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“Ideological bias” doesn’t require some coherent master plan, just like minded people acting according to their incentives. Everyone really needs to read Manufacturing Consent: https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

Micromanging is not necessary. They just set the tone and don't hire people who would write anything opposed to their policy [1] which they rarely need to explicitly convey, although they do at times of course. People write things that they really like get rewarded.

"Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media" by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky explains how this work with a very large number of examples.

1. https://youtu.be/9RPKH6BVcoM

2. https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

⬐ throwaway0a5e

Exactly.

Internet commenters love to think their enemy's minions are stupid.

In reality they're just as smart as you are and don't need to be specifically told what the people in charge do and don't want published and/or what tone they should take.

⬐ CrazyPyroLinux

Just imagine if academia were like this...

> Despite what those propagandists and opinion pieces say, the NY Times, ... do[es] provide quality news (don't read their opinion sections either).

You ever read Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent[1]? If you can't bring yourself to read the book, he made a film about it too [2]. But the book has hundreds of examples (well sourced) of why you should probably rethink that.

1. https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII

⬐ wolverine876

I know it well, and a agree to a great extent.

I'm mostly responding to attacks on the NYT from the right; it's interesting to think about it to a great extent. My first impression is that the NYT has broken from the 'consent manufacturing' apparatus, which is why so many 'moderates' attack it.

The free press and independent justice system makes the difference.

Those can and do make a difference. No system is perfect, however. Chinese culture has an extensive heritage of moral philosophy. Despite that, it's still been shown that it's possible to overturn the social order there with massive consequences. The west certainly isn't above that sort of chaos. France and Germany, the largest economic powers of continental Europe, have that in their history. The US isn't entirely above this kind of chaos, either.

The press in the west also follows a propaganda model.

https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

Justice systems in the west have been known to cooperate with the authorities in miscarriages of justice, particularly in wartime or when subject to near-wartime hysteria.

When it comes down to it, there is always a struggle between good and evil in all times and places. The really tricky part of it is this: The worst evils disguise themselves as movements of good and justice. People and movements should be judged by their actions. Ask: Who is committing violence against whom? Who abets or tacitly accepts bad actions? Who is willing to call out their own side and their own tribe when they do wrong?

The left/right political spectrum ceases to have meaning when you look at it that way. The Authoritarian/Anti-authoritarian spectrum and the tribalist/universalist spectrums hold much more value.

Highly recommend reading Manufacturing Consent: https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

A very good analysis of these very questions is Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky and Herman.[1] It is fairly scientific, supported by case studies of mainstream coverage of roughly similar atrocities committed by U.S. allies or the U.S. itself, and official U.S. enemies.

In fact it reviews the very case of East Timor. It compares the near total silence of coverage of that (Indonesia's brutal dictator was an ally) to the coverage of the Communist Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia, which was extensive and impassioned.

They discuss a few simple mechanisms that help explain how this bias happens in our otherwise democratic society, which they call the Propaganda Model.[2] A key factor is that major media is funded by advertising, which imparts a kind of natural selection for viewpoints that favor the class interests of the business elite (which extends to foreign policy that favors a powerful American state). So by the time you get hired as a reporter for major media, you've already been selected. You don't have to be told to do the right thing, because you already believe what you're doing to be right.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

⬐ 1iota

Does the Council on Foreign Relations play a role in "selecting" the journalists?

"How can we be better than we are now?" By getting informed on what is REALLY happening, i.e. if you are participating in electoral democracy, you're part of the misinformed set.

Reasoning and the human brain doesn't work the way we thought it did:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

Manufacturing consent

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econom...

Most have no clue what's really going on in the world... the elites are afraid of political awakening.

This (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttv6n7PFniY

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kmUS--QCYY

The real news:

http://therealnews.com/t2/

http://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Incorporated-Managed-Inverte...

http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Government-Surveillance-Securit...

http://www.amazon.com/National-Security-Government-Michael-G...

Look at the following graphs:

IMGUR link - http://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

And then...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

http://www.businessinsider.com/wikileaks-haiti-minimum-wage-...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnkNKipiiiM

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHj2GaPuEhY#t=349

Free trade?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju06F3Os64

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Illusion-Literacy-Triumph-Spect...

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."

Important history:

http://williamblum.org/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcA1v2n7WW4#t=2551

Manufacturing Consent (the book), specifically the section in the beginning about the ownership filter.

If you do "Look inside this book" and then "excerpt," it explains it in the first few pages of the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econom...