That looks like conjecture more than fact.

Because of the fact that whites at least as it is genuinely known, is that they'll lose political/social influence that they've held on for so long. The fear that they'll be the minority in the United States, — Anaxagoras

I'm largely comfortably with this new generation's open-mindedness to the struggles of people of color. — Anaxagoras

Are they fearful or open minded? I’m not sure where you’re coming from?

Because of the fact that whites at least as it is genuinely known, is that they'll lose political/social influence that they've held on for so long. The fear that they'll be the minority in the United States, — Anaxagoras

Feel like giving us a source for this.

The role of the news media in a democracy.

Should the news media support Democracy unquestionably, should it question and challenge aspects of Democracy when it senses a deviation, should it challenge governments on policies, even if those policies are developed to protect democracy but they deviate from democratic ideals?
To do that we would need well educated and experienced people at the helm of the news media. They would have to have integrity, a keen sense of morality, inside knowledge of what’s behind government actions and trust from those government institutions. They would have to be free from influence and coercion, unimpressed by offers of money and benefits, disinterested in power except in the interests of the news outlet.

In an ideal situation they would almost be a partner in the democratic process. Their own interests would be democracy itself. The part they play in the democratic process would also reward them and benefit them as a result.

But how or in what way could they be rewarded? What form could it take without perverting and corrupting itself over time?

If they actively disagree with an elected government how far should they go or be allowed to go? How much should they be allowed to reveal?

Once you started having national newspapers, these then applied a tone that felt good for the general public. — ssu

That would be the days of a shared narrative, the shared myth. The myth can only sustain so many people then it falls apart. I think that’s where we are now. How can objective news even mean anything anymore? How many people can it hold together? How many no longer relate to it? It’s so alien to them as an idea that they no longer trust it. A collective truth? That seems absurd these days.

This is from Wikipedia;

“ Capitalism in its modern form can be traced to the emergence of agrarian capitalism and mercantilism in the early Renaissance, in city-states like Florence.[36] Capital has existed incipiently on a small scale for centuries.”

Condition would have to be right for Capitalism to thrive. Otherwise it wouldn’t get past seed stage. So those conditions were already there and perfect to help in its emergence.

Once you get to a certain point in the Capitalist pyramid, you are effectively mostly above the law and beholden to nobody. — Drumpot

Except the dynamics of Capitalism which can bring you down virtually overnight.

There’s a third option: that man is a work in progress, limited in his potential, yes - but still radically underachieving as a rule. — Possibility

Yes, I know this is your position, and I can’t argue against it. It’s a hope for improvement but not an idea I can embrace.

capitalism which is basically the incentive to get as much stuff as you can at the expense of others. — Drumpot

If that’s what capitalism is, if it behaves in exactly that way, then in what way is it corrupt?

The way I see it you can view humans as a flawed creature, which would suggest our survival over time is a miracle, or that they have endured and overcome incredible challenges over time to get here. You may not like what you see but our being here, our survival, is no accident. If we are corrupt, if that’s our history, our nature, then that’s who we are. But define corrupt.

Would I rather be oblivious to how horrible this world really is or is it better to know the truth (or what appears to be the truth) about how our species destroys And corrupts everything We touch?! — Drumpot

There’s no doubt we’re complex creatures. But we are extremely successful evidenced by our still being here. I don’t know if it’s true that we destroy and corrupt everything. We may be behaving in the best way possible for our survival.

There’s an interesting idea about the difference between the political right and left, or conservatives and progressives (whatever that is) that conservatives believe man is flawed but that he cannot be changed. Instead we must live with that knowledge and make the world as good as we can under the circumstances. It also explains why religion and conservatism seem to go hand in hand; man is a sinner, he’s imperfect, he has to live with that understanding, hence the confessional, etc.

The left see man as corrupt and instead of living with it they want to change him from what he is into something better. No room for religion here.

Take your pick.

What ways would you say religion, politics and capitalism have been corrupted? What’s the evidence? I don’t think ignorance, isolation and exclusion are evidence of corruption. What was the purpose of religion and how has that purpose been corrupted?

What was the purpose of capitalism and how has it been corrupted?

Ditto politics.

Your post seems to suggest some fully formed entity that was delivered to us whole and then corrupted by us.

But then what is that voice, exactly? And are there multiple voices (I think there are)? Does the internalized interlocutor, and one's relationship with it, determine in part how one acts? If one acts in a different way, does that change one's internal monologue? — csalisbury

However many voices there may be it all amounts to the same thing, which is that internalised conversation. Whether it’s true or not I don’t know, but evidence seems to suggest a high rate of suicide in poets. (What the rate is among builders, or plumbers I don’t know, so how can we be sure the poet figures are high?). My feeling is that poets spend too much time in that internalised space. Philosophers are the same. Mathematicians might be considered in that light but their language is maths.

