[HN Gopher] Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newsp...
___________________________________________________________________
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807)
Author : apsec112
Score : 266 points
Date : 2020-09-03 07:53 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (press-pubs.uchicago.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (press-pubs.uchicago.edu)
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| News organizations have to compete for people's attention so they
| present the news in a way that impacts people's emotions most
| strongly. Fear is a favorite subject. Most news is framed in a
| way that highlights how it MAY negatively effect the reader. FEAR
| is a very effective way to get and keep people's attention.
|
| Also, the news has to compete with entertainment so it's
| entertaining. It's the first "Reality TV." You may get some
| information that you can use but the goal is to keep your
| attention by entertaining you.
|
| Most people would be better informed by reading a newspaper once
| a week and spending the other free time reading a good book.
| Everyday news is a waste of time.
| minimuffins wrote:
| This post is unfairly downvoted. Downvoting is for content that
| violates community norms. This post doesn't do that.
|
| If you don't agree, just say why. Don't downvote.
| minimuffins wrote:
| This post is unfairly downvoted. Downvoting is for content
| that violates community norms. This post doesn't do that.
|
| If you don't agree, just say why. Don't downvote.
| krapp wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It
| never does any good, and it makes boring reading._
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| " I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is
| better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows
| nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with
| falsehoods & errors. "
|
| This is the best quote, because they sensed to be true what we
| now know is true for pew research data. The more you watch and
| read the news, the more likely you are to be less informed about
| the state of things.
|
| This is obviously the case when you recognize that the media
| focuses on the long tail of interesting topics. The average is
| never interesting enough to sell clicks/papers, so the entire
| focus is on outlier events (this is how Trump got focused on and
| eventually elected).
| lqet wrote:
| This reads like it is a statement about today's press
|
| > Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted
| vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known
| only to those who are in situations to confront facts within
| their knolege with the lies of the day. I really look with
| commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who,
| reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have
| known something of what has been passing in the world in their
| time; whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just
| as true a history of any other period of the world as of the
| present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to
| their fables.
| air7 wrote:
| I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately. It seems to me
| that the nefarious ways in which modern media operates are
| responsible for a large portion of the problems we see in the
| world today.
|
| That's because the world in general is doing better than ever in
| almost any measurable parameter, yet the general notion is that
| everything is going to shit. This has real world consequences
| such as violent riots, couples deciding not to bring a child into
| "this terrible world", depression etc.
|
| The mere choice of what is news worthy and how much coverage any
| one item gets already warps the mind's heuristics about how often
| this type of event occurs and thus how important it is. Add to
| that the "artistic licence" that reporters take (maliciously or
| otherwise) and the situation becomes really dire.
|
| The reason for this problem is that society has decided that news
| should be a form of entertainment, and news outlets are for-
| profit companies. Considering these incentives the current state
| seems inevitable.
|
| This has also led me to think of hypothetical solutions. I would
| argue that "The News" should be a non-profit, state funded entity
| (or entities). However, these must very much _not_ be state
| controlled but rather allowed to operate independently. A similar
| institution is the Judicial System, which doesn 't need to worry
| about clickbaiting titles for its rulings in order to fund
| itself, yet it has, ideally, full autonomy to procecute people in
| power if the need arises and we (society) take any attempt of
| collusion between state and court to be unacceptable.
|
| Similarly, an independent yet tax funded news agency can deliver
| boring, unentertaining news and facts to help save us from
| ourselves.
| brahweh wrote:
| > That's because the world in general is doing better than ever
| in almost any measurable parameter, yet the general notion is
| that everything is going to shit.
|
| If you're interested in reading more about this phenomenon, I'd
| recommend Factfulness by Hans Rosling. He discusses how
| statistics are often presented pessimistically, but if you look
| at our world as a complete system over time, things really are
| better than they've ever been in most cases. We just tend to
| overlook slow and steady improvement because it's boring, as
| you mention. And, his first global risk we should be on the
| lookout for is "global pandemic" (published 2018), so that's
| gotta count for something in supporting his arguments.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| I think there are plenty of things going wrong in the world as
| it exists today, at least as an American, that would dissuade
| me from having children. The exploding costs of childcare,
| healthcare, and education, let alone the impending crisis of
| climate change and ecological collapse, are all pretty scary.
| None of those things need to be exaggerated by the media.
| ledauphin wrote:
| I tend to think this proves the point.
|
| Healthcare and childcare and education are in fact (largely
| though not comprehensively) nonessential goods that are
| already in very many ways far better than they were 50 years
| ago. Childcare wasn't even a thing except for the incredibly
| wealthy until pretty recently. It would be very difficult to
| argue that the overall options for post-secondary education
| (and the number of people taking advantage of them) are not
| better than 30 years ago, even though their costs are known
| to be rising much faster than their quality. Most of the
| kinds of healthcare that are clearly price-gouging were not
| even categories of healthcare 50 years ago, and most of the
| ones that were are so qualitatively better now that we're
| comparing apples and oranges. Etc.
|
| Climate change is the one where by almost any objective
| measure we're headed for potentially irrecoverable
| catastrophe, and yet this one doesn't actually receive media
| coverage commensurate with the weight of the potential risk
| and its probability.
| kaesar14 wrote:
| Saying things like, "look, it really is better!" when wages
| haven't gone up in 50 years as college has gotten twice as
| expensive in the last 20 I think is really missing the
| point and being overly dismissive of people's life
| experiences.
|
| Price gouging because kinds of healthcare most people
| weren't really getting a few years ago? My best friend was
| billed 1100 dollars for an ambulance ride and 4000 dollars
| for a recent hospitalization that lasted 12 hours. Get out
| of here with this dismissive nonsense.
| ledauphin wrote:
| not intending to dismiss real challenges! merely pointing
| out that often news media talk about these things like
| society is crumbling, when they really aren't indicative
| of that.
| hprotagonist wrote:
| It is always, always worth remembering the truly vituperous
| hatred of the election of 1800. (and the fact that newspapers
| were truly partisan outfits)
|
| "don't vote for that guy, he's a french traitor who burns bibles!
| if you elect jefferson, rape and murder will be legal!"
|
| "oh yeah? well, my opponent's gunning to marry his kid off to the
| british crown and make us colonists again and establish an Adams
| dynasty!"
| loughnane wrote:
| This dovetails with something I've been thinking much about
| recently: providing a classical education, or at least a dose of
| it, to my kids. Jefferson was a big proponent of this as well [0]
|
| My reasoning is that there are few other venues that young
| people, in their formative years, encounter such examples of deep
| critical thinking. I used to think it snobbery to reference
| Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, etc. But reading the Republic, Apology,
| Ethics, etc. really prompts you to think about your life and how
| it relates to other in a society in a very meaningful way. It
| also teaches you to be more critical of all ideas.
|
| It seems to me that such perspectives are more important now than
| they've ever been. Jefferson and others have espoused the idea
| that an educated populace is required for a functioning
| democracy. While that may have been true in the 18th century, it
| is certainly more poignant in a world where people have an
| instant and unending stream of comment and opinion coming to them
| wherever they are.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_education...
| rement wrote:
| This reminds me of a T.S. Eliot quote
|
| > Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
|
| > Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
| busterarm wrote:
| Unschooling/Home-schooling + https://www.sjc.edu/ (if they want
| to) IMO
| burkaman wrote:
| Looking at https://www.sjc.edu/academic-
| programs/undergraduate/great-bo..., this is definitely a good
| list of "foundational texts of Western civilization" as they
| say, but the world is a lot more interconnected than it was
| in 1696, and this curriculum leaves out most of it. There's
| nothing wrong with studying one part of the world or one
| community of ideas as long as you're open about it, but I
| don't think I would be comfortable calling this a well
| rounded education in the modern world.
|
| The about page says "students study the works of history's
| greatest thinkers." I mean, come on. There's not a single
| "great thinker" in all of history outside of Europe, the
| Roman Empire, and the US? How are you supposed to defend the
| ideas of Western Civilization if you have no idea what the
| alternatives are?
|
| It reminds me a little of some culinary schools where the
| whole curriculum is based on French cooking, and you take
| like one class on "global cuisine" that covers the entire
| rest of the world. You can't pick one focus area and claim
| it's all you need for a full education.
| simonsarris wrote:
| A classical _and_ a mythological education are both important
| and missing today. I wrote recently:
|
| > A mythological education is distinct from the common school
| subjects. It builds in the mind intuition for second-order
| effects, for the first lesson a child learns from one hundred
| stories is that every thing you do will have unintended
| consequences, something years of schoolwork fails to teach.
| Myths give us shared art and common culture--a set of
| characters with which we can play in and enjoy together. In any
| culture rich with myths, their vocabulary is enlarged far
| beyond words, to allegories and metaphors. The quality of
| thought follows.
|
| (To this end I've been writing a book of fables, mostly for my
| children, but serializing them by newsletter right now, which
| is turning out more popular than I expected.)
| Izkata wrote:
| > Myths give us shared art and common culture--a set of
| characters with which we can play in and enjoy together. In
| any culture rich with myths, their vocabulary is enlarged far
| beyond words, to allegories and metaphors.
|
| _Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra_
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Darmok and Gilad, at Tinagra.
|
| This has been a discussion for some time with my friends, the
| utility of religion in humanity for social purposes and
| communications purposes.
|
| I hadn't thought much of the importance of "studying the
| classics" to the ends of teaching cultural vocabulary, but I
| do think critical thinking and logic should be core subjects
| like math and reading.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| I think this is very insightful, and is touched on quite a
| bit in Harari's Sapiens, which is alluded to in a sibling to
| parent post, which also mentions Jefferson:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24364993
|
| I picked up an old copy of Grimm's Tales on a whim and read
| some every now and then before bedtime. Also Aesop's fables
| just to refresh my memory of them. I enjoy them both and
| think it's a worthwhile format.
| antipaul wrote:
| We have a hard time talking to each other these days (eg,
| Republicans vs Democrats in US).
|
| So I also feel that education, specifically a liberal arts
| foundation, could broaden people's minds so that we're not just
| shouting at each other, but can actually converse as somewhat
| rational beings.
| Loughla wrote:
| But this boils down to initially defining the "purpose" of
| education. The US can't even agree on what the purpose of
| education is. Many see it as you do - broaden minds and
| encourage thinking. Many others see it as life-skills
| 'training' designed to teach adult survival skills. Still
| others think education should point specifically, and
| directly to work, or, in other words, be 'job-skills' based.
|
| We don't even have a clear understanding of what is best, nor
| do we have an agreement on when each serves its best purpose.
| The whole thing is a mess.
| waterheater wrote:
| Just the USA? Humanity has differences on the purposes of
| education. For example, should education only be for men?
| In some parts of the world, yes.
|
| >The whole thing is a mess.
|
| Then let's use different terms to refer to the reality of
| these differences. Here's a first crack:
|
| Educating includes broadening minds and encouraging
| thinking.
|
| Training includes the dictation of knowledge and
| application of specific skills.
|
| Learning "life-skills" is a specific but important part of
| training.
|
| All educating includes training, but not all training
| includes education.
|
| The terms "education" and "training" are often conflated
| and should not be.
| blhack wrote:
| It's just so sad. The biggest one lately for me has been watching
| the riots which are happening all over the US. The really crazy
| thing is that all of these things are livestreamed usually by 10s
| of people in every city, who are standing a few feet from the
| people burning buildings and attacking people. You can virtually
| attend all of these things from your office.
|
| To watch buildings burning, people chanting that they want to
| abolish the police, or burn peoples homes "fire fire
| gentrifier.", "out of your homes and into the streets" (while
| throwing things at windows, spray painting the outsides of homes,
| and shooting fireworks at homes), "all cops are bastards" etc.
|
| And then to see reported in the news that these people are
| "peaceful". It's a sort of paranoid schizophrenia that I think
| we're seeing. People are watching their own cities burn, then
| reading CNN say that it's all fake, and that there is such a
| thing as peaceful arson, or a peaceful riot, that somehow looting
| is justified, and repeating that.
|
| The news isn't just wrong at this point, they are actively trying
| to mislead people. It's really, really awful.
| TheGrim-888 wrote:
| It's really disheartening. Until recently I lived in Capitol
| Hill, Seattle, 4 or 5 blocks away from CHAZ/CHOP. I saw with my
| own eyes what was happening. I saw with my own eyes buildings
| get set on fire multiple times within a block of my apartment.
| I saw with my own eyes the riots, looting, violence, nightly
| political shows of force. Just two days ago they were molotov
| cocktailing a police precinct. There's even video evidence of
| all of this.
|
| Yet all I read about on mainstream news is how it's actually
| mostly peaceful. I see Facebook friends who live 2000 miles
| away from Seattle re-posting news articles about how there's
| nothing really going on in Seattle. But I've seen with my own
| eyes what's going on.
|
| It's really approaching a 1984 level of situation, where we're
| expected to just believe whatever we're told, even if we
| obviously see the problems. Where everybody is supposed to just
| accept what the media is telling us, rather than what we can
| see is happening. If they want something to disappear (like
| rioters throwing molotov cocktails) they just don't report on
| it, and it ceases to exist. But you can bet if a Republican
| starting throwing molotovs for their political beliefs it'd be
| front-page CNN for days on end. It's all so political and so
| manipulative.
| SQueeeeeL wrote:
| It's not that I _don 't_ believe you, it's that I would
| _love_ to see the videos of this happening and not just you
| promising me super hard that you saw it _with my own eyes_
| (which you somehow dropped 4 times in your post)
| unethical_ban wrote:
| To be clear, it is not that bad, which is the point. Many
| cities protested without these issues. Most protesters are
| nonviolent. Most cops are not directly evil (murder, assault,
| intimidation).
