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Study Finds Google Is More Trusted Than Traditional Media

According to a study by market research company Zogby International, people trust Google, Apple, and Microsoft more than the traditional media. Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter scored lowest on the trust scale, but still soundly beat the media. From the article: "The traditional media received little sympathy from the public, with only eight percent of all adults and six percent of young adults saying they trusted them."

155 comments

  1. What about /.?? by bronney · · Score: 1

    Ah no love?

    1. Re:What about /.?? by miggyb · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I wouldn't trust Slashdot with the stolen handbags and cars that I stole because I got introduced to peer-to-peer filesharing at a very early age.

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    2. Re:What about /.?? by ta+bu+shi+da+yu · · Score: 4, Funny

      I trust slashdot posters even less than I trust market research companies.

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    3. Re:What about /.?? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      For me, it’s the other way around. I learn more from these comments here, than from all the tech news sources combined.

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      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
  2. The elephant in the summery by BluePeppers · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Who shall be the first to say it. Rupert Murdoch?

    Oh and of course, I do realise that the left has much bias aswell. But R.M. does take it to a new level.

    --
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    1. Re:The elephant in the summery by cappp · · Score: 5, Informative
      There are, as usual, some important caveats. This is the finding of a Zogby poll, a polling firm that Nate Silver fondly refers to as “the worst pollster in the world” and one whose methodology has been consistently critiqued. Further, it’s an online poll that obviously elicits a very specific kind of response.

      Given the aforementioned, the specific numbers hardly paint the picture the summary provides.

      While Microsoft, Apple and Google were each trusted by 49%, the percentage expressing little or no trust was higher for Microsoft and Google (both 46%) than it was for Apple (35%). The percentage of not sure responses was higher for Apple (15%) than for for both Google and Microsoft, both 5%. Adults under 30 had the least trust in the two computer giants, especially Microsoft. Among First GlobalsTM under 30, 34% had trust in Microsoft and 41% in Apple. That age group's trust in Facebook (20%) and Twitter (15%) was also greater than that of older age groups.

      I recommend you go over and look at the original report yourselves, it makes some really odd choices – for instance lumping together “trust a little” and “not at all.” Similarly "The Media" represents some monolithic entity - which is also primed against given the pervasive creation and politicization of the catagory of "mainstream media" - whilst Twitter, Google, and Apple somehow deserve their own catagories.

    2. Re:The elephant in the summery by Rogerborg · · Score: 2, Funny

      Nonsense, Zogby is the Rob Enderle of polling.

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    3. Re:The elephant in the summery by owlnation · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Oh and of course, I do realise that the left has much bias aswell. But R.M. does take it to a new level.

      Bias isn't a reason not to trust a media source -- assuming you know they are biased. I completely trust Murduch's outlets, because I know they are biased and can read through it. That doesn't mean I agree with them, just that I know I can rely on the info to be biased in a certain way, and thus have an indication of truth, at the very least.

      It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased, but of course, is -- because all of them are. The BBC being the perfect example. They claim to be unbiased, but are very much not. It is, however, often hard to tell what their underlying spin is. Thus, I would never ever trust one single thing they say.

    4. Re:The elephant in the summery by Shrike82 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also, from what I can see they never actually specify what we're supposed to be trusting them with? Our lives? Our children? Our cars? Are we trusting Microsoft, Apple and Google not to tell the world about that time that we accidentally wet the bed when we were really drunk and the three of them put our hand in warm water?

      Call me crazy, but a poll with such generic ideas of trust seems almost as useless as a poll about which type of tree people trust the most. Damn, those Nordic Pines look a bit shifty...

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    5. Re:The elephant in the summery by digitig · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased, but of course, is -- because all of them are. The BBC being the perfect example. They claim to be unbiased, but are very much not. It is, however, often hard to tell what their underlying spin is. Thus, I would never ever trust one single thing they say.

      Actually, it's not hard to read through the BBC's bias once you realise where it comes from. Because of the way it is set up and regulated, it is in a near permanent state of fear of being accused of bias, which means that it tends to give disproportionate prominence to the views of those most likely to complain. That means that somebody who says the Earth is flat gets equal time to somebody who says that it's round (exaggerating here, but that's the mechanism at work). Once you realise that, it's usually not hard to tell which views are those of people who know what's going on and which views are the screwballs'. What you can be pretty sure of with the BBC is that they don't make their news stories up, because the regulators come down on them like a ton of bricks if they do. Unlike the press, which invents news with impunity.

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    6. Re:The elephant in the summery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Also, from what I can see they never actually specify what we're supposed to be trusting them with? Our lives? Our children? Our cars? Are we trusting Microsoft, Apple and Google not to tell the world about that time that we accidentally wet the bed when we were really drunk and the three of them put our hand in warm water?

      Call me crazy, but a poll with such generic ideas of trust seems almost as useless as a poll about which type of tree people trust the most. Damn, those Nordic Pines look a bit shifty...

      Not really, trust in a general sense translates easily to confidence in someone doing their given task.

      If somebody asked me if I "trust" the main stream media, I would interpret that to mean they want to know if I trusted them to deliver unbiased reports about notable events around the world(or region of choice). What one would expect from an ideal news service.

      The answer would be "Ha ha... No" incidentally.

    7. Re:The elephant in the summery by Shrike82 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      But the article compares trust in commercial companies with trust in "the media". Since they do totally different things the comparison is meaningless. I take your point that trust in a very generic way means our belief that they'll do their "given task", but the task of Apple, Microsoft etc. is to make money. And yes, I trust that they'll do that.

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    8. Re:The elephant in the summery by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 1

      No, he doesn't take it to a whole new level, he takes it to a level, and that irks the left - "that's OUR thing."

      Turnabout IS fair play. Get over it, pointdexter :)

    9. Re:The elephant in the summery by Apple+Acolyte · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Yeah, the study sounds almost as flawed as the summary of it. Trusting Google more than traditional media is almost completely a non-sequitur. Google isn't of itself a source of news. There's Google News that aggregates articles from news sites, but Google doesn't have its own news bureau. The comparison between Google and "traditional media" implies that people were ranking Google as a news provider against traditional news sources, where in actuality that wasn't the comparison at all.

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    10. Re:The elephant in the summery by HungryHobo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Not quite but they genuinely do balance based on complaints.
      In an interview I remember one BBC producer saying they try to end up with piles of complaint letters of similar size for each side of contentious issues.
      So old nutters who send a lot of complaint letters do get overrepresented but the BBC isn't all that bad overall.
      It's quite common to get lots of letters from both side complaining that a particular show was biased towards the other side.

    11. Re:The elephant in the summery by NickFortune · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Bias isn't a reason not to trust a media source -- assuming you know they are biased.

      I tend to disagree. A consistently biased news source is one that deliberately attempts to mislead its users. The trouble is that you don't necessarily know what the bias is on any particular subnject, or when that bias changes. All you know is that the data is unlikely to be reliable as presented.

      As such, the rational thing to do is distrust the baised source.

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    12. Re:The elephant in the summery by something_wicked_thi · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I'm not sure what your point wrt Enderle is. There are several predictions in that article, all of which are correct, but with some caveats.

      Apparently, Enderle said that Apple would switch to Intel chips by the end of 2003. He also said it would use Windows. He was wrong about the year (it was 2006), but Apple computers now run Windows as an option, and they are Intel chips.

      Enderle predicted Apple would make smaller, cheaper ipods based on flash memory. Right on all counts.

      He predicted that Apple would make an ipod that played video. Right again.

      Obviously, he was wrong about the timelines on most (all?) of these, but overall, I'd say that's a pretty impressive record. I certainly wouldn't have called the ipod moving to flash in 2003; at least, not for a long while. I also wouldn't have called Apple moving to x86. He was two years early on the first one and three on the second.

      Anyway, I don't think you were trying to imply that this poll is something that's insulted by short-sighted blogs, but is just a little ahead of its time. Maybe you meant it's the Fox News of polling?

    13. Re:The elephant in the summery by TheRaven64 · · Score: 2, Informative

      This is, to a degree, what they aim for, and does not contradict the grandparent. They regard a report as unbiased when both sides of the issue complain in equal numbers that it is biased towards the other side.

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    14. Re:The elephant in the summery by Ash+Vince · · Score: 1

      Yeah, the study sounds almost as flawed as the summary of it. Trusting Google more than traditional media is almost completely a non-sequitur. Google isn't of itself a source of news. There's Google News that aggregates articles from news sites, but Google doesn't have its own news bureau. The comparison between Google and "traditional media" implies that people were ranking Google as a news provider against traditional news sources, where in actuality that wasn't the comparison at all.

      You see to me this actually makes perfect sense and is an entirely expected result.

      If I base my knowledge of something to s single news source, then I am only getting the person who wrote that articles perspective. However if I can read several perspectives on an event side by side (even if I have to click through to each individual site to do this), then I am getting a far more balanced view than I would by just reading one. News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.

      The other reason is that most of the worst news services are not biased in the way the cover a world event, they are bias by simply not covering world events that do not put across the world view they want to encourage. This neatly gets round all the laws regarding balanced coverage that they would have to obey in certain countries. This is something that is completely bypassed however if you have an automated news aggregator that does not have a human editor who can be required to toe the company line.
      Since Google specialise in automating the crap out of everything I would be very surprised if Google News worked differently.

