince her to turn off Fox.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/opinion/coronavirus-fox-n...

They can flip a 180 overnight, and the viewers will see it as people with "updated information" and continue to cheer them on.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-stars-sean-hannity-an...

There is the sad irony too, that the demographic who watches Fox news is already the most likely to be at risk (age, faith over evidence, distrusting of established medicine and government) denial not withstanding. Add denial to the mix, and youve got a real bad stew.

The problem is that the channel is named "fox news", but they have both news shows (which are actually not bad), and opinion programming, which is pretty terrible. I suspect most people don't really make a distinction between the two.

Why would you assume they want to? Opinion shows are the only thing watched on Fox News, they are the primetime lineup. Everything else is filler.

This is a deliberately built political philosophy, one of the results of Karl Rove's "reality-based community" [1] idea, from over 15 years ago. Whether or not the label was actually coined by Rove is debated, but essentially this idea is that some people lived in a world that was "reality-based" and that others were not limited by reality and thus were better/stronger politicians. In practice, what this means is the Bush administration did not have to believe in and be bound by this thing called reality, they created reality when they acted.

President Trump is just continuing this idea through today. Unlike GWB and cronies, Trump and team don't even have to act to "create reality", they merely talk and reality instantly changes for their followers. It's a powerful tool and like him or hate him, his administration is using it skillfully.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/faith-certainty-...

to an outsider, americas left vs right hostility and mutual disrespect are becoming painful to watch. lets make a counter example to they one you provided, does the nyt "create reality" for their readers? they did publish their fare share of dangerously incorrect material about the virus, pandemic, the countermeasures,you name it.

I’m not sure that’s true. Some objective “truth” exists in the world whether it’s noticed and reported correctly or not (the tree falling in the woods), and some news outlets (NYT) report this truth more accurately than others (Fox News). It’s misleading to insist on “both siding” to make a mountain of untruths from one outlet seem to be the same size as a molehill of untruths from the other.

Bothsiding feels so mature though. Look at those petty little onesiders! Don't they know bothsides are the same!?

This is false equivalency.

When you have to seek to find bad examples from other side, and it's the every day modus operandi the other side there is no comparison.

the two outlets are absolutely equal when it comes to making half of the americans view the other half as raging lunatics. it is basically this https://youtu.be/aFQFB5YpDZE

Trump is a lunatic, literally. Obama was a smart, measured person people didn't like.

There's a difference.

Obama killed civilians overseas and presided over massive NSA surveillance of US citizens. Trump also kills civilians overseas and presides over massive NSA surveillance of US citizens, but that doesn't make it any better that Obama did it.

"Obama carried out the duties of being President" - yes he did, one of those duties is killing people. You'd have to go out of your way, almost to the point of ignoring and not acting on threats, to not kill anyone as POTUS.

Nice straw man, the above has nothing to do with my statement.

You could show this comment to anybody from either of the general left/right tribes, and they’d think it was true. Whether you’d use this reasoning to deride Fox News, or CNN (or pretty much any other ‘news’ organisation), would boil down entirely to your tribal affiliation. When I was younger, having “critical thinker” or “anti-establishment” views would generally lead to the conclusion that politicians and mass-media tend to lie/mislead to promote whatever their agenda is. Now, those same views seem to lead to the conclusion that “the politicians and mass-media of the other side tend to lie/mislead to promote their agenda, but the politicians and mass-media of my side are generally pretty good”. I think that’s pretty sad. But perhaps I’m wrong, perhaps things have always been this way, and my perspective has simply changed. That said, I don’t remember any counter-culture icons coming out to endorse career politicians who’d accepted millions of dollars from big business interests when I was a kid.

The downvotes on your post demonstrate the left-leaning nature of this site. It's discouraging frankly. The thousands of conversations that occur daily on this site, without emotion or incident; but insult "the other side"'s politicians or news outlets as being biased? Downvote hell

Yes, CNN and the like are just as bad as Fox news. The sooner you folks recognize that, the sooner we can have decent conversations about emotional issues. Both sides are bad. Neither is better. No, they aren't. Stop it. Blame them BOTH for getting us to this point so that we can leave them in the dark past, and we all over here can talk like adults while they sit over there and bicker, mutually accusing each other of racism and Nazism or whatever today's 5 minute hate happens to be.

WE DO NOT NEED THEM! Either of them! There is a whole universe of conversation that is not occurring because BOTH SIDES are refusing to engage in it, because if you did, you would realize -- tada -- you don't need them. And they can't have that. Viewership and income would drop.

Neither is incentivized with your best interest. And the sooner we collectively start to see it the better.

> The downvotes on your post demonstrate the left-leaning nature of this site.

Not really. If you post something that certain people dislike for whatever reason, but which is unremarkable to others, the votes will never break even; you will not get enough upvotes from the latter group to make up for the former. (Even given the fact that not everyone can downvote.)

Whichever group's buttons you push then makes it seem like the site is overrun with that group. E.g. an atheistic comment might enrage theists, but to atheists it might just be "meh". Gee, what's with the downvotes? Boy, this site is just a haven for religious zealots!

I can't even begin to speculate about the grandparent comment. Maybe some users simply found it insubstantial? Shrug.

Criticizing the impact of political tribalism (as I have done above) is likely to irritate anybody with politically tribal views. When it comes to things like Fox News vs CNN (or MSNBC, or whoever else...), I’d consider them all to be on approximately even footing in regards to journalistic integrity (as in, a rather low footing). It’s easy to see how an opinion like that would trigger anybody who had strong tribal affiliation with any of those organisations (whether they viewed it as tribalism or not, people don’t tend to scrutinize their own views in that way, as far as I can tell).

