A very thoughtful essay, but there's just a massive asymmetry of effort in this discussion, one favoring MSM defenders. Bluntly, the media's most vocal critics often don't actually read it, or their audiences don't read it and then just credulously accept whatever is said about it (usually "I bet the media won't report on this!" - about a story that is either fake or being duly reported on - ad nauseum). It's considered naïve and, like you said, boring, to unapologetically stand by the default source of information, the same way that conspiracists roll their eyes at anyone who believes "the official story". But healthy skepticism doesn't mean that the official story is always wrong - that road just leads to a complete defection from information quality control, and our present madness where so many beliefs don't even try to optimize for accuracy.
I've said this elsewhere, but Wikipedia articles extensively cite mainstream media. Prediction markets use mainstream media as reliable sources to resolve bets. You can cite mainstream media in a college paper. It's like how Scott Alexander says "Western medicine" is just "medicine that works" - mainstream sources are just the sources that work.
I think one reason MSM criticism is so lazy and misinformed is because it's convenient. Reading the news as a habit takes time and patience, and it's easier to dismiss it as a sucker's game. When someone writes off vast swaths of literature as being unworthy of their time, we have to question whether they just want to do less reading.
A whole lot of medicine from the west is not "western medicine" by that metric. Hence the ineffectiveness of marginally greater medical spending on health outcomes.
To channel Richard's blunt edge: I'm capable of learning things I want to know from the mainstream media without getting taken in by the kind of biases Caplan complains about — and I don't want to lose that resource just because other people are too stupid to manage it. His paternalism is against my best interest.
Perhaps you believe you are, but most people don't believe they are being mislead by the media they consume (otherwise they would stop consuming it). Caplan chooses not to consume "news", and what has he lost out on? Richard himself is now denouncing uncensored social media, claiming it's worse than censorship. That is paternalism.
You ask what Caplan has lost out on by abstaining from news, but in order to answer that question... you need to read the news! Since I do, I'll give some examples:
Of course you can become informed through other methods than just reading the news, but to act like it's worse than silence is just unserious. The people who do the work of actually reading the news (and of course the news teams themselves) are thanklessly responsible for so much of our information, including a lot of what Caplan knows through word of mouth.
This is what I mean by the asymmetry of effort in this discussion - you can get away with saying *anything* about sources that people are socially discouraged from reading, while it takes painstaking effort to lay out the obvious truth.
On censorship Hanania may be even worse than progs. IIRC he said he wouldn’t let them get away with nearly as much they let conservatives get away with! (Or once did let them get away with.)
Fantastic essay, Megan. I’ve come to the same position as you. I consider myself a Dispatch conservative and believe that some alternative media is of very high quality, but I’ve watched over the last ten years or so as many dear friends and otherwise bright people have (understandably) abandoned the MSM only to replace it with crackpot YouTube channels and podcasts run by conspiracists. I would bet money that the septuagenarian couple who watches the NBC Nightly News and reads the print local paper every morning is better informed than most of the “heterodox voices” out there.
It would also be fair to call me a "Dispatch conservative" or a "George Will style American conservative" (who writes for the MSM) — with Will's clarification that "American" does a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase, making it distinct from European blood and soil style conservatism, and emphasizing that the whole point is to conserve the enlightenment principles American liberal democracy is built on.
Great essay Megan, but once again, I must disagree with Hanania's seemingly arbitrary distaste for conservative media and everything that conservatives touch. One thing I have noticed from following Hanania over the past few months is that he *really* likes over-generalizations and omitting certain data points when it is convenient for him. There was a note that blew up last week pointing this out about him! National Review is certainly on par with the Times, and The Post is fairly reliable as well. Hanania also leaves out smaller reliable and conservative voices that have flocked to Substack such as Andrew Sullivan etc. Not all conservative media is Breitbart...!
Yes, I would put those with my Dispatch example as exceptions that don't have the capacity for the kind of international reporting power the NYT can muster. Love all those!
A very thoughtful essay, but there's just a massive asymmetry of effort in this discussion, one favoring MSM defenders. Bluntly, the media's most vocal critics often don't actually read it, or their audiences don't read it and then just credulously accept whatever is said about it (usually "I bet the media won't report on this!" - about a story that is either fake or being duly reported on - ad nauseum). It's considered naïve and, like you said, boring, to unapologetically stand by the default source of information, the same way that conspiracists roll their eyes at anyone who believes "the official story". But healthy skepticism doesn't mean that the official story is always wrong - that road just leads to a complete defection from information quality control, and our present madness where so many beliefs don't even try to optimize for accuracy.
I've said this elsewhere, but Wikipedia articles extensively cite mainstream media. Prediction markets use mainstream media as reliable sources to resolve bets. You can cite mainstream media in a college paper. It's like how Scott Alexander says "Western medicine" is just "medicine that works" - mainstream sources are just the sources that work.
I think one reason MSM criticism is so lazy and misinformed is because it's convenient. Reading the news as a habit takes time and patience, and it's easier to dismiss it as a sucker's game. When someone writes off vast swaths of literature as being unworthy of their time, we have to question whether they just want to do less reading.