| jjcon wrote:
| Hilariously - the protests really are mostly peaceful and the
| police really are mostly good.
| stevula wrote:
| That does not match my experience at all with the many peaceful
| protests in SF lately. Your sources may be cherry-picking to
| push a certain political narrative.
| tdfx wrote:
| I'm genuinely happy that SF is seeing peaceful protests, but
| I spent 2 weeks driving through National Guard checkpoints in
| my city due to violent unrest, and I'm aware of at least 5
| other cities who were similarly affected. Minimizing the
| presence of violence on either side is wrong. The "few bad
| apples" narrative doesn't work for cops or protesters, or we
| wouldn't be seeing what we're seeing.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| The police and the general population have very different
| flavors of bad apple.
|
| The "good" protestors have no ability nor obligation to
| remove or control the "bad" ones. It's shameful that some
| see fit to dismiss the message of them all for the actions
| of a few. And anyway, the goodness or badness of violent or
| riotous protests through the lens of history is more than a
| little bit complicated.
|
| The police do have such an ability and obligation. They are
| organized and they are in a position of power. It is
| shameful that some see fit to excuse the entire enterprise
| because not all cops are bad.
|
| Neither is as simple as that.
| [deleted]
| tomatotomato37 wrote:
| The complete disregard for locality and generalizations
| over an entire continent-sized country don't help either.
| It's like if a report on the Belarus election situation was
| used to insist the entirety of the EU was collapsing, while
| at the same time a report over protests in, I dunno, Sweden
| was used to show that everything in Belarus is peaceful.
| [deleted]
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| I would bet the press is talking about different people than
| the ones you are watching.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| Maybe take a weekend and go to a protest yourself?
|
| I think you would be pleasantly surprised.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Don't think that just because you're your own editor you can't
| be deceived by editing. You're feeding yourself with the
| material that you're seeking out.
|
| edit: just spend a day only looking up the millions peacefully
| marching, rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams. (Also,
| give me some information about the people you've seen attacking
| and burning private residences, because I don't know of a
| single example of this.)
|
| After the day you can go back to watching what you normally
| watch, but if you can't find all of these boring people walking
| through the streets with signs, I don't know what to tell you.
| If the millions protesting actually had the aim of burning
| middle-class people out of their homes, middle-class people
| would have been burned out of their homes.
|
| If there's any problem imo, it's that the protests are
| generally unfocused street wandering. If there were a specific
| focus or target, they would be effective at accomplishing that
| target. But when the target becomes anything other than
| generalized racism, the ad-hoc coalitions fall apart.
| [deleted]
| blhack wrote:
| I think your comment here perfectly illustrates exactly the
| problem I'm talking about.
|
| >rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams.
|
| These aren't "right wing livestreams". It's people, at the
| protests, with cameras. Some of the bigger ones are people
| like Unicorn Riot, who has been active in Minneapolis for
| quite some time, and Regg Ikagnedo.
|
| In some cases, the "press" end up being protestors themselves
| and end up fighting with the police. I really struggle to
| understand why you would cast any of this as right wing.
| throwawayhacka wrote:
| Yes, the protests are 'mostly peaceful' and any violence is
| due to reactionaries.
| margalabargala wrote:
| I don't think anyone is claiming the protests are 100%
| peaceful. The question, then, is how much violence occurs
| relative to total protest activity?
|
| If fewer than 50% of protestors engage in violence,
| wouldn't it then be accurate to describe the protest as
| 'mostly peaceful'?
| [deleted]
| dependenttypes wrote:
| > rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams
|
| What? Are you seriously claiming that all of the livestreams
| that display riots are from right wind people? And even if
| they were, would it mean that they are fake or what?
|
| Anyway, you can just go and see some of the aftermath images
| that the media publish.
| tantaman wrote:
| picture of the original writing:
| https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=tex...
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| > Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted
| vehicle.
|
| Damn.
|
| > I really look with commiseration over the great body of my
| fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the
| belief, that they have known something of what has been passing
| in the world in their time;
|
| Double Damn.
| erikig wrote:
| I had a chuckle at this proposal:
|
| "...Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way
| as this.
|
| Divide his paper into 4 chapters: heading the 1st, Truths. 2d,
| Probabilities. 3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies"
| njarboe wrote:
| I would pay quite a bit for a newspaper in Jefferson's proposed
| format. To be quite certain that something is true for current
| events, the reports on those events would likely have to be
| delayed days or weeks after they broke. I would be fine with that
| and is the complete opposite of today's instant, viral seeking,
| click-bait, emotionally charged media landscape.
|
| Edit:It would be even better if this paper was connected to a
| prediction market where people could bet real money on if the
| "Truths" and "Probabilities" events will be shown to be false at
| certain time steps in the future.
| Shoreleave wrote:
| The closest thing might be the bloomberg terminal. It costs 2k
| a month, but you can get a news feed of the topics you care
| about and it will be accurate and factual. And then people
| instantly make bets based on that news.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > it will be accurate and factual
|
| We're still waiting for the Supermicro retraction.
| njarboe wrote:
| That was a "hard to believe this is true, but it is in
| Bloomburg" moment for me.
|
| A nice summary of the situation a year after the article
| came out in 2018 can be found here[1]. I wonder what their
| rational for not retracting the story. Just one little line
| somewhere that few would notice would have put the
| controversy to rest, but if they did it now. so late after
| the fact, it would just add to the intrigue instead of
| diffuse it.
| njarboe wrote:
| 2k a month is not in my current (one can dream) budget for
| news sources, but I would like to check one out sometime. I
| don't need the real time option, which is much of what people
| pay the 2k for, so maybe a 15 minute delay option, like there
| used to be with free stock quotes, could be a lot cheaper.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| > The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only
| to those who are in situations to confront facts within their
| knolege with the lies of the day
|
| Well ain't this the cold, hard truth, eh HN? How many times have
| we seen science and technology just completely butchered,
| twisted, manipulated, or sometimes, all three, by the "truth-
| seeking journalists" over there at the establishment media
| companies? Yet we [willfully] ignorantly turn the page to the
| next section, say on sports or local affairs, and assume we are
| being fed facts.
| onorton wrote:
| There's a name for this cognitive bias but I always forget what
| it's called. Something to do with the reader's expertise in one
| field being able to pick out flaws but not in other fields from
| the same source.
| waihtis wrote:
| Gell-Mann Amnesia: https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-
| amnesia/
| altcognito wrote:
| More dangerous are the people who would implore you to ignore
| all sources from what they perceive are enemies and pay
| attention only to their (or your own) bubble and prejudices.
|
| Posts with catch phrases like "establishment media companies"
| are usually a red flag.
|
| This submissions feels more like launching point for arguing,
| little value to community.
| liability wrote:
| > _Posts with catch phrases like "establishment media
| companies" are usually a red flag._
|
| That's pretty flimsy evidence to accuse somebody of
| wrongthink.
| altcognito wrote:
| It's an ill defined phrase. I didn't accuse anyone of
| "wrongthink", whatever that means.
| liability wrote:
| By 'wrongthink' I'm refering to the insinuation that
| people who use such a phrase might be suspected of being
| 'dangerous'. Dangerous as in _" More dangerous are the
| people who would [...]"_
|
| Use of the phrase _" establishment media companies"_
| seems like poor evidence for accusing somebody of being
| dangerous. But perhaps I misread your comment and the
| remark about red flags had nothing to do with your
| previous remark about dangerous people?
| disown wrote:
| > More dangerous are the people who would implore you to
| ignore all sources from what they perceive are enemies and
| pay attention only to their (or your own) bubble and
| prejudices.
|
| Okay.
|
| > Posts with catch phrases like "establishment media
| companies" are usually a red flag.
|
| Wait. Aren't you doing what you say is the "more dangerous"?
|
| > This submissions feels more like launching point for
| arguing, little value to community.
|
| So lets nip it in the bud and prevent discussion? Your
| comment feels like an attempt to curtail an interesting
| discussion before it happens because it threatens your own
| bubble and prejudices.
| altcognito wrote:
| I'm labeling specific content based on reason, not using
| weakly defined identity as a flag for concern.
|
| So, similar concerns, different approaches that yield very
| different results.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| Tell me honestly please. Would you rather trust a media
| company that is funded by the government or one that is not?
| The whole "establishment media companies" thing is not just a
| joke but rather actual companies that try to portray
| narratives that work out for them.
| mrfusion wrote:
| Best to look at raw data and original sources whenever
| possible. The media is an unreliable middleman.
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| on finding primary sources and analysing secondary:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23897577
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| Lot's of assumptions in this here reply that I would be happy
| to report back to you are incorrect (such as the one that I
| or others who feel this way subscribe to a certain particular
| "bubble", or that I am suggesting in any way shape or form
| you ignore anything)
|
| And since you brought up feelings, this reply to my post
| feels like I may have struck a nerve with one of the
| aforementioned "establishment media companies" that you may
| hold near and dear to your heart. Is this how constructive
| conversation works?
|
| How about this: let's talk about the situation I alluded to
| in my original comment, something called the Gell-Mann
| Amnesia effect. Something that has countless documented
| occurrences in (sorry to use this word again) establishment
| media companies. Does this meet your criteria for providing
| value to the community?
| altcognito wrote:
| Claiming someone is responding to you is "triggered" is
| tiresome. Another red flag, and yes, you're fitting a
| particular profile. A constructive conversation can still
| be had, but I'm not particularly interested in Gell-Mann
| Amnesia which you alluded to in your last post because I
| [don't] think a focus on "newspapers" is very accurate or
| interesting.
|
| Newspapers are no different than anything else. Errors are
| found in all writing.
|
| My only points are: Evaluating truth based on the identity
| of the source instead of the content in question is not a
| good approach. Journals, thesis can and are all written
| with errors and misleading information.
|
| I stand by original comment that this thread and the
| content was put here to cause injury to the a persons
| confidence that they can know what is happening in the
| world from reading the news. Which is a very particular
| viewpoint.
| throwaway212135 wrote:
| How nice of you to choose what what you think we are capable
| of discussing.
| [deleted]
| abrbhat wrote:
| Whenever I think of media, I keep going back to Rita Skeeter from
| Harry Potter. It seems a very appropriate metaphor that there is
| no personal ill-will on the part of the reporter but still the
| quill just keeps writing in a scandalous way.
| monkeynotes wrote:
| I don't understand how we as a society turn a blind eye to being
| surrounded by lies and misdirection. It's well known to be a
| folly and well documented that governments the world over abuse
| their position of first hand knowledge to redirect and re-cast
| truth, and manipulate public opinion in their favour[1][2].
|
| Perhaps at my age I have come to see patterns and have come to
| understand that pretty much everything I don't have first hand
| experience of is likely to be distorted to a lesser or greater
| extent. This is not only true of news and public discourse, but
| also in my personal life. People naturally bend reality to fit
| their beliefs, world views, and often to just tell a good story.
|
| I am sure many adults are aware of this, but we never really talk
| about it. Children are not educated about the nature of this
| problem. We are not taught to think about the nature of
| information we consume, and yet many of us know our lives are
| surrounded by lies and manipulators.
|
| Manipulative advertising and government deception, both of which
| have reams of psychological research backing their strategies,
| dominate a majority of our lives and yet we don't educate each
| other as such.
|
| I am very sad to come to realize that TV shaped my beliefs
| growing up, and it was mostly based on myths driven by
| advertising dollars. Obviously entertainment is not going away,
| and nor should it, but we should have discourse highlighting who
| drives the narrative. One of the few facts we can know is little
| of what we learn is truly verifiable - knowing that is hugely
| helpful and allows us to make better decisions about what we
| value in life.
|
| [1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-
| wh... [2] https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-
| magazine/2008/f...
| lemonlizzie wrote:
| Well stated.
| draw_down wrote:
| Every generation thinks they invented sex, and lying.
| tdeck wrote:
| Most of the comments here are missing a big part of the context:
| newspapers in the early 1800s didn't do journalism as we know it
| today. Most relied entirely on rumors and letters that crossed
| their desk, combined with cribbing old stories from the foreign
| press. Newspaper staff was often just one or two people doing the
| writing, marketing, and distribution (and often the typesetting
| too). There wasn't this idea that a journalist should be
| conducting interviews or investigating stories or even arriving
| at the scene of anything. Most papers were funded largely by
| political patronage as well.
|
| For a great book on the history of American journalism I
| recommend "Infamous Scribblers" by Eric Burns.
| gxqoz wrote:
| By the American Revolution, newspapers were getting closer to our
| modern perception of them. But for the hundreds of years between
| their ostensible invention in Germany and the late 18th century
| they were quite different. Many only reported foreign news (in
| part to avoid domestic topics that may have been more sensitive).
| They offered very little in terms of editorial. In France, one
| particularly dull one was granted a monopoly, stopping
| competition.
|
| Andrew Pettegree's Invention of the News covers this in much
| greater detail:
| https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/19/invention-news...
|
| One other interesting anecdote from the book: For quite some
| time, the identity of who was conveying the news was paramount. A
| nobleman's wild story would be given more stock from contemporary
| audiences than several eyewitness accounts from commoners.
| dublin wrote:
| Fake News is far more common than people think (not just the
| Gell-Mann effect, but that helps...) I quit trusting anything I
| saw in the media in 1998, when my wife and I saw NBC totally
| faking a hurricane report in Corpus Christi. The reporter was
| in a rain slicker, and there was a lackey standing off-camera
| with a hose spraying water. Corpus was on the dry side of a
| hurricane deep in the Gulf that wound up hitting near Yucatan -
| winds were up, but there wasn't a cloud for 400 miles. Fake
| News then, even faker news now.
