Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.

Twitter, now X, was once a useful site for breaking news. The Baltimore bridge collapse shows those days are long gone.

  • Minotaur@lemm.eeEnglish
    1104·
    6 months ago

    It’s actually crazy how low the percentage of people under like… forty is now that actually gets their news direct from a news site. Seriously, i don’t know a single person from like 20-35 who actually just goes on the NPR or C-SPAN app or whatever.

    It kind of sucks. So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now. And I just feel like there’s something bad about being able to see a comment section on Twitter or Reddit or even Lemmy now on every news event. Makes for a lot more group think rather than just reading the news and going “huh”

    • Stovetop@lemmy.worldEnglish
      281·
      6 months ago

      So much news is just reading the headline and seeing a photo now.

      Mexico’s new president: 3-year-old Alfredo Pequeño Lobo becomes nation’s youngest elected and first canine leader. But can he be rough on the cartels?

      • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        6 months ago

        Even Lemmy does that, though. You’re still influenced by the headline, the community/moderation and the users.

        Assuming that everyone clicks through to the article, and doesn’t comment before reading the headline, anyhow.

        • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          And at the news organization, you are influenced by the editors and framing by authors.

      • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
        83·
        6 months ago

        Lemmy is massively biased though. While that doesn’t mean the articles aren’t factual, you’re still only ever hearing one side of the story. What I find time after time is that majority of people who have strong opinions about current events are completely uncapable of fairly steelmanning the opposing side’s argument.

        • stoly@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          6 months ago

          I’m not sure why you think that news orgs aren’t also biased. Everything and everyone is biased, even those that genuinely try to not let it show through and be fully impartial.

          • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
            33·
            6 months ago

            So what are you implying? That it doesn’t matter where you get your news because all sources are biased anyway?

              • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
                61·
                6 months ago

                There’s still a massive difference between news sources like NY times and Breitbart. It matters where you get your news from and even if it’s coming from a biased source you should atleast be aware of the bias. Some sites atleast try to counter their bias while others embrace it. These things matter. It’s not binary.

                • hamid@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  24·
                  6 months ago

                  Difference in quality? Yes. Difference in bias? No. The NYT has an extreme neo liberal US oriented business empire bias that as a refugee of the Iran Iraq war and victim of US foreign policy they supported that I don’t trust. I also don’t trust Breitbart.

    • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
      11·
      6 months ago

      I think the bigger issue is how bad news sites have gotten. I’m sure part of the reason for that is people getting news online from alternative sources, but mainstream sources are significantly worse than they once were which just pushes things further in that direction.

      That said, I don’t know which caused more group-think. Was it having a few mainstream sources and that’s it or having many worse quality but more diverse sources? People relate to the new version more probably, which encourages them to follow along and not think for themselves, but I don’t know if that’s better or worse than not really having any dissenting opinion available at all.

      • Jourei@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        Yeah, bad news sites is the reason I didn’t follow any news for years, I got burnt out verifying just about every article. Most bended the story one way or another, headlines usually not quite what the article read…

        • Veraxus@lemmy.worldEnglish
          6·
          6 months ago

          Try explaining that to a rightist, though. It’s not right-wing propaganda, therefore it is left-wing propaganda. 😔

        • lud@lemm.eeEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          Reuters is also good and less USA Centric (at least for their notifications) which is a good thing for me because I am not from the USA, but AP is excellent too). I don’t think you can even disable USA news in your “interests” with AP.

          Both Reuters and AP are news agencies that sell news (and stuff like photos) to other news companies. So it’s very likely that everyone here has read at least some content from them.

          Both are also often regarded as among the most reliable and least biased news sources available. AFP is also in that group.

    • Branch_Ranch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      5·
      6 months ago

      A few months back, i subscribed to the news aggregator Ground News. Although there are more expensive options, i pay about $6/year and I love it. You get news stories from lots of different sites and gives you a good idea of biases. I highly recommend it!

    • realitista@lemm.eeEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      For me it’s RSS, Lemmy, and suprisingly YouTube as I can get the major news sources( eg BBC, CNN, FT, DT, MSNBC) chunked up into specific topics so I don’t have to sit through a bunch of garbage to get to the topics I care about. And I get it from more sources.

    • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
      73·
      6 months ago

      That’s how I get my news. I visit the Finnish equivalence of BBC once or twice a day and that’s my news diet. If they don’t report on it, I don’t need to know. Something like what a VOX journalist thinks about Twitter I couldn’t care less so I don’t even bother reading it. I’m proudly unaware of most of the things that non-serious news organizations report on.

      • cygon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        41·
        6 months ago

        Vox is a reputable and very thorough news source, though, usually worth the read.

        This two-pager, for example, highlights false Twitter journalists popping in Baltimore to politically spin the recent bridge collapse.

        • Thorny_Insight@lemm.eeEnglish
          43·
          6 months ago

          That’s not my point. What I’m saying is that I knowingly limit my news diet to what is the most important/interesting and this is neither so I’m not bothering my mind with it. I don’t need to know and not knowing has zero effect on my life.

        • (des)mosthenes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          6 months ago

          yea definitel! - working on a site for that with docs etc, prolly a week or two - currently rebuilding the user settings / models - just a preview till then ^^

    • LifeOfChance@lemmy.worldEnglish
      53·
      6 months ago

      Honestly I think a big part of people looking at headlines and pictures is closely related to people’s attention span. Why read many words when less is better. Those same people can’t hold conversations for more than a minute or two on the subject then it spirals into speculations which is where the misinformation starts to take place. Society is bombarded with so much information hour by hour people don’t want to miss anything so they skim through an immense amount of partial information. It’s wild and I’m guilty of it myself so I’m in no place to speak ill of anyone.

    • BoscoBear@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
      31·
      6 months ago

      You can find out the event from the news, but then get the facts from industry experts. It’s much better these days.