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Trump admits he didn’t have to tear down East Wing for ballroom, but just wanted to (piefed.cdn.blahaj.zone)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-melania-upset-east-wing-demolition-b2862932.html

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[–] 20 points 9 months ago (3 children)

"Distracting headlines" as a canard gets a bit old. Everything is a distraction from everything else, because we have a heavily monopolized mass media and a shrinking pool of investigative journalists with any kind of budget.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_newspapers#United_States

When you had twice as many newspapers and half as many people, the idea of "distracting headlines" was more a matter of consumer choice (you could read serious news at the New York Times or junk pop-media at the New York Post). Now media functions as a cartel, with papers all echoing one another on topics of the day. Or deliberately remaining silent on embarrassments the business community owners would rather not talk about.

This isn't a "Trump" problem, though. Its a problem of consolidation and privatization on a national scale.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago*

    This. Media consolidation has been going on for the last 40 years, with the numbers of owners going from around 40 in the 1980s to only 5 today. And if those 5 billionaires get together and decide something isn't going to be talked about, then it's NOT getting talked about.

    This is also why the so-called "mainstream news media" is all lies, sanewashing and WrestleMania rage bait. It's why the news loves to say, "things suck" but NONE of them want to talk about WHY things suck. This is by design. It's a distraction so the owners can keep the lower classes fighting with each other while they, the rich, run off with all the farking money.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Well, look at lemmy anytime someone posts a link that requires you to pay for the journalism. Pitchforks and torches. People don't want to pay for quality journalism, do they get whatever billionaires want to feed them.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (1 child)

    anytime someone posts a link that requires you to pay for the journalism

    People subscribing to random newspapers via links on Lemmy would not be a sustainable model for funding local journalism. And - historically - plenty of people did subscribe to local outlets. Plenty still do. Hell, go on Patreon or Substack and see how well the nascent podcast journalism marketplace is doing.

    What changed over the last 40 years was a wave of M&As targeting smaller papers to consolidate the news markets. Case in point, my own city of Houston had half a dozen different newspapers chugging along just fine for decades. But because they were small, they were also very cheap. Loose monetary policy in the 90s made buying up papers very cheap. So the Houston Chronicle went around town buying the smaller papers and shutting them down. Now its the only major newspaper of record remaining.

    "Well, people on Lemmy should have paid for more subscriptions to the Houston Post" is a fucking asinine statement, given that their stated reason for failure was cost of newsprint rising in the early 90s and they stopped existing before most of the people on this site were even born.

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  • [–] -1 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I don't thing the likes of wsj, nyt or similar are "random newspapers", and they still get hate for asking for money. Bezos finds that useful.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The NYT is what billionaires want to tell me, and if they expect me to pay for the privilege they're out of their minds. Oughta be paying me to read that trash.

    If you were talking about actually independent sources providing other perspectives then you might have a point.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I'm talking about all sources, the average lemmy user doesn't distinguish nuance, they complain about all paywalls. And billionaires take advantage of that and obviously buy the papers with the widest reach first, but with time they'll reach everywhere.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    I’m talking about all sources

    Yet the only ones you listed are the billionaire backed ones. Curious.

    Almost as if your argument is in bad faith because you yourself don't have any great examples of the sort of thing people would want to support that are also news outlets with reporters, and so you are forced to use bad examples.

    Ill give you an example though, just like the other person pointed out, there are smaller sources popping up everywhere. Even youtube journalism such as HowTown are pockets of not yet corporate information sources that people are fine with supporting.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    I listed ones that are not random newspapers, what the other commenter suggested. I don't have examples of the sort of thing people would want to support, because people don't want to support anything. Not with ads, not with money, just everything must be free to them.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    You say it was, but I don't recall it ever filing for bankruptcy etc, so I have to wonder what these claims are based on, and why you felt their journalism was actually good and the type of thing people say they would pay for in the first place. In essence, you are still using the bad example, but with a new unverified claim that still doesnt work because it is a bad example.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    Well, look at lemmy anytime someone posts a link that requires you to pay for the journalism. Pitchforks and torches.

    People don't want to pay for something they don't think is quality.

    It's not like these companies would clean up their act if they got another viable revenue stream. We can see that because when companies do, they regularly just keep the extra cash.

    What you'd need is a boot strapped organization that actually had standards people cared about and didn't bend. Its an impossibly hard situation, yes, but that does not make your snark prescient or clever. More than that, it doesnt at all back up your conclusion that people don't want to pay for quality journalism. It just doesnt exist, because it gets bought out by billionaires.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    It was bought by billionaires after people stopped paying.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    “Distracting headlines” is basically the symptom of the populace having the attention span of a gnat with ADHD using meth as a cure. We don’t focus on anything long enough to generate enough traffic and therefore money for these media companies. So the media end up producing a constant barrage of shit and drivel while ignoring the stuff that likely matters.

    I don’t disagree this blame lies on the people producing the news but it’s also due to the consumers sliding into a character from Idiocracy.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    it’s also due to the consumers sliding into a character from Idiocracy.

    I've seen more intelligence from consumers in the modern landscape of bullshit and scams than the Reagan Era landscape we hold to such high esteem.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    As someone who actually is old enough to remember the Reagan era, I’m not sure it deserves that much nostalgia.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    I'm just hoping it was an /s-less sarcasm. I agree with the point through. Our attention span are shorter and the world always appears to be ending, but I think a lot of that is that along with all the lies and manipulation, we're actually seeing more of 'how the sausage is made' than ever before.

    As disastrous as smartphones have been, it's never been easier to collect and instantly share evidence.

    This, of course, is not to say that I think we're not supremely screwed right now, and there's still a lot happening in the shadows, but I feel there's definitely an increase of visibility.

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