| war1025 wrote:
| Actual news these days comes from message boards such as
| this.
|
| TV / Radio news is little better than entertainment.
|
| The trouble the news industry is having is that you can get
| an equal amount of information from social media without all
| the holier-than-thou garbage coming from news anchors.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| I don't feel that way. Social media circulates a lot of
| weird takes. For the many, many hot topics of 2020, I hear
| a lot of opinions that are something like, I'm bored of
| this so it's not important and it's all fake news anyway so
| I can make up my own story. That's a take that sounds like
| it should be quiet but it's instead really noisy.
|
| Not really a replacement for quality journalism.
| war1025 wrote:
| > Not really a replacement for quality journalism.
|
| The trouble (in my opinion) is that major networks don't
| really offer much in the way of "quality journalists."
|
| They've mostly devolved into getting hot takes from
| pundits and "rah rah our team is great".
|
| I listen to (and donate to) NPR (Iowa Public Radio
| specifically) because I think they are about as good as
| you can get for "quality journalism", but even their work
| devolves into garbage as soon as politics or culture come
| into play.
|
| It probably doesn't help that a few years ago they redid
| their program structure to focus less on news and more on
| "think pieces" [1]
|
| [1] https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2018/08/16/
| 6392099...
| Loughla wrote:
| I don't know why, but the thought that 'trustworthy' news
| sources are pseudo-anonymous or actually anonymous sources
| on a message board scares the ever-loving-shit out of me.
| blueridge wrote:
| Good books to read on the subject:
|
| 1) Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle
|
| 2) Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in
| America
|
| 3) Jacques Elull, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes
| minimuffins wrote:
| The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's
| going on in the world is really debilitating.
|
| I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major
| outlets with a bunch of different political alignments, and to be
| honest, I don't really know why I even do it.
|
| By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a
| picture of what might have happened, according to a handful of
| corporations whose job it is to turn the smallest amount of
| factual raw material into maximally entertaining spectacle. The
| factual raw material can even be done away with sometimes as
| evidenced by how much of the news is just media reporting on
| itself (often centering on Twitter!).
|
| There is not a technical solution to any of this.
| "Decentralization" into forums and social media and whatnot is
| not a solution. At best it's a good way for some of us to discuss
| the problem among ourselves as it unfolds. Decentralization is
| better termed "de-professionalization." The institutions which
| used to, at the very least, dedicate serious resources to going
| out into the world and gathering facts no longer function
| properly or just don't exist.
|
| I remember seeing an interview with Christopher Hitchens where
| somebody asked him how he informed himself about the world, what
| news he liked to read. He said, not much. Mostly he relied on
| people he knew personally in various parts of the world who have
| firsthand experience and write him about it. Must be nice!
| iagovar wrote:
| Specialized publications. But you have to pay for them, and
| they typically aren't really the news, and use some jargon.
| NortySpock wrote:
| "The truth is paywalled, but the lies are free..."
|
| https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-truth-is-
| paywalle...
| screye wrote:
| > Mostly he relied on people he knew personally in various
| parts of the world who have firsthand experience and write him
| about it. Must be nice
|
| It is not that difficult.
|
| In the world of internet, there are many prolific writers who
| have lived very public lives. There are quite a few specific
| opinion/news writers who I've read long enough to know their
| biases or the lack there of, depending on what they are
| reporting. These individual actors being the feet-on-the-ground
| lends a large amount of credibility to them as well.
| fapi1974 wrote:
| My solution is I read the Economist and the Sunday NYT (which
| admittedly skews too much these days but then I guess so do I).
| The 1 week lag gives things time to settle. And I love the
| ritual of the paper.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| The vast vast majority of news isn't actionable in our daily
| lives, at all. At the core of it, we read the news to satisfy
| our human curiosity.
|
| Once I came to realize this, it was like a weight was lifted
| off me. For the last few months, I've only been reading news
| regarding specific topics I'm genuinely interested in (new
| gadgets, tech/startups in general, new skyscraper projects,
| etc).
|
| This way, it's like I'm reading books about my interests that
| were written very very recently. General news seems to add a
| net negative to my life with very little upside, so I just
| stopped reading it.
| andi999 wrote:
| Customers of newspaper pay for the political aligned viewpoint,
| most people like their viewpoint confirmed. Look out for people
| needing information to make money. Money does not care about
| political bias. E.g. I think the "financial times" quite
| unbiased (of course there is no perfection).
| minimuffins wrote:
| Political alignment isn't the problem. Every outlet will spin
| the same facts differently, sometimes intentionally sometimes
| not, because of this or that ideological commitment. They
| will choose which facts to foreground and which to background
| ("framing"), etc, etc, all that media studies stuff. Bias is
| fine. There is no such thing as an unbiased media outlet.
|
| I'm talking about a different problem, which is that
| increasingly, the basic facts don't even enter into the
| discourse at all! That's the case because the institutions
| that used to carry out the basic functions of journalism are
| now facing tons of pressure to cut their costs, and all of
| that.
|
| Disruptive "decentralization" pressure from the tech
| industry, often discussed as a "solution" to this mess, is
| actually a major cause. And it's of course not a solution at
| all because it has no answer to the basic material problem:
| once we've defunded traditional journalism, who is actually
| going to do the work? News is basically the production of
| information about the facts of unfolding world events. Now
| that we have no foreign correspondents etc, news ends up just
| being the production of information about the news itself
| (the only part left is the bias!). How long can we keep doing
| this, I wonder?
| jariel wrote:
| Handy tip: to get the politics of a nation, read the news on it
| by some paper outside the nation.
|
| So reading the BBC for US news gives you something fairly
| readable.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| What I see is that foreign news have no idea of what is
| happening in my country, they all just repeat some
| superficial and normally wrong pieces.
|
| At the same time, domestic media is all lying through their
| teeth.
|
| With some work one can disecate the news, separate what can't
| possibly be lies (because it would lead to problems), and
| reassembly something into an overall picture. (Who has the
| time for all this?) But one can never know what is being
| omitted, either intentionally or by incompetency.
| Bud wrote:
| The Guardian actually does a very fine job covering US
| news.
| jariel wrote:
| The Guardian is super biased and narrative driven - most
| outlets in the UK are. The BBC less so, and oddly, the
| FT's coverage tends to be very demure.
| jariel wrote:
| The BBC is not 'wrong' - it's maybe just superficial and
| doesn't have enough detail.
|
| The anecdotes about 'lying press' on this thread are
| misleading. 'Respected' news entities do not just 'make
| stuff up'. Definitely no the BBC, they have standards.
|
| The problem with the bigger agencies is narrative bias, and
| yes, if 'within America' the narrative is pushed to 'one
| side' hard by the local press, then the international press
| will be influenced by that, but it's not as bad.
|
| Edit: got to CNN.com right now and give some examples of
| their 'blatant lying'. Because they're not. Editorial bias,
| of course, but 'making up stories' - this is wrong. The
| onus would be on you to provide evidence they are doing
| this consistently.
| zo1 wrote:
| Yeah but they'll skew it based on their political leanings,
| too. They're just a little less invested in the geographic
| details. But ideologically, they want to convince/captivate
| people to their point of view.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I think the best approach is to read a story from a left, right
| and centrist source. The intersection of "facts" is probably
| all true and the things that point far one direction or the
| other are probably in the middle somewhere.
| staplers wrote:
| I've found that even "liberal" media is heavily biased to
| favor corporate sponsors.
|
| Sometimes journalists can sneak small (actually) progressive
| articles through but are often followed up by large front-
| page hit pieces on those same ideas.
| necrotic_comp wrote:
| That's because "liberal" in the U.S. typically means "neo-
| liberal", so the focus on corporate sponsors shouldn't be a
| surprise.
| dependenttypes wrote:
| Liberal globally refers to economic liberalism - that is,
| capitalism.
| chongli wrote:
| This is the argument to moderation [1] also known as the
| golden mean fallacy. If one person says the sky is blue and
| another person says the sky is yellow, by taking the middle
| position you would conclude that the sky is green. This is
| clearly not correct.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| That's such a stupid example though. I'd assume the sky was
| looking in such a way that it could be interpreted as
| either. A nice sunset gradient perhaps? Averaging the color
| spectrum values or hypothetically mixing colors is
| ridiculous.
|
| If you have reason to assume atleast some measure of good
| faith, I think it's reasonable to try to cancel out biases
| between sources to get closer to the truth.
| TheDong wrote:
| This reads to me like saying "the best way to determine if
| god exists is to read the hebrew bible, the koran, and the
| book of mormon and take the average".
|
| It starts with the assumption left, right, and centrist
| sources all have biases, but those biases cancel out. That
| the "middle" of those things is meaningfully better.
|
| I see no evidence that that's the case. All popular news
| sources these days seem to be biased towards corporate
| profit.
|
| "Left" and "right" both exist relative to each other more
| than they exist relative to the truth.
|
| Reading several news sources to find the truth begs the
| question of if modern news sources, regardless of political
| bent, are meaningful sources of factual information vs
| sources of advertisements and outrage.
|
| For the sake of presenting a counter argument, I think that
| keeping up with the constant inflow of news doesn't get you
| meaningfully closer to the truth compared to reading well-
| regarded books on recent history around the world, and using
| that as a lens to understand the present. Well-regarded non-
| fiction books are generally better researched than stories on
| "this senator just had a haircut", and the recent past shapes
| the present significantly, not to mention repeats itself
| shockingly often.
|
| By reading left and right sources, you're assuming you can
| find similar stories on similar matters, when the most
| important matters are not "the president tweeted X" (which
| both sources will report on), but rather information about
| the structure of cities, the human condition, and changes
| thereof ("a postmortem on this transit project shows that we,
| as a society, should think in this way"), which usually no
| news agency will report on. It's just too dry, unless the
| researcher dresses it up and makes it flashy.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| The thing with those books is, they are 100% based on
| faith. There are no underlying facts that they're based on.
| They're independently constructed origin myths and
| allegorical morality tales.
|
| With an article in the NYT, it's a narrative representation
| of objective facts as filtered through the lens of a
| reporter. If you think it's B.S. check Reuters, check WaPo,
| check NPR, hell check Fox reporting on the same core set of
| facts.
|
| If the story is important, it's going to be out on the wire
| feeds, and other major outlets. The narratives average out,
| the facts (mostly) stay the same.
|
| That's the whole point of college. So we can learn to think
| about complicated things and draw on multiple sources to
| paint a cohesive picture.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Well said. The problem is not bias but just the absence of
| any real content.
|
| What happened in the world today? CNN: Trump is rude and
| orange! etc.
| [deleted]
| ardy42 wrote:
| > The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know
| what's going on in the world is really debilitating.
|
| Honestly, I think the standards you seem to be setting for
| yourself are too high. As far as I know, none of us are God, so
| it is completely impossible for us to know what's going on in
| the world.
|
| > according to a handful of corporations whose job it is to
| turn the smallest amount of factual raw material into maximally
| entertaining spectacle.
|
| Which ones are you referring to, specifically? While there are
| certainly some companies that just want to turn the news into
| "entertaining spectacle," I think it's over-cynical to say they
| all do. I try to focus on the ones that seem to feel they have
| a duty to report on the news and columnists who seem to feel
| they have something important to say (and whose columns are
| interesting enough that that may actually be true).
|
| > There is not a technical solution to any of this.
| "Decentralization" into forums and social media and whatnot is
| not a solution. At best it's a good way for some of us to
| discuss the problem among ourselves as it unfolds.
| Decentralization is better termed "de-professionalization." The
| institutions which used to, at the very least, dedicate serious
| resources to going out into the world and gathering facts no
| longer function properly or just don't exist.
|
| I totally agree with you here about de-professionalization, but
| I'm less dejected about traditional news gathering
| institutions. They're definitely on the decline, but they're
| not dead yet. Some are still soldiering on and functioning
| reasonably well, especially if you're interested in
| national/international news or live in a major city.
| andreilys wrote:
| _" I try to focus on the ones that seem to feel they have a
| duty to report on the news"_
|
| Can you share an example? I have trouble coming up with any
| which aren't burdened with profit or idealogical motives.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| I think wire services are generally pretty good, and
| Wikipedia Current Events Portal has a decent roundup of
| wire reports (AP, BBC, Reuters, etc) for stuff going on in
| the world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
|
| Everyone has profit motives and stuff, but if you're well-
| read and keep an eye on what's going on you can usually
| subtract any bias you detect.
| bromuro wrote:
| It is your perspective, similar to "The World as Will and
| Representation" by Schopenhauer:
|
| > Schopenhauer argues that the world we experience around us--
| the world of objects in space and time and related in causal
| ways--exists solely as 'representation' (Vorstellung) dependent
| on a cognizing subject, not as a world that can be considered
| to exist in itself (i.e. independently of how it appears to the
| subject's mind). Our knowledge of objects is thus knowledge of
| mere phenomena rather than things-in-themselves.
|
| I like to think that the recent physics discoveries are
| crossing the same line.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Repres...
| neonate wrote:
| What if it was always impossible, and we're just now finally
| realizing it? In that case this may be a positive development.
| But we're just at the beginning of learning how to adapt to it.
| minimuffins wrote:
| Yeah, that is a kind of postmodern take on the situation that
| I have some sympathy for. I do think this attitude could lead
| to a kind of quietism about a problem we could actually make
| a dent in though, if we did some things differently.
|
| I think we should think about the destruction of traditional
| journalism not as some inevitable natural evolution, like the
| tide coming in washing away our sand castle, but instead as a
| historical, political development with high stakes, winners
| and losers. We should fight against it, not just passievly
| "adapt."
