> people generally turning to higher quality sources than have previously been available
Out of curiosity, what do you consider some examples of "higher quality sources" that people have started turning to?
Out of curiosity, what do you consider some examples of "higher quality sources" that people have started turning to?
For larger events or situations, it's often possible to get footage from numerous different sources, including from different physical angles, helping to corroborate and clarify what's actually going on.
One example of this are the protests that happened in Canada during early 2022. The Canadian "mainstream" media, which is quite tightly controlled and close to the government, seemed to be portraying the protesters in a very negative light.
On the other hand, there were also many photos and ample footage online, taken by various people walking through the protests, which showed very different views of the situation. The "mainstream" media's portrayal often didn't correspond well to what I was seeing from all of these other independent sources.
I didn't particularly trust the Canadian "mainstream" media before then, but that situation really made me distrust them and their "news" coverage.
In one case, my YouTube addiction of watching Things That Go Boom paid off when I saw a video showing a huge refinery explosion reported as being in the Gaza Strip and recognised it instead as coming from a Pemex plant in Mexico: <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=0LD82y4ulds>
I posted evidence of the true nature and challenged the poster over the disinformation. They never issued a correction or apology, though the post disappeared some time later (months, as I recall).
This is fairly common: actual incident footage from one context is portrayed in another.
There's a classic cartoon illustrating this: two men running, one with a raised knife, though in the cropped framing of the television camera it appears that the fleeing man is threatening the attacker: <https://archive.org/details/The-Media-Shows-You-What-They-Wa...>
Discussed on: <https://blogs.longwood.edu/visualrhetoricbadgley/>
Another classic example of framing shows two soldiers around a prisoner, one holding a rifle to the prisoner's head, the other offering water from a canteen. Depending on how that image is cropped, very different narratives are created:
<https://www.moillusions.com/media-manipulation-illusion-exam...>
My own preference is to attempt to source, view, and read information from multiple perspectives, whether that's video, images, or narratives/accounts. One lesson from our own senses is that we create the most accurate views of our world when relying on multiple sensory inputs. Our eyes, ears, and sense of balance can each fool us individually, it's much harder for them to be fooled collectively, or at least, the contradictions between inputs become apparent. This is a lesson well-understood by pilots, where the inner ear and actual or artificial horizon signals are often at odds (the "death spiral" in instrument conditions such as clouds, fog, or night flight is one tragic outcome, see JFK Jr.'s death).
And of course there are artisans who do manipulate these senses, which we find in cinema and stage magic, though those also rely strongly on a single and highly-crafted perspective on the action.
It isn't academic fare, but Tulsi Gabbard for 2.5 hours is a much more high-information look into US politics than anything that could be considered mainstream in the early 2000s.
[0] My mistake, she's technically an independent. Should spend some time listening to Joe Rogan I suppose.
I think, given Joe Rogan's popularity these days, he is the mainstream.
It is? Who says?
> or at least respectable
Well, that's a different matter entirely.