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    15. Re:The elephant in the summery by Comboman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I completely trust Murduch's outlets, because I know they are biased and can read through it ... It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased

      What part of the Fox News motto "Fair and Balanced" do you believe is not a claim to be unbiased?

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    16. Re:The elephant in the summery by Ephemeriis · · Score: 1

      If I base my knowledge of something to s single news source, then I am only getting the person who wrote that articles perspective. However if I can read several perspectives on an event side by side (even if I have to click through to each individual site to do this), then I am getting a far more balanced view than I would by just reading one. News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.

      I agree with this... Which is why I like Google News... But I don't know why they'd include Apple and Microsoft in the poll. What do either of those companies have to do with news media?

      --
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    17. Re:The elephant in the summery by Schadrach · · Score: 1

      As far as an off the cuff, is that such a bad metric? I mean, assuming you could somehow balance against the vocality of each side?

      A viewer will have a view that his heavily skewed towards their beliefs (hence how socialist US media is when viewed by a hard right-winger, except for Fox News which is fascist to the leftists out there). If the liberals all complain about your conservative bias and the conservatives all complain about your liberal bias with regards to the same piece, shouldn't that imply you presented a centrist/moderate view?

    18. Re:The elephant in the summery by VShael · · Score: 1

      In my experience, the further to the right of right-wing your politics are, the more likely you are to distrust the BBC, call them socialist, anti-Semitic, what have you.

    19. Re:The elephant in the summery by fireboy1919 · · Score: 1

      Well...the poll is clearly trusting its readers to be able to glean the rather obvious context of "trust" from the question.

      We're asking how much we trust news outlets, google, apple, and Microsoft to tell us the truth.

      And I have to say, the news seems to have done a fantastic job at indoctrinating us with their crap.
      Looking through this thread, I don't see a single article that differentiates between "bias" and "lies."

      If we're going to talk about semantics, that's a lot more important. There must be a line of trust beyond which any transgression makes me trust that you're trying to fool me into believing something that you don't believe.
      And past that line we're not talking about bias.

      This is why I don't trust MS as much as traditional media. I know that they will never tell me when their product isn't suitable to my needs (which usually happens because it isn't ready for market yet). They want to sell it to me, even if they have to lie to do so. With traditional media, truth sells...some of the time, anyway. If a paper always lies, they're not going to have as many sales. With corporations, they just call that marketing.

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    20. Re:The elephant in the summery by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      Exactly.

      And I guess it's stupid meaningless articles like these why people don't trust the media...

    21. Re:The elephant in the summery by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      As an off the cuff metric, it's not bad. The problem is that it only really works in issues where there is a real dispute. Consider the original poster's example of flat-earthers. If you write a piece giving equal weight to flat earth and round earth models, you will probably get the same number of complaints on both sides, but there isn't really any serious debate about whether the earth is flat - the Greeks measured its circumference fairly accurately several thousand years ago. In areas where there is no well-established objective truth, it works better.

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    22. Re:The elephant in the summery by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      So, a guy who got his start in blogging on the DailyKos is supposed to be a good arbiter of trustowrthiness?
      Personally, based on Nate Silver's opinion of Zogby, Zogby has moved up in my estimation. If Nate Silver was able to get a following from the DailyKos, he has to be a complete leftwing nutjob, who says things that support the pre-conceived ideas of other left wing nutjobs.

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    23. Re:The elephant in the summery by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

      I agree with your general point that bias sources are still useful, and unknown bias is dangerous. But I don't think it follows that therefore the BBC are totally untrustworthy, whilst biased outlets aren't.

      Firstly even though it is a problem that the BBC does have its unclear biases, overall I would still rate it as far more accurate, and less bias, than much of the media. Secondly, I don't think that just because you know a source is bias, means you can somehow factor it out.

      How do you know that Murduch's outlets don't also have some unknown biases as well? It's a fallacy to assume that a non-biased source must have some hidden bias, but to also assume that if you know of at least one bias, that there are no hidden biases.

      How does this apply to other kinds of sources? Would you trust a Creationist website over Encyclopedia Britannica on scientific matters, because you know the former is biased towards Creationism, but you're not sure what the bias of Britannica is?

    24. Re:The elephant in the summery by FuckingNickName · · Score: 1

      News aggregation services like Google News are bound to come out looking more "honest" when viewed from this perspective.

      Really? Search for something non-contentious like, say, "Iraq". Almost all top reports are from the usual well-known list of mainstream news agencies and publishers (often Murdoch / government owned) - plus, of course, al "fill them with ex-Western media guys and let them carry on so we can pretend we don't have a news monopoly" Jazeera.

      "Honest" would be links to stories from people who haven't been filtered through a million layers of military and foreign office smokescreening, e.g. reports from *shock* Iraqi and other more local journalists.

      Google is essentially one big algorithm to reinforce existing human biases, and this applies to both web page sorting and news sorting methods.

    25. Re:The elephant in the summery by Jawnn · · Score: 1

      No, he doesn't take it to a whole new level, he takes it to a level, and that irks the left - "that's OUR thing."

      Riiiiight...
      Out there, all by themselves on the far right wing of American journalism, and their obvious and unapologetic bias is really only "a perception problem" of "the left". Please...

    26. Re:The elephant in the summery by sorak · · Score: 2, Informative

      That is true, if the facts are being reported from a different perspective, perhaps with a slightly different emphasis. The problem with Fox News (I can't speak for RM's other companies), is that they have too many activists who don't care what the facts are. I used to watch Fox News, because I wanted to have my opinion challenged, but there were just a few too many times when I would have to go to my computer to fact-check the talking point that had gone unchallenged the past week, or to simply hear the other side of the debate, that I eventually realized that it wasn't worth my time.

    27. Re:The elephant in the summery by Rogerborg · · Score: 4, Insightful

      My point, which you've handily illustrated, is that even though Enderle and Zogby usually spout complete bullshit, there are still many apologists suffering from chronic cognitive dissonance who queue up to use them as reliable sources because their random guesses are right half of the time.

      Note carefully that Enderle wasn't "predicting" Apples' future strategy, he was talking about what they were just about to announce, and was wrong on every count. By that measure of success, I could predict that Ford's are about to announce a flying car, and in 50 years or so, I'll look like a frikkin' genius.

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    28. Re:The elephant in the summery by Shrike82 · · Score: 1

      I'm reading it using Windows so I'm reducing my level of trust in Microsoft. I trusted them to filter this kind of crap in their operating system...

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    29. Re:The elephant in the summery by Blkdeath · · Score: 1

      I completely trust Murduch's outlets, because I know they are biased and can read through it ... It's much, much harder with media that claims to be unbiased

      What part of the Fox News motto "Fair and Balanced" do you believe is not a claim to be unbiased?

      ISTM that "balanced" and "biased" in this context are direct contradictions. But I could be wrong.

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    30. Re:The elephant in the summery by Monchanger · · Score: 1

      Thank you both for pointing out what should be obvious to all.

      I wonder though if your understanding of "given task" being "making money" is identical to that of those surveyed. I think there could be many commonly-held but incomparable views. When talking about Apple, I think of "developing good products" or "pricing products so they're accessible". With Google I'm sure many are concerned with "protects my privacy". With Microsoft (or RIAA), I think "practice fair business".

      Unless the survey specifically states what it's asking it not be more pointless even if it were limited to technology companies, or specific types of those (software, hardware, search/online services).

    31. Re:The elephant in the summery by Shrike82 · · Score: 1

      Well...the poll is clearly trusting its readers to be able to glean the rather obvious context of "trust" from the question.

      We're asking how much we trust news outlets, google, apple, and Microsoft to tell us the truth.

      If that's the case then people don't seem to be doing a very good job of gleaning the meaning* of the poll. They really, honestly expect huge transnational corporations to tell us the truth more than the media at large?

      I agree with your point that it's semantics, expectations and bias vs. lies that put all this into context. However, I doubt most people actually thought that much about it. I suspect that most would be willing to take the stupid poll at face value.

      * As you read this I'm already taking steps to copyright that wonderfully melodic turn of phrase

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    32. Re:The elephant in the summery by HungryHobo · · Score: 1

      Not really because flat earthers are such a tiny minority.
      You'd get a pile of complaints from the sane majority and a few from the flat earthers.

      It's main problem is that it tends to reflect the views of the majority more than the real situations.
      The biases will more closely resemble the biases of the majority.

    33. Re:The elephant in the summery by DavidTC · · Score: 1

      If you're judging Nate Silver on anything except his demonstrated track record of statistics knowledge, you're an idiot.

      The reason he can criticize Zogby is that he is better than Zogby.

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    34. Re:The elephant in the summery by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bias isn't a reason not to trust a media source -- assuming you know they are biased.

      I tend to disagree. A consistently biased news source is one that deliberately attempts to mislead its users. The trouble is that you don't necessarily know what the bias is on any particular subnject, or when that bias changes. All you know is that the data is unlikely to be reliable as presented.