|
| That doesn't mean replicate exactly what was there before,
| but I don't think we have to just acquiesce before a now
| permanently incomprehensible world and give up on ever
| understanding it, either.
| krmmalik wrote:
| I've had a slow descent not getting away from reading the news
| over the last several years. It's been incredibly gradual, but
| further to your point about firsthand experiences from people I
| know personally, I have to admit that has been truly
| transformative. I've now made it a point to find any which way
| I can to find friends or make acquaintances in other countries
| and actively nurture a relationship with them in order to get a
| better picture of what's going on. It's been truly refreshing.
| That said, I'm still not sure what a technical, automated and
| scalable solution accessible to the masses for this would look
| like and if it could or would even work, but nonetheless,
| there's definitely something in this idea.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Here is what goes on in a day:
|
| 1.) Bad things 2.) Good things 3.) Things that might be both
| bad and good
|
| Thankfully we live in the safest period of human history.
| Thankfully many smart people want to focus their time on doing
| good things.
| techslave wrote:
| yeah well you're not being persecuted. for many it may as
| well be the 12th century or whatever
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| Agreed. Probably aren't too many Yemenis on here. Part of
| reading the news is to see how bad it really is for some
| people, and drum up ideas for how you can help them in your
| own way (donating to a public interest group, volunteering,
| raising awareness, etc).
| tines wrote:
| > Thankfully we live in the safest period of human history.
| Thankfully many smart people want to focus their time on
| doing good things.
|
| The obvious counter is "but you learned this from headlines"
| (assuming you're not like Hitchens with a bunch of
| intercontinental friends to be your eyes and ears.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| Not the person you were responding to, but I learned it
| from this TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sm5xF-
| UYgdg
|
| (Not joking in the least. It's a very good presentation.
| Title is: How not to be ignorant about the world | Hans and
| Ola Rosling)
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| No the headlines state the opposite. You learn this by
| reading history and looking at recent events through
| reasonable sources.
|
| And yes this is the safest period in human history, and it
| continues to get safer by the day.
| Wohlf wrote:
| My personal favorite example to get some perspective is
| from the book Days of Rage. During the 1970s domestic
| bombings were a daily occurrence, and at the peak there
| were over 2000 a year. Even the massive amount of
| violence in modern day Chicago is nothing in comparison
| to what was happening as recently as the 90s.
| ycombinete wrote:
| Sounds good. Those close to us are the most likely to have news
| that has actual significance to us. And are probably the most
| trustworthy.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Sounds good. Those close to us are the most likely to have
| news that has actual significance to us. And are probably the
| most trustworthy.
|
| So third-hand information from my InfoWars-reading brother
| and workplace rumors (or even worse, official workplace
| corporate communications)?
| oblio wrote:
| I think that the best thing, which is really hard to do with
| the internet, is to let time pass. If you're 1-2 weeks, 1 month
| behind the news, you will probably get only the important news.
| Following daily news is madness and useless unless you're
| making money out of it.
|
| As someone I know said when I mentioned a new revolutionary
| battery technology has been discovered: I'll believe it when
| the researchers get the Nobel prize for it, in 10 years.
| minimuffins wrote:
| This is good advice but I want to clarify that the problem
| I'm trying to highlight here is structural - historical and
| political, and we should be thinking about it that way too,
| as well trying to figure out how to cope with the situation
| as individuals.
| aeternum wrote:
| I think the best solution is to cast a wide net, gather
| information from as many viewpoints as possible, and then look
| for correlations to narrow down on the truth.
|
| The human brain is surprisingly good at this. The brain is
| constantly doing this with our various senses. None of those
| senses is perfect and they are fooled easily yet by examining
| the overlap we are able to create a surprisingly accurate
| picture of reality.
| klyrs wrote:
| > The human brain is surprisingly good at this.
|
| Is it, though? Confirmation bias is a pretty big factor in
| how we parse incoming information. I try to read a variety of
| sources and see where different folks are coming from, but I
| wouldn't delude myself to think that I'm some ultra-rational
| arbiter of truth.
|
| We need only look as far as the growing(!) popularity of the
| flat-earth conspiracy to see that the population at large is
| no better at this than I think I am.
| minimuffins wrote:
| > cast a wide net, gather information from as many viewpoints
| as possible,
|
| I agree that's the best thing to do. It's a rational choice.
| I do it and recommend others do it.
|
| But there's still this historical problem of divestment from
| traditional journalistic practices (going out into the world,
| gathering facts, interviewing people, observing -- it's
| expensive). Without that factual raw material it doesn't
| matter how diverse your set of sources is, your ability to
| know your own world is impoverished.
| aeternum wrote:
| I find that Youtube is a very underrated source for those
| traditional journalistic practices. It's amazing how many
| great interviews there are with formats that allow
| interviewees to actually answer a question rather than
| provide a TV sound-bite. There's such a huge variety of
| content creators that you can often find a primary-source
| for major events.
|
| It also helps the recommendation algo if you use separate
| accounts for watching entertainment vids vs. this more
| serious content.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Decentralization is better termed "de-professionalization."
| The institutions which used to, at the very least, dedicate
| serious resources to going out into the world and gathering
| facts no longer function properly or just don't exist.
|
| But now the people they were gathering the facts from are
| connected to the internet.
|
| Local newspapers often had a police blotter publishing the
| police reports in the locality. Now you can get that directly
| from the police department, because they have a website.
|
| Once upon a time if you wanted to get stories from Turkey and
| Israel and Brazil then you had to send reporters to those
| places to collect the stories of the people there. Now the
| people there are on the internet and can post their stories
| themselves.
|
| You're getting closer to the sources instead of having a
| "professional" as an intermediary. But you're also getting
| access to more sources, with more differing opinions, and it's
| driving people nuts because they don't know who to believe. But
| there weren't any fewer sources before, you just weren't
| hearing from so many of them because the traditional
| gatekeepers decided for you what you got to hear. If you assume
| they were doing a good job of that then we've lost something,
| but what evidence is there of that?
| throwawayinfo wrote:
| This is why I'm convinced independent journalists are the
| future. Fact finding itself is a shrinking part of the job.
| Fact checking the monunental amount of data out there is
| increasingly important. As such, the need for these megacorp
| publishers is going away.
|
| Edit: Just look at the BLM movement. Lots of people believe
| these are peaceful civil disobedience and lots of people
| believe they're communist race riots. Right now, the question
| is basically "who do you want to believe?" I don't claim to
| have an answer but I just hope that the right ideas will win
| in an open space with small creators.
| icelancer wrote:
| >> The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know
| what's going on in the world is really debilitating.
|
| Is it? Why? Does it meaningfully change your life to know
| what's going on everywhere from the mundane to the impactful?
|
| Our lives are lived in the present, locally. You interact with
| people in your community thousands of times more than people
| you read about thousands of miles away.
|
| Be where your feet are.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| I personally view it as a duty. Part of being a citizen in a
| (kind of) functioning democracy is understanding the nuances
| of the stuff that is screwed up around you to the best of
| your ability so that when the time comes to vote or have a
| meaningful discussion with others around you, you can be a
| voice of reason. Ignoring the world around them is how so
| many Americans still think Iraq had something to do with
| 9/11. I may not know everything, but I'm trying and putting
| an honest effort into learning as much as I can every single
| day. Reading NYT, WaPo, etc. is my version of putting an
| American flag out front, or a Support the Troops sticker on
| my car, or singing the National Anthem or whatever people do
| to feel like they're doing their part.
|
| That being said, your approach is probably a lot healthier in
| the long-run. I always get really depressed after reading the
| papers. Usually I just call a buddy after and we both rant
| about things and afterwards everyone feels ok.
| icelancer wrote:
| >> Ignoring the world around them is how so many Americans
| still think Iraq had something to do with 9/11.
|
| Consider that maybe them ingesting news from the President
| and other "news sources" are the reason they think this.
| Not because they are ignoring the world. If they ignored
| the world around them, they wouldn't have an opinion at
| all.
|
| So in that case, how good is the consumption of
| information?
|
| This is a lot like people saying that the people from
| thousands of years ago thought the world was flat. Then
| there is a rebuttal saying "no, Eratosthenes proved it was
| round forever ago, people knew that." The reality is people
| didn't think about if the world was round or not and it had
| zero impact on their life and vice versa.
|
| People consume so much news information thinking it makes
| them a good citizen or something. But our power to change
| what happens 7000 miles away is basically nil; the power to
| change the lives of people within 7 miles of you is
| massive. And if we all did that... the people 7000 miles
| away would probably get a lot better results than us
| whining and wringing our hands about it while hoping
| politicians did something.
| phobosanomaly wrote:
| I don't mean to be dismissive of your argument. I'm
| trying to follow it. However, your argument seems to be
| for a country of passive, ignorant sheep that let whoever
| is in the White House do whatever they want?
|
| The problem in '03 wasn't that people were reading too
| much, it was that they had no idea what was going on. The
| more you read, the more news from the President becomes
| contextualized, and you can have a more nuanced opinion
| on it. If the President says "Iraq bad" and you don't
| know anything about Iraq, it's hard to go "well,
| actually, it's a little more complicated than that."
|
| Edit: I have a masters in international affairs. But,
| when I want to talk international affairs, the person I
| call up is my buddy with a high-school diploma, not
| people from my cohort. My less-formally-educated friend
| reads widely, and has a much more grounded take on
| everything going on around us that sometimes makes me
| stop and rethink my own opinions. The power of reading
| widely and often is pretty spectacular in my opinion, and
| can sometimes trump a formal education in a subject.
| dragonsky wrote:
| I do understand your feelings of a responsibility to be up
| to date on news, especially when it is regarding political
| events. It's easy to get the facts from a report on the
| weather, a tornado devastated a town, you know this is true
| because you can see the photos (selected for drama) taken
| of the damage.
|
| It's more difficult when reporting is on things that are a
| little more fluffy. Claims a politician did something are
| almost impossible to verify and reporting on this ends up
| being an exercise in spin. One of the best things about
| politicians taking to twitter to directly communicate is
| that you have an unfiltered direct message. If something is
| in a tweet from a politician then you can be pretty sure
| that is the message they want to get out. If they same
| something stupid or ill considered at least you can judge
| them on that, not so much the actual facts of the content.
|
| So media of all types allow you to judge the messenger,
| less so the message.
| [deleted]
| m0zg wrote:
| Fiery, but mostly peaceful article, written by an austere scholar
| and revered military leader.
| awinter-py wrote:
| > It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could
| not more compleatly deprive the nation of its benefits, than is
| done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Credibility of seventeenth century publications:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859546
|
| ===
|
| Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon have the day off from Hell, so
| they go up to check out the Washington DC military parade.
|
| "Look at those M1s," says Alexander, "if only I'd had them I
| wouldn't have had to prematurely declare victory in southern
| asia!"
|
| "Look at those F-35s," says Caesar, "if only I'd had them I
| would've captured all of persia!"
|
| "Look at this cable station," says Napoleon, peering into the
| window of the Union Trust Bar, "if only I'd had it no one would
| ever have heard of Waterloo!"
|
| Bonus track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbH1BVXywY
| elwell wrote:
| Nor can UberEats ETA's be trusted
| mrfusion wrote:
| As an exercise, go read the front page of cnn.com right now. Do
| you still believe all of it?
| notafraudster wrote:
| Above the fold on my 2016 MacBook running uBlock Origin (so I
| may be dropping some ads if they have advertorial stuff, not
| sure), here's what I get:
|
| Trump suggests voters should commit fraud; an uncharitable
| read, but basically true -- Trump suggested voters in NC vote
| by mail and in person as part of his contention that vote by
| mail is easily exploitable by fraudsters. I suspect when this
| blows up he'll say he was joking, but the words were literally
| true and nothing about the context of him saying it (let alone
| the broader context of his attacks on vote by mail and election
| integrity generally) suggests it's especially a joke. I agree
| that this is an uncharitable framing.
|
| BREAKING Facebook will limit some ads in the week before the
| election, but it will let politicians run ads with lies.
| Clicked on the article and this seems like an accurate summary
| of events; Facebook will not get into the business of policing
| lies in political ads generally, but will limit them in the
| last week of the campaign
|
| Analysis: Donald Trump is _already_ working the debate refs;
| Analysis implies it 's an opinion piece. My biggest objection
| here is the style of putting asterisks around the word already
| instead of using <em> tags. It looks like the biggest objection
| to the headline is that it's the Trump campaign who are working
| the refs, not Trump himself. I think that kind of "royal we"
| thing is pretty common, though.
|
| Analysis: Bill Barr's indefensible defense of 2020 voter fraud.
| This title is all sorts of mangled, the actual thesis is that
| Barr is alleging systematic mail vote fraud including by
| foreign actors with no evidence to support it. That seems in
| keeping with past statements he's made.
|
| Barr interview gets tense when pressed on mail-in voting; this
| appears to just be a link to the video discussed in the piece
| immediately above.
|
| AG William Barr: "I don't think there are two justice systems";
| this is Barr discussing racial inequality in justice. The
| headline is a direct quote and surely Barr knew to the extent
| that this is an inflammatory argument, he was making it.
|
| Opinion: What Barr could have up his sleeve for Trump; dumb
| title, the op-ed piece's thesis is that the Justice Department
| customarily avoids announcing any major activity within 60 days
| of the election to avoid the appearance of impropriety, and
| that Barr might not respect this precedent. I don't see strong
| evidence here and as an editor I think I'd have pressed the
| writer to revise the argument a bit, but it doesn't seem false
| per se?
|
| Police officer poisoned by Novichok in UK issues cryptic tweet
| on Navalny; the tweet is clearly deliberately cryptic, and the
| headline seems true. I would argue this is a bit of a
| nothingburger as a story.
