Hacker News Reader

Traditional media paints in broad brush strokes. They simplify or streamline their stories for two reasons that are not nefarious, but lead to a lot of problems:

1. Time - Television news, which is how most of America consumes news needs to fit a story into a 30 seconds to 1 minute spot. Even if they devote more time to it, it is a series of short spots. It is almost an art form to try and package it and they are doing it on a break neck deadline. Even written content will often have a strict word count.

2. They are producing content for the lowest common denominator. Since you used USA Today, they, for example, write to an 8th grade reading comprehension level. This often involves simplifying the narrative.

And then you add on top any biases or partisan news, which sells. There is a profit motive to have a lot of angry upset readers. This is where it gets dangerous.

I don’t know what the solution is. More and more people are turning to even simpler news sources like a Facebook post. I think reading comprehension is a major issue. We have so much access to information but a large portion of the population seems unwilling or unable to effectively parse it.

Something I've noticed is that it pays to have a lot of upset conservative viewers. For a liberal audiance, it pays to make them laugh. Compare, for instance, John Oliver vs Tucker Carlson. There's a whole genre of left leaning news comedy act, and a whole genre of right leaning angry old man yells news and opinions.

Sometimes, when things don't make sense it's cause no one in the room has any idea what to do.

They don't have the time, skills, resources or experience to produce a good outcome. And so whatever they do produces either no outcomes or creates more issues.

There are only two know strategies for such scenarios

1. Find a simpler problem - refocus everyone on something simple, within their abilities to solve so that atleast outcomes are produced how ever simple they maybe.

2. Exit the room and disconnect from the people trapped in there (cuz they want to pull as many ppl into the trap hoping it will solve the prob)

The Kyle Rittenhouse trial was a great example of this. The media painted him as a white supremacist and all that, and one of Biden’s campaign ads implied he was those sort of things. I was buying into the mainstream news narrative at first, but then I watched most of the actual trial. In the evidence and testimony presented I didn’t see even a hint of racial bias, and my conclusion is he probably shouldn’t have even been charged since the video footage clearly shows what he did was lawful. I will never trust most news sources again.

I was also duped on this one. I still think he shouldn't have been there, but after watching the trial and finding out the facts, he didn't appear to do anything unlawful.

As a rule now, I do my best to watch the trial itself rather than trial coverage, or at least to read official court documents and transcripts.

Even when they're trying to be honest, most media completely screws up reporting on trials. They love to do things like quote huge demands for damages ("x files a $BIGNUM lawsuit against y") that are almost always either never granted or substantially reduced later, print big headlines for suits that are almost surely meritless (SCO), etc.

Mind you, I say "almost never" because there is that 1% of the time when $BIGNUM damages are actually granted, like the billion dollar Alex Jones trial. The later trillion dollar thing I don't know about, though, I'll wait to see how things play out in court and whether the awards stick on appeal (for the billion dollars, they actually might).

>he didn't appear to do anything unlawful

Having the weapon at his age wasnt illegal?

No, it wasn't. The straw purchase was, and Rittenhouse's friend got in trouble for making it. That, in turn, lead to him testifying against Rittenhouse as part of a plea agreement. Rittenhouse didn't actually take possession of the gun until he was 18 and did not face any charges related to the purchase of the gun, which he had destroyed after trial to avoid it becoming a symbol.

There was also a separate charge against Rittenhouse for carrying it that was dismissed at the very end of the trial due to a confusingly-worded law. But Rittenhouse wasn't carrying anything that counted as a short-barreled rifle. The judge ruled that the law did not apply to what Rittenhouse did, since the prosecutor did not allege any facts that the jury could have agreed with that would have made him guilty. The prosecutor was apparently going by the caption of the law (which says something about guns held by someone under 18) but that has no legal effect and the judge admonished him for trying to pull a fast one again.

This was covered right before it went to the jury as I recall, if you want to look up videos of how it went down at trial.

The gun laws were written incredibly poorly, listing at one point "all dangerous weapons" then for minors, citing an anti short barreled shotgun and rifle law.

The defense successfully argued that the phrasing meant rifles and shotguns with a barrel length of sixteen inches or more were exempted.

Furthermore he didn't shoot anyone black nor did he interact with anyone black.

There was no racism in the shooting inherently.

Pair that with the fact that they attacked him and you find out the kid didn't do anything wrong.

Great example. You really have to be careful in what you choose to believe.

If you don't watch the news, you are uninformed. If you do watch the news, you are misinformed.

(Paraphrasing Denzel Washington)