      As such, the rational thing to do is distrust the baised source.

      No. Since every source is biased that leaves you with nothing. The rational thing to do is to get your information from as many different sources as you can and try not to simply believe the loudest voices or go with what conforms to what you think "ought" to be true, but make a rigorous effort to extract as clean a signal as you can from the noise.

      Observation over the years led me to the conclusion that Peter Jennings had some extremely liberal views, but kept an iron lid on them on the air (it was a shock one day to hear him actually expressing opinions of his own on a non-news program). At the same time, however, it was blatantly obvious that Sam Donaldson suffered no such qualms. Likewise, Dan Rather could be counted on to be pretty obviously anti-gun in his reporting. Fox News makes a specialty of coming up with reaction-provoking headlines on their scrolls that even they don't pay much attention to on the main news report. Probably because it's fairly common for a Fox News TV to be turned on in a bar or gym where the audio is off or drowned out.

      Learn their methods and you can separate the wheat from the chaff.

    35. Re:The elephant in the summery by DavidTC · · Score: 1

      As far as an off the cuff, is that such a bad metric?

      YES.

      The media should be reporting whatever they can figure out is true. It is not a place to let people just show up and assert things. That is not reporting.

      Reporting is finding out what's true, and telling people that. Yes, they then give the guys a chance to respond, but there's a major difference between that and what they do. What they should be doing is portraying the actual facts as true, and then letting people talk about those facts.

      Instead, they just report 'allegations', and responses to the allegations, and then, at the end, manage to talk more about whichever one fit their political viewpoint, so that people walk away with the idea that was the one that was true.

      THAT IS NOT HOW TRUTH WORKS.

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    36. Re:The elephant in the summery by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      THIS right here is exactly what I wanted to say.
      Why do people still fall for the illusion that there could be something without bias. It’s a straight-out physical impossibility. And for us humans even more impossible, since nearly all our “knowledge” relies on what we heard from others. Or have you checked for yourself if you survive jumping from a 10 story building? Of course not. :)

      Spin/bias is just the effect of the inner reality model of the people. Which itself is based on their previous experiences and by far mostly on what they heard from their trusted sources. There is nothing evil (or good) about that. It’s just how it is.

      If one accepts this, then every source becomes a useful one. And one also starts to accept that maybe the own model is off here and there in very very fundamental things. (Common examples: Men thinking that women would not want to have sex. Or that eating insects would always be bad. [Don’t try to combine those two, though. ;])

      --
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    37. Re:The elephant in the summery by Pandrake · · Score: 1

      Trust ze google. Do not trust anything you find on ze google, but trust ze google will find it.

    38. Re:The elephant in the summery by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 1

      I trust microsoft to scam, try to build monopolies, try to kill opposing software - even if it is better, try to steal opposing software, lie under oath in court. I trust these things implicitly.

      I also trust that they have good support*, their products work well enough (but are overpriced unless you are getting a deal through your company). *sometimes you have to agree to pay the support fee but when you do, all the stops come out- they had 5 people on the line including a couple deep level developers to solve my problem- I was very impressed- and in the end they didn't even charge me the fee.

      Google... I didn't really trust to begin with .. well I trusted them to betray their stated identity ... which they did very quickly. I trust them to discriminate against people over 40. I trust them to release a lot of fairly nice free tools with zero support.

      Apple, I trust to build a closed hardware system that works awesomely well but which may arbitrarily deny me software they don't like.

      I trust all corporations to use employees as batteries, dump costs off to the state, export jobs to the lowest areas while trying to continue selling to more expensive areas and paying executives premium dollars (they never export the executive jobs to those indian executives making $500k and doing just as good a job as the multi billion dollar american ceos).

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    39. Re:The elephant in the summery by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      Wrong. They don’t try to “mislead” users. They want to push their sense of reality. You just did the exact same thing right now. And I’m also doing it in this exact moment. :)
      The reason we see strongly different opinions that way, is because they don’t fit our own sense of reality.
      It’s a fight of mindsets over resources (minds), which in psychology is seen as so similar to life-forms fighting over resources (food, land), that there is a whole field working on analyzing those similarities.

      So we are constantly circle-jerking in our own soup of self-affirmation. And them, just like us, think that our views are the correct ones.
      This is because of how the brain is fundamentally wired. A brain is always holding a model of reality in it. It needs that model to work. Therefore it can not ever accept to be told that that model is broken. It would simply fail. Or at least fall into emergency mode (schizophrenia, religion, “neuroses”).

      So, see it like this: The FOX News people actually truly believe that they are the correct ones. All their input supports it. Their inner models says it must be true. Telling them to stop it, is like expecting them to die. For the brain it’s about the same.
      But they are not evil because of it. They are just what they are, based on their previous experiences.

      Of course that does not make it useful, since it isn’t compatible with your model. I mean you and I know that based on basic physics, they are nutjobs and we are right. Usually.
      But just because we accept basic physics. Which somehow did not happen for them.
      In the end, the ones who survive and reproduce the most, will be right, no matter what. Who knows, maybe lying to oneself is a better strategy in evolution, for some reason. Who knows, maybe we really live in a Matrix where things are as weird as they think they are. ;)
      How can we know, when we can’t even prove that anyone besides ourselves even exists at all.

      Now... no... I’m not saying they are more right. (Here my own mental model would stop me from doing that.) But, you get my point. :)
      Be cool. Make the best out of your life. The rest doesn’t matter. :)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    40. Re:The elephant in the summery by NickFortune · · Score: 1

      Wrong. They don't try to "mislead" users. They want to push their sense of reality. You just did the exact same thing right now. And I'm also doing it in this exact moment. :)

      Bah! Fox News went to court to establish their legal right to knowingly broadcast lies as news. Point to a factual error in my post.

      There's a meme going around that having an opinion is the same thing as having a bias. I don't subscribe to that at all.

      How can we know, when we can't even prove that anyone besides ourselves even exists at all.

      I'm sorry, but that's schoolboy sophistry. Physics, law, and (apparently up until recently) journalism all have precisely well defined notions of truth and falsehood. To try and claim that everything is purely subjective and relative is to leave us powerless to exercise the faculty of judgement, and gives an open licence to every liar and confidence man on the planet. I don't buy it, I'm afraid.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    41. Re:The elephant in the summery by NickFortune · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No. Since every source is biased that leaves you with nothing

      Conceeding the point for a moment, bias is not an absolute quantity. It's like security in that regard. Any security system can be cracked, but that doesn't mean they're all equally insecure. Leave your valuables unguarded in the street is not a rational strategy for securing them.

      Similarly some news sources are much less reliable than others. When we say "biased" we generally mean a source that deliberate seeks to mislead, rather than one that occasionally and unconsciously shades its language.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    42. Re:The elephant in the summery by jimbolauski · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What part of the Fox News motto "Fair and Balanced" do you believe is not a claim to be unbiased?

      What you fail to realize is that when fox news started using it's fair and balanced slogan was when cBS NBC ABC all claimed to be unbiased but clearly were, I have always thought of it as a jab at the other media outlets' bias.

      --
      Knowledge = Power
      P= W/t
      t=Money
      Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
    43. Re:The elephant in the summery by robot256 · · Score: 1

      It's main problem is that it tends to reflect the views of the majority more than the real situations. The biases will more closely resemble the biases of the majority.

      Not necessarily. Here in the states its pretty easy for an activist minority to out-speak an apathetic majority. Or at least that's what is sounds like on the unbiased media. (We don't argue about the earth being round much, but they routinely give equal time to scientific studies and famous people claiming they are false.)

    44. Re:The elephant in the summery by something_wicked_thi · · Score: 1

      I could predict that Ford's are about to announce a flying car, and in 50 years or so, I'll look like a frikkin' genius.

      It doesn't work that way. There was an article on here a few weeks back about all the things Bill Gates predicted in The Road Ahead, and he had a lot of misses. Just predicting something will happen because it could doesn't make it automatically right. For example, I think the flying car prediction, although tongue-in-cheek, is wrong and a good example of how social factors are often neglected in such predictions. Consider: How dangerous is driving now? Do you think it will be safer with flying cars? How bad are drivers today? Do you think they'll be better in three dimensions? How fuel efficient will a flying car be? Do you think that energy prices will be low enough to allow this?

      It's my prediction that the only way we'll ever get flying cars is if the car is completely autonomous and powered by nuclear fusion. Even then, it seems unlikely that a normal person could keep the thing in proper working order so as not to result in regular crashes, causing much damage to people and buildings on the ground.

      My point is, it's hard to guess where tech is going. Even getting things this right is impressive, in my book. That doesn't mean I don't take tech analysts with a huge grain of salt. I just finished explaining why what they do is really hard and unreliable. If Enderle managed to get this much right, I think he deserves to pat himself on the back. That's not to say I'll believe him the next time he comes out to say something crazy, though.

    45. Re:The elephant in the summery by robot256 · · Score: 1

      Similarly some news sources are much less reliable than others. When we say "biased" we generally mean a source that deliberate seeks to mislead, rather than one that occasionally and unconsciously shades its language.