|
| Pelosi says she was set up by salon owner; Pelosi's defence
| here seems quite thin. She responds very poorly to criticism
| and this specific story I think is the kind of personal gotcha
| that tends to get a bunch of traction. But she did literally
| say this, so...
|
| Officers covered a Black man's head before he stopped
| breathing, video shows; there's clearly an implied frame here
| that the officers action was police abuse, so you could maybe
| argue that a fairer frame would contextualize the actions
| better, but again seems literally true
|
| Laid off and now evicted amid Covid-19, a Houston father
| contemplates homelessness; story seems true, although you can
| argue whether this is adequately framed in terms of how common
| or uncommon it is
|
| The US jobs market is gradually recovering from the pandemic
| lockdown; this seems basically true. We're still down a bunch
| from highs, but recovery is happening. The headline attributes
| the job losses to the lockdown in a way that is causally
| clearer than I think the evidence suggests, but it exists in
| the realm of truth certainly.
|
| CNN political director: This is a problem for Trump; truly
| awful headline, and it links to a video whose thesis is
| basically that Trump is behind in polling in "swing states" and
| in "key demographics". This is factually true [I have not
| worked for CNN but have polled this election for the last 15
| months for a day job]. You could argue some of the conclusions
| require an exploration of the limits of polling, or the uses of
| "basically tied" -- and the reported MOEs are classical sample
| MOEs, not TSEs -- but this is consistent with what most
| pollsters would tell you.
|
| These children are being held in hotels, then kicked out of the
| US; again, terrible headline, but it seems to be true and is a
| story about migrant ("illegal immigrant" if you prefer)
| children detention.
|
| MacKenzie Scott has become the world's richest woman; I think
| it's difficult to assess the wealth of autocrats or whatever,
| but given the restriction that wealth lists relate to public,
| documented wealth this seems likely, especially given Bezos'
| wealth growth over the last few years.
|
| Overall, I would say that this is certainly a news source whose
| editorial voice is focusing on stories closer to the interest
| of Democratic voters, but covering generally true things
| without a particularly strong editorial slant. I don't
| habitually read CNN or watch any TV news an I'm not about to
| start because a lot of these pieces are pretty shallow and I
| didn't learn anything. But if the question is "Do you still
| believe all of it?", subject to the general limitations I would
| apply to skepticism of any source, I think the stories
| presented are broadly true.
|
| Since I took time out of my day to do your exercise, do you
| think you could flesh out your own position a little bit more
| about what exactly it is you think I missed? In asking me to do
| this, surely you did it yourself, and I have to believe you
| wouldn't have posted if you didn't have specific objections.
| bosswipe wrote:
| I just went through it at your suggestion and it all seemed
| fine to me. So you have a specific example?
| busterarm wrote:
| Conspiracy-theories and fear-mongering.
|
| Tribalism coming out in force with these downvotes. This is why
| there's a walkaway movement.
|
| This is a network that literally had to settle a libel suit and
| has more coming.
| intotheabyss wrote:
| I get the impression that cnn.com looks like an entertainment
| site, not a news site.
| [deleted]
| shanecleveland wrote:
| This is true for most "news" organizations at the moment.
| CNN, MSNBC, Fox, etc., are entertainment. Much of what they
| produce would fall under the Op. Ed. section of a newspaper.
| And the speed of the news cycle does not allow for rigorous
| fact checking and adequate opposing viewpoints to be
| included. "We have reached out for comment" is a common claim
| when there is a failure to include opposing viewpoints.
|
| The problem is compounded by social feeds (Facebook, Twitter,
| etc.) that are engineered to only show you information you
| already agree with being the primary method of consumption.
| And then the comments within the article or accompanied in
| the social platform further drive home the biases.
|
| Traditional print journalism, while never perfect or
| completely accurate, at least presented a consistent and
| uniform experience for all readers. The news cycle was
| extended to provide more time for fact checking and
| information/quote gathering. And the structure of the paper
| was clear: news, opinion, entertainment, etc. These never
| mixed. And corrections were clear and available in the same
| place in future issues.
|
| That doesn't mean biases never existed, but the expectations
| were much clearer and there was less of an ability to focus
| on a segment of a market and ignore the views of others.
| liability wrote:
| This version of their site has less visual clutter and flashy
| graphics: http://lite.cnn.com/en
|
| Spoilers, it's still shit. The biggest problem with CNN is
| the shitty writing. CNN articles seem to be written for an
| audience of borderline illiterate idiots. Do yourself a favor
| and read the NYTimes instead. The biases there are basically
| the same, you're getting the mainstream American centrist
| take on things, with the difference being the NYTimes hires
| people who actually know how to write. CNN is dailymail-tier.
| dublin wrote:
| I call BS: The NY Times is in no way a "mainstream American
| centrist take on things", and they now freely admit their
| Socialist biases. I will agree the writing there is better
| than most other sources, but that's a low bar these days.
| krapp wrote:
| >The NY Times is in no way a "mainstream American
| centrist take on things", and they now freely admit their
| Socialist biases.
|
| I don't believe it. Show me a quote from an authority at
| the NY Times admitting the paper has a "Socialist" bias.
| liability wrote:
| American conservatives think the NYTimes are socialists,
| and American socialists think the NYTimes are
| conservative. I think this sort of split reputation is
| characteristic of American media with a centrist bias.
| maynman wrote:
| Agreed. It's hard to consider a newspaper "centrist" that
| basically forces Bari Weiss out of a job.
| clairity wrote:
| no, the nytimes is no better overall. they still have some
| good longer-form investigative pieces, but that's probably
| <1% of their volume. the rest is the same slanted,
| stimulant filler (corona all the time!) as other outlets.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I don't mind the times reporting when they're reporting,
| I just have to push my way through tons of bait-y opinion
| headlines to get to it.
| liability wrote:
| As I said, I think they have approximately the same
| content and biases as CNN. I think they come out better
| than CNN because they have better writers and editors.
|
| CNN articles seem like they were written by highschoolers
| and rubber stamped by editors who can't be bothered to
| read anything.
| clairity wrote:
| i guess our differing opinions turn on what "better"
| means. to me, a better writer, and especially a better
| editor, would correct those unsubstantiated
| embellishments and biases. so it's a distinction without
| a difference to me.
| liability wrote:
| There are many ways in which something might be judged
| and therefore many ways in which something might be
| called 'better.' I am not saying the NYTimes is better
| than CNN in terms of what biases they have, what stories
| they choose to cover or what embellishments they add. I
| am not saying they have better fact checking. I am
| essentially saying CNN's articles are written for a less
| literate audience and they have lazy editors who let poor
| writing slide. I am not taking about their fact checking
| or factual accuracy.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| I think this sort of holds true for any modern news org in
| the west (and possibly world-wide). Look at the profit
| incentives and it makes sense which way reporting trends will
| go. The more outrageous/unbelievable the story, the more
| eyeballs; the more eyeballs, the more ad revenue. Some news
| orgs definitely take more liberty than others in bending the
| facts of a story just enough to carve out a demographic niche
| that they can depend on to keep coming back.
| glial wrote:
| Business models based on advertising revenue are ruining
| the world.
| rs999gti wrote:
| > Business models based on advertising revenue are
| ruining the world.
|
| What else do news agencies have to make money?
|
| The could sell stories and news for a subscription. But
| the news can be had for free in other places.
|
| They can't really sell classifieds anymore since
| Craigslist, Facebook, and forums have taken those posting
| monies away.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What else do news agencies have to make money?
|
| Patronage model, which (often also with subscription
| tiers on top of free content) is what bigger non-
| advertising media outlets seem to use; this works better
| if you qualify as a nonprofit with tax-advantaged
| donations, so may not be as useful for for-profit firms,
| but it's certainly a way that news organizations can
| exist and pay their staff and bills without advertising.
| minimuffins wrote:
| They could be funded unconditionally by the state.
|
| The BBC has, at times, been pretty good.
| alpha_squared wrote:
| Personally, I've actually gravitated more towards long-
| form stories that aren't exactly news as-it-happens and
| more about events unfolding. Because of that personal
| preference, I've subscribed to The Atlantic (and
| considering others). I remember reading a post on here
| about a month ago that seemed to indicate I wasn't alone
| in that trend.
|
| I posit that people are willing to pay for quality
| journalism that talks about a larger problem, but not for
| as-it-happens news. The latter has become a race to the
| bottom and first-out-the-door incentives drive it even
| lower (social media has certainly contributed immensely
| to this).
| tsimionescu wrote:
| News organisations have never lived just out of
| subscriptions and/or sales - advertising has always been
| the major part of their revenue, for most publications.
| glial wrote:
| Maybe if they were better, people would pay for them.
| That's how the market is supposed to work.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| It really is. They copied the FoxNews formula in 2008. Fired
| anyone who could edit or fact check anything. They then
| turned the formula up to 11. Most of the 'news' is pick your
| flavor and enjoy the editorial. Because that is about all you
| are going to get out of them. News comes way down on the list
| of what you get out of them.
| anchpop wrote:
| on cnn.com, these are the biggest headlines
|
| > Trump suggests voters should commit fraud
|
| > Bill Barr's indefensible defense of 2020 voter fraud
|
| > Officers covered a Black man's head before he stopped
| breathing, video shows
|
| > Dr. Fauci says it's conceivable but not likely a vaccine will
| be ready in October
|
| The only one I think is questionable is the second, but even
| that one doesn't seem like it contains factual inaccuracies to
| me
| goodluckchuck wrote:
| Ugh... Even CNN admits that the following headline is a
| lie... Let's follow the rabbit trail:
|
| > Trump suggests voters should commit fraud
|
| The source that article links is another one of CNN's own
| articles:
|
| > Trump appears to encourage North Carolinians to vote twice
| to test the system
|
| The first paragraph of that article then gets closer to the
| truth:
|
| > President Donald Trump on Wednesday __appeared to
| __encourage people in North Carolina to vote twice -- once by
| mail and once in person -- during the November general
| election to __purportedly double check that their initial
| vote was counted, __...
|
| Of course, that's not "double" checking. That's checking. If
| you mail a ballot and never check, then you haven't checked.
|
| Moreover... "Appeared." If the author believes Trump was
| saying that, then say Trump said it. However, the author
| knows that's not true, so the author said he "appeared" / his
| words could be twisted. Utter cowardice.
|
| Then that links to this source, which gets even closer:
|
| > President Donald Trump suggested Wednesday during his visit
| to Wilmington that people who vote by absentee ballot should
| "check their vote" by attempting to vote in person as well.
|
| > https://www.wect.com/2020/09/02/wects-jon-evans-interview-
| wi...
|
| Then finally 3-4 links deep WECT links to a f-in Twitter
| post:
|
| https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/13012842454495764.
| ..
|
| Where Trump clearly explains that people should go to their
| polling places so that the poll workers can check the voter
| rolls and confirm whether their ballots have been received.
| If so, then voters will be turned away. If no, they'll
| already be at the polling place and will be able to cast a
| ballot. You, I, WECT, and CNN all know that Trump isn't
| saying to lie about whether you mailed a ballot. To say
| otherwise is to lie.
| tgb wrote:
| The video in the tweet you link to is explicitly as in the
| headline: Trump tells people to mail in a ballot and then
| to go vote in person. He repeats it multiple times and is
| very clear that the "check" is done by them attempting to
| actually vote, not merely asking to confirm the ballot was
| received. I had really assumed it would be much more
| ambiguous than this from the headlines.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Moreover... "Appeared." If the author believes Trump was
| saying that, then say Trump said it. However, the author
| knows that's not true, so the author said he "appeared" /
| his words could be twisted. Utter cowardice.
|
| Trump is so confused and unclear sometimes that it's hard
| to tell exactly what he's trying to say, hence the
| "appeared.". What he says is newsworthy, and some of the
| most likely interpretations are shocking, so it can't just
| be ignored. It wouldn't surprise me if he advised his
| supporters to do something that clearly amounted to voter
| fraud without actually understanding that it was fraud.
|
| > Where Trump clearly explains that people should go to
| their polling places so that the poll workers can check the
| voter rolls and confirm whether their ballots have been
| received. If so, then voters will be turned away. If no,
| they'll already be at the polling place and will be able to
| cast a ballot. You, I, WECT, and CNN all know that Trump
| isn't saying to lie about whether you mailed a ballot. To
| say otherwise is to lie.
|
| I don't know how it is in North Carolina, but where I live
| they never ask if you've already mailed in a ballot at the
| polling place. They just ask for your name, look it up in
| the voter roll, and cross it off, and give you a ballot.
|
| North Carolina accepts absentee ballots postmarked on
| election day (https://www.ncsbe.gov/voting/vote-mail/five-
| steps-vote-mail-...), so following Trump's advice could
| potentially bypass the poll worker check if the poll
| workers are like those in my state. I believe North
| Carolina has _other_ checks to prevent double absentee /in-
| person votes from being counted, but fraud is still fraud
| if the deception doesn't work.
| luckylion wrote:
| > Trump is so confused and unclear sometimes that it's
| hard to tell exactly what he's trying to say, hence the
| "appeared.".
|
| It's irrelevant what he's "trying to say". If he writes
| "covfefe", the accurate reporting is "he wrote covfefe",
| not "he appeared to have written covfefe".
|
| Qualifying something with "he appeared to say" is just a
| way to write anything. Turns out it's not at all what he
| said? "Well, it appeared that way to me, don't tell me
| how I have to perceive reality!"
| ardy42 wrote:
| > It's irrelevant what he's "trying to say". If he writes
| "covfefe", the accurate reporting is "he wrote covfefe",
| not "he appeared to have written covfefe".
