So in the debate over 1984 and Brave New World we seem to be getting both with people both doping themselves into apathy and thought crimes increasing. Curious what is the biggest threat in the future to the already flailing fourth estate. Obviously the press won't be trying to help out Trump but look a little bit out, say next 10 years. How do you view the future of journalism, will it make any comeback or continue to decline?
Of the three options in the poll, I'd weight the first two over the third. But it depends on what is meant by crackdown.
Government collusion with the media (?) is more of a myth that either side uses when one of their issues or candidates is losing. Stricter libel laws would be a nightmare for investigative branches of mainstream media because they insulate subjects powerful or wealthy enough to bribe or cajole sources into recanting or lying in a civil suit. But news is evolving to independent online sources, and the pretext of social networks or their regulators monitoring and penalizing all content could literally shut down the pipeline. So the "fake news" crackdown is the worst.
It's hard to really make a decision based on the tenuous position the media finds it selves in. I went with the stricter libel laws because that has traditionally been the greatest threat overall to a free communication of ideas in this country. But any one of these could be theoretically disastrous. The Internet has muddied the waters a bit. The uncertainty of an upcoming Trump presidency makes things even more nebulous. Overreaching on fake news could prevent legitimate online outlets from having voice in the conversation. We've already heard Trump propose the "opening up" of libel laws but that guy said a lot of things on the campaign trail. The more likely scenario is he changes the culture in Washington enough so that the media organizations he incessantly tweets about are mired in lawsuits and less effective. Nobody really knows though. As pouhe remarked, the collusion matter is largely election year politics, ratcheted up a notch in the most toxic presidential election in recent memory.
Trump won and he was clearly using Breitbart and Sean Hannity as an arm of his campaign. I think the cooperation is a real danger in the future but not with Trump.
How about option 4, b****es who are just gonna take it when Russia interferes in US election to install a pro-kremlin buffoon: CaseyH fmullegun Bandwagoner others?
I think the biggest threat to a free press is the current lack of a viable business model that can make independent journalism a worthwhile investment. Most of the integrity problems the industry now faces seem to stem from the internet's destruction of their business model.
Yup. People just refuse to pay for subscription based news platforms like NYT or WaPo which would mitigate the largest issue with journalism today which is click-bait.
The answer is always going to be censorship so either of the last 2 options are legit.....and they are basically the same thing.
Fake news became big business inadvertently due to the ad revenue from all those clicks and eyeballs.
The biggest threat to a free press isn't the crack-down on fake news, it is fake news itself aka propaganda. Propaganda is always the tool of authoritarians like Putin, and to see people support it is disturbing. You already have a president that wants to control the press and intimidate it - using twitter to spread his lies as a means to get around a press that still somewhat holds him accountable for his deceptions and distortions.
The war waged against the press, science and education will have dramatic repercussions for the future of this nation. A large chunk of this country basically think anything the press says bad about their side is a lie, scientists are money grubbing liars and college education is worthless. Now we are adding our own national intelligence services to the list of discredited institutions. I wonder if the perpetrators even expected it to be this easy.
Yes. This is one of the most troubling trends over the past couple of decades. It keeps getting worse. There is so much wrong with this line of thinking, but it giving rise to the fake news stories of recent concern is just one of the horrible things that comes from this. It isn't even the most problematic symptom.
The NSF's budget is continuously growing. As is privately funded research. As is the percentage of college graduates. On the other hand I think you need to some basis to these claims.
A large part of the country thinks the press is in the bag for Democrats . this was proven true by the pedesto emails. countless journalists asking the Clintons for approval to publish stories. questions from the debate being leaked to hillary. asking hillary am pain what to ask Republicans in the debate. ... everything Republicans complained about was proven true. what was also great was watching the media be in the bag against sanders.
Spare me. Your side has had your own media and it's been churning out hit pieces on obama since day one and followed up with a masterpiece against Clinton. Your side doesn't care about the turth anymore than the your opposing side. It's not even debatable. You are a fool is you think Fox News doesn't do the same but no one bothered releasing their internal communications.
On the other hand majority of Americans can't perform a 1st derivative of a 1st degree polynomial. It's time to not place any merit one what majority of Americans think. If majority of Americans can't trust NYT or WaPo because articles disagree with their preconceived biases, that's their problem not MSM.
You are going along with the educations are worthless meme. If you want to cut public funding to non STEM degrees you won't have much argument on the right. Trust by a majority is important to the function of the fourth estate in pretty much everyone's opinion.
