Scott has now convinced me that the media does not state literal lies in the voice of the article. However, while we’re using the phrase ‘bounded distrust’, I do think that there are two things that are unbounded:
How far away the Narrative they are pushing is from reality.
How egregiously unethical the Narrative they are pushing is relative to reality.
Scott analyzes a couple of examples in his follow-up post Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying. Pushing narratives of voter fraud, covid being less important than the flu, Clinton being 99% likely to win, etc etc, were all harmful to different amounts in different ways. I haven’t thought about which ones are the worst, but my claim is that the terrible-ness of the narrative being pushed is not bounded by much more than what they can get away with people buying in the current culture, while not stating explicit lies in the author’s voice. I don’t have a cite for this, but my guess is that people performing very good acts can be punished and have a mob set on them and have the goodness of their acts inverted pretty casually in the establishment narrative. Again, not by telling explicit lies, but by present exceedingly misleading information that is selected to be consistent and supportive of a narrative that they can sell.
I think this is a lot of what is captured when people say things like “I wouldn’t put anything past the media”. Not that they explicitly lie, but that they will support arbitrarily inaccurate and unethical narratives.
Scott has now convinced me that the media does not state literal lies in the voice of the article. However, while we’re using the phrase ‘bounded distrust’, I do think that there are two things that are unbounded:
How far away the Narrative they are pushing is from reality.
How egregiously unethical the Narrative they are pushing is relative to reality.
Scott analyzes a couple of examples in his follow-up post Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying. Pushing narratives of voter fraud, covid being less important than the flu, Clinton being 99% likely to win, etc etc, were all harmful to different amounts in different ways. I haven’t thought about which ones are the worst, but my claim is that the terrible-ness of the narrative being pushed is not bounded by much more than what they can get away with people buying in the current culture, while not stating explicit lies in the author’s voice. I don’t have a cite for this, but my guess is that people performing very good acts can be punished and have a mob set on them and have the goodness of their acts inverted pretty casually in the establishment narrative. Again, not by telling explicit lies, but by present exceedingly misleading information that is selected to be consistent and supportive of a narrative that they can sell.
I think this is a lot of what is captured when people say things like “I wouldn’t put anything past the media”. Not that they explicitly lie, but that they will support arbitrarily inaccurate and unethical narratives.