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I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. After being like most people in 2010s I sort of retreated into online bubbles as social media exploded. Over the past few years I’ve made a conscious effort to read centrist and business “traditional” mainstream media as well as the kind of leftist oped stuff I was consuming. I would add I read this incredibly critically. I’m highly aware the BBC has its own agenda as does the liberal Guardian (not a left wing paper IMO). The Guardian and FT are probably “the best” MSM to understand what we are supposed to see as within the Overton Window. They both have the odd outlier but generally are centrist. The FT has always intrigued me after probably thirty years ago I heard Chomsky speak and he referred to the FT as one of the only trustworthy sources because capital needs unbiased reporting to make decisions. The curtain was always back. That’s changed a lot as more columnists were hired but if you ignore them is still broadly the case.

Have people returned to mainstream media critically now social media just causes brain rot?

This conversation sounds familiar, but couldn't find previous discussions...

For rather obvious reasons, I got super burned out from watching the news around October-November last year. My habits have definitely changed.

At this point:

- I barely use social media (unless YouTube counts?).
- I don't watch any of the MSM/cable news networks, well not directly at least.
- I do watch the WGN evening news (local Chicago TV station) on an almost daily basis.
- I will occasionally watch a video clip from pretty much any news network (if the headline sounds interesting) when I'm mindlessly surfing YouTube. I'm just as likely if not more likely to pick a clip from a global news source (e.g., Reuters, BBC) rather than anything domestic.

Heather Cox Richardson's daily newsletter is a good breakdown of the day's events, and how they tie into American history.
I don't watch any cable news, though I guess local news is still good.
I give $ to The Atlantic and Slate b/c they write interesting articles, though the latter I don't read as much as I used to.
Also recently started giving $ to Flaming Hydra.

I forgot one thing, for completeness's sake:

I do still subscribe to and read the NYT's "The Morning" newsletter that's sent to my inbox, so I guess my previous comment about generally avoiding MSM is not entirely correct. I was thinking too much about TV/cable news.

Local tv news in the morning and late. Online versions of relatively traditional sources (NYT, and a mix of visits to places like Al Jazeera, The Guardian, WaPo, The Atlantic, etc.), although the quality of these has decreased greatly in recent years.

Used to get The Economist in the mail until relatively recently but nowadays, Harper's is the closest thing to current affairs (granted, it's not news at all) on paper that we subscribe to.

Social media news is fucking garbage and I don't engage w/it. Or w/any social media, for that matter. Feeds and algorithms too often lead to clickbait headlines and articles that say nothing much or are grossly misleading. Given how many people get their "news" that way, is it any wonder they're so distracted, misinformed, easily fooled, and prone to confusing opinion w/fact?

Gramsci wrote: Over the past few years I’ve made a conscious effort to read centrist and business “traditional” mainstream media as well as the kind of leftist oped stuff I was consuming. I would add I read this incredibly critically. I’m highly aware the BBC has its own agenda as does the liberal Guardian (not a left wing paper IMO). broadly the case.... Have people returned to mainstream media critically now social media just causes brain rot?

I never left. To me, it was obvious that far-left digital media was using too many of the same techniques as the post-Murdoch right-wing media. And being way too liberal (pun not intended) w/the facts, possibly to promote an agenda, but more likely... to get clicks and/or shares. I've never been a fan of the gradual embrace of extreme bias in the news media, and the trad sources—increasingly flawed as they are—have a less tenuous relationship w/"the truth," not to mention superior fact checking and copy editing.

The problem w/"news" is the problem w/media in general. It went from a subscription-and-newsstand model, to an advertising model, to a click-based model. Most of this has to do w/mergers (fewer people own everything), and also w/the tech industry calling the shots on the medium. And so, the whole endeavor becomes way less profitable and starts to rely on visits, user "engagement," and algorithms. Which tend to boost what's popular and/or sensationalistic, as opposed to what's, y'know, important. And so it no longer resembles hard news so much as tabloid-style journalism and entertainment.