      Very true, but determining the actual intent of the creator is even harder than determining the content bias (whether intentional or unintentional), therefore defining "bias" colloquially as "seeking to mislead" is extremely difficult in practice. The presence of two definitions of bias in this discussion is certainly not helping.

    46. Re:The elephant in the summery by NickFortune · · Score: 1

      Very true, but determining the actual intent of the creator is even harder than determining the content bias (whether intentional or unintentional), therefore defining "bias" colloquially as "seeking to mislead" is extremely difficult in practice

      You can make some judgements. Fox News went to court to establish their legal right to knowingly present lies as news, for instance.

      It's a judgement call, but that doesn't mean we can't make the call.

      --
      Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
    47. Re:The elephant in the summery by robot256 · · Score: 1

      I agree that your example is a very good reason to make that judgment. I was about to say something about your how to judge the bias of your judgment of someone else's bias, but decided that was too much mental masturbation to handle at the moment.

    48. Re:The elephant in the summery by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 1

      No the bias is there. It's only that it's fair.

      Way back a long time ago, the press used to operate as some sort of neutral "above the fray" thing.

      Those days are long gone - everyone's got an agenda, and most of the press are libs, and in choosing what to cover, that's bias. Fox is only balance.

    49. Re:The elephant in the summery by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 1

      I have found that judging people by the company they keep is a very reliable way to judge somebody who is a newcomer to a field. This is not to say that I trust Zogby, just that I trust Nate Silver less.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    50. Re:The elephant in the summery by fireboy1919 · · Score: 1

      Since they do totally different things the comparison is meaningless

      Not totally different. They do one overlapping thing: they issue statements to the public.

      trust in a very generic way means our belief that they'll do their "given task"

      I didn't say that. I didn't imply that. I was very specific in my definition of trust, and I think this definition is rather obviously gleaned from the survey, and, in fact, that the definition of trust as "reliably telling the truth" is actually used at least as frequently as "behave predictably in doing what they do," if not more so. It isn't terribly meaningful to survey people about whether or not they trust that they can predict the behavior of one group more than another (at least, not nearly so as the alternative). So...as I said, it is a bit obtuse to completely ignore the context and select the wrong definition of truth as the one that they mean. Perhaps I was wrong...you did get a lot of moderation there.

      They want to sell it to me, even if they have to lie to do so. With traditional media, truth sells...some of the time, anyway. If a paper always lies, they're not going to have as many sales. With corporations, they just call that marketing.

      ...and once again you drive home my other point. Living in a world where people don't know the difference between marketing (or, as the case may be, newspaper bias) and lying sucks. They aren't the same thing. Lying is much, much worse.

      --
      Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
    51. Re:The elephant in the summery by Shotgun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Funny that, cause I've tried to watch Rachel Maddow and Keith Oberman for the same reasons. I didn't bother to fact check, because their arguments always seem to be self-contradictory. Of course, they'd always bring in an "expert" that completely agreed with their premises, and then call themselves informed. You always see someone with opposing viewpoints in the Fox panels, but I swear they hunt far and wide for the stupidest people they can find.

      --
      Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
      Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
    52. Re:The elephant in the summery by spitzak · · Score: 1

      Absolutely agree, this poll seems really bogus. I might ask Google to show me a map of where somebody's address is, or ask it if the NY Times (or WSJ) has an article about a certain subject. And I certainly trust those answers much more than I trust the contents of that NY Times or WSJ article.

      But conversely, if the NY Times decided to print maps showing where things are, I would trust that just as much as Google. A more obvious example, the NY Times has a listing of all it's previous articles, and I would trust this just as much as Google's list of NY Times articles, perhaps even more as it seems there are fewer chances for mistakes. Conversely if Google hired a reporter and they started writing articles that directly appeared in Google's news results, I would not trust that more than the NY Times.

    53. Re:The elephant in the summery by spitzak · · Score: 1

      I agree. A non-flawed test would be to ask if they trust Google's answers more than they trust the NY TImes to accurately say that an article is continued on page 21. I think you would find the trust to be about equal in that case!

    54. Re:The elephant in the summery by Comboman · · Score: 1

      Most would assume "fair and balanced" referred to their own reporting, not "our bias counter-acts the opposing bias of the other mainstream media outlets so that, taken in total, the average is fair and balanced".

      --
      Support Right To Repair Legislation.
  3. Wow, really? by Walkingshark · · Score: 4, Insightful

    People don't trust the propaganda arms of massive multinational corporations?! I'm shocked!

    --
    The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
    1. Re:Wow, really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I take it as a somewhat encouraging sign. Encouraging in that it shows people have the sense to distrust the media, but a little disappointing that they have any trust in Facebook and Twitter.

    2. Re:Wow, really? by iluvcapra · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What's remarkable is that the survey says people don't trust the "propaganda" of multinational corporations but they do trust a multinational corporation that keeps a record of basically everything they do on the Internet.

      Media bias exists but it's really just a convenient excuse. News media's real problem is that it regularly can confront you with information you didn't want to know or strongly disagree with, even though you need to know itif you're going to be a functioning citizen. Google only tells you what you want to know, or cared to look up, and then it gives you every site on the 'net so you can find whichever sites agree with your personal prejudice and use that to justify yourself. Despite many many studies proving vaccination is safe, people seem to find all the evidence they need that it causes autism; or that Barack Obama was born in Kenya; or that Israel was justified in attacking the Gaza flotilla, or the opposite!

      People like Google because it allows them to sustain and perpetuate their OWN biases. Instead of having to confront an opposing viewpoint, which may or maynotbe biased, they can use simply use Google to find authorities they agree with. Part of their preference for Google IS bias in media, but only part -- and it's simply too easy nowadays for people to simply shout "media bias!" without any supporting evidence whenever the news reports something that's inconvenient.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
    3. Re:Wow, really? by Hurricane78 · · Score: 1

      The only trust the propaganda arms of small groups and individual people. ;)

      It’s what viral marketing is for.
      So I wouldn’t be surprised, if the future would hold a flood of blogs & co, looking like they are made by individuals, while in reality they are made by big corporations. (I bet money, that Elsevier already does this.)

      --
      Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
    4. Re:Wow, really? by meustrus · · Score: 1

      I blame news outlets like Fox News, not because of their political bias, but because they shit on everyone else, and in return, other outlets like MSNBC shit back on them. This may have helped their ratings in the short term, but in the long term shit storm that ensued, now nobody trusts any of them.

      Furthermore, people are starting to realize that big newsrooms have certain ideas about what stories to show, and that these ideas might not correlate at all to what interests you personally. They're trying to run stories that get good ratings, they're trying to run stories that won't piss anybody off, and they're trying to avoid stories that could upset their sponsors. Online sources don't have any of these hindrances.

      That's saying nothing about how wildly inaccurate things on the internet can be, but I think it explains why people would trust the internet more than the traditional outlets at this point.

      --
      I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
    5. Re:Wow, really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > Media bias exists but it's really just a convenient excuse. News media's real problem is that it regularly can confront you with information you didn't want to know or strongly disagree with, even though you need to know itif you're going to be a functioning citizen.

      News media's real problem is that it's gone through a crapload of mergers and control has been focused down into a very small number of individuals. We *don't* trust that they're giving us the unvarnished truth we need to know. We deeply suspect they're just picking the articles that will raise viewership or pimp other parts of the same business, and avoiding articles the owners don't want us to see. We're well aware that some of these companies are specifically used to present certain points of view as if they were fact, and at the same time we're seeing the competition evaporate.

      News media tells you what They want You to know. Google hits tell you what you searched for *AND NO LESS*, and the latter is why people trust Google.

    6. Re:Wow, really? by iluvcapra · · Score: 1

      Google hits tell you what you searched for *AND NO LESS*, and the latter is why people trust Google.

      Google will never contradict you, in the end. It'll always be your good buddy who can introduce you to someone who thinks just like you. What's not to trust about such an awesome, if codependent and deleterious, relationship? Of course it shows you NO LESS than what you looked for, but it's all about what you think to look for in the first place, isn't it?

      What's better, hearing what They want you to know or hearing only what You want to hear? There's still deference to authority happening, there isn't necessarily any originality or free thought going on. You've just used the connector of the World Wide Web to find new mantras to mindlessly repeat, and brandish them ("Drill Baby Drill!" "Change!") like little beads on a neolithic necklace.

      People have this idealism that somehow the Internet can enable informational liberty, without considering that it might just enable informational hedonism-- the pursuit of nothing more than comfortable and happiness-inducing ideas.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
  4. Umm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Trust them about what ? And who the hell is Zogby ?

    1. Re:Umm... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And who the hell is Zogby ?

      A name you can trust~ :)

    2. Re:Umm... by sorak · · Score: 1

      Trust them about what ? And who the hell is Zogby ?

      It's a place that sells chicken.

    3. Re:Umm... by magus_melchior · · Score: 1

      Zogby is an Internet pollster and so-called "social research" company; they got some of the lowest reliability marks from these meta-pollsters because their numbers were neither consistent nor terribly accurate in the last American election cycle.

      So I would take the assertions of this study with at least a pound of salt; it could very easily be a study paid for by someone who has something to lose should Google continue to gain popularity.