That said, you can just read the thread and come up with a rather decent guess as to which side of that paradigm I likely upset.

Logically speaking what you say is true and is worth recognizing. My comment is based more on trends I have observed over the years (and HN is no more immune to the moving window than any other social media site, it's just slower here).

The "both sides bad" mantra is really just lazy. The false equivalence between the validity of whatever DJT says and what critics say have let even basic decency be thrown out the window, let alone facts.

You must have a reasonably short memory, because people said exactly the same sort of sensational things about Obama, and Bush Jr, and Clinton, and Bush Sr, and Reagan... There’s not really any truth or insight in what you just said. It’s simply an impassioned judgement about a politician you don’t like/disagree with/don’t trust/whatever...

The truth is that most politicians are corrupt on some level, most politicians are unduly influenced by lobbyists, few politicians truly care about their constituents, mass media doesn’t care about the truth, even though some of their employees might, they just care about revenue, for any political perspective you can think of, you’ll find a media outlet willing to pander to it.

I don’t think any of that is particularly controversial (or even insightful for that matter). I’d wager that most people would agree with that sentiment on some level. But they’ll tend to lose sight of reason when you suggest that “yes, that includes the politicians you like, and the media outlets that share your opinions”.

Any public figure of any significance is going to attract a tribe of impassioned haters. They tend to have no greater connection with the truth than that same persons tribe of fervent fans will.

But DJT lies a lot more than any of his predecessors, and hires a lot more incompetents, and fires a lot more competents, than any of his predecessors.

You must have a reasonably short memory, because people said exactly the same sort of sensational things about Obama, and Bush Jr, and Clinton, and Bush Sr, and Reagan...

But when (if) they said those things about Obama, the Bushes, Clinton, and Reagan, those were lies like Trump's.

Perhaps what you’re saying right now is a lie.

In general, I’m quite fond of being incredibly sceptical of the government and all of its agents. They should be scrutinized thoroughly. But this isn’t honest or productive scrutiny. The truth is all of those politicians lied, and all of them exaggerated details, and misrepresented facts (though trying to measure how much would be reasonably subjective). They also all did good work (again open to some subjective interpretation). But your commentary boils down to an incredibly black and white view, which ignores the sins of one group, and exaggerates the sins of another. It almost exclusively reflects your own biases over the actual conduct of any president.

> The "both sides bad" mantra is really just lazy.

"Fox News is TEH EVILZZ AND CNN/CBS/NBC/MY HOLY LOVE ARE TEH ANGELZZ" is really lazy. Refusing to recognize how the other news outlets aren't bastions of honorable reporting is really lazy. Refusing to recognize that none of them -- any of them, not one -- have the public's (e.g. YOUR) best interest in mind, is really lazy.

Somewhere deep down you know that but there's some emotional need you're trying to satisfy that prevents you from recognizing it. You NEED something like Fox to be evil so that your views feel justified.

So a few days ago CBS trumpeted this crying nurse from NYC complaining about lack of masks and people dying and blah blah blah. Turns out? Never happened.

The hilarious part? I despise Fox News. I just equally despise all the others. They're all complicit in fascism and the march toward corporatist dictatorship.

> "Fox News is TEH EVILZZ AND CNN/CBS/NBC/MY HOLY LOVE ARE TEH ANGELZZ" is really lazy.

Now you are being downright dishonest. Nobody said either of these things but it's demonstrably true that Fox News often publishes unverified propaganda while CNN routinely has scientists and solid source surveys to support their points.

It's interesting how you refuse to answer anything I'm saying. You're simply proving my point.

And you know full well what it is. You don't need any of them. They're all dishonest. We'd be better off having honest conversations with each other rather than tribally organizing behind ANY mainstream media (colloquially called news, but they aren't).

And yet the only thing you can focus on is attacking your perceived enemy, ignoring the enemy you choose not to see.

The world is a lot more nuanced than your manichean view is making you see.

Yes it is, and that's exactly the problem I have with defending any news outlets. None of them have those complex conversations, and they prevent us from doing so. It's important we have them. Until that massive blinder is removed, they will be overjoyed for us to bicker about which news outlet is best, because it means we aren't looking square at them and everything we miss because they never talk about it.

We are better than the world they've given us.

You want complex conversations? Try listening to Ezra Klein's podcasts, Kara Swisher's podcasts, Lawfare's podcasts, PopeHat's podcasts, and there are many more.

The founder of Vox, the editor of a Vox subsidiary, and two law blogs that have become devoted almost entirely to trying to impeach Trump. That sure is a diverse group of perspectives you’re exposing yourself to. You can be glad you don’t exist in some sort of echo chamber.

Perhaps even more nuanced than the comment you made immediately preceding this one.

I think the factor you missed in relating anything prior to the Trump era is the fact that Trump is an obvious, completely symptomatic Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

When he is back out of politics, watch for the other appointees to not just be replaced due to the change of president, but actively canned because they are all cronies appointed as a personality cult, and/or as favors to his worshipers.

And yes, I'm morbidly curious to imagine what the Trump presidential library might wind up containing. I snarkily predict that nothing will be approved except autobiographies.

"like him or hate him, his administration is using it skillfully"

I couldn't agree more.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-recorded-havin...

Not many people could survive this, then become president.

Politicians have survived worse.

When I heard it first I thought Trump had clinched the presidency. People publicly rail against this kind of talk but emotionally look up to people who can not just talk but behave like that. I distinctly noticed women talking more positively about him after it came out.

Right, but this might change as people they know start dying. It is easy to lie about things happening that don’t directly affect the people being lied to, but if you personally know multiple people killed by the virus, it will be hard to lie about it.

This is the only thing I can think of that could change their minds. And even then.

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