Media and news

Q: Why do people trust some news sources more than others? A: A lot of it comes down to whether a source confirms what someone already believes, even though people rarely describe their own trust that way — they'll say a source is "balanced" or "accurate," which usually just means it agrees with them often enough not to feel challenging. There's also a track-record effect: an outlet that's been visibly wrong before loses trust much faster than it earns it back, so early credibility matters disproportionately. I don't think trust in news is purely rational, but it's not purely tribal either — it's some mix of accumulated track record and a comfortable alignment with what someone already thinks. Q: Should social media companies decide what is true? A: I'm uneasy giving that power to companies whose main incentive is engagement rather than accuracy, because those two goals don't always point the same direction — the most engaging content isn't necessarily the most true. At the same time, doing nothing clearly isn't neutral either; an unmoderated platform still shapes what spreads, just by algorithm rather than by policy. So I'd rather see the decision made transparently, with some outside accountability, than either left entirely to the platform or removed from platforms altogether — the second option just pushes the problem somewhere less visible. Q: Has the news become too negative? A: I think it's become more concentrated rather than strictly more negative — bad events have always outnumbered good ones in terms of what's reportable, but rolling, constant coverage means you now encounter that negativity continuously instead of in a single daily digest. That changes how it feels even if the underlying ratio of good to bad news hasn't shifted dramatically. So I'd say the world probably isn't worse than it was; it's that we're now exposed to its worst moments with far less of a break in between. Q: Is it healthy to follow the news every day? A: In moderation, I think it's genuinely useful — being informed about your own society is part of functioning as a citizen. But I'd distinguish between following the news and consuming it constantly throughout the day, because the second one produces anxiety that isn't matched by any corresponding benefit; refreshing a feed every hour doesn't make you more informed than checking once, it just makes you more anxious about the same information. So the question isn't really whether to follow the news, but how often, and I think most people would be better off with less frequency and more depth. Q: Do algorithms make people's news diet more narrow or more varied? A: Narrower, in my experience, even though the platforms themselves often claim the opposite. An algorithm optimised for engagement learns what keeps you watching and gives you more of exactly that, which tends to converge on a fairly small set of topics and viewpoints rather than expanding outward. The irony is that these systems have access to more variety than any human editor ever could, but they're not optimising for variety — they're optimising for attention, and attention narrows rather than broadens over time.