|
| You're asking for a raw transcript, but that's not what
| the news is. For instance, when the OJ trial was in the
| news, do you think the papers should have just printed
| the court reporters transcripts verbatim? The news make
| judgements about what's important, then _summarizes_ what
| happened and adds context necessary to understand it,
| which requires figuring out what he was "trying to say."
|
| > If he writes "covfefe", the accurate reporting is "he
| wrote covfefe", not "he appeared to have written
| covfefe".
|
| Actually, if you want to be _really_ nitpicky, "he
| appeared to have written covfefe" is the most accurate.
| No one saw him type that word. It could have been some
| social media aide instead.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Where I live if you are registered to vote by mail and
| you show up at the polling place on election day, you
| have to vote provisionally, which means that you have to
| make a sworn statement about why you are weird, and your
| ballot will be subject to additional verification to make
| sure you had a right to cast it.
| cgriswald wrote:
| Without commenting on the factual nature of the content or
| the content itself:
|
| The biggest headlines for you aren't the biggest headlines
| for me. And I get quite a different view on mobile than I do
| on desktop. On mobile I get blasted by the coronavirus and
| economy sections, which are mostly gloom-and-doom (the
| article about a possible vaccine is far far down the list in
| a different subsection). On desktop those sections are there
| front and center, but the other stuff is visible too, so it's
| not quite so in-your-face.
|
| CNN has multiple articles/videos about the exact same topics,
| but the headline---although any individual headline arguably
| represent its article technically accurately---are not
| equivalent to each other.
|
| Consider:
|
| "Dow and Nasdaq plunge after record highs" vs "Stock Market
| Bloodbath: Down and Nasdaq plunge"
|
| "Trump suggests voters should commit fraud" vs "Trump
| encourages people to vote twice -- which is illegal" vs
| "Trump appears to encourage North Carolinians to vote twice
| to test the system"
|
| So, from my point of view very different pictures can be
| painted with just:
|
| 1. Choice of headline.
|
| 2. Choice of presentation/order.
|
| 3. Choice of material to cover.
|
| My takeaway is that, no, I can't trust it. A charitable
| interpretation is that the headlines are technically true,
| but designed to get me to click on them. That's not
| _truthful_. (Other interpretations may also be plausible, but
| would require more evidence.)
|
| Edit: List formatting
| krapp wrote:
| Bear in mind some of those may be opinion pieces and some may
| be journalism, those need to be considered separately.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| The line seems to becoming increasingly blurred these days.
| eplanit wrote:
| I advocate for something like consumer warning labels on
| products: you cannot call something Aspirin unless it is
| truly, chemically Aspirin. Nobody should be able to label
| their product "News" unless it is strictly
| Who/What/When/Where; also, opinion and editorial should
| be required to be labeled clearly as such. Something akin
| to the Fairness Doctrine (now defunct) might be a place
| to start.
|
| A thorny issue to discuss, but given the current state of
| "journalism", I think it's worthwhile.
| deadalus wrote:
| I get very frustrated, sad and emotional when I read CNN or any
| of the major news sites. So I avoid it.
|
| Instead I use Wikipedia once a month :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:August_2020_events
| eindiran wrote:
| I have taken to using the current events portal, perhaps once
| a week: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
|
| The once-per-month approach is an interesting one, which I
| would imagine removes even more of the lingering "urgency" to
| keep up with the news treadmill. How long have you been doing
| it?
| bosswipe wrote:
| I just went through it and didn't see any problem. After
| wasting my time you owe me a specific example of what you were
| trying to point out.
| umvi wrote:
| How CNN currently works: if
| (makesTrumpLookBad() || makesBidenLookGood())
| pushToFrontPage(); else if (recentDeadPerson.skinColor
| != 'white' && recentDeadPerson.causeOfDeath == 'police')
| pushToFrontPage(); else
| pushToFrontPage(numNewCovidCases(getRandomState()))
|
| Apply DeMorgan's Law to see how Fox News works.
| wwright wrote:
| Fox News is certainly much worse than this. They habitually
| and regularly post actual fake news. Of course, they do have
| real news mixed in there; otherwise the strategy wouldn't
| work.
| busterarm wrote:
| you forgot the =~ s/violence/peaceful protests/
|
| And yes DeMorgan's law here too.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| "Fiery but mostly peaceful protests after police shooting"
| was such an incredible thing to see.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| The fundamental problem with news reporting is that so much of it
| has political implications, and political opinion among the
| public is bimodal. You can look at the two left-right humps on a
| spectrum of political beliefs and see two different worldviews.
| If you try to report the facts on any story that has a political
| angle, you're probably going to alienate one of those worldview
| modes. And god forbid the facts fall right in the middle and you
| alienate both.
| mellowdream wrote:
| "The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man
| who reads nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson
|
| "Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever,
| even to the protagonists." Norman Mailer
|
| "Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a
| bicycle accident and the collapse of civilisation." George
| Bernard Shaw
|
| "In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right
| place and the right time. It is the job of journalists and
| historians to make it appear that it has." Mark Twain
|
| "I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets."
| Napoleon
|
| "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the
| people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are
| doing the oppressing." Malcolm X
|
| "The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything.
| Except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and
| having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands." Oscar
| Wilde
|
| "The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined
| by the word journalist." Soren Kierkegaard
|
| "Whenever I thought of you I couldn't help thinking of a
| particular incident which seemed to me very important. . . . you
| made a remark about 'national character' that shocked me by its
| primitiveness. I then thought: what is the use of studying
| philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk
| with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic,
| etc., & if it does not improve your thinking about the important
| questions of everyday life, if it does not make you more
| conscientious than any . . . journalist in the use of the
| DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends." -
| Wittgenstein
|
| "The newspaper epitomises the goal of today's educational system,
| just as the journalist, servant of the present moment, has taken
| the place of the genius, our salvation from the moment and leader
| for the ages." - Nietzsche
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20180327031901/http://www.aarons...
| InfiniteRand wrote:
| The fact that no information sources can be trusted completely
| should be a call to humility both in individual decisions and
| public decision making.
|
| On a side note, I wonder if Thomas Jefferson had so low an
| opinion of the press pre-1800 (before he was elected and when he
| was defending the right of the press to be critical of the Adams
| administration)
| notadoc wrote:
| You can experience this directly yourself on a near daily basis
| right now, here's all you need to do.
|
| - Go on social media and find the endless streams of videos
| showing mayhem and violence at many of the protests / riots going
| on throughout the country
|
| - Read the 'news' stories about those events, which rarely
| describe anything resembling what you see in the videos
|
| Do you believe the regurgitator who likely wasn't at the scene
| and probably has bias, or your lying eyes?
| dalbasal wrote:
| When I was 15, there was a bus bombing near my school.
|
| A kid in my class was the grandson of a well known politician. A
| newspaper ran with a completely made up story about how it was
| his bus line, and how the grandfather had panicked. A few days
| later a fact checker called his mom. Not sure if they ran a
| retraction. It seemed incredibly disrespectful to those who were
| on the bus. Two died.
|
| About a year after that, some kids that I knew were arrested for
| cannabis use. The story made the news. Some of it was true, but
| some was made up. The made up parts were embellishments, they
| made the story better. Age gaps were exaggerated, romantic
| narratives inserted...
|
| I think most people who are in the vicinity of a news story irl
| have such experiences. Often the lies are minor, but just like
| with ordinary people who tell lies... the little lies make you
| disbelieve everything they say.
|
| We kind of expect this from book authors and documentarians.
| Their job is to get a good narrative going. No one thinks "Tiger
| King" is an honest telling.
|
| IMO the problem is expectations. "Restraining it (a newspaper) to
| true facts & sound principles only" is not just boring... it's
| unimportant. It's the narrative that makes it salient.
|
| TJ should have understood this. He was a pamphleteer after all.
| The rights of man is pure fiction, to quote Yuval Noah Harari. If
| you dissect a person, you will find no rights inside.
|
| Calling out intellectual dishonesty is a road to hypocrisy,
| usually. It's very common to have someone call it out and
| practice it simultaneously.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| I was in the vicinity of a news story once and I interacted
| with the press. A reporter from a local news station. She asked
| me what I saw and took notes. There were two follow up
| questions: "did you notice anything else?", and that's it. The
| report didn't really include any of the extra details that I
| provided, just what you could see from the street. It included
| a clip from a different witness who was much more chatty and
| added their own... flair.
|
| I say all this because in my limited experience, the
| embellishments come from average Joes who are eager to say such
| things to reporters.
| BlueDingo wrote:
| I agree but I think it's both. Reporters will know if a
| witness/interviewee is too straightforward for their purposes
| and will move out until they find a juicy enough narrative.
| That way their ass is covered.
| pwned1 wrote:
| Same experience here. I was a elected to a local board and was
| mentioned in several local newspaper stories. Every story that
| included events that I had personal knowledge of was incorrect,
| sometimes in very substantial ways.
| darepublic wrote:
| Reminds me of the opening text of Fargo.
|
| > The events depicted in this film took place in Minnesota in
| 1987. At the request of the survivors, the names have been
| changed. Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told
| exactly as it occurred.
|
| So solemn, so respectful and complete bs :D
| elliekelly wrote:
| Is there a word for that sort of cinematic (or in some cases
| literary) device? Opening with "disclaimer" style text to
| make the movie feel more real. It seems mockumentary adjacent
| - fiction presented as fact. Pseudo non-fiction?
|
| I've seen it used in other films, too but the only example I
| can really think of is maybe the Blair Witch Project.
| superhuzza wrote:
| The use of disclaimers to suggest real events is discussed
| here:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_persons_fictitious_discla
| i...
|
| Also
|
| https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DanBrowned
| BeetleB wrote:
| A friend of mine was once arrested and it made national news -
| multiple times (arrest, randomly later on, then trial, etc).
| What I observed:
|
| 1. They often got a lot of details wrong - details very
| relevant to how the public would perceive him. Easily
| verifiable details, BTW. A lot of it was just someone on the
| law enforcement/justice side making statements that they did
| not bother to verify.
|
| 1a. Some of these false facts are now part of his Wikipedia
| page, with several references to these news outlets. Be wary of
| facts on Wikipedia if the source is journalism.
|
| 2. The national news have a hive mind mentality. Between the
| arrest and the trial, he would suddenly become headline news,
| and often _with no event triggering it_. As if they all
| suddenly decided (on the same day) to just write a story about
| him. The reality is more likely laziness - one outlet decided
| to make it big news and others didn 't want to be left behind.
|
| 2a. As an aside, another well known freelance journalist said
| this is common. He once had the scoop on a big story and was
| trying to sell it to the top news outlets. The most common
| question was "Is anyone else running this?" followed by "We
| don't want to be the only ones to run this." The concern was
| about being wrong in the end, but the facts were easily
| verifiable and the news outlet didn't want to go through the
| trouble.
|
| 2b. The random big news about my friend with no trigger? A
| number of times the _same_ news outlet had reported the very
| same thing at the time of arrest months prior. It was basically
| recycled news, but presented as if it was breaking news.
|
| 3. The local newspapers were the best. They didn't report false
| facts - they verified them. They had the most detail (continual
| coverage over months rather than random sensational headlines).
|
| That was 20 years ago. Something similar happened to another
| friend of mine recently. Half of the latest news reports about
| him have ridiculously wrong facts (year of arrest, time spent
| in prison, etc). Stuff that is trivially verifiable. His case
| was not as high profile. Lesson learned: News stories that are
| not as big are a _lot_ more likely to have wrong information.
|
| This experience (particularly the false facts) is why I'm
| adamant about suspending judgment prior to the trial. My
| sources (news) are unreliable.
|
| (BTW, that first person was easily acquitted - the defense
| called only one witness, because the prosecution's case was so
| flawed).
| [deleted]
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I was once interviewed by a local newspaper. It was not a full-
| length interview. I just said something quotable as a bystander
| and so they asked me for some demographic information. I gave
| them three facts, my name, my age, and the town I lived in.
| Including my quote, I gave the journalist four facts.
|
| When I read the article, I was horrified that two of the four
| facts, including a misquote of what I said, were wrong.
| civilized wrote:
| > IMO the problem is expectations. "Restraining it (a
| newspaper) to true facts & sound principles only" is not just
| boring... it's unimportant. It's the narrative that makes it
| salient.
|
| > Calling out intellectual dishonesty is a road to hypocrisy,
| usually. It's very common to have someone call it out and
| practice it simultaneously.
|
| You have a right to your opinion, of course, but frankly I find
| this revolting. There's a huge difference between recognizing
| that imperfect intellectual integrity and flawed critics are
| common, and dismissing the aspiration towards intellectual
| integrity as boring, unimportant, and hypocritical.
|
| You don't have to deceive people to be interesting and
| successful. You just don't. And I think plenty of people manage
| to not live their lives that way.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I agree, its despicable. I would also suggest there is an
| enormous opportunity to make money for an organization that
| pursues and documents the truth, with integrity and to the
| the best of their ability. Society cannot possibly work if
| its members inhabit vastly incoherent bullshit bubbles and
| deep down inside we all know it.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I think you might be misunderstanding me.
|
| ">* dismissing the aspiration towards intellectual
| integrity*" is far from true. Intellectual integrity is
| crucial. I a deep sense, it's the main thing that matters.
|
| I mean that a newspaper is a newspaper. A pamphlet is a
| pamphlet. An Encyclopedia is... etc. Moralizing about it
| doesn't help much. As TJ says in his speech.
|
| Anyway, I mean this "for one's own sake." Our own
| Intellectual honesty is something most of us think we just
| have. In practice, it's a skill. Call outs like this aren't a
| good way of practicing it, IMO.