Wired has been good lately. Yeah it's 'tech' news, but since tech is intertwined with basically everything it covers a lot.

I'll still look to NYT, WaPo etc. for pre/post election coverage and whatnot, but the gentle euphemisms piss me off after awhile. "Musk move raises some eyebrows" when he's clearly breaking the law, and it's ok to point out he's breaking the law.

Otherwise, I'll follow individual writers more than publications overall (though most of them work with MSM outlets at least some of the time).

I'll watch some cable show clips (Maddow, Chris Hayes, etc.) but it's less news and more rage outlet porn.

Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, NPR. I’ll glance at CNN for breaking news if a situation is developing, but that’s about it.

Honestly, I don't think it matters. Propaganda was never taken seriously, except maybe by the most dedicated plebs. The best defense you can have is to be educated with basic reasoning and a broad worldview. (EDIT: also empathy would be nice). Without that you are always at the mercy of others.

The big boys are all mostly opinion pieces and ads these days as traditional media has to compete with the appeal of up and down voting shit-posts on socials I guess.

As to the matter of trust, you're probably best consuming like three sources from different perspectives on topics of interest and using your bullshit detector to piece together the truth from there. I don't think there is that much actual lying going on, it's more like ego stroking the reader, selective curation, and slanted reporting to drive clicks for the advertisers.

zorg wrote: Wed Apr 09, 2025 12:22 pm Honestly, I don't think it matters. Propaganda was never taken seriously, except maybe by the most dedicated plebs. The best defense you can have is to be educated with basic reasoning and a broad worldview. (EDIT: also empathy would be nice). Without that you are always at the mercy of others.

The big boys are all mostly opinion pieces and ads these days as traditional media has to compete with the appeal of up and down voting shit-posts on socials I guess.

As to the matter of trust, you're probably best consuming like three sources from different perspectives on topics of interest and using your bullshit detector to piece together the truth from there. I don't think there is that much actual lying going on, it's more like ego stroking the reader, selective curation, and slanted reporting to drive clicks for the advertisers.

exactly. trust is just an unnecessary concept when you teach yourself to question everything. read everything, even people you disagree with. especially people you disagree with.
does anyone get magazines delivered to their mailbox anymore? my attempts to get my kids to read national geographic were a waste.

My deal with media is to survey what everyone's talking about. Generally some combination of BBC, Reuters, The Hill, WaPo, NY Times, NPR, Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, and The Economist. When something really specific happens and I want to see how people on the other side are getting it fed to them, I peek at Fox News (that website is like a car wreck), New York Post and The National Review. From there I usually get curious about something specific and look for articles, podcasts or op eds with more depth (i.e. Syrian civil war, US tariffs, EU relationship with Ukraine, trans rights in various states etc).

I find the fringe political folks take: "Main stream media is all lies" to be horribly stupid. When it comes to straight up reporting that an event happened, even really low quality companies like Fox and CNN are generally accurate. If you can tell the difference between regular reporting and opinion pieces (which Fox makes it really hard to tell, and it seems most of their consumers especially on TV are lost on this concept) every legit new operation is telling you "some truth". What's interesting, as mentioned above, is framing and emphasis.

I've had to contend with a right wing concept of how our ilk supposedly consume news, and it's basically that we mainline CNN, MSNBC and NYT and just say, "Yes, master." I think it's because this is how there folks treat Breitbart. I think if you aren't reading with a veneer of skepticism then you're a mark. Everything has some bias and some angle, so you read actively. The whole "lying press" (Lugenpresse) thing is ripped from the pages of Goebbels and is a foundational step for manipulating people. It's funny how most of the people who "do their own research" are totally seduced into believing total garbage that some intrepid reporter for ABC News can already disprove.

The short answer is I consume as much as possible and don't fully trust anyone, least of all fringe sites, Tik Tok, YouTubers etc.