      --
      "We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
  5. Traditional Media...LOL by sonicmerlin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    When the entire public hates the media with such passion as it seems to do now, shouldn't that be a sign to the powers that be that the system needs to be reworked? I know some people are deathly afraid of The Fairness Doctrine, but do you honestly believe our country could be more divided, mislead, and corporate-controlled than it is now? I certainly don't.

    1. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Walkingshark · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The fairness doctrine is not really a good idea. It reinforces the whole two party system, which is never good. On the other hand, bringing back restrictions on corporate ownership of networks and market share restrictions, and preventing foreign interests from owning broadcasting (over public airwaves, no restrictions on cable/networks of course) is a good way to start undoing the damage. Check the correlation between who profits from the sathe sale of a book and who owns the shows those books are promoted on and you'll notice some not-so-surprising correlations.

      --
      The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
    2. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Psaakyrn · · Score: 1

      Or they can rebrand themselves as part of the entertainment industry, just as what WWF/WWE did.

    3. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by petes_PoV · · Score: 3, Insightful

      shouldn't that be a sign to the powers that be ...

      Except that TPTB are even less trusted than the media.

      do you honestly believe our country could be more divided ...

      If you don't think it could be worse, that's just a limit to your powers of imagination.

      --
      politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    4. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Funny

      That's right! Our public doesn't believe in a controlled, manipulated mainstream press, so the answer must be MORE control and manipulation!

    5. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If the public distrusts the media, it's because the media has earned distrust. They distrust the media because they are obviously slanted to one side. The problem has more to do with a monopoly. Historically, there were multiple papers; one for each party. So, you knew you were getting bias, and you had the choice to buy the biases you wanted. Now there is such a hegimony of one side that people crave alternatives.

      I didn't RTFA, but would agree with the notion that the Internet provides the variety once had in print media. People trust the disparate view points because they don't claim to be impartial. People accept the bias because it is sincere, and can again chose which biases they can listen to.

    6. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The answer is not allowing all the wealthy politically radical right-wing extremists to buy up all the air waves and package their propaganda as "fair and balanced news".

    7. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Moryath · · Score: 2, Interesting

      No kidding.

      The decline in trust for media correlates almost directly with the removal of media ownership rules - proscriptions on owning both a newspaper and TV station in the same town, proscriptions on ownership of multiple TV stations in the same city, limitations on the number of radio stations ownable in the same city, etc.

      This is a natural outgrowth, unfortunately, of our fucked-up view on corporations in general. I'm not going to go with the wack-job "all corporations are evil" line, but at the same time the Supreme Court decision that Corporations deserve the same rights as "people" was ill-informed, badly decided, and has caused many problems. The reality is that a "corporation" - especially a large one like Microsoft, Sony, Apple, Kraft, "Altria Group" (the rebadged Philip Morris), etc - while backed by people and an employer OF people, is itself a legal entity that is immune to 90% of society's normal legal remedies while at the same time carrying incredible power in being able to direct resources - lawyers, money, equipment, merchandise, advertising - in a tireless way.

      Thus, the first reform step necessary is to de-personize corporations.

    8. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you look at the history of the Fairness Doctrine, you will discover that the reason that the country was less divided while it was in force was because the Fairness Doctrine acted to suppress opinions that did not agree with the establishment by presenting them as ideas only supported by crackpots.
      So, actually, the country was more corporate controlled when the Fairness Doctrine was in force (although it was more united).

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    9. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At first I read your username as "Chris Matthews", and figured you were being serious!

    10. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      do you honestly believe our country could be more divided... than it is now? I certainly don't.

      I do.

      https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Civil_War_%28United_States%29

    11. Re:Traditional Media...LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Do you seriously think we have hit bottom and can't go any lower? That would imply that things can only improve now. But I don't trust you even 1% on this. Just wait till they start digging.

  6. That's nice to know. by Stumbles · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now I can write off Zogby International as a half assed, two bit of a chump market research company. So who paid for this research, Google, Apple or Microsoft?

    --
    My karma is not a Chameleon.
    1. Re:That's nice to know. by Sockatume · · Score: 1
      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
    2. Re:That's nice to know. by macemoneta · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I participate in Zogby surveys, and I haven't even watched traditional news media in years. I trust Google News more, because it doesn't present a single point of information on a subject. I get a representative article, and then a link that gives me the details - "all 11,002 articles" on the subject. I can drill down as far as I want. Traditional media is a single point of view, with a single agenda; why would anyone trust them any more than a Wikipedia article with no citations?

      --

      Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.

    3. Re:That's nice to know. by cacba · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Notice how Zogby's survey only mentions "the media" and not specific companies. With the most noticeable of the media being television news and not the new york times. This is a wide class of companies with very different goals.

      Apple, microsoft and google are engineering companies that create products with a function. Usually that function is achieved with minimal hick ups. News is very often opinionated and wrong.

      PS might this be an online poll?

    4. Re:That's nice to know. by Shrike82 · · Score: 1

      I trust Google News more, because it doesn't present a single point of information on a subject.

      That's because it's just a news aggregator. It's like saying you trust a newspaper stand more than Fox News because the newspaper stand offers you lots of different points of view. Apples and Oranges. The comparison just doesn't make any sense. Not that I'm blaming you, I just think the whole damn "survey" is a badly conceived pile of nonsense.

      --
      You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
    5. Re:That's nice to know. by DerekLyons · · Score: 1

      I participate in Zogby surveys, and I haven't even watched traditional news media in years. I trust Google News more

      You seem to be unaware that Google News is nothing but a search engine (of sorts) for traditional news media.
       

      it doesn't present a single point of information on a subject. I get a representative article, and then a link that gives me the details - "all 11,002 articles" on the subject. I can drill down as far as I want.

      Which I suspect you probably don't do all that often, as if you do you'd realize that it's all traditional media with (as you say below) "once agenda and one viewpoint", almost always repeating the same material from the same sources.

  7. A very wise man once said by NaCh0 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Beware the Government/Media complex.

    Say bad things about your master and you're no longer invited to the evening parties.

  8. Nothing new by cybereal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    News media has always been heavily biased one way or another. There's nothing wrong with this. The problem comes with the source of the bias. It used to be small news outlets trying to stick it to the community's most apparent "bad guys" like big business or the government. They were small and independent. However now, the largest and most influential companies in the world are the owners of the mainstream news media. Disney or Murdoch or it doesn't matter, most people know by now that the companies funding mainstream media are doing it for profit only, and have only that interest in mind. If you see something seemingly controversial on the news it's only because that organization feels everyone agrees (or at least, everyone they think watches their show.)

    However, I find it worrying that people trust google. They are just as rabidly chomping at the bit of profit as Disney or NBC, or whatever. They don't have an altruistic plank in their yachts. They pretend to "not be evil" but regularly exert their dominance in public exposure via the web to piss all over other markets in an effort to clear a path for their own business strategy. They make things "free" so nobody can compete in conventional terms, forcing them into advertising revenue or similar structures and guess who has a huge monopoly on advertising online? Yeah... so before you go suckling the teet of google or similar companies, remember what it is they are after in the end.

    That said, it's still more understandable to view a source like google as more trustworthy, but the problem is that google does not report on the news, they only repeat it from the other, less trusted sources, so it's sort of pointless to compare them.

    When it comes to trusting information, it is acceptable to think the official source will be more truthful, even if occasionally they are not. News media gets a pass for some reason, maybe citing bad information, but authoritative organizations get panned for any lies, even accidental unimportant ones. So when an organization like MS or Apple or Google lies about something, it's either well known right away or it's well hidden, and the latter is much more common in my experience.

    Not trusting social networking sites ... well that's just a surprisingly, unusually rational position to hold by the general public. Personally I "trust" twitter itself more than facebook, but trust the information less. I trust facebook to constantly try to screw me the way I described google doing it, subversively, for their own profit, under the guise of helping. Just see the constant quiet changes made to their privacy policies as cases where they didn't get away with it. Twitter is easier to trust just because they don't promise anything. You can protect your tweets, but that's about it. You can block followers but you know your tweets and most info is public. Twitter hasn't changed these policies, there is barely anything to change anyway. When I use twitter, I feel it's very obvious what my privacy expectations are. However, the information coming via twitter is less trustworthy than overhearing gabby women at the local mall. It's the same thing, really, except with infinitely more anonymity to hide your lies and innuendo behind.

    --
    I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
    1. Re:Nothing new by icebraining · · Score: 1

      Social networks depend on who you follow - they're just a medium, not the content producers.

      I mean, I trust each message to come from the real sender, so the trust I deposit in each message is dependent on him/her, not on the social network itself.

    2. Re:Nothing new by iVtec · · Score: 1

      However, I find it worrying that people trust google. They are just as rabidly chomping at the bit of profit as Disney or NBC, or whatever. They don't have an altruistic plank in their yachts. They pretend to "not be evil" but regularly exert their dominance in public exposure via the web to piss all over other markets in an effort to clear a path for their own business strategy. They make things "free" so nobody can compete in conventional terms, forcing them into advertising revenue or similar structures and guess who has a huge monopoly on advertising online? Yeah... so before you go suckling the teet of google or similar companies, remember what it is they are after in the end.

