this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2023
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More likely an important component of a more complex strategy. Oversimplification is really a shitty thing in journalism these days.
That's not a "these days" thing. Even back to the Vietnam War, Cronkite's famous analysis of the Tet Offensive was woefully off the mark. While it helped get us out of Vietnam, which was a good thing, it was not actually accurate at all.
Journalism is basically an impossible job in the modern world. The gulf between the level of complexity the experts are at, compared to the general public, is just too great. On virtually every topic now. And they need to be fast too, now? It's just asking too much.
I get what you say about the complexity of communicating on complex topic but that’s literally their one job isn’t it? Exception of investigating journalism they are supposed to make information available to the masses.
I like to thing that we could hope that the industry will eventually strive to reach that objective. I think that to some extent newer generations are doing that, albeit on non traditional platforms. Many a specialised youtuber offers troves of information and qualitative analysis on nice topics.
The entire thrust of my argument is this: They are trying very hard, and cannot try much harder. The task they are trying to do gets harder every year, though. It became practically impossible some time in the past 100 years, and we just started noticing. What makes it steadily and inevitably harder, primarily and at its root, is advancing technology.
What enables some youtubers to do a better job is the fact they're doing investigative journalism, usually, and have a lot of time to verify their facts and try to get it right. Or they themselves are a subject matter expert, working within their area of expertise, and speaking to a specific audience of people with some pre-existing knowledge on whatever subject.