My personal feelings are that action is the only thing to put the internal voices in place. Action is about moving forward, literally one step in front of the other. In the end you are removed from where you were. The voices never do that. To spend too much time in that conversation is profitless. Do they determine how one acts? very rarely in my opinion.

If the way one acts in a different way is action then it doesn’t change one’s internal monologue, it shuts it up long enough to put you in a different space ( then one may have a different conversation). In extreme active situations that monologue is completely shut down, it’s no longer relevant, it has no benefits.

The processes you mention (religion, politics, capitalism) are warped and corrupted by ignorance, isolation and exclusion: — Possibility

I don’t think that’s true. I think that religion, politics and capitalism are exactly what they are, they are not corrupted by ignorance, isolation and exclusion. I thinks that’s overthinking, (conscious or unconscious I don’t know), they’re tools of what I suspect is a political creature. What they do is exactly what they were intended for.

And then right in the middle of it all, bringing everything together, is where I’d put philosophy. — Pfhorrest

I think that might be wishful thinking. It’s an interesting diagram and covers a lot, but I don’t really see people living this way with philosophy as the core of their behaviour. There are posters on this forum who feel that less than half the posts on this forum are doing philosophy. Is that really who we are?

My post as an attempt to find something that I could use to view the world today. My conclusion was that we’re political animals and most things, if not everything, about us springs from that. I’ve indicated previously what my idea of political is.

I was interested to see if other aspects of our nature confirmed that, like economics and religion. Banno introduced the idea of science, based, I presume, on the idea of developing stone tools. Whether it is or not is a difficult debate I think. Economics, to me, serves the political animal. Religion is the consequence of the political animal.

If we are foremost political animals then what does it suggest about what’s happening in the world today. If everything we do is done through the lens of that political animal then does that explain things a little more; the seemingly irrational behaviour, the division and aggression, the ideology behind things. Does it suggest that we only know of one way of doing things?

This is a bit of a move for me away from what I’ve thought so far. So far I’ve regarded humans as inherently moral animals but I’m beginning to think differently, as are my thoughts on relativism.

This OP hasn’t really taken off. Probably because it’s not regarded as “philosophy”. But there is a big question buried in your OP.

Democrat is an agreed upon myth. If that is true and that the sharing in the belief in that myth is shrinking or fragmenting then what role is there for the news media. If the democracy myth is fragmenting then the idea of truth as we’ve been living it also fragments into a thousand versions of it. There’s no place for a news source to claim an objective truth telling any more. That does sort of play into the hands of relativism, but what other conclusion could I draw from what I see?

Thanks for the reference re. the Sapiens book. It’s been very helpful in relation to what I’ve been thinking about. I’d discuss it further but it may not be “compelling” or “philosophy”. We mere monkeys must bow to the apes.

Another consideration is that some news outlets are publicly listed companies, they're tasked with providing value for their shareholders. — Judaka

Even a privately owned outlet has to make a profit. Maybe not to quite the same degree. But they need a loyal readership. There could be any number of reasons for someone sticking to one outlet. How do you hold on to them, by being totally unbiased or by targeting their political and social leanings? Can any outlet operate on a totally unbiased platform?
In some ways it might be better to have them obviously biased, at least we’d know what’s behind their stories, no more pretence of objectivity.

Distrust of the news is increasing but profits are soaring. — Judaka

This is one of the really interesting points I think. Why?
It looks like people have an insatiable appetite for news, even if they mistrust it. So why are they watching or reading it? It seems to me that news now means something different than it was. It serves some different purpose, like those people in the street who keep checking their phones every few minutes. I don’t think it’s about being informed. Which suggests it doesn’t really matter what the news is but that it’s just presented as news so that it fills the habitual desire to check the news. So let’s say it’s a drug.

Edit: that’s the msm.

When you can speak for yourself we’ll continue.

If I don’t think that then how do we decide if it is or isn’t?

But what do you think of it as a news source?

Do you think it is or not?

If i said The New York Times was not just a poor newspaper but a bad one what would you reply?

What exactly is the problem? I choose media based reputation. — Wheatley

I’m not sure what you mean there. But my feeling is that we are not to be held responsible for standards of the media. Those standards have been set by business interests.

You can say that particular news sources should be rejected by people, or that they should be better at analysing what they’re reading, but people chose a source they feel comfortable with. You might have leanings to the right and consequently reject news sources from what you regard as the left and feel they’re unreliable. Does that mean the stories from the left are sub standard, or that you’ve failed to read them carefully enough?

Determined by my comprehension of a news story?
— Brett
Determined by your ability to argue about the news with others. — Wheatley

What I mean there is that just because I reject a news source or story doesn’t mean my critical reasoning is poor.

There's always room for improvement. — Wheatley

Determined by my comprehension of a news story?

