Interesting graph. While the trend since '93 shows high confidence is down, what's the explanation by the increase in high confidence since '14? Echo Chamber?

Sincliar is nuttier and more right wing than FOX.

News long ago became infotainment. Citizen cane is good film on this subject.

@brianl PBS?

The study claims that two-thirds of Facebook’s user base read their news on the platform, with 59 percent of Twitter users getting news on Twitter, and 70 percent of Reddit users doing the same with their respective platform.

Best idea is not to use any of these. As all of them are some kind of rusty bent pipe that redirects sewerage into your drinking water tap.

Where do you get your news? Many are getting it from Twitter since no one trusts big media. How about AJ?

good quote from Man on Fire movie:

Fuentes: You know, I-I'm a professional.
Creasy: That's what everybody keeps saying. "I'm just a professional". Everybody keeps saying that to me. "I'm just a professional", "I'm just a professional". I'm getting sick and tired of hearing that.

This is exactly about media and journalists. Some of them, being criminal gang, kill with words. They sow lies and reap deaths. But if something happens to them during their work... They are just professionals. Yeah, yeah.

@brianluce , I'll have to agree with @Vitaliy_Kiselev here, as I subscribe to a would-be Marxist understanding of how objective material forces produce culture and cultural artefacts. Taste is produced. Culture is produced. Start by reading some Karl Marx (it will be good for you. Coppola is doing it, and many other clever people read him too.) then graduate to more complex philosophers and social scientists. This is not a "Conspiracy Theory", this is what is known as Critical Theory. To put it in simple words, first they dumb you down, then they shape your opinion, then they ask your opinion -- conduct polls and invite you to participate in ritualistic voting for the puppet on the left or the puppet on the right. It's a closed logical loop - a tautology. And the most obscene thing is that they call it "Democracy", which is an insult to the principle.

The Universe may be "random". Hollywood most definitely is not - that's just not how Kapital works - that's not it's logic.

As to why Kim Kardashian dominates? ;D Ha-HA-HA I'll have to be more playful on this one .... cause she's a sexy foxy smoking-hot Armenian chick - but you can go to Armenia and find entire cities filled with chicks far hoter than Kim, the only "drawback" (or maybe advantage) is that they're not sluts like Kim Kardashian.

I can't believe the media is any sort of conspiracy - they're not that organised

Guys, you so like word "conspiracy". I am sure you can guess where you got the idea to use it in inappropriate places? I also like to see "not that organised" examples. May be 8/8 some of your mass media somehow had different position? May be they even called mr. president the criminal who must be prosecuted for that he done in Libya? No? How can it be? In this democratic(tm) and "we fight for freedom" companies? No, of course it is just completely independent positions that somehow always match.

My greatest hope, though, is that we can be liberated from the stranglehold of these big media companies, so we can freely produce as well as consume - but that might just be a dream!

Yep, it is just a dream. In current system.

Human taste is extremely far from random.

I concede this, but we are obviously a long way from the ability to predict it with any accuracy. JOHN CARTER. GIGLI. 13th WARRIOR

Or perhaps you have some evidence that Hollywood intentionally makes box office bombs?

The best infographic I could find that represents the media is this one.

I really suggest to read something how Hollywood and its financing works. And how random it can be :-)

Trust, I've read many account of adventure in film financing. Many Hollywood feature films fail. That's a fact. Or is there a mysterious off the books elite that actually profits from box office failures?

Human taste is random. Hollywood bases investments on what people like or what they think they will like. They can focus group things but ultimately it's human taste. You cannot make people drink and enjoy sour milk.

If you listen and watch media for years you make the certain model.

As I've said, my model is that the world is random, no real model at all. You are the one with the tight narrative in your head who makes news events confirm the model.