Is the Media Trustworthy?

[Mountains and Volcanoes]

And it made up horrible lies about Corbyn to keep him out of office.

Corbyn is a Kremlin tool, a friend of terrorists, and a hater of British heritage and history. I don’t care at all for him.

*Beijing, and so was Boris & his corrupt Tories!

[Great Britain eke Northern Ireland]

Corbyn is a Kremlin tool, a friend of terrorists, and a hater of British heritage and history. I don’t care at all for him.

*Beijing, and so was Boris & his corrupt Tories!

Trust me, I despise the Conservative Party a great deal as well. They’re fifth columnists who, like Labour, have no place in government in their current states.

[Northern Forestland]

That depends on the media in question. News outlets like Fox News, CNN, Buzzfeed, and RT are definitely very biased and have a questionable level of credibility. Others like Reuters and the Associated Press are pretty reliable.

[Technoscience Leftwing]

I typically view the media as untrustworthy, for several reasons:
- the media is by and large in the hands of a few corporate conglomerates, and thus is favourable towards the owners’ interests;
- the media is an integral actor in the Europhone (and especially Anglophone) culture war, and may be argued as being institutionally biassed against indigenous peoples, including Europeans;
- the media, as a business model, is inherently biassed to publishing sensationalist stories and articles that generate clicks and readings rather than publishing important information for citizens’ own benefit;
and media’s own ties with governments and governments’ control over media, exploiting their business, allows governments to manipulate headlines and access to information, which makes them, in many cases, propaganda offices and machines for governments (this goes for state-controlled media like Russia’s and China’s, except in those cases, the matter is much more openly propagandistic while it’s more subtle in the West).

That's what I agree with

It so happened that I was born in a society with a state monopoly on the media (i.e. in the USSR). In this society, the media presented an idealized picture of the internal situation of the country and its foreign policy - and very sharp criticism of the state of affairs in foreign capitalist countries. Sometimes revealing reports were shown on TV that American and European radio stations broadcasting to the USSR were not independent at all, but were funded by the governments and even the special services of their countries, reflecting the point of view of their sponsors and bosses. It was often written that in bourgeois society, all the media are dependent on big business, on monopolies, billionaires and the funds created by them, grants allocated by them.

Then the policy of glasnost began, and mass media calling themselves independent appeared in the USSR. Sometimes this was reflected even in the name - for example, "Nezavisimaya Gazeta". In the course of privatization, the Russian bourgeoisie emerged, it was quickly monopolized, financial and industrial groups emerged, and they bought the press and TV for themselves. Media magnates like Gusinsky and Berezovsky emerged, owning the largest channels. With the concentration of capital and its fusion with the state apparatus, two large groups of media emerged - pro-Western-liberal and statist-chauvinistic. Both groups depended on their owners (billionaires and dignitaries), reflected their interests, broadcast myths and prejudices beneficial to them. Then the statist-chauvinist group won the pro-Western-liberal one, and the liberal media began to be ousted or directly banned. If earlier it was possible to observe how two competing groups of bourgeoisie through the media tear off each other's masks, and try to reconstruct reality from this, now it is increasingly difficult to do this, because Far-right chauvinists claim totalitarian monopoly and blind praise of their policies, in the spirit of Italy and Spain of the 1930s.

Of course, the liberal media are more critical and more informative - they write about those outrages and threatening trends that ultra-patriots are silent about. But liberals have their own set of myths: about the infallible policy of the West, which supposedly selflessly protects freedom all over the world, about the benefits of social Darwinist market competition, about the advantage of peaceful reformism over revolution, about the advantage of agnosticism over materialism, about the superiority of the rich and the inferiority of the poor, about the positive nature of nationalism of pro-Western countries. Their blind anti-communism drowns, along with the shortcomings of the USSR, many features of modernity and emancipation that were present in the plans and policies of early Bolshevism (social security, technological progress, internationalism, anticlericalism, anti-patriarchy, revolutionism). As for the ultra-patriotic media, tsarism, militarism and religious obscurantism are generally promoted there, there is an apologetics of the Middle Ages and serfdom, complete disenfranchisement of the common people before the authorities. And what should an ordinary person do who does not want to be either a victim of market social Darwinism or a victim of fascist statism? He has to filter the lies coming from these competing gangs and listen to the opinions of his like-minded people in social networks.

[Great Britain eke Northern Ireland]

Snip

The state of media in Russia and the wider world is indeed very regrettable and as much as I am a nationalist and inwardly focused, I do sympathise with you and other Russians that are experiencing those difficulties. I hope that someday the media can be reformed to be less biassed and corrupt.

[Mountains and Volcanoes]

I hope that someday the media can be reformed to be less biassed and corrupt.

Under neoliberalism, not going to happen!

[Greater Cesnica]

I hope that someday the media can be reformed to be less biassed and corrupt.

Under neoliberalism, not going to happen!

Well yeah, the media is comprised of an "official" narrative and a controlled opposition nowadays.

[Frisemark]

The Atlantic and The Economist*, yes.

*do NOT ask the Economist about trans people

[Great Britain eke Northern Ireland]

I hope that someday the media can be reformed to be less biassed and corrupt.

