• Hey Guest,

    As you know, censorship around the world has been ramping up at an alarming pace. The UK and OFCOM has singled out this community and have been focusing its censorship efforts here. It takes a good amount of resources to maintain the infrastructure for our community and to resist this censorship. We would appreciate any and all donations.

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noname223

Archangel
Aug 18, 2020
5,426
You see VICE goes bankrupt, the BBC is under pressure can you see a similarity between both? I might be mentally unstable but even I know the reporting about this forum does not have a correlation even more no causation to the demise of media companies. I think the NYT is flourishing and personally if I were American I would probably watch a lot of PBS. However the last remark is pure speculation I don't know PBS enough maybe they are too centristic. In case that Trump gets elected the revenue of the media would go through the roof anyway.

I am subscriber of two outlets. I am a news addict and waste dozens of hours listening to articles. I am no expert on international news outlets but from what I heard I would never subscribe to VICE. Some of my concerns about VICE are shown in the reporting about this forum - however in this instance I am heavily biased so I will talk about my problems with the reporting style of VICE in general.

The reporting style of VICE is known as gonzo-style meaning that it involves the reporter as a participant in the story rather than an objective observer. They use very often informal language in order to be "trendy" and attractive for a young audicence. I have a huge problem with that. I perceive their attempt to gain popularity of the younger generation as needy, desperate and embarrassing. Cringe as the young people would say nowadays.

Moreover I think they suffer from audience capture. The following sums it up: Audience capture is a self-reinforcing feedback loop that involves telling one's audience what they want to hear and getting rewarded for it. VICE is by far not the only outlet that is influenced by that. I follow independent media and due to the fact they finance themselves on a grass-root level they are affected by it a lot.

However this is not my main criticism. I really hate as many others too strong emotionalization and hypermoralization of stories. Ironically I might suffer from the last point myself. I think many media outlets tend to hypermoralization. And due to the fact this pattern is adapted by myself I become an hypocrite myself. Maybe that is an exaggeration but it sounds cool and why not no one is paying me for these 1 million threads if you want to read good and coherent stories subscribe to an outlet that delivers texts without endless rambling and self-hatred. So where was I?

The over-emotionalization. In German there is the term borderline journalism but I think the word does not capture my perception perfectly. I think VICE did some stories which crossed lines in order to get the attention they wanted. Sometimes the content was disturbing and kind of edgy. They reported about extreme issues very explicitly. Personally I perceive that sensationalistic and cheap. I think some of their titles use clickbait. And I really hate such a behavior. I read they photoshopped smileys on the face of genocide victims. This is really horrible and there is not really a good excuse for that.

I prefer a news outlet with clear ethical standards. But this becomes very double-edged. Due to the fact one can perceive stories and headlines differently. The danger is that one only reads outlets which write what you want to hear. So you should not be too sensitive for comments you dislike.

I dislike emotionalization of stories. I have the feeling media companies chase the topic that sells the best currently like for example Andrew Tate or the psychotic episode of Kanye West. Though the real consequences are often not followed because the topic is outdated then. This is why we read too often about problems but never see a solution for them. I have the feeling also in my country that journalism is very paternalistic. They were the goatkeeper of debates which had advantages but they see how their power vanishes more and more. It is getting pretty hard to make money with journalism and the need for money can lead pretty quickly to corruption. I think the situation in the US is even more screwed compared to the German media landscape. I have the feeling sometimes the media tries to lecture the readers too much and the people dislike being treated like a child. Personally I have a huge issue with how the German media reports on assisted suicide. They distort the highest court ruling and are very onsesided in the way they report about it. Moreover the German people want to have liberal assisted suicide laws but due to the fact the whole media bubble only reports one narrative the people are not represented.

I hear the last argument from many people in my country. I am more satisfied than them on the diversity of opinions. Though it is a fact many people don't feel represented anymore by media outlets. Maybe fake news are a reason for that - or maybe it is true that the spectrum of allowed opinions becomes more and more narrow.

I hate the dramatization of stories they do it because they will get the most likes and clicks for that on social media. I think this might lead to shortterm profits but has no future on a longtime basis. Social media, the internet and globalisation have made our interconnected news system extremely fast. Sometimes the profound analysis of topics has suffered a lot due to that. There was a time I only read the free articles of newspapers. And they suck so much. The texts are extremely superficial and barely contain any value. It is clear the people are sick of that. So they turn for example to populistic (but eloquent) bullshitters on suicide forums who shit their half-knowledge on a daily basis for free on the internet.

