Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmooss | Hacker News Reader

People like Wales have a bizarre blindness to what's happening in our society:

> Jimmy Wales: If you look at the Edelman Trust Barometer survey, which has been going since 2000, you’ve seen this steady erosion of trust in journalism and media and business and to some degree in each other. ...

> What do you think has gone wrong?

> I think there’s a number of things that have gone wrong. The trend actually goes back to before the Edelman data. Some of the things I would point to are the decline of the business model for local journalism. To the extent that the business model for journalism has been very difficult, full stop, you see the rise of low-quality outlets, clickbait headlines, all of that. But also that local piece means people aren’t necessarily getting information that they can verify with their own eyes, and I think that tends to undermine trust. In more recent times, obviously the toxicity of social media hasn’t been helpful.

How about a political movement's explicit, extremely aggressive all out assault on social trust, specifically journalism - an 'enemy of the people', target of law enforcement and laws, etc. And how about toxic capitalism's (emphasis on 'toxic', not all capitalism) actually valuing and aggressively embracing complete abandonment and manipulation of trust in order to profit by any means possible (e.g. stereotypical private equity squeezing money out of nursing homes)?

What planet to people like Wales live on? They are so used to ducking this issue that they almost can't see it anymore.

Why not both?

Who or what do you include in 'both'?

The degradation of quality journalism (what jimmy is talking about) lead to political movements attacking social trust (what original poster is talking about)

The evidence is that the causal arrow points the other way: The political movement attacks quality journalism - for example attacking reporting on election results, climate change, vaccines, and much more - and promotes disinformation.

That doesn't mean there isn't degredation in quality journalism, but I see no evidence that it's a cause of the reduction in trust. The reduction in trust is greatest in the political movement described above.

I would argue that the degradation of journalism came first, and what allowed such political movements. An intertwined positive feedback loop to be sure, but i think its the weakening of journalism that allowed such movements to get a toe hold to start with.

You need some evidence. An argument without evidence is in the company of disinformation.

Maybe you could address the evidence I presented (the examples). Ignoring evidence is also part of disinformation.

My evidence is that the things you mentioned happened after journalism was already weakened. Cause has to temporaly preceed effect.

Unless they mix together or there are other causes involved.

First, when was journalism 'weakened'? The conservative anti-journalism campaign (to be clear, not all conservatives are anti-journalism) goes back to people like Rush Limbaugh in the late 1980s and Fox News in the mid-1990s. And journalism lost funding due to Craigslist taking over the main source of income, classified ads.

Second, if these people are really interested in good journalism and truth, why do they attack journalists for reporting truth and insist on disinformation?

Maybe come up with some evidence of your own, for your own argument. Mine won't help you much.

I think my evidence is of the same quality as yours.

Since you decline to present any, it's clear you have none. Why not look up the evidence and see what you can learn? It might be different than what I percieve, and at least you'll be learning.

The planet of wealth.

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