Do You Trust the Mainstream Media?

Northern Light said:

No I don't. They regularly lie by omission, and being corporate/private/for profit means that they care more about ratings and ad revenue than telling the total truth.

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Fortunately Alternative Media is composed of tens of millions of small people like us.

SCitizen said:

But at least Alternative Media is free for us to be on.

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Most of the MSMs are free as well. Only some of the old school mainstream print sources have a paywall.

Roycarn said:

For the purposes of this poll, Mainstream media includes CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, Washington Post, etc.

Leave a post letting me know what you think.

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I trust them to do whatever they think will get them viewers, to make their companies money. That does not necessarily mean telling the unbiased truth all the time.

SCitizen said:

Fortunately Alternative Media is composed of tens of millions of small people like us.

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Thank goodness for the internet

Roycarn said:

For the purposes of this poll, Mainstream media includes CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, BBC, Washington Post, etc.

Leave a post letting me know what you think.

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Depends on the quality of the article. Generally speaking, however, most msm journalists are required to vet their sources and publish corrections, so their trustworthiness is typically going to be several notches higher than most non-msm sources.

Fishking said:

I don't trust MSMs, of any flavor, nor do I trust alternate media. I use them mostly to alert me about a thing and then I look into the thing for myself and don't need them tell me what to think about it.

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If your research involves the internet, then it is all basically the same thing.

SMTA said:

If your research involves the internet, then it is all basically the same thing.

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Not really. For example, if it's reporting on a piece of legislation then I'll look up the legislation for myself and read it. If it's about something that happened and there is a video, I will try and find the full video. If it's something some politician said, I will look up the interview or townhall speech or video myself.

There are plenty of ways to go about getting the information from closer to the source.

Fishking said:

I don't trust MSMs, of any flavor, nor do I trust alternate media. I use them mostly to alert me about a thing and then I look into the thing for myself and don't need them tell me what to think about it.

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Out of curiosity, if you hear a story from the msm, where do you then go to look into it for yourself?

Trust is a big word...so I had to say no. There have been too many mistakes / biases / perhaps even outright lies that they have been caught up in leaves me feeling that unless I fact check I'm not going to buy in. And even fact checking is limited to looking for consistency across multiple platforms, which is really the only way to check, but leaves you with the understanding that if everyone is lying consistently, you're screwed.

I think it's also important to note the comparative nature of this. On their own, I don't trust them, but up against the alt-news industry they are pinnacles of reliability. That's not to say all alt-news is garbage, just there are so many garbage news outlets out there calling themselves alt-news that it's impossible to tell who you can and cannot trust.

It's a mess out there, there really is no way to fully understand what's going on. I'd say that's always been the case, though, to one extent or another. That so many people don't trust MSM is more indicative of the fact that more people have the ability to check the facts than anything new in the news industry. It's kind of a mess...

ThoughtEx. said:

Do I trust them to what? Provide accurate accounting? Yes. Do I trust them to provide an accurate accounting free of sensationalist spin meant to entertain and draw in viewers? No.

The world is run by propaganda, it is what it is. All we can do is learn to spot the propaganda.

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The biggest problem with the MSM is not what they report but what they don't. If a conservative screws up they are all over it on the front page but if a liberal/progressive screws up its on page 59 or not at all.

Cardinal said:

Out of curiosity, if you hear a story from the msm, where do you then go to look into it for yourself?

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If it's legislation I find the legislation. Most of it isn't very long and it's written such that you can read through it very fast. If it's a behemoth piece of legislation you key word search for the part that is referenced and then read around it for context.

If it's some event that happened and there is video for it, I will look for the full video.

If it's something some politician said I will look for where they said it and for a full xcript or full video.

Not everything can be gotten straight from the source but you can usually get pretty close to it and then see if there is anything there.

antiquity said:

The biggest problem with the MSM is not what they report but what they don't. If a conservative screws up they are all over it on the front page but if a liberal/progressive screws up its on page 59 or not at all.

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Which, of course, has been proven (repeatedly) to be total fiction, yet righties can't stop repeating that blatant lie.

Northern Light said:

Thank goodness for the internet

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Thank G-d this generation has Internet.

SCitizen said:

Thank G-d this generation has Internet.

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The mainstream media will own internet publishing soon enough. The era of a free and open internet is fleeting.

Not in the least..... The biggest problem is the networks all have political bias. One will cover the story from a democrat point of view and another will cover it from a republican stance. The thing is we don't need our version of whats good we need answers that are right based on their morals and principles.

Snakebite said:

The mainstream media will own internet publishing soon enough. The era of a free and open internet is fleeting.

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Too horrible to be true. But I guess you are correct.

SCitizen said:

Too horrible to be true. But I guess you are correct.

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When they attack "fake news," guess what they're doing?

"You don't want FAKE news, do you? You need news from reliable providers of news coverage, like us!"

The war on fake news is just a proxy for the war on the non-controlled media.

The internet is already a lot less free than it was at inception. These days, massive companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon dominate the web. It's only a matter of time until Google is screening out your search results, eliminating what it considers "fake news." Facebook, the same thing. And these censoring actions are perfectly legal.

Snakebite said:

When they attack "fake news," guess what they're doing?

"You don't want FAKE news, do you? You need news from reliable providers of news coverage, like us!"

The war on fake news is just a proxy for the war on the non-controlled media.

The internet is already a lot less free than it was at inception. These days, massive companies such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon dominate the web. It's only a matter of time until Google is screening out your search results, eliminating what it considers "fake news." Facebook, the same thing. And these censoring actions are perfectly legal.

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Sad but very true. What can Politically Incorrect sources do to save their Freedom of Speech?

SCitizen said:

Sad but very true. What can Politically Incorrect sources do to save their Freedom of Speech?

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Just my opinion, but I think we're in a good spot for the next 4-8 years. We have a champion in the White House who has really taken the fight to the CNN's and NBC's of the world like nobody ever really has.

For example, he totally stole the line "fake news" from them when it was just starting to catch on. Rather than allow them to control the narrative, Trump flipped it around and labeled CNN as "fake news," among others. And it's taken a lot of the bite out of their bark because now when they call Breitbart "fake news," half the country will just call CNN "fake news" and it's a wash.

But Trump won't be there forever. They'll keep pushing to gain control.

We just need to keep awareness up and keep strong to our beliefs.