How To Repair The Western Press?

Roman got me thinking last week, about the central difficulty with western press’ reliance on telling both sides of the STATED story, instead of whether they tell the truth given the INCENTIVES of both sides, regardless of what they state.

Telling both sides merely gives the liars equal air play as the truth tellers.

And it’s much easier for a ‘journalist’ to report on someone’s feelings, and speech than it is to report on facts and incentives. It’s much easier to create moral outrage or high ground with verbalism that obscures incentives, rather than the incentives themselves.

To report ‘scientifically’ is possible with propertarian incentives and testimonial truth. We can systematically criticize what people say, and report on their incentives rather than their propaganda.

But that means retraining a lot of ‘journalists’ and eliminating the perverse incentives that we have produced with the popular press.

And the press, who free rides on destruction of the informational commons, may not like carrying the burden. On the other hand, we would have a lot fewer ‘journalists’ and they would be highly respected – and highly paid.

And I think that’s something all of us would like.