Under neoliberalism, not going to happen!

I hope to see neoliberalism fall by the way side at some point and something what I consider to be better take its place, but don’t underestimate the ability for institutions to reform despite the system in play.

[Aeritai]

There's no such thing as trustworthy media, they're all controlled by capitalist politicians to feed the lower class lies.

[Life empire]

There's no such thing as trustworthy media, they're all controlled by capitalist politicians to feed the lower class lies.

I think you're confusing the right and left wing politicians with each other, sounds more like a leftist thing to do

[Drongonia]

No, of course not.

People on the right are constantly vilified for having opinions that were considered sane/dominant 20 years ago, and manipulated into arguing with the left about nonsensical rubbish.

People on the left are constantly gaslit by corporations into supporting stupid causes or ignoring issues entirely, being made to argue with those on the right.

[Necroghastia]

There's no such thing as trustworthy media, they're all controlled by capitalist politicians to feed the lower class lies.

I think you're confusing the right and left wing politicians with each other, sounds more like a leftist thing to do

riiiiight, who's taking money from big oil to fight against climate change regulation and purport it isn't happening again?

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

I'd like to tender this question to everyone who answered 'no':

Compared to what?

Most of us here on the Anglosphere internet are citizens in democracies. Consequently it is our civic duty to remain informed about the key issues of the day, but no normal person has the time or energy to develop an expertise in every field of academics. At some point someone has to distill the world into something that normal people working 40 hours a week can fit into their spare time.

So if you don't trust conventional media to play this role, then who do you trust?

[Nilokeras]

I'd like to tender this question to everyone who answered 'no':

Compared to what?

Most of us here on the Anglosphere internet are citizens in democracies. Consequently it is our civic duty to remain informed about the key issues of the day, but no normal person has the time or energy to develop an expertise in every field of academics. At some point someone has to distill the world into something that normal people working 40 hours a week can fit into their spare time.

So if you don't trust conventional media to play this role, then who do you trust?

'Civic duty' is a curious phrase - it implies being bound by some higher authority to do something. Is that higher power bound to us, though? What evidence is there that the media feels a 'civic duty' towards us?

Perhaps more importantly, this implies that working 40 hours a week and being too exhausted to interpret the world around us is a natural phenomena.

[Drongonia]

So if you don't trust conventional media to play this role, then who do you trust?

Nobody really.

[The Aituia]

The only media I watch (for TV) is game shows and comedic movies, nothing else. By news, who knows?

[Archinstinct]

You're asking if western mainstream news is trustworthy on a website that's become a communist equivalent of stormfront? I could tell you the overall answer would be a resounding "no" from people here before you even make the thread. You Don't need a poll to know what's already obvious.

[Doomsday Delaware]

The Atlantic and The Economist*, yes.

*do NOT ask the Economist about trans people

I don't trust those guys, either. Frankly, there's almost no publication that I trust nowadays. It's almost always either State or Corporate propaganda. Hard to decide which is worse. Even so-called "progressive" media is like that. Maybe The Nation, but not perfectly even then. Some of the Intercept as well, but that's about it for rags.

[Mr Matzerati]

Media can be trusted as long as you remain critical about the news and regulary checkt the resources. Its also inportant to check how said media operates. Do they have credible, experienced journalists? Do they fix mistakes in articles and do they notify the public about it?
Its also important to check multiple media sources and compare them to eachother. If 95% of media sources, big or small, are saying the same things, you can say its mostly true

[Mr Matzerati]

its also important to understand that the media tries to make stories and often exaggerates stuff, but if you are aware of this you can trust most media sources

[Khardsland]

Media is never trustworthy because it is made up of humans. Humans have their own biases and these biases affect what they say. However, the solution is not to have an unbiased media. Media needs to be biased sometimes. If one side says that it is rainy outside and the other says that it is sunny outside, you don't publish the claims of both sides. You go outside and check the weather for yourself.

That being said, there are certain types of media to never be trusted. Ik this post is made by Americans so what I am gonna say is almost certainly gonna start an online flame war but here we go.

FAR right news outlets are obvious ones like Fox News and Infowars.
Many news outlets often considered far left in the US would be right wing everywhere else. A good example is CNN, a worker hating, money loving, corporate propaganda network that is considered far left by many even though they do not represent anything even remotely leftist.
Although not a news source, Hollywood too is a great propaganda network for the US military. You can learn more about it here.
Now, for the ridiculous claim that American media is free. It is not. Just five companies control the entirety of mainstream US media. The Nayirah Testimony and the story of all the journalists killed by the CIA for exposing American warcrimes should be more than ample proof of how US media is not free.

This is not to say that media in America is the only problem. It is a global problem. Very rarely can you find a news outlet that doesn't lean to the absolute right. Even then, most of these "leftist" news outlets are leftists only in the American sense (aka anywhere between blandly centrist and outright ultraconservative).

[Raskana]

Depends what country you are talking about.

[Khardsland]

Depends what country you are talking about.

True, but in general, most media leans either partially or completely to the right.

[Saiwania]

The media has never been trustworthy, but it doesn't tell only lies, it has agenda, biases, and actual hard news/facts mixed in.