      Your other points are pretty fair, but I fail to see how this one is sufficient to characterize Google as "evil" or "untrustworthy" for that matter. Google and other corporations have shown over a decade now that advertising and other means of revenue are a sustainable strategy. Redhat has made it in the top 500 by creating Free software. If competing in conventional terms is now obsolete and can't win against Google's model, as you imply, why hold on to the old structures? I'm not into demonizing successful companies unless they're being anticompetitive and Google is not one of those companies. They have stated that they can and plan to make money by "not doing evil" and they're doing just that. They're the most open to competition between the three corporations mentioned in the fine article. (Open Standards, Open Web, etc).

    3. Re:Nothing new by Shrike82 · · Score: 1

      News media has always been heavily biased one way or another. There's nothing wrong with this.

      Exactly. People who watch or read news from a source with a left, centre or right wing bias do so because it fits in with their world view. A truely neutral newspaper or programme would likely be seen as baised to the left by right-wing groups, and biased to the right by left-wing groups. In England if the Daily Mail isn't blaming Diana's death on the latest super-terrorist group then the middle-classes would have to find another target for their quiet anger.

      --
      You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
    4. Re:Nothing new by YttriumOxide · · Score: 1

      People who watch or read news from a source with a left, centre or right wing bias do so because it fits in with their world view.

      This is almost certainly true and it disturbs me greatly... I've never understood the desire that most people seem to have to be told what they already know/believe. I want to be constantly told things that I DON'T know or believe. That gives me a chance to argue, debate, and ultimately learn (either reinforcing or weakening my current viewpoint, or perhaps even turning it around completely if presented with strong enough evidence).

      --
      My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
      Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
    5. Re:Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They make things "free" so nobody can compete in conventional terms

      Does that mean this is The Year of Linux on the Desktop?

  9. "The Media", huh? by TheEyes · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.

    Liberals hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "Faux News" and all the other anti-facts news organizations they've been trained to hate.

    Conservatives hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "The Liberal Media", which seems to mean anything OTHER than Fox News.

    Is anyone surprised that everyone hates a loaded word? Why not just ask if people trust "Terrorists"?

    1. Re:"The Media", huh? by Firethorn · · Score: 3, Interesting

      "The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.

      I simplify it even more.

      Look at the approval ratings for 'congress'. They've been dipping into the single digits lately. Yet ask people about their representative/senator, it's pretty much guaranteed to be at least double that of 'congress'.

      Ask about Fox News, NBC, CNN, BBC, etc... You'll get higher numbers.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    2. Re:"The Media", huh? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The Media" is such a loaded phrase these days, that it's no surprise nobody "trusts" them. Years of politicians and everyone else slamming "traditional media", "Big media", "The Liberal Media", and "The Right-wing Media" mean that everyone associates "The Media" with whatever group they disagree with.

      Liberals hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "Faux News" and all the other anti-facts news organizations they've been trained to hate.

      Conservatives hate "The Media" because, to them, it means "The Liberal Media", which seems to mean anything OTHER than Fox News.

      Is anyone surprised that everyone hates a loaded word? Why not just ask if people trust "Terrorists"?

      Let me guess - you call yourself a Liberal, right?

      (Not so much a coward as lazy)

  10. Google is spam by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Traditional media is coming to a natural end, no paywall, whether there own or Googles will save them, but to rate Google as trustworthy is like saying BP cares for the environment!

  11. Well it's on the internet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so it must be true

  12. Hmm... how about marketing research? by Psaakyrn · · Score: 1

    Does marketing research count as traditional media?

  13. There are different studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    There are different studies: In Finland, young people trust newspapers far more than anything in the internet. 78 % say they trust newspapers, while 18 % say they trust internet.

    This is a study ordered by Finnish Newspapers Association and made by major independent research company.

    Bad google translation here.

    1. Re:There are different studies by Firethorn · · Score: 1

      There's a HUGE difference between 'anything in the internet' and 'internet'.

      I don't trust 'the internet' as a whole one bit. Still, there are specific sites I place a large amount of trust in.

      I trust wikipedia, for example, about as much as I would an encyclopedia or public school textbook. Good for getting links and figures for internet arguments. Not so much for a college thesis, but a good point to start.

      --
      I don't read AC A human right
    2. Re:There are different studies by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, the parent article has the same problem: it compares Google with "traditional media". What would be the results, if they used Google vs. The New York Times?

      Furthermore, is NYT more trusted on paper than on their website?

    3. Re:There are different studies by Shrike82 · · Score: 1

      There are different studies: In Finland, young people trust newspapers far more than anything in the internet. 78 % say they trust newspapers, while 18 % say they trust internet.

      This is a study ordered by Finnish Newspapers Association and made by major independent research company.

      Bad google translation here.

      Emphasis mine to highlight a potential problem with this study.

      --
      You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
  14. media = entertainment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    the right wing media strokes the egos of republicans.
    the left wing media strokes the egos of democrats.

    forcing people to confront reality is a liability when competing networks are entertaining their audience instead.

  15. Weaning your self from Google by improfane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Blasphemy you say! I've actually been actively weaning myself from Google recently. My stance is that you have all your data hostage unless you maintain active backups with a remote host (Google).

    • I now use ixQuick, a metasearch across many engines, supports HTTPS.
    • I am considering moving to paid email hosting, don't want Google processing my emails
    • Removed myself from Google Street View
    • Deleted my YouTube account in attempt to kill my video browsing
    • Blocked Google analytics and Google services at HOSTS level just in case a non-Firefox program attempts to access them

    What have you done? What do you recommend? How do you become more self sufficient? Google are getting to big to be benevolent: they own Recaptcha, so even if you block Analytics, they have additional analytics from that.

    They know who you are, where you live, what you think, who you're communicating with, where you're trying to go, what websites you're a member of, what you're trying to find out, what you're buying, what news you've been exposed to.

    --
    Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
    1. Re:Weaning your self from Google by Threni · · Score: 1

      > My stance is that you have all your data hostage unless you maintain active backups with a remote host (Google).

      I have my email with them, but I could pop3 it somewhere else if I was bothered. I'm not bothered.

      > What have you done?

      Nothing. I'm not on street view - at least, not near my house, and I'm not going to scan all of the UK in case it captured me when I was shopping or something. I don't even understand what you're saying about youtube - `kill my video browsing`?

      How do you manage your paranoia problem vis a vis your ISP? I take it you only access the internet via an anonymous internet cafe, wearing some sort of latex facial mask, changing your VM and mac address each time?

    2. Re:Weaning your self from Google by improfane · · Score: 1

      I am definitely privacy conscious. If paranoid means 'more concerned about privacy than you are' then yes.

      As for YouTube, they definitely log what videos you visit. There was once this feature you could see what your friends were watching and what they are watching now. That's what I meant. They will montetize that.

      Ad for streetview, check your home address. I felt uncomfortable with my home being there. Car, windows, etc. Maybe you don't, fair enough.

      You refer to the UK. Check 192.com, see if your name, address and all your 'house occupants' are there. They take your local council's election register and put it online. (Even if you opt out)

      If you're not concerned about privacy and rights, fair enough. We'll be concerned for you.

      --
      Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
    3. Re:Weaning your self from Google by JustABlitheringIdiot · · Score: 1

      Thank you for making me more paranoid. I sit here folding my tin foil hat as I type this...

    4. Re:Weaning your self from Google by YttriumOxide · · Score: 2, Insightful

      As for YouTube, they definitely log what videos you visit. There was once this feature you could see what your friends were watching and what they are watching now. That's what I meant. They will montetize that.

      But why exactly is this a problem for you?

      I'm all for privacy where it makes sense (it's probably a bad thing if people can actively see that I'm not at home, know my home address, and that I recently purchased a huge flat-screen TV); but I see absolutely no reason to worry that Google knows what I've been watching on YouTube recently, or searching for, or what websites I've been visiting.

      Similar thing to wandering around naked in my apartment with the curtains open (as I often do first thing in the morning after getting out of bed and before my morning shower). If my neighbours watch me, I really don't care (although being an overweight balding guy, I'm probably not that worth watching). If they make videos and post them online, I also don't care. When they film me leaving my apartment and record me hiding my spare-key under the pot plant* and post THAT online with a time-stamp, there's a problem.

      * Note that my girlfriend has my spare key, and I do not have a pot plant.

      --
      My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
      Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
    5. Re:Weaning your self from Google by improfane · · Score: 1

      Walking around the house in the nude does give you a great sense of freedom. I've unfortunately looked into windows while on trains and buses and seen the same... I do it to. Actually, I may even be naked now, while typing this very message.

      I'll try explain myself further. My concern about your video viewing history is that it reveals a lot of information about you. It reveals more than just a web search would, take a look at AOL Stalker. The point is not that other individuals can see it (although that's terrible), it's more about what is being added to the Google's online file on you.

      • Have you seen that Collateral Murder video leaked by Wikileaks? Indication how many people have witnessed the video for the US Army. Attempt further coverup or go clean?
      • You watch an illegal reproduction of a music video or a film on YouTube? You're liable for having it streamed to your computer. RIAA is suing file sharers now, in the UK you can be disconnected for copyright infringement.
      • with an account, everything is tied to you as an individual. I assume this makes it easy for the media companies who are in bed with YouTube to receive statistics on their own videos.

