Can you trust the media?

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Can You Trust the Media? | Manufacturing Consent Explained.



Corporate media doesn't have our best interests at heart.

More to the point: it doesn't have a heart to begin with. It's corporate.

I think the real mistake generally involved in this matter is assigning human features to corporate entities and then developing expectations based on that. No corporate entity should be trusted without reservations. They're using you. It's no secret. Likewise, you should use them / their services, not trust them.

Sure, I trust the corporate media; but only insofar as I can consistently verify what they present against other resources.  I do not see the Media as an ally, but as a resource for information, and if a particular media outlet (e.g., one with a vulpine name, for example) consistently presents invalid information, I will not trust that outlet as much as I might trust the others.

I posted a list of links to "Skeptics' Resources" HERE for just this purpose.

"Trust; but Verify" is the key phrase.

Corporate entities are inherently human as every part is made or run by humans. They do not exist independently. 'human features' can be both good, evil, and everywhere in-between. That's just my thoughts.

They are, but only in the same sense that people are made of cells, cells are made of atoms and atoms are made of quantum weirdness. It doesn't make much sense to expect cell-like behavior from a person. When thinking of a person, it only makes sense to think of cells in the context of what results from their interactions with each other and the surrounding micro/macroscopic environment.

When thinking of the role of people in a corporation, you can't think of the corporation as simply an entity (or equivalently "an individual"), you need to think of it specifically as a dynamic system.

A person can live their whole life without awareness of cells, but all actions of corporations are made by an actual person or an automated process made by a person.

Oooh...the big bad boogeymedia!

They are programming me to bake cookies. Cookies dangit!

Oh the horror. The Horrors, I tell you.
Next thing you know, they might bring me a puppy

Tragedies!

Mmm, yeah, news are for profit. Fabricating news means generating profit.

And yet it can go its entire "life" without being properly perceived as a system of people. That's my point really. (See the part I added to my previous post.)

A corporation is, ideally, a collective effort to achieve something greater than any one individual or small group can accomplish alone. But in reality it's also (and sometimes exclusively) in many ways a system thoroughly based on the principle of evading accountability, from the very top to the very bottom of the corporate structure. Employees don't do what they believe is right, they typically do what they assume will prevent them from getting fired and/or getting in legal trouble (if for nothing else, than simply as a result of "naturalcorporate selection"), which is often at odds with what they believe is right. And the people who assess their performance are also employees, who also work largely based on the same principle. And so on.

The two things that keep (or can keep) corporations in check are law enforcement and, probably more important in our age, PR. If one of those things is a realistic deterrent for some otherwise profitable behavior, then that behavior will be curbed. But if not, then it will just go on unchecked by default. Because it's profitable. "Good intentions" are not a factor one way or the other. It's a human feature that doesn't apply to a corporation.

A while back I read about some research that showed that (at least in Britain) right-wingers trust the media a lot less than left-wingers do. Which seems odd, in a country where 90% of the newspapers have a very strong right-wing bias.

I have some level of trust in the facts as reported in the media, but I am very aware that they are almost always cherry-picked and interpreted with a slant in pursuit of one agenda or another.

I am wary of biased sources. They're everywhere these days.

Yes I would say the same. In the US it seems like fabricated stories really are a rampant issue (though oddly enough they seem to cater primarily to an audience who ostensibly "distrusts the media"). But in most countries it seems that it's a matter of what doesn't get covered by each media outlet instead, or disproportionate media coverage given to certain things.

propaganda is not new
been around since time began in one form or another
that along with bullying and slander

in order for extreme capitalists to keep their consumers addicted to their products
they need to keep the psychological manipulation up in order to prevent any loss of
revenue, and especially, keep at bay any trends in human behaviour that may undermine
their control over their maximum potential for making profits

in this day and age, where the media is everywhere and all pervasive
they have a grip on every aspect of human society

there is no escape

even the drug rackets are yet another market for the wealth supremacists to
squeeze yet more profit from the masses at any cost

and if anyone is concerned
they sells us miracle cures also at high cost to society (public spending paid by taxes)
or perhaps incarceration (also at the cost of public spending paid by taxes)

so who wins....
those who capitalise out of consumer markets
who would argue that we also win as we get value from the products we consume
even if we have to work in no end low paid jobs for our entire life in order to pay for basic living essentials
and a few "must have" luxury items

so were all winners
but not really

as those who control all the markets take all the profits
which allow them to invest in more markets and control more
but also consume the most products including exclusive luxury products
that are inaccessible to the masses

so who wins...

well, if life is all about material gain
then those who control the most markets win

but is life all about that?...
that now is an endless debate that will never be answered....

but for the masses
we will never win

so why do we try
or why do we feed those to allow them to win?

...der... well, cause everyone else does dats why.... derrr!

Corporate media have profits at heart.
Public media have upholding the state at heart.
If the public becomes informed through them, it is a convenient side effect.

I don't trust any one source of news. Look at a bunch and draw your own conclusions.

Absolutely not. They are supposed to be a watch dog of the government but have become it's lap dog.

Strange ... I thought you once said that the Media had been enslaved by the corporations.