| civilized wrote:
| If you're just saying "this is how the world works" - yeah,
| maybe, but not everyone is the same. I'm sure there are
| some individual reporters and maybe, occasionally, even
| whole news orgs, that are trying to be better then this.
| ptaipale wrote:
| Not everyone is the same, but too many are. I have
| similar experiences of newpaper articles: whenever I
| happen to know the case in deeper detail, I find the
| newspaper reporting sloppy at best, and drama-seeking and
| distorting at worst.
| busterarm wrote:
| I've been in the vicinity of news/magazine press or knew the
| subjects personally about a dozen times.
|
| In every single instance the facts were grossly misrepresented
| and in the three cases at Vice/Motherboard told the complete
| opposite story of the actual truth.
|
| Vice's article about "Sugar Weasel, the One and Only Clown
| Escort" is a complete fabrication (well, other than his own
| self-delusions) and any basic fact checking shows the story to
| be false immediately.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Vice has that reputation.
|
| This is the problem. There's plenty of newsrooms doing solid
| work. You can't do this any more than you can talk about
| restaurants while describing fast food burgers and a fancy
| tapas bar in the same sentence.
|
| There's more interesting problems here. Outlets with actual
| scientists on staff do better science coverage, local
| institutions can cover a crisis with a better grasp on the
| context than a global organization that's sending reporters
| there for the first time. But before we can have that
| conversation we need to paint with a narrower brush.
| busterarm wrote:
| Definitely. I've certainly found my own sources for the
| kinds of news that I'm interested in. A lot of it is
| independent journalists/*loggers.
|
| Often enough I can check their sources and check multiple
| points of view on the same topic. The problem is that's a
| lot of work. Other people I might want to educate about the
| facts haven't put in that work -- they've just watched
| CNN/MSNBC/FOX or read the NYT/etc.
|
| And most of those get it wrong.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Sure, and I won't defend cable news at all. The 24/7
| realtime nature of what they do is set up to be
| superficial and error-prone.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| I was interviewed by journalists twice, both times they
| published a text that contained some of my words but edited
| to make it say the opposite of what I actually said.
|
| I wonder whether in ten years television will regularly use
| deepfakes when "interviewing" people, and we will feel
| equally hopeless about it.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I became interested in Jordan Peterson and the my Google feed
| noticed. The amount of fabrications that started popping in
| my feed, from famous outlets, opened my eyes to just corrupt
| the news media is. Its hard to overstate how despicable and
| toxic this is.
| 3np wrote:
| This made me feel pretty uneasy about Wired's posthumous
| Holloway story.
| mike-cardwell wrote:
| The one time that something newsworthy happened in my life, we
| didn't speak to the press, because we didn't particularly want
| to. That's not a problem for them though, they literally just
| printed errors and completely made up quotes from us instead.
|
| I guess I should be thankful. It's a valuable lesson to learn
| at a young age.
| foobiekr wrote:
| On the contrary, lots of people think "Tiger King" is an honest
| telling.
|
| Spend a little time on /r/conspiracy and consider that most of
| these people are not joking and their thinking is _entirely_
| narrative driven.
| TT3351 wrote:
| TJ: A newspaper should be divided into four sections (truths,
| probabilities, possibilities, and lies)
| https://jacklimpert.com/2017/02/newspaper-divided-four-secti...
| air7 wrote:
| > I think most people who are in the vicinity of a news story
| irl have such experiences
|
| What's funny though is that although this is true, we still
| tend to believe all _other_ news stories as though they are
| 100% true.
| clint wrote:
| This is largely due to the wholesale destruction of the news
| industry by embarrassed capitalists and politicians over the
| last 30-40 years. Another reasons is that the same people have
| removed any ensemble of education which teach children to think
| even halfway critical about any topic.
|
| We have journalists entering the workforce who have a good
| chance of having never consumed or witnessed any real
| journalism in their entire life.
|
| So many of publications we used to know and love employed a
| sufficient amount of _professional_ copywriters, fact checkers,
| editors and so forth.
|
| Editors were happy to let journalists take their time on
| stories that might not pay off for several years knowing it
| would pay to get things right.
|
| Now-a-days, unless you work at the NYT, Guardian, or other
| company with mega-bucks and a robust subscription program you
| will probably never see a fact-checker, photographer,
| copywriter, and your editor will be not much more than an
| assembly line manager who may or may not care about the quality
| of the journalism you produce. If they do care, the likely have
| no leverage over the moneyed-interests who own the company.
|
| A lot of people these days are not willing to pay for good
| journalism because they've been tricked into thinking they get
| "just as good" for free, which they most obviously do not.
|
| And when they "discover" that their free news is run by rank
| amateurs who don't actually care about journalism and produce
| the kinds of things the OP rails against, it often seems to
| fester into a complete denunciation of the entire enterprise.
|
| In fact, it is my belief that this is actually the goal of many
| unscrupulous practitioners of crappy journalism.
|
| They know they can bankroll and support a crappy "news site"
| with the left hand and with the right hand use that to slowly
| tear down the firms putting out rigorous journalism, giving
| actual facts to citizens which show their ideology and
| politicians are nothing more than kleptocratic idiots.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Journalism has almost always been payed to a vast extent by
| advertisers, not subscribers. I don't think the decline in
| journalism is directly attributable to the pattern of free
| news.
|
| More likely, it is due to the progressing obsession with
| profit, metrics-driven businesses. Papers are for-profit
| companies, so any change they can do that help their bottom
| line will always win out. We can make more money if we run
| aggressive titles? Done. We can save money by getting rid of
| seasoned professionals and people won't stop reading and
| looking at our ads? Awesome!
|
| Not to mention, the extent to which journalism has declined
| is probably exaggerated. The style is obviously changing, and
| it may be more popular and crass. But journalism has always
| been extremely biased for the status quo, with many events
| that ruin the common narrative being systematically ignored.
| A lot of the problems caused by the US military and companies
| in South America was long ignored in mainstream journalism in
| the US in the 70s and 80s, just as one example. Watergate was
| huge news for years, COINTELPRO was quickly forgotten.
| tome wrote:
| > This is largely due to the wholesale destruction of the
| news industry by embarrassed capitalists and politicians over
| the last 30-40 years
|
| I'm familiar with HN commenters not reading the linked
| article, but this is the first time I'm coming across a
| commenter not reading the title.
| JackFr wrote:
| https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
|
| "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows.
| You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know
| well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You
| read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no
| understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
| article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward--
| reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause
| rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with
| exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and
| then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
| read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate
| about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the
| page, and forget what you know."
| Joeri wrote:
| This is why I am subscribed to two news papers from
| independent owners.
|
| It doesn't help that much though, because the overlap between
| the two is a lot smaller than you would think, and a
| significant part of that overlap is content provided by a
| press service (which is often wrong itself).
|
| Sometimes I wonder whether it even makes sense to try to
| follow the news. News by definition cannot be objective in
| how it describes the world, even when factually accurate,
| because the most important things in the world aren't the
| things that are novel and interesting, they're the things
| that are commonplace and boring. Maybe following the news
| makes us less informed because it biases us to pay attention
| to the wrong things.
|
| On the other hand, how else do you get informed about going
| affairs? Most long-form books on a subject are themselves
| heavily biased to the author's viewpoint.
| gojomo wrote:
| It's interesting to me that Jefferson, in this text, offers
| an observation that's formulated very similar to (one-half
| of) the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect, when he says:
|
| "The real extent of this state of misinformation is known
| only to those who are in situations to confront facts within
| their knowlege with the lies of the day."
|
| For hundreds of years, anyone with personal knowledge of a
| topic-reported-on knows much if not most of the reporting is
| wrong.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Interesting (and well written).
|
| It had an opposite effect on me. Maybe because it wasn't a
| specialized are. It was just regular news.
| jancsika wrote:
| "He explains the irony of the term saying it came about
| 'because I once discussed it with Murray Gell-Mann, and by
| dropping a famous name I imply greater importance to myself,
| and to the effect, than it would otherwise have,'"
| jkaptur wrote:
| Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I propose
| the "Sinclair Effect" after "It is difficult to get a man to
| understand something, when his salary depends on his not
| understanding it."
|
| You open the newspaper to an article on some subject that you
| know well, because your salary depends on it. In Tourre's
| case, finance. In mine, tech. You read the article and see
| that the journalist isn't a subject matter expert and has
| made an error about some fact. Often, the error is so small
| that it doesn't affect the story at all. I call these the
| "well, actually, some streets are sheltered from the rain"
| stories. In any case, you dismiss the entire story and stop
| reading it, and then turn the page to national or
| international affairs, and read as if your technical
| expertise somehow gave you insight into a place you've never
| been and a culture you've never interacted with. You turn the
| page, and forget the gaps in your own knowledge.
| ardy42 wrote:
| > Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I
| propose the "Sinclair Effect" after "It is difficult to get
| a man to understand something, when his salary depends on
| his not understanding it."
|
| I think this is a fantastic comment, especially given the
| cavalcade of robotic quotations of that "Gell-Mann Amnesia
| effect" passage that happen whenever the press comes up.
| One should definitely read the newspaper with a certain
| degree of skepticism, but I feel that people who take the
| "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" to heart often get into weird
| places (like thinking that reading raw scientific papers is
| somehow a replacement for reading the newspaper, as if
| anyone could actually keep up with them in more than a
| narrow area and science is the only thing that matters).
|
| While I think the self-interest from the Sinclair quote is
| definitely a reason to doubt "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect"
| dismissals (i.e. maybe the story actually is right, but you
| think it's wrong because you have biased take), I think the
| problem you're getting at is ego. A lot of people want to
| be the guy who is smarter or sees things more clearly than
| others, so they latch on to ideas that let them
| superficially dismiss things that others trust as a way of
| proving their greater insight (maybe only to themselves).
|
| I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a
| timely first rough draft of history. First rough drafts are
| always going to have errors, but you'll be the last to know
| if you wait for those to be corrected before reading. If
| you keep up with the rough drafts, you'll see the
| corrections as the stories unfold.
| acqq wrote:
| > I think it's useful to just see the news for what it
| is: a timely first rough draft of history.
|
| Only, it's not what "the news" are. One can reconstruct
| the history using "the news" as source material, but it's
| a grave error to think that "the news" are "a first draft
| of history."
|
| Try to find how the media covered the claimed "weapons of
| mass destruction" in Iraq in 2003, and how they wrote
| many years later about the same events. What you believe
| to be a "first draft" was historically completely false.
| But it was at the time used as an excuse to start the
| war, which are both now verified historical facts -- both
| the fake "news" in the major media and the start of the
| war.
|
| If you are interested in the topic you can even read how
| the local pressure on journalists makes them "following
| the editorial policy" even when they know that what they
| write about is false.
|
| In short, there's no substitute for treating the news as
| only "pieces of information" which have to be verified,
| behind which could be different interests and which
| surely don't have to be true at all.
| ardy42 wrote:
| >> I think it's useful to just see the news for what it
| is: a timely first rough draft of history. First rough
| drafts are always going to have errors, but you'll be the
| last to know if you wait for those to be corrected before
| reading. If you keep up with the rough drafts, you'll see
| the corrections as the stories unfold.
|
| > Only, it's not what "the news" are. One can reconstruct
| the history using "the news" as source material, but it's
| a grave error to think that "the news" are "a first draft
| of history."
|
| > Try to find how the media covered the claimed "weapons
| of mass destruction" in Iraq in 2003, and how they wrote
| many years later about the same events. What you believe
| to be a "first draft" was historically completely false.
| But it was at the time used as an excuse to start the
| war, which are both now verified historical facts -- both
| the fake "news" in the major media and the start of the
| war.
|
| I don't really see how that contradicts the idea that the
| news is a rough first draft of history at all. First
| drafts have errors, and you've pointed out some errors.
| Similar things could even happen with established history
| (for instance a later discovery proving some document
| that the old history relied on was a forgery or some
| account unreliable, etc.). You shouldn't expect perfect
| accuracy with the news, and to criticize it for not being
| perfectly accurate is to misunderstand what it is.
| acqq wrote:
| > to criticize it for not being perfectly accurate is to
| misunderstand what it is.
|
| I gave example where the news were completely and utterly
| false compared to what the real truth was -- that's not
| just "not perfectly accurate" but _completely_ opposite
| of the truth.