      It's a bit of a slippery slope argument but why are people so oblivious to what is being collected by them? Do you really think it's for your benefit?

      I'm finding my own argument weaker than I thought. Thanks for provoking me into more thought. Essentially I want Google to know less about me online aggregated life.

      --
      Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
    6. Re:Weaning your self from Google by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They know who you are,

      By name and number only, not personality.

      where you live,

      So does anyone with a phone book. I really don't care. I don't expect Google or anyone else to come kick in my door anytime soon.

      what you think

      No, they really don't. If they think they do, they are terribly mistaken. If anyone thinks they can know what a person thinks, based purely by their actions on the internet, they are seriously underestimating the process of thinking within the human mind.

      who you're communicating with

      Correction, they know who I am communicating with on the internet. That's very different from who I am communicating with.

      where you're trying to go

      Half the time, even I don't know that.

      what websites you're a member of

      Who cares? I sign up for memberships to lots of websites with fake personal information just to use them as throwaways at my convenience. For example, I have over 36 web based e-mail accounts that I use for nothing more than plugging into, 'e-mail address?' fields on other random websites. I haven't checked those inboxes in years.

      what you're trying to find out

      No, they know what I am looking at. Quite often, that has nothing to do with what I am trying to find out. Usually I have to talk to a person to establish a proper correlation between what I am trying to find out and what I should look for.

      what you're buying

      Yeah, I do all my grocery shopping online. Also, I purchase all of the parts I need for maintaining my gizmos online...not at local hardware stores or anything....because, you know, waiting a week for a part that I could just buy today makes a lot of sense.

      what news you've been exposed to

      I didn't realize Google owned the local newspaper copies that my coworkers leave in the lunchroom every day...

      To make my point clear...I think you are overestimating things by far. Either that, or you really do spend far too much time on the internet.

  16. Twitter by RabbitWho · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why don't people trust twitter?

    It's pretty transparent and as honest as the people who post on it..

    1. Re:Twitter by Psaakyrn · · Score: 1

      People aren't very transparent, nor honest.

    2. Re:Twitter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Twitter is as transparent as a piece of shit you finally manage to take after you've been constipated for a week. They too deleted accounts and removed flaming tweets. If you want 100% transparency, you have to put up with all the spam in the world, just so that you're sure you don't miss on anything important when someone (like Twitter) marks it as spam.

  17. Subtle distinction by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

    More trusted or less distrusted?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  18. Makes no sense by hlovy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The article makes no sense. "Trust" in what way? It hints that they're talking about "trust" in the context of your private information, and not as a news source, but doesn't go out and say it. Also, Google is not a source of original information. It compiles news and repackages it from ... well, from traditional news sources.

  19. I bloody well hope this is a joke by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why don't people trust twitter/social media? Because even the most Idols addled mind can figure out that a news source with absolutely no accountability or even traceability is totally and utterly worthless.

    Twitter: A fly is in my room.

    Judge this. You can't. It is is a claim but you don't know who claims it, if the person who started the account is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.

    Mind you, most often when people claim they "trust" a media, they are actually saying "these people say what I want to hear". Someone who doesn't want to give up his SUV is more likely to trust Fox news when it reports global warming is a hoax. People react violently when exposed to a source of information that contradicts what they want to believe. And no, this is NOT just a right-winger thing.

    With ever more sources of information it has also become very easy to completely isolate yourself from anything that distresses you. Back when everyone read their OWN newspaper, people at least READ the newspaper. Now kids get their info from twitter and facebook and nothing else. Their source of news, they idea of investigative journalism is "he heard that someone said".

    Well RabbitWho shows this, he thinks that because the entity twittering pretends to be a "normal" human being that he/she/it is trustworthy. Because of course nobody could setup bogus accounts to start spreading propoganda over twitter or facebook. No, google bombing does NOT exist in social media. No guerilla marketting of political ideas. Some teen says something so it must be true because... why? How do you know WHO that person really is and wether they should tell the truth let alone the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

    Because the easiest way to be biased in reporting is to leave out tiny details.

    Like how Turkey so upset about Israel killing Turks crossing into Israeli waters went into Iraq to kill Koerdish civlians at the same time. My my, how convenient their righteous indignation kept their own actions from the media. Convenient.

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

    1. Re:I bloody well hope this is a joke by Lincolnshire+Poacher · · Score: 1

      > Like how Turkey so upset about Israel killing Turks crossing into Israeli waters

      The flotilla was still in international waters.

      Who told you they were in Israeli waters? Why did you believe them?

    2. Re:I bloody well hope this is a joke by RabbitWho · · Score: 1

      You're not talking about twitter you're talking about the people using it. Euronews and The Guardian use it too, as well as CNN and Reuters and any other news source you can think of.
      Thanks to a Guardian tweet I've seen women and the elderly on that flotilla being beaten up and shot at by Israelis. I'm ot trying to get across a political view, I'm just describing the video I saw with my own eyes.

  20. How can I locate these people who trust Microsoft? by shikaisi · · Score: 2, Funny

    I can let them have the Brooklyn bridge for a wonderful bargain price. No checks, please. Cash and in small bills.

    --
    No left turn unstoned.
  21. An Important Caveat by Zixaphir · · Score: 0, Troll

    I trust bloggers more than I trust Fox.

    --
    "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"
  22. B to the S by Smekarn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    My take on this is that the majority of people, when asked "Do you trust the media?" will answer that "No, I do not." However, in reality they don't think twice about the validity of what they read or hear on TV. It's one of those viewpoints people like to claim to have to sound educated, critical and thoughtful. Quite similiar to all the people who say "I don't judge people by the colour of their skin", "I make sure to check my damn sources on the internet" or "Homosexuality is fine" and STILL firmly grip their wallet when walking through areas were most of the minorities live, still buy any crap any aluminium-hat sells them and still wince at the sight of two men making out (but strangely rarely at LEZBOES.)

    1. Re:B to the S by Smekarn · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ...My point being that research like this will never get truthful answers, because people very often act very differently from how they percieve themselves.

  23. Social Networking by helix2301 · · Score: 0

    Social network is to opinionated instead of fact orientated. Plus anyone can start facebook or twitter page get a bunch of friends and throw a bunch of information up there and swear its the truth and it might be all lies. Social networking is not a reliable place for important information.

  24. Re: The elephant in the summary by hao3 · · Score: 1

    Fox news claims to be 'fair and balanced'. I wouldn't have a problem with their bias otherwise. They should be upfront about it. I don't think any other news network crows about 'fair and balanced' whilst at the same time being so incredibly biased. That's what sets Fox apart from the other networks imo, even though the other networks are of course not unbiased either.

    --
    "Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance." - G.K. Chesterton
  25. the public is a teenage girl by circletimessquare · · Score: 1, Insightful

    traditional media is her fuddy duddy middle aged father who has her best interests at heart, but she hates him

    the web is her shiny new teenage boyfriend, who she's gaga over, but he's devoid of concern for her well-being and just wants to get in her pants

    misplaced trust due lack of experience, that's all this study means

    visit us again in 10 years, when as a jaded, betrayed, defiled, used, cynical, heartbroken 20 something chick, she looks at her dad/ traditional media in a new light

    there's no shortcut to real world experience, and the curmudgeon killjoy screaming the truth in the corner is never listened to, which is all anyone's comments on this study amounts to

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:the public is a teenage girl by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      traditional media is her fuddy duddy middle aged father who has her best interests at heart, but she hates him

      the web is her shiny new teenage boyfriend, who she's gaga over, but he's devoid of concern for her well-being and just wants to get in her pants

      misplaced trust due lack of experience, that's all this study means

      FYI, traditional media has been getting in her pants since she hit puberty, and only pretends to care about her wellfare. No wonder she's got no sense of boundary. Teenage boyfriend is starting to sound a lot better now considering he might grow up, but Papa has proven himself to be evil.

  26. Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason... by paper+tape · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason. It isn't just the bias that everyone knows is there.

    Its that they've been caught, not once but several times, reporting stories they knew or should have known were false, as fact, because the stories in question supported that bias.

    Spin real news according to your bias, and I'll listen and filter accordingly. Lie to me outright, and I'll never trust you again.

  27. Re:The elephant in the summary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As biased as the BBC tends to be, there is a level of professionalism there that I find is typically lacking in most U.S. media companies. I honestly trust what comes from the BBC _far more_ than anything that comes from the likes of the FOX propaganda network. Of the U.S.telivised media, the only one I can really even consider as news anymore has been ABC, and even that requires a considerable BS filter to be applied. FOX has devolved from being yet another questionable U.S. media supplier to the American equivalent to Al-Jazeera...."news" in name only, and even then, JUST BARELY.

  28. trust google? by FudRucker · · Score: 1

    not a chance, they are in bed with the NSA so when you "google" something you are also telling the government what you are searching/researching.

    --
    Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
  29. Re: The elephant in the summary by BluePeppers · · Score: 1

    I can live with the bias, everyone knows it's there. Its the lying that I don't like.

