Originally Posted by
Theodarzna
In the age of Trump and a lot of these revolts against establishment parties, institutions, and news outlets, the term "fake news" has come into popular usage. Fake News, as in outright false stories, are fairly rare. Or at least, are easy to spot as probably not true. Things like a Crystal Pyramid found in the Bermuda Triangle are an example of a story that is outright not true. The issue most people take with any news outlet, be it Brietbart or the New York Times, or really anyone is rarely directly fake or invented stories. Typically its the issue of ommitting information, or what is reported versus not reported.
In the age of the internet it is possible for all information and events to be seen. All information, all events, all facts can be found with enough dedication and searching. No news outlet, none, can report all information. You couldn't possibly absorb every bit of information that could be reported to you. Every murder, every robbery, every dead child, every event would just be disjointed meaningless noise. Imagine an endless stream explaining in chronicled fashion every event that happened on a given day. A news outlet does not report every single fact, some information is news and other information is not news.
I’ve long argued that the chief problem of media bias is not “fake news,” but instead how particular news outlet prioritizes what is news and what isn’t, what is emphasized in The Narrative and what is skimmed over. There’s an endless abundance of events in this world, so what makes the headlines versus what is relegated to the police scanner chatter are likely politically important decisions. Even if they are not overtly political decisions, its hard to argue they aren't shaped by a worldview. Because in the end all a News outlet, a journalist, can do is write a coherent narrative out of random chaos. Narration is what gives the incoherent string of events some semblance of meaning and importance.
Bringing ourselves back to the internet, the issue emerges that because all information is now available to John Q Public; it becomes hard to ignore why some outlets find some events meaningful enough to be reported, and others do not. What is not covered, versus what is covered, becomes in it of itself a a story. The public now asks why is X news and not Y? Why is Y insignificant to you but not me? Why do I see this and not that. The questions began to rise from there, are these narratives a reflection of reality? Do they reflect the world I see? Can these people or those people be trusted to tell me about things when they don't report a lot of seemingly important events. How any outlet gets around the age of the internet is going to be the challange for credibility. Because to really have credibility requires public trust. But mass public trust seems fleetingly rare since anyone can look up events and compare them. Anyone can find out what is not being reported.
What do you think? Do you think news outlets can get around this problem? Does the public fundementally msunderstand what News outlets are capable of?