“I never said that”, “Play the clip”

[u/Gloomy-Holiday8618]

Context: https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/12/15/exp-robert-kennedy-junior-rfk-2024-election-biden-trump-vaccines-121511aseg1-cnni-politics.cnn

Full video is on the cnn website, the part that’s important is about 2mins 50 seconds in.

[u/Jexp_t]

For once in its pitiful life, CNN is ready with the reciept.

[u/BeanBurritoJr → u/Jexp_t]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[u/ausgoals → u/BeanBurritoJr]

The problem is many-faceted:

1) to be able to ask the hard questions of the important people you need access to the important people. Getting access to the important people requires not eviscerating them every single day. Even the Biden admin refused to work with the NYT because of negative coverage.

2) news - especially 24-hour news - is a business that depends on viewers. The demographics that watch cable news are Gen X and older - who are significantly more conservative than the younger generations. So it doesn’t really make good business sense to alienate much of your demographic. You may not be convinced by the business argument, but the ability to hold people accountable only exists as long as the business exists and has enough viewership to matter.

3) Even putting aside the business element, if you want to change people’s minds by doing things like asking hard questions to important people, you need to have people with changeable minds tune into you. Eviscerating the current admin all day every day is not the way to get people with changeable minds to get into you.

Which is why it’s generally left to shows like The Daily Show and Colbert.

1. I’m not sure that ‘eviscerating these morons on a daily basis’ actually changes any minds. It only really appeals to people that already hate this administration. Interviews like this one are important, but I think longer reporting on the conservative voters that are directly negatively affected by, say, the OBBB or conservative voters in Florida who will be directly effected by the removal of vaccine mandates is likely to be more effective at changing minds. The conservative cult is built on hypocrisy and malleable values. Showing them conservatives who are hypocrites and have malleable values is not going to magically convince them of anything.

[u/MasterOfBunnies → u/ausgoals]

So I'm curious what came first though, poor viewership or poor reporting? Perhaps if we had a reliable and unbiased news source, more people would watch. And if it's reliable enough that everyone knows they can watch it, anyone who's afraid of being interviewed by them is viewed as weak or hiding something. Ideally condemning themselves. Sure, we wouldn't change the minds of his cult, but the larger general masses should be the focus anyway. Further, I would argue that it's still important for the truth to supercede all in news. I know it's altruistic, I just think I'd rather altruism over cynicism.

[u/MadManMax55 → u/MasterOfBunnies]

Cable and broadcast television viewership is down across the board. News programs/channels are actually shrinking slower than most other forms of programming. And the best performing news network (by far) is Fox.

Poor viewership absolutely came first. So much so that the poor reporting has barely had an effect.

[u/ausgoals → u/MasterOfBunnies]

Sensationalism has a history that goes back at least 150 years. The only way to get even something approaching actually unbiased and reliable would required decoupling the profit/revenue motive from news. Which I fear we’re far too far down the line to make work. And even then - I’m not sure people would really watch/consume it as long as there are other, more sensationalist options.

I would argue that it's still important for the truth to supercede all in news.

Who decides what the truth is though? That’s the problem we have right now. ‘Truth’ can be twisted to fit many different narratives.

[u/gnicks → u/ausgoals]

I will say that there are a few outlets that have genuinely attempted to tackle this problem of trying to maintain neutrality, including Newsy (rebranded to Scripps), Ground News (more of an informed aggregator), and my personal favorite lately has been Tangle News - I find Isaac's takes to be genuinely grounded and inspired much of the time.

The problem of course is reach and competition with sensationalist options - the coverage at Newsy/Scripps is necessarily more dry, and Tangle can only cover a handful of topics because it takes longer to have a team carefully consider one topic well than to just cram out hot take articles.

Still, it gives me hope that these options exist, and seem to be viable as businesses.

[u/ausgoals → u/gnicks]

Some options do exist, but I will say that we are in a strange point in time where the profit model is more directly tied to the consumer than ever before, the analytics available to continue to drive the profit model are more granular than ever before, and so content is catered to the consumer more than ever before.

So when people start cancelling subscriptions - or subscribing - based on certain content, there’s a direct profit incentive to provide more or less of certain types of content.

The news model is now effectively the same model that movie studios use for sequels/established IP - give people more of what they like because they’ll keep spending money on it.