    --
    Penguins can be fascists too
  30. Twitter is a medium by mdwh2 · · Score: 1

    Twitter is a communication medium - saying you don't "trust twitter" makes no more sense than saying you don't trust phones, you don't trust email, you don't trust speech.

    If someone emails you to say a fly is in their room, how can you trust them? Oh no, email is untrustworthy! You don't know who claims it, if the person who started the account is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.

    If someone says they had a fly in their room last night, how can you trust them? On no, speech is untrustworthy! You don't know who this person is, if the person who lived in the room is still in control of it and have no way to verify or even know what room the person is talking about or if they can accurately determine a fly from another insect.

    Or perhaps the issue of trust is not simply a matter of the communication medium? Moreover, not all uses of Twitter are between anonymous strangers, just as it obviously isn't with email and real life. All of the people I read on Twitter are people whom I know.

  31. Re:Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Its that they've been caught, not once but several times, reporting stories they knew or should have known were false, as fact, because the stories in question supported that bias.

    It is more than that, in addition to reporting stories that they should have known were false (for example, the story about John McCain having an affair during the last election cycle), they have ignored other stories that had more evidence behind them (for example the story about John Edwards having an affair in about the same time frame) that turned out to be true, but didn't support their bias. I use these two stories because I don't have to do any research to be sure that my recollection of the details supports my point, rather than because they are the best examples of how this process works.

    --
    The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
  32. in what way is traditional media evil? by circletimessquare · · Score: 1

    because its biased?

    ALL media is biased, always was, and always will be. so by your definition of evil, everyone is evil, and always was, and always will be

    so, just like a teenager's basis for hating their parents, your basis for finding traditional media to be evil is in error. someday you'll grow up, and realize the reasons for hating your parents/ traditional media are trumped up, hysterical, and pointless

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
    1. Re:in what way is traditional media evil? by Culture20 · · Score: 1

      I wasn't referring to political/social bias. Instead I was thinking of commercial bias: advertising and how ads creep into "news". The concept of Slashvertisements didn't begin with /., only the unique name.

    2. Re:in what way is traditional media evil? by BJ_Covert_Action · · Score: 1

      I like your analogy on this one, but I am not sure the media can, any longer, be cast as the fuddy-duddy middle aged parent. Rather, I think they could be better cast of the overly-dramatic, never quite learned how to speak without hyperbole, middle aged parent. Don't get me wrong, I know that mainstream media really does try to report the news and the facts to some degree or another. It just seems to me like they present it, at least in my lifetime, like a bunch of deranged 16 y/o girls that always think everything will be the end of the world.

      I know the mainstream media is biased. I know it can be a good source of information when approached with a healthy level of critical thought. I just really wish they would do away with the overblown sky-is-falling crap that gets attached on the ass-end of every single freakin' news story that's reported. In this regard, it varies very little from informal media source. The variance that does exist is usually just a matter of scale.

  33. I wouldn't be surprised... by stewbacca · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...if those who distrust traditional media the most trust Fox News the most. Sort of like how every Fox News broadcast belittles the mainstream media when they themselves are the #1 mainstream media outlets in America.

    Flame away.

  34. It's the spin factor by singingjim1 · · Score: 1

    It seems as if I'm always looking for the spin on traditional media stories. Every since FOX News went rogue conservative it's created the same partisanship in the news organizations as is in our government. The divide seems to be getting wider too as media outlets pander to their "target audience" on either the right or left, while those of us in the silent middle search harder for unbiased reporting.

  35. Re:Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason by stewbacca · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The distrust of the media comes from a an inherent distrust of capitalism. The news media exist to sell advertisements and make money, so they report crap that will do just that.

    This is why PBS and NPR are head-and-shoulders above any cable or network news agency.

  36. Data, not interpretation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When reporting the results of a study, the report should always conclude the exact way the survey was done, what questions were asked, what format was used, demographic info about the participants, etc.

    If this keeps up, it won't be long before people will stop reading after the words 'According to a study by market research' ...

  37. Poll presents a meaningless comparison by DragonWriter · · Score: 1

    It makes no sense to compare trust of "the Media" (a collection of independent institutions) to trust of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Twitter as individual institutions.

    This is much the same mistake that is commonly made when people pretend that approval ratings of the President are directly comparable to approval ratings of the Congress, such that one can draw meaningful conclusions from the latter being less than the former at any point in time.

    That anyone thinks this is newsworthy as anything other than an indictment of the professionalism of the outlet conducting and publishing the poll is a sign that critical thinking skills are desperately lacking.

  38. Re:Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason by jbeach · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Mistrusted with good reason indeed. Such as, say, specifically the **entire run up to war in Iraq**.

    That pretty much killed all sympathy for the traditional media for me. If I hadn't been fortunate enough to be cynical AND not trust traditional media, I would have been manipulated by fear and anger by what felt like most of the rest of America - which was itself a media-created exaggeration. There were so many dissenting voices, simply ignored.

    I mean, tens of thousands march on a street to protest the way in Iraq, and it's a blip on the news. A few hundred honkies gather in a public park to sit in lawnchairs with misspelled signs and hate on taxes, and it's a revolution in the making? That should tell you all you need to know about the integrity of traditional media - and why people aren't trusting it.

    --
    The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
  39. This is what happens... by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

    This is what happens when you feel that every story needs "balance" and you give idiots with false information voice whenever they have an opposing agenda and/or a press release. The media walks a fine line distinguishing between legitimate dissent and encouraging stupidity. In the last few decades, it has become lazy, has abrogated its responsibility as fact checker, and has moved heavily into the "encouraging stupidity" side. Publish enough untruths and people stop trusting you. QED.

    --
    That is all.
  40. Depends what they mean by "traditional media" by asdf7890 · · Score: 1

    Depends what they mean by "traditional media" - I'd trust that Nigerian fellow that keeps emailing me to manage my finances before I trusted any output from the Murdoch empire.

  41. I don't get it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google aggregates traditional media, what media does Google itself produce?

  42. PLUEASSSS! by gabrieltss · · Score: 1

    I wouldn't trust Google either.... I only trust information from the Alternative media anymore!

    --
    The Truth is a Virus!!!
  43. Re:Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason by lennier · · Score: 1

    One thing I find bizarre, now, after several years of Wikipedia - is how news reports hardly ever give citations. They'll just report a story, but give you no links to follow to go check out the facts yourself. Wikipedia on the other hand, on every page will have a whole set of offsite links, and Google is nothing but a collection of links to various primary and secondary sources.

    Why don't I trust 'traditional' media? This. Because they have a culture of not even bothering to give the semblance of citing sources. Just a byline and I'm supposed to take that as gospel.

    That's fine if it really is an original story and there aren't any other quotable sources. But for most AP wire copy, it's just a very poor standard of journalism, and it assumes a level of ignorance and lack of online awareness in their readership which is simply not true any more. When a free volunteer open-access project can cite every paragraph, that's just not good enough.

    --
    You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  44. Re:Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason by lennier · · Score: 1

    Mistrusted with good reason indeed. Such as, say, specifically the **entire run up to war in Iraq**.

    Yes, exactly. 2002-2003 was basically when I switched to Google News and specialist news aggregators, like www.antiwar.com, and found that they were doing a much better job of collating all the published stories which did surface in legitimate 'old' media, but didn't make it up to the front page of the big official newsmakers - NYT, The Times, Washington Post, etc. It was painfully obvious how the Big News editorial departments were blocking and filtering all stories which didn't fit the official government-media spin. They couldn't kill all the stories but they could bury them. But Google News, RSS, and a little ferreting could easily dig them out.

    So I switched off TV news at that point as less than useless, and resolved to do my news searching myself. Because I as a random uninformed citizen could do a better job, apparently, than the top news editor of the New York Times.

    And that's scary.

    --
    You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
  45. Re:Mainstream media is distrusted with good reason by jbeach · · Score: 1

    Isn't it scary. Oh my God.

    There's a flip side to it, which we can be our own journalists and dig into the source. The traditional media hasn't gotten any worse than it's always been; it's just that now we can find our way around it.

    The trick now is to find aggregators and analyzers who can put together what we miss, in ways that we trust. Which can be tricky, because we can have our biases pandered to; but I'll take that risk as opposed to proven spoon-feeding any day.

    --
    The Invisible Hand of the Free Market is what punches workers in the nuts.
  46. Hmmmm Australian Journalists.... by dogzdik · · Score: 0

    Are on the whole a bunch of sleazy spin doctoring bullshit artists.

    --

    .

    Voting up, Voting down - If I really gave a fuck about your approval or not, I'd come and ask you.

  47. And by mahadiga · · Score: 1
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    I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
  48. Trust Meaning ...? by bat21 · · Score: 1

    Do I trust Google, MS, Apple to tell me the truth any more that I trust CNN, Fox, etc, to? Absolutely not. On the other hand, I expect corporate spin from the former, but I have a right to expect ZERO spin from the latter. For me it's a difference in expectations. I expect a journalist to be fair and impartial. It rarely happens, but that is the way it should be. I expect a tech company to be fair and partial to its customers, but still do whatever it takes to sell their product.