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I don't quite follow how the narrative makes it more important
| than the facts.
|
| I guess we have define what ideas we expect the news to
| deliver.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Many people die every day. This isn't news, nor is it
| meaningful to us on more than an ambient level.
|
| The narratives that these deaths fit into make them
| meaningful. The stories of people dying of covid. People
| dying of political violence.
|
| If drug deaths or suicide rates are increasing, and it's been
| making news then associated deaths are a part of this
| narrative.
| philipkglass wrote:
| I have been interviewed twice for articles in Wired and once
| for Chemical and Engineering News. I was a first hand observer
| of an event reported in the Portland Oregonian when I was in
| high school.
|
| I was not misquoted or otherwise misrepresented in the first
| three cases. In all of these cases I found the reporting to be
| accurate.
|
| I _do_ notice mistakes when news publications write about
| topics relevant to my expertise. But these mistakes often
| (though not always) would not change the conclusions of the
| article when corrected. A lot of the mistakes I notice are
| elementary ones like confusing units of energy and power. They
| indicate that the writer lacks a subject matter background but
| they don 't invalidate the whole article. When an article says
| "The new wind farm will generate 180,000 megawatts per year,
| enough to supply 10,000 Texas households" it's clear enough
| that "180,000 megawatt hours per year" is what should have been
| written.
|
| I know that other people have different experiences, where they
| find that their first hand knowledge of events has been
| completely twisted by news reporting. Or where their subject of
| expertise is reported incorrectly in mainstream publications
| all the time, not only in details but in the major conclusions.
| I wonder if these howlers are prevalent in online discussions
| of news accuracy simply because the howlers make for more vivid
| memories that will spur people to share their experiences in
| comments.
| insidepgsmind wrote:
| I love this part: "I will add, that the man who never looks into
| a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch
| as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is
| filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still
| learn the great facts, and the details are all false."
|
| When I read the headlines or scan articles here on HN I'm under
| the impression that I know things and understand things, but it's
| really just surface level.
|
| I like the idea of ignoring news and instead read quarterly long
| form magazines or books. The really important stuff will bubble
| to the surface and be examined more intelligently.
| [deleted]
| robomartin wrote:
| Here's the full text of the letter between Jefferson and Norvell.
| Very interesting.
|
| http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-jefferson/letter...
|
| I've often wondered if the protections afforded to the press in
| the first amendment of the US Constitution could have benefited
| from greater clarity. What I mean by this is that I sincerely
| doubt the authors intended to protect lies, deceit and libel. It
| would make no sense whatsoever to create a law that effectively
| says "You can lie cheat and steal all you want and this shall be
| protected by the highest law in the land".
|
| Here's the text from the first amendment:
|
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging
| the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the
| people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for
| a redress of grievances."
|
| Some might say: Well, libel is addressable through other
| legislation.
|
| Well, yes and no. It just so happens I was involved in a libel
| case many decades ago. In this case a newsletter (this was before
| internet days) had given a competitor a monthly column to author.
| This competitor decided to dedicate one column to attack our
| company and print a bunch of outright lies about our products.
| Things like "they don't test", "they ship their customers
| untested products", etc. I mean, this guy knew nothing about us
| and yet he focused an entire page to defaming me and my company.
|
| A meeting with my attorney resulted in letters to the
| publication's entire board as well as the author/competitor. The
| only way I can characterize the reaction from the other side was
| "they shit in their pants". I came to learn a libel lawsuit is a
| very serious and potentially financially crippling event for
| someone without the means. Large companies can manage them but
| individuals can lose their home, savings, job, etc.
|
| I wasn't interested in destroying lives or taking their home and
| savings. They agreed to print a solid retraction, fire the
| competitor/author and hire someone without skin in the game to
| pen that column.
|
| Here's the problem: Retractions don't work. We saw an immediate
| and lasting hit to product sales. It took about a year to recover
| from the hit piece. Reputation is something that is hard to
| regain, particularly when people enter a fearful mental state. In
| retrospect I should have been smarter and should have gone for a
| financial settlement of sorts to compensate for the damage they
| caused. Our competitor actually gained sales and status in the
| industry as a result of this hit piece.
|
| My point is that lies are like climbing to the top of a hill with
| a feather pillow, ripping it open and letting the winds take the
| feathers in all directions. Fixing the damage caused by lies
| requires finding every single feather, which is impossible.
|
| Sometimes I think we need to rethink this one aspect of the first
| amendment and either modify it or bolster it externally (through
| separate legislation) in order to prevent the kinds of lies and
| manipulation that have been a part of the press since, well,
| according to Jefferson, the very founding of this nation.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> I sincerely doubt the authors intended to protect lies,
| deceit and libel._
|
| I think the authors intended to prevent the Government from
| being able to declare by fiat what counts as "lies, deceit, and
| libel". That some people will use their freedom to do wrong is
| the price we pay for freedom. It's still preferable to the
| alternative.
|
| You actually describe the right way of dealing with lies,
| deceit, and libel in a free society later on:
|
| _> In retrospect I should have been smarter and should have
| gone for a financial settlement of sorts to compensate for the
| damage they caused._
|
| Exactly. Another quote from Jefferson seems apt here: "Eternal
| vigilance is the price of liberty."
| robomartin wrote:
| What I didn't describe was the non-trivial cost, workload and
| time it took to deal with a very simple libel case. When you
| have publications, major TV networks, where almost literally
| every single piece they publish is filled with lies and
| manipulation it becomes an impossible task.
|
| A couple of years back I decided to highlight such lies to a
| group of people I was in regular online conversations with.
| Friends and people I have known for 20 to 30 years, not
| strangers. The effort and time required to research and
| gather the evidence necessary to demonstrate falsehoods in
| just _one_ story per day was significant enough that I had to
| quit after a couple of months. Not to mention the fact that
| writing-up articles on these findings and then discussing
| them until people understood they had been lied to also
| consumed a ridiculous amount of time.
|
| The problem with the press engaging in constant lies and
| manipulation is that the vast majority of the population
| (I'll guess 99%) consumes without questioning any of it.
| Which, in turn, means people, over time, develop twisted
| narratives of reality that serve no useful purpose and do
| nothing but cause damage to society. The roughly 3.3 million
| people in the US who might be wiser or take the time to dig
| for the truth are powerless in rectifying the lies and
| manipulation. Refer to my feathers into the wind analogy on
| this last point.
|
| I sincerely doubt anyone would propose we should tolerate the
| level of lies and manipulation weaponized by mass media
| today. The difference with respect to 1807 is that _everyone_
| is now reachable via their phones and computers through
| myriad services, with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube perhaps
| being the main culprits.
|
| I do concede and fully understand that this is an area of law
| that requires very careful consideration and a soft touch.
| There isn't a simple fix. I don't like the idea of saying
| "well, just litigate using existing law" because of then
| massive asymmetry between these large corporations and the
| people. This approach actually harms anyone who isn't a
| millionaire or billionaire.
|
| It would be almost impossible for the average Joe to go up
| against the major news sources except for the most egregious
| of cases (where a large law firm would take the case for a
| piece of the action). In other words, large news operators
| can utterly destroy your life and massively affect public
| perception and nothing ever happens to them. The simple proof
| of this is that they are full of lies today, which means they
| haven't been challenged and suffered enough financially to
| change their ways.
|
| Sometimes I think the simple addition of the word "truthful"
| to the first amendment could be enough. IANAL, so I don't
| know how that could be detrimental. As a lay person it makes
| complete sense:
|
| "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the _truthful_ press;
| or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the Government for a redress of grievances. "
| krapp wrote:
| >Sometimes I think the simple addition of the word
| "truthful" to the first amendment could be enough. IANAL,
| so I don't know how that could be detrimental. As a lay
| person it makes complete sense:
|
| >"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
| religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or
| abridging the freedom of speech, or of the truthful press;
| or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
| petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
|
| And to make it easier for the press the government can
| establish a Ministry of Truth to determine what is and is
| not truthful on their behalf.
| robomartin wrote:
| > establish a Ministry of Truth
|
| I know this isn't simple. However, there are things that
| are simple. Things like taking statements out of context
| or editing videos/audio to distort what was said to fit a
| narrative.
|
| What I would like to see are articles with a full list of
| references and sources for the reader to dig into. In
| other words, if you can't provide backup for your claims,
| don't publish it. The TV equivalent for that would be a
| process through which viewers could access sources via an
| easy to use link to the TV network's website.
|
| In other words, we ought to demand more from the press.
| We have the technology to deliver more. Lies and
| distortion should not be tolerated. The rule should be
| something like: If you can't confirm your claims and back
| them up with evidence, don't say or print them.
|
| The other side of that would be that it would be OK to
| print and broadcast opinion (which can be unverified,
| even lies) with a clearly visible disclaimer. This could
| be like the equivalent of the disclaimers in cigarette
| packs, something like "THIS INFORMATION IS NOT VERIFIED
| AND COULD BE 100% INACCURATE" at the start and end of
| every article and prominently displayed on video.
|
| Probably a bunch of silly ideas. I'll admit that having
| been the subject of libel has made me sensitive to just
| how destructive this can be. People without this
| experience tend to discount the lies the press/media
| float every minute of every day as unimportant. It isn't,
| but convincing the masses they should demand and somehow
| require better is a nearly impossible task.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> we ought to demand more from the press_
|
| The problem is the first word: "we". Who is "we"? Earlier
| you said you thought 99% of people believe whatever the
| media tells them. Anyone in that category doesn't think
| there's any more to be demanded.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| No, of course not. Look at the recent events: the
| governments asked the press to organize their own "Truth
| Consortium" that would decide what's "fake news" or not
| and label it accordingly. Why make it a part of
| government that could, in principle, be made somewhat
| accountable to the public? Better leave it in the hands
| of the few owners of the news consortiums. They'll self-
| regulate all right, with the public interest in their
| minds first and foremost.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the non-trivial cost, workload and time it took to deal
| with a very simple libel case_
|
| _Any_ court case will involve non-trivial cost, workload,
| and time. Even legal matters that never make it to a court
| involve non-trivial cost, workload, and time. My wife and I
| had a condo association threatening us with fines and
| litigation for something we hadn 't done and had shown them
| proof that we hadn't done; we had to hire a lawyer and
| spend quite a bit of time, effort, and money just to reach
| a stalemate until the condo was sold.
|
| However, you can't fix that problem by just passing new
| laws, because the whole problem is that the way the court
| system functions does not respect the spirit of the laws to
| begin with. And it's that way because we citizens have
| allowed it to get that way, because most people don't have
| enough dealings with the legal system to (a) see how messed
| up it is, and (b) see the impact it has on ordinary people
| who are unlucky enough to have to deal with it.
|
| _> The problem with the press engaging in constant lies
| and manipulation is that the vast majority of the
| population (I 'll guess 99%) consumes without questioning
| any of it._
|
| And you can't fix _that_ problem by passing new laws
| either. (I actually don 't think the percentage is as high
| as you say; but I'll agree that it's high enough to be a
| problem.) The only way to fix it is for enough people to
| realize that they are being lied to and manipulated and
| stop consuming the media that is doing it.
|
| _> I think the simple addition of the word "truthful" to
| the first amendment could be enough._
|
| Who gets to decide what a "truthful" press is? Why, the
| same legal system that we've already established is a mess.
| So the "truthful" press will end up being...the same press
| we have now: whoever has enough money to prevail in any
| legal fight.
| pryelluw wrote:
| Same can and should be applied to websites (including this one).
| smolder wrote:
| This of course has echoes in the present. I think the public may
| not be better informed/closer to the truth than 20 years ago, but
| not much worse either. A lot of things probably just weren't
| widely reported or could stay under the radar before the internet
| and social media took over. Now when "undesirable news"
| inevitably gets out, it has to be countered with contradictory
| narratives and misinformation. It's gotten to the point that
| aligning yourself politically one way or the other implies you
| must adopt a volume of their favored fiction in addition to a
| shared interpretation of the real facts.
| clairity wrote:
| > "It's gotten to the point that aligning yourself politically
| one way or the other implies you must adopt a volume of their
| favored fiction in addition to a shared interpretation of the
| real facts."
|
| being truly independent is a lonely row to hoe in my
| experience. nobody likes or trusts you, because you're not all
| in on their side. despite this very real cost, more and more
| people are adopting an indepedent stance, which i find hopeful.
| swagasaurus-rex wrote:
| Those that adopt an independent stance are often much more
| agreeable to get along with.
|
| After all, they aren't usually the ones interjecting
| political nonsense into discussions every chance they get.
| toss1 wrote:
| Modern Analog in USA: those watching the most politically
| oriented sources, Fox & MSNBC are actually WORSE informed than
| those who watch no news at all.[1]
|
| And those who watch actual sources (in the case of this study,
| the Sunday AM interview shows) are best informed.
|
| [1] http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/
| danielam wrote:
| In this vein, "The Free Press" by Hilaire Belloc[0].
|
| [0]
| https://archive.org/details/freepress00bellgoog/page/n12/mod...
| jungletime wrote:
| "If You Don't Read the Newspaper You Are Uninformed, If You Do
| Read the Newspaper You Are Misinformed" Mark Twain
| joshjs wrote:
| "The lies of the day" is a great phrase. Stealin' it. Thanks, TJ.
| quacked wrote:
| A primary concern with "the news" is that it has no incentive to
| be correct, especially when it is reporting on predictions.
| Consider a situation where a respected economist releases a
| report that predicts a high likelihood of economic recession.
| "The news" will circulate something like "HIGH PROBABILITY OF
| RECESSION, SAYS FAMED ECONOMIST". The impending recession will be
| the talk of the people for the next several weeks.
|
| If the recession arrives, "the news" will report on the economic
| bloodbath, credit itself for reporting on the prediction of the
| recession in a timely manner, and give itself awards for accuracy
| in reporting.
|
| If the recession does not arrive, "the news" will report on the
| surprising market strength and why economists predicted the
| future incorrectly, credit itself for reporting on the inaccuracy
| of our once-great financial system, and give itself awards for
| accuracy in reporting.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| A related aspect is that a nice, solid, impartial fact-based
| news organization will often report on what various public
| figures have said. Since they are impartial, objective, and
| just reporting the facts, they will of course refrain from
| commenting on the truth of said declarations - that would be
| the reporter's biases showing!
|
| "X says Y" is objective news. "Y is actually not true" is
| journalists showing their biases!
| quacked wrote:
| You're right. It gets really gnarly, really quickly. "X says
| Y" is objective news, but it is extremely difficult to
| evaluate Y without deep knowledge of both the background of Y
| and the reliability of X.
|
| "Y is actually not true" is partial, biased journalism, but
| can also serve as critical information about the truth of Y,
| or the reliability of X!
|
| The safest bet is to be aware of what the news is claiming,
| but remember at all times that the news is a signal repeater,
| not a signal generator. Whenever possible, one must find
| primary documents or videos.
| maynman wrote:
| Reminds me of Ecclesiastes. "There is nothing new under the sun".
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