I love that quip about western medicine, too! Such a grating phrase.
A whole lot of medicine from the west is not "western medicine" by that metric. Hence the ineffectiveness of marginally greater medical spending on health outcomes.
Certainly disproven medicine should be discarded, and as always "this human endeavor is inevitably flawed" — thus one of the points of this essay!
Perhaps it should be, but don't hold your breath. Medicine was on-net harmful until the 20th century, but people kept using it anyway, falsely believing that doctors had actual expertise. https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/03/31/medicine-as-a-pseudoscience/
"Compared to what?" Silence. Bryan Caplan argues that the media is worse than that. https://www.betonit.ai/p/mainstream-media-is-worse-than-silence https://www.betonit.ai/p/how-good-and-honest-is-the-media
To channel Richard's blunt edge: I'm capable of learning things I want to know from the mainstream media without getting taken in by the kind of biases Caplan complains about — and I don't want to lose that resource just because other people are too stupid to manage it. His paternalism is against my best interest.
Perhaps you believe you are, but most people don't believe they are being mislead by the media they consume (otherwise they would stop consuming it). Caplan chooses not to consume "news", and what has he lost out on? Richard himself is now denouncing uncensored social media, claiming it's worse than censorship. That is paternalism.
You ask what Caplan has lost out on by abstaining from news, but in order to answer that question... you need to read the news! Since I do, I'll give some examples:
-Interviews with powerful people who he'll never meet, like government officials, revolutionary leaders, etc. (examples: https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-ambassadors-farewell-warning-you-cant-ignore-the-impact-of-this-war-on-future-us-policymakers/ and https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/01/politics/ahmad-massoud-afghanistan-resistance-interview/index.html)
-Interviews with ordinary citizens of foreign countries who he'll never meet. (https://www.timesofisrael.com/he-will-rot-in-hell-iranians-remember-jimmy-carter-as-architect-of-sanctions/)
-Interviews with ordinary citizens of his own country, giving him a more accurate barometer of public opinion (https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/11/politics/cnn-poll-trump-transition/index.html)
-Updates about scientific discoveries (https://www.cnn.com/science/world-largest-prime-number-found/index.html)
-Foreign policy analysis from the perspective of Western adversaries (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/25/world/middleeast/iran-israel-hezbollah.html)
-Random shit, like uncontacted tribes (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/30/last-member-of-brazilian-indigenous-community-found-dead)
Of course you can become informed through other methods than just reading the news, but to act like it's worse than silence is just unserious. The people who do the work of actually reading the news (and of course the news teams themselves) are thanklessly responsible for so much of our information, including a lot of what Caplan knows through word of mouth.
This is what I mean by the asymmetry of effort in this discussion - you can get away with saying *anything* about sources that people are socially discouraged from reading, while it takes painstaking effort to lay out the obvious truth.
What is the value of those interviews?
The "work" of reading the news? News employees work. Consumers aren't paid for consuming, any more than they are paid for consuming fiction. The demand from consumers is instead what news serves, and those consumers (who are ignorant of what is being reported) are the real problem https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/the-real-problemhtml https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/who-wants-common-sensehtml We could imagine news that aimed at informing consumers, but that imagined scenario differs greatly from reality https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/news-as-if-info-matteredhtml If consumers wanted news to be accurate, that news could come with accuracy bonds ensuring a financial incentive https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/news-accuracy-bondshtml but consumers don't actually penalize news that much for inaccuracy.
Once you realize the lack of incentive for news to be informative, there's nothing "unserious" about Caplan's stance.
On censorship Hanania may be even worse than progs. IIRC he said he wouldn’t let them get away with nearly as much they let conservatives get away with! (Or once did let them get away with.)
Fantastic essay, Megan. I’ve come to the same position as you. I consider myself a Dispatch conservative and believe that some alternative media is of very high quality, but I’ve watched over the last ten years or so as many dear friends and otherwise bright people have (understandably) abandoned the MSM only to replace it with crackpot YouTube channels and podcasts run by conspiracists. I would bet money that the septuagenarian couple who watches the NBC Nightly News and reads the print local paper every morning is better informed than most of the “heterodox voices” out there.
It would also be fair to call me a "Dispatch conservative" or a "George Will style American conservative" (who writes for the MSM) — with Will's clarification that "American" does a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase, making it distinct from European blood and soil style conservatism, and emphasizing that the whole point is to conserve the enlightenment principles American liberal democracy is built on.
Powerful.
Great essay Megan, but once again, I must disagree with Hanania's seemingly arbitrary distaste for conservative media and everything that conservatives touch. One thing I have noticed from following Hanania over the past few months is that he *really* likes over-generalizations and omitting certain data points when it is convenient for him. There was a note that blew up last week pointing this out about him! National Review is certainly on par with the Times, and The Post is fairly reliable as well. Hanania also leaves out smaller reliable and conservative voices that have flocked to Substack such as Andrew Sullivan etc. Not all conservative media is Breitbart...!
Yes, I would put those with my Dispatch example as exceptions that don't have the capacity for the kind of international reporting power the NYT can muster. Love all those!