Discussion
rectang: A big problem is that the product of "access journalism" is untrustworthy.In order to produce articles which generate large clickthrough rates for comparatively low cost, news organizations rely on interviews with people in power. But in order to maintain access, the people in power require a certain level of deference that compromises the news channel in the eyes of young audiences, when there are lots of other competing sources that don't observe the same deference.Reuters is less guilty of this than the NY Times, but it's a problem that afflicts all traditional news organizations.
supliminal: “Most people across generations favour the idea of impartial news, but young people more often (32% compared with 19% of those 55+) think it ‘makes no sense for news outlets to be neutral on certain issues’, such as climate change or racism.”Unfortunately it’s documentarians such as David Attenborough that carefully curate a picture of nature as some playful, curious thing. It would behoove schools that prepare students for post-secondary education to put on actual video recordings of how animals go at it and how the strong kill the weak (and their offspring) in the most savage and cruel of ways with complete disregard. And then ask them if they would rather not know this is how the world really is. Because that’s what taking a side means here, is being wilfully ignorant.
layman51: This is tangential, but what you wrote about nature reminded me of a biology professor once saying how at least in nature it seems like other animals generally kill in a quick, efficient way where hopefully the prey won’t suffer too much.
rootusrootus: I feel like the best advice I could give to young news audiences is to stop. Just stop. What little value the news may offer to make you a more informed citizen is completely outweighed by all the negatives.Or if you must watch the news, local only.
littlexsparkee: There's some drawbacks to the news, certainly, but I can't imagine not being aware or interested in what's happening around the world. Surely it's better to follow AP and Reuters and tune the rest.
kevin_thibedeau: Local US television news is coöpted by conservative media empires that routinely insert propaganda pieces into the stations they control.
Animats: Useful study. UK-based.The "authenticity" thing of podcasters is only meaningful if the podcaster was there. Sometimes that happens, and those are the good ones. There are good protest videos. Not many war videos. Secondary sources are just pundits, of which we have too many. It's easy to be an influencer who covers entertainment - entertainment wants to be watched. It's hard to be an influencer who covers, say, unemployment. It's possible, but you have to go and talk live to people who just got laid off. That's reporting.It's not the delivery system. It's whether the source goes out and pulls in news. Most don't.“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." - City Editor of a Chicago newspaper, 1918. Look at a news story and ask "did this begin with a press release or a speech?". If so, it's publicity. HN had an article from a few days ago about "CEO says" journalism. It's worse on the political front.Democracy requires that a sizable fraction of voters know what's really happening. This is a big problem.Influencers can be controlled. Dubai has cracked down on war reporting by the large number of influencers there.[1] Right now, Iran claims a missile hit on an Oracle data center in Dubai. The UAE denies this. Did anybody in Dubai drive over and take pictures? Call up Oracle and ask? Nah.[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/03/dubai-...
tigerlily: How else are young people supposed to cultivate their own cynicism though?
littlexsparkee: That, and being prepared - either let macro phenomena like recession, AI, etc wallop you in the face or be able to spot it in the distance and adapt.
lotsofpulp: The "news" warns people about impending recessions every single day. You can open up the Stocks app right now and there will be multiple conflicting "articles" on the SP500 having reached its top or bottom.Other than news about mortgage rates dropping and trends in payrates for various careers, I see almost nothing actionable in the news for 99% of people.
littlexsparkee: Taking a stance frames results for the writer, such that they are less likely to write about points of the opposing side or express skepticism towards findings on theirs. I'd rather understand the situation regardless of how much it advantages my preference than gain a false understanding. Most issues are nuanced yet interest in covering things in this manner seems to be more rare over time. You have to hope you can cobble this together by looking at both sides, establish what's true, perhaps if lucky run into an insider / impartial sources (which is why I come back to HN).
thesumofall: I don’t know. Is a random YT channel more trustworthy considering their reliance on sponsorships? And once they do interviews, they face the same issueI also just don’t see interviews being a big audience draw (at least for text-based news). It seems there are so many other, bigger problems than the issue of access: lack of revenues, lack of interest in quality journalism, …
modeless: Agreed, watching national or world news is useless. If you want to know what is likely to happen instead of what someone wants you to think will happen, we now have prediction markets. Whenever I see a headline I'm curious about, now instead of reading the article I just go to a prediction market and check the probabilities.
slg: I don't know if it's just getting older or some deeper change in society, but more and more the reading of how my peers view the world depresses me. Even beyond the specific issues with prediction markets, there is a whole lot more to understanding our world than merely knowing the rough odds of possible outcomes.
squibonpig: "taking a side is willful ignorance"So is "neutrality." Neutrality is at best just a third perspective obtained through distance. A foreigner who reports on an ethnic genocide can in many cases be neutral because they're distant from it, but as they learn more about it they'll almost certainly adopt a position, losing their neutrality as their distance to the issue shrinks. Much worse is when the perception of distance coincides with an unspoken bias on an issue. How can an American who grew up in America be neutral on racism and what does that mean?