It shouldn't be different than shopping for clothes. — Wheatley

That’s my point. Clothes are chosen based on fashion leanings, practical reasons or just frivolous, but they’re all desires to maintain your subjective narrative.

Do we want the news media to have a role in democracy when it is in effect a corporation having a role in democracy?

instead of placing all the blame on the media market, we could play a part, holding the media accountable improving our critical reasoning skills. — Wheatley

And then what? It still comes down to what you chose to read and then make a decision that yes, that sounds true, or yes, I trust that journalist. And why should I doubt my critical reasoning skills as they are?

How it happened I don’t know, maybe it’s not new, but it seems to me that we all generally take our news from a source that fits our narrative, or reject that that doesn’t. That can happen because there’s so many news sources out there of all persuasions and all sizes.

The news services are the only way we have of monitoring and revealing the truth about politicians and politics, or business and bent products. But that faith we can have in any single source is slipping, because logically I should treat all sources with suspicion. If I’m going to chose to distrust certain sources based on my existing understanding of things then I should apply that to all sources, I should approach all stories with scepticism, even the ones that I agree with. So the worm is in there, now I can’t be sure that the truth is out there, that it even exists. I don’t have time to do fact checking, that’s why I went to the news source in the first place.

What happens after that? Just faith?

Lately, I've felt conflicted about what the news should be and then how to ensure that media outlets are rewarded for doing whats in our best interests as opposed to that being different to what's best in theirs.

What do you think the role of the media should be within a democracy and are you satisfied or dissatisfied with how things are now. — Judaka

This is part of the problem, just whose interests? So much diversity, so many tribes, who should they serve? Does it end up with the media only serving a target audience which in effect is an echo chamber.

The role of the media in a democracy; is it to serve democracy, to reinforce those values, to have opinions that support it? Or is it’s role to question and enquire whatever the outcome, or in a democracy is it allowed to be whatever it wants?

We can wrestle with defining news, but do we really have to? T — tim wood

No we don’t have to. We can just agree that we’re talking about what the news media delivers and consequently what role it has or should have in a democracy.

Thank god. I thought I was losing it.

Isn’t it perfectly clear? It’s about media that delivers the news. What we can argue over is what is and what isn’t news.

Maybe it depends on what the people call news.

most "pack" animals are "political" — 180 Proof

By the way I don’t think that’s true. Primates yes, but pack animals seems to be operating on instincts. I don’t see instincts being political.

Well I intend no distinction. So then I take it that you agree that humans are political animals. Would you agree they’re more political than spiritual?

In its simplest term the role of the media would be to inform people about the world they’re living in. Alongside the news stories there might be the editors opinion piece; a personal or long view of some event or issue. That’s the readers experience.

The other role is that of the owners or investors. There were owners who had genuine beliefs in the role of their newspaper. They hired editors and let them run the newspaper on the basis of the reason they hired them. To a large degree there was integrity involved on all sides.

Some were powerful and biased in their views and what they supported. The Hearst empire for instance. But newspapers like The New York Times we’re respected in traditional terms of owner, editors and journalism,

Putting aside companies like the Hearst organisation I think it was probably television that marked the first change. Advertising revenue for one, and competing with video and then live stories. In time family ownership went and the accountants took precedence. So long integrity, so long real journalism,

Unfortunately “Freedom of the Press” is something we still regard as vital to a healthy society. But the media no longer operates in ways that served that purpose. They’re like a prostitute that goes around in virgin white.

The important question to me is how do we remove them without hurting ourselves and how do we replace them?

I wouldn't "add or delete" anything because I don't see a philosophical point of "pillars" - — 180 Proof

Would you at least be prepared to admit that humans are political animals?

Intuitively they do seem to go together. But I thought made an interesting comment about that.

["dex;431330"]Religion's genesis isn't much to do with poetry, but Art played a role in its expression. The precursor was more likely hunter-gatherer pattern recognition, which gave a survival advantage over other species. The faculty, which evolved into a genetic propensity, caused false inferences to be made when human events coincided with unexplainable phenomena, an obvious example being tribal rain dances.[/quote]

It’s trying to make sense of “the ineffable” and ends up contributing towards ideas of “the ineffable”

It seems to me that religion, the strongly held beliefs in God or Gods and their word has faltered or failed. Fewer people seem to take take part in religious practices. What they believe in I can’t be sure. But it’s influence has diminished I think. Then again it’s something one can practise internally.

We no longer have much of a connection with the unconscious mind, it’s the dark disturbing past, which is unmanageable.

Economics is removed from peoples’ control, it gives very few autotomy or sense of agency.

All that’s left is their original state; the political animal who acts. I think politics comes about through the sense of individuality people naturally experience. The irony is that Democracy, representing the wishes of the people, (who I regard as autonomous, political animals), takes their political nature, remodels and restructures it through professionals and institutions and then hands it back to them one vote at a time.

Ah, yeah. That’s interesting.