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Journalism, and lack of pushback to unanswered questions
a year ago
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I feel like there's too high a priority in getting a quote, whether or not what's said answers the question or not. It's basically left up to the audience to interpret the answer, because they'd rather continue asking questions that get no answers than possibly lose out on future interviews.
I'd like it if journalists could just summarize the answers given as "they refused to answer the question", and maybe provide the answers they gave in a separate document so people can critique the journalist if they feel the question did get a relevant answer. It would cut down how much time is wasted, and do more to depict corporations and politicians as avoiding responsibility for their decisions. If an interview were to result in no real answers given, or primarily focused on selling something unrelated to the interview, then the whole thing can be summarized as well, "They refused to participate in the interview".
And while this might initially feel like news companies would waste their time, because most important questions go unanswered nowadays, I feel that this only reveals how bad reporting has gotten, that filtering out the garbage would remove almost everything.
One bonus is that if journalists clearly and simplistically show which companies do this the most, it'd be easier to make apps that can blacklist them when buying things online. Suddenly there's a monetary incentive to accepting interviews and providing actual answers in them instead of dodging questions and turning it into an ad.
The smartest move reporters could do would be to develop an app for this themselves, it would rely heavily on their reputation for providing unbiased reports, and would require the ability to reach out to every company at all times (maybe by paying for past interviews other people made), but the result would be too useful to go without. At the same time, the reporters would need to ask questions people would like an answer to, not just whatever the reporter thinks would get a bad response. This part's trickier, and would be the biggest weakness in this system, but again this can contribute to their reputation if they only include the questions that deserve an answer.
I'd like it if journalists could just summarize the answers given as "they refused to answer the question", and maybe provide the answers they gave in a separate document so people can critique the journalist if they feel the question did get a relevant answer. It would cut down how much time is wasted, and do more to depict corporations and politicians as avoiding responsibility for their decisions. If an interview were to result in no real answers given, or primarily focused on selling something unrelated to the interview, then the whole thing can be summarized as well, "They refused to participate in the interview".
And while this might initially feel like news companies would waste their time, because most important questions go unanswered nowadays, I feel that this only reveals how bad reporting has gotten, that filtering out the garbage would remove almost everything.
One bonus is that if journalists clearly and simplistically show which companies do this the most, it'd be easier to make apps that can blacklist them when buying things online. Suddenly there's a monetary incentive to accepting interviews and providing actual answers in them instead of dodging questions and turning it into an ad.
The smartest move reporters could do would be to develop an app for this themselves, it would rely heavily on their reputation for providing unbiased reports, and would require the ability to reach out to every company at all times (maybe by paying for past interviews other people made), but the result would be too useful to go without. At the same time, the reporters would need to ask questions people would like an answer to, not just whatever the reporter thinks would get a bad response. This part's trickier, and would be the biggest weakness in this system, but again this can contribute to their reputation if they only include the questions that deserve an answer.
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bobingabout 
WhiteChimera
Samhat1Waitlist
MrSandwichesTheSecondOngoing Projects
Bob's Mondays
Amanda in Coveille (Tuesday-Thursday)
Bad End (Friday Offline)
Saturday Sketches
Future Projects
Seasonal One-Shots (why are there so many holidays edition)
Some Re-Tooning Required (...)
Magical Girl (name undecided)
HackerManda Re-vengeance (sigh, these names)
Project Aleshinne
Miscellaneous ideas, stories, transformation themes, etc.
Independent journalists may be the better go to, but even I think there's some questioning to their merits and intentions a swell. Before we can talk about lack of pushback we must first question why ethics has been left at the door with journalism as a whole.
Oh, and that's on top of the fact that either A) the Fourth Estate never existed or b) the window that the Fourth Estate existed as a force to keep things from going bad was incredibly short in the grand scheme.
Look up MIT's Electronic Communities paper, we're in the 'Cyber Balkans' portion of that paper and denying it will NOT make things better, just worse.
The idea that speech and information must be unregulated is a memetic hazard at best.
You need to understand the Hegelian Dialectic. In short, manufacture a crisis to sell a solution. Free speech and misinformation is the very crisis they're creating to sell regulation of free speech and further increase the control of legacy media. They literally pay agitators to spout nonsense on the internet and then use these agitators as an example of why free speech is dangerous.
So let me restate my point: Free speech is the solution to subversive media organizations. They instinctively understand this, which is why they present this balkanization (which is largely the doing of large tech conglomerates and their oppressive terms of service) as a bad thing that needs to be squashed.
The sad reality is that you'll need to regulate because humans will not self-regulate.
Can you tell me what speech needs to be regulated?
Can you tell me who gets to decide what speech needs to be regulated?
Can you tell me why this speech is dangerous?
Who is telling you this speech is dangerous?
Can you tell me why this speech cannot be countered with better information and education?
Can you tell me how these regulations will be safeguarded against misuse?
Once you start regulating speech you'll see a lot of chilling effects. It's already happening. There is a widespread attack on art. Many artists here on Furaffinity and elsewhere are seeing their livelihoods threatened by laws passed to censor porn. Giving these ideologues more tools to censor is a recipe for disaster. They have successfully brainwashed you into thinking you need to surrender your rights, and that makes you a danger to liberty.
Hell, Europe doesn't have our stupidity of unregulated speech, and they're doing better than us on the bad actor front.
Of course, then they'd want to know what they did say, and all the arguing on whether they really answered the question or not could commence. I mean, Putin did eventually answer why Russia invaded Ukraine, he just started the answer in the 13th Century and took a half an hour, to give a recent example.
You things are thought provoking, but sadly I'm usually not in a state to do much thinking when I read them.