I think I could go on for quite a time but I think noone will read it anyway. I think the thread would have had a potenital to talk more about the reporting of suicide related topics on the media. But I think that such an expressed schadenfreude for the demise of VICE would have had necessarily backfired on my person. I am full of misery and resentment already way too much there is no need to prove this even further.
 
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Ultracheese

Ultracheese

Arcanist
Dec 1, 2022
490
As someone who is a fan of gonzo journalism, I find Vice to be pretty distasteful. I find that the genre requires having a distinct voice that a lot of people just don't have (think of the work of Hunter S Thompson or even some of the nonfiction works of David Foster Wallace, though it's believed a lot of details of his nonfiction work were fabricated). You hit the nail right on the head when you mention the problem is that they're trying to pander to a very specific niche of upper-middle-class hipster millennials. As millennials begin to age out of a lot of the trappings that defined their youth, Vice hasn't changed their tactics to appeal to Gen Z and I think that is a big factor in their decline in relevance. Interestingly enough, Vice originally started as a punk zine. I enjoy a lot of their music criticism and Robert Christgau, considered one of the greats of music reviews, wrote there for a while which I think is neat.

I think the reason for the hyper-emotionalization in journalism is because of the pandering you mentioned earlier. Pathos is the term used for an argument that is based largely on appealing to one's emotions, and turning news stories into fables with lessons at the end of them is the way this is conducted nowadays. I would hesitate to call it propaganda, as that's quite a loaded term, but that's what this reeks of. It's interesting you mention someone like Tate because I believe he's someone who has thrived on the media's coverage of him. I have noticed (at least on my end) that Tate's appeal has gradually declined along with media coverage of him. A large part of his audience seems to have been attracted by the forbidden nature of what he was pushing. Now that that allure is gone, it seems he has lost a lot of his fanbase.

I think journalism has gotten superficial over time as you mentioned, and that's something I think about a lot as well. I do not buy the argument that people have gotten stupider over time. I also don't believe journalism has declined over time, and I think both of these are simplistic views that hide a lot of other issues going on. Mainly, the damaging effects the rise of anti-intellectualism has had. I think that as people have gotten more skeptical of intellectuals (who are traditionally wealthier than the majority of people), writers and other intellectuals have gone down two paths: pander to those they consider on a lower level than them (revealing their condescending nature) or "fight back" by striving to put more barriers than ever between who is considered worthy or important on that level. If that makes any sense. So much of this seems to be wrapped up in class divisions, in my opinion. I don't know if there's a solution to this but one of my most deeply held beliefs is that it should possible to be a "thinking intellectual" if you will, without having all the traditional trappings associated with that realm of people. I feel so many problems would be solved if we learned to stop associating critical thinking with professors and people on TV and the like, and instead believe that everyone is capable of great thoughts. Sorry about the tangent.
 
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Georg

Georg

Experienced
Feb 25, 2023
263
Hahaha nice, vice, lol!
I never liked this woke bullshit!
 
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Lawliet

Lawliet

b a n g
Sep 15, 2020
349
vice has always been a "news" outlet for like, gen z or millennials and they make up the majority of their content, especially the videos where they claim to show drug lords or crime people openly talking about their crimes and stuff. i used to like them before realizing how much BS they did, which is a shame because a lot of the content is enjoyable as just a piece of fiction rather than truth
 
borderline-feline

borderline-feline

Constantly Sleepy Catgirl
Dec 28, 2022
644
Vice hasn't been a real news outlet in years. I remember when I was younger and they had people going into dangerous places to document reality, but at some point, they decided to switch to outrage farming. I'm honestly happy that they're bankrupt considering that incredibly racist article they put out about the manga industry last year (I think it was last year).
 
no.hope

no.hope

Member
May 7, 2023
22
Vice hasn't been a real news outlet in years. I remember when I was younger and they had people going into dangerous places to document reality, but at some point, they decided to switch to outrage farming. I'm honestly happy that they're bankrupt considering that incredibly racist article they put out about the manga industry last year (I think it was last year).
i mean isnt that how news is now days? sort of like entertainment. if you logon to twitter you see the most useless , dumb & pathetic tweets when its about politics , most news networks have power packed breaking news sessions filled with action. we see this garbage not because its good journalism but because its entertaining. real news is meant to be boring and mundane.