Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.

Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.

  • Minotaur@lemm.eeEnglish
    1514·
    9 months ago

    It’s actually crazy how low the percentage of people under like… forty is now that actually gets their news direct from a news site. Seriously, i don’t know a single person from like 20-35 who actually just goes on the NPR or C-SPAN app or whatever.

    It kind of sucks. So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now. And I just feel like there’s something bad about being able to see a comment section on Twitter or Reddit or even Lemmy now on every news event. Makes for a lot more group think rather than just reading the news and going “huh”

    • Shake747@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      672·
      9 months ago

      Sometimes there’s good discussion though, and it’s good to hear different takes.

      Having comments also gives less power to the writer, like could you imagine if we all took Fox News or CNN headlines at face value and didn’t discuss them?

      • Minotaur@lemm.eeEnglish
        57·
        9 months ago

        You can literally just read news from less overtly biased news sources. There are scant few articles that I can think of where I really need a redditors interpretation of it

        • Shake747@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          82·
          9 months ago

          It’s not so much what their interpretation is of the specific article is, it’s more that you might find more information from someone who has info that was left out, or maybe another source that has conflicting information.

          Could you show us a few not so biased news sources? I suppose this will also vary wildly by topic. A news outlet might be narrative/propaganda driven on one topic, but not about another.

          It’s so much mess (through corporate ties or money) to sort through, it’s hard to trust any of them anymore

          • borari@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            4·
            9 months ago

            Check out the articles posted on [email protected] . Every article is a summary of facts, followed by an explanation of the narrative being pushed by each side of the story.

            In a recent article about Sam Bankman-Fried being sentenced to 25 years for example, there is a “Pro-establishment narrative” and an “Establishment-critical narrative” given. In an article about the FCC and TikTok there’s a Pro-China and Anti-China narrative given. When necessary there will be more than two narratives given.

            As a bonus there’s usually a “Nerd Narrative” with a percent chance of occurrence of something related to the story. I don’t know what Metaculus is or who comprises their “prediction community”, but saying shit like this is a bit ridiculous:

            There’s a 50% chance that after a (weak) Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is created, it will take at least 28.7 months for the first superintelligent AI to be created, according to the Metaculus prediction community.

            Thanks, that’s really helpful there lol. Sometimes they can be genuinely informative, but it’s the only thing I view with any real skepticism in any particular article.

          • FutileRecipe@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            9 months ago

            Could you show us a few not so biased news sources? I suppose this will also vary wildly by topic. A news outlet might be narrative/propaganda driven on one topic, but not about another.

            Have you heard of Ground News? It’s basically a news aggregator that shows multiple stories on the same event, but with a bias rating and a factuality score, as well as a ownership category. Also, a blindspot category which shows articles being shown predominantly by one side and not the other.

            The Ground News bias ratings are calculated using three independent news monitoring organizations: All Sides, Ad Fontes Media, and Media Bias Fact Check. This score does not measure the bias of specific news articles. It is an assessment of the political bias of the publication. The rating takes into consideration things like the wording, story choices and political affiliation of the outlet.

    • Stovetop@lemmy.worldEnglish
      281·
      9 months ago

      So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now.

      Mexico’s new president: 3-year-old Alfredo Pequeño Lobo becomes nation’s youngest elected and first canine leader. But can he be rough on the cartels?

    • space@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      261·
      9 months ago

      I’m guilty of doing this (just reading the headlines) as well. I usually do it for these reasons:

      • I don’t care enough to want to read more. For example, news about US politics. I don’t live in the US. I feel that reading the headlines is enough to keep me informed about what’s happening, but I really don’t care any more than that.

      • The details aren’t valuable to me. For example, the Apple anti-trust lawsuit… Is it important? Yes. I’m already well aware of the horrible anticonsumer practices of Apple. But do I need to know all the particular details about the lawsuit? Not really. In fact, the only thing that matters is the final verdict, which hasn’t happened yet.

      • I care, but I already know enough details.

      • I don’t feel like the article would bring a lot of value, especially if the title is click-baity. I’ve encountered too many articles that are void of content, just the title repeated in 10x more words.

      I don’t like visiting news sites because, in addition to all of them being obnoxious and ad riddled, I feel like I’m wasting a lot of time reading long articles that could be rewritten as 3 bullet points. On platforms like lemmy, users will highlight the important bits in the comments which saves a lot of time.

      • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
        82·
        9 months ago

        Lemmy is massively biased though. While that doesn’t mean the articles aren’t factual, you’re still only ever hearing one side of the story. What I find time after time is that majority of people who have strong opinions about current events are completely uncapable of fairly steelmanning the opposing side’s argument.

        • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          I’m not sure why you think that news orgs aren’t also biased. Everything and everyone is biased, even those that genuinely try to not let it show through and be fully impartial.

          • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
            43·
            9 months ago

            So what are you implying? That it doesn’t matter where you get your news because all sources are biased anyway?

              • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
                51·
                9 months ago

                There’s still a massive difference between news sources like NY times and Breitbart. It matters where you get your news from and even if it’s coming from a biased source you should atleast be aware of the bias. Some sites atleast try to counter their bias while others embrace it. These things matter. It’s not binary.

      • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        Even Lemmy does that, though. You’re still influenced by the headline, the community/moderation and the users.

        Assuming that everyone clicks through to the article, and doesn’t comment before reading the headline, anyhow.

        • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          And at the news organization, you are influenced by the editors and framing by authors.

        • Veraxus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          9 months ago

          Try explaining that to a rightist, though. It’s not right-wing propaganda, therefore it is left-wing propaganda. 😔

        • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Reuters is also good and less USA Centric (at least for their notifications) which is a good thing for me because I am not from the USA, but AP is excellent too). I don’t think you can even disable USA news in your “interests” with AP.

          Both Reuters and AP are news agencies that sell news (and stuff like photos) to other news companies. So it’s very likely that everyone here has read at least some content from them.

          Both are also often regarded as among the most reliable and least biased news sources available. AFP is also in that group.

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      9 months ago

      I use 1440, which sums up daily news in a fact-based way and leaves out all opinion. It’s magical. It takes 10 minutes to read and I’m not bombarded by why “libtards are destroying america” or why “this ties back to trump destroying democracy” somehow.

      Highly recommend it for daily news.

    • Branch_Ranch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      A few months back, i subscribed to the news aggregator Ground News. Although there are more expensive options, i pay about $6/year and I love it. You get news stories from lots of different sites and gives you a good idea of biases. I highly recommend it!

    • realitista@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      For me it’s RSS, Lemmy, and suprisingly YouTube as I can get the major news sources( eg BBC, CNN, FT, DT, MSNBC) chunked up into specific topics so I don’t have to sit through a bunch of garbage to get to the topics I care about. And I get it from more sources.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
      73·
      9 months ago

      That’s how I get my news. I visit the Finnish equivalence of BBC once or twice a day and that’s my news diet. If they don’t report on it, I don’t need to know. Something like what a VOX journalist thinks about Twitter I couldn’t care less so I don’t even bother reading it. I’m proudly unaware of most of the things that non-serious news organizations report on.

      • cygon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        9 months ago

        Vox is a reputable and very thorough news source, though, usually worth the read.

        This two-pager, for example, highlights false Twitter journalists popping in Baltimore to politically spin the recent bridge collapse.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
          33·
          9 months ago

          That’s not my point. What I’m saying is that I knowingly limit my news diet to what is the most important/interesting and this is neither so I’m not bothering my mind with it. I don’t need to know and not knowing has zero effect on my life.

        • (des)mosthenes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          yea definitel! - working on a site for that with docs etc, prolly a week or two - currently rebuilding the user settings / models - just a preview till then ^^

    • fruitycoder@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      9 months ago

      Watching CSPAN is weird now. It used to be more boring but some the more recent ones have felt I was watching a behind the scenes show where each person was saying things so perfectly crafted for sound bites they seem incongruent with what someone else would say.

    • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      9 months ago

      I highly prefer getting my news from independent journalists/investigators. You think everyone reading the same news sites is going to be better for groupthink?!

      • Minotaur@lemm.eeEnglish
        22·
        9 months ago

        None of your independent journalists / investigators are independent.

          • Minotaur@lemm.eeEnglish
            22·
            9 months ago

            You’re going to have to tell me what oligarchs own NPR, C-span, and the associated press

                • MonkCanatella@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  11·
                  9 months ago

                  Wow you get backed into a corner and resort to middle school name calling. Like, maybe you need to get out of your comfort zone. Maybe you need to put on your big boy pants and accept that your original premise is incoherent

    • LifeOfChance@lemmy.worldEnglish
      43·
      9 months ago

      Honestly I think a big part of people looking at headlines and pictures is closely related to people’s attention span. Why read many words when less is better. Those same people can’t hold conversations for more than a minute or two on the subject then it spirals into speculations which is where the misinformation starts to take place. Society is bombarded with so much information hour by hour people don’t want to miss anything so they skim through an immense amount of partial information. It’s wild and I’m guilty of it myself so I’m in no place to speak ill of anyone.