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The problem is this: The person who wrote that article for Reuters didn't know anything about Mission Motors. The reporter had to hit her quota by mostly packag

The problem is this: The person who wrote that article for Reuters didn't know anything about Mission Motors. The reporter had to hit her quota by mostly packaging up and rewording Apple press releases because she has to pump out n articles per day. Otherwise Reuters starts to lose money on her and she gets fired. Expertise and research take time, and therefore are expensive. Reuters can't afford to pay someone to have deep expertise. So she gets pitched on something and pushes it out without much thought, it gets some clicks, and no one cares. Almost every time I read a piece in the mainstream media about something I understand really well I'm baffled at how badly the press machine we've set up (and inexplicably trust) can butcher it. Then I think about that experience the next time I read about something I don't know much about. In the age of the Internet (with the monetization of the Internet) the structure of traditional news is fundamentally flawed.

archmikhail 11y ago
This is exactly right. I had detailed knowledge of an acquisition and all media articles about it were so completely wrong that it was offensive.
snowwrestler 11y ago
In the good old days, there were just a few news operations. Each had the resources and time to do thorough vetting and deep reporting of each story. Today, there has been an explosion of news outlets, but each one has little time or resources to do deep reporting. But because there are so many, they are highly incentivized to attack each other's stories, to gain traffic. I'm not sure that one way is worse than the other, from the audience perspective. Today's news cycle is in some ways more transparent--the first take goes public, then the fact check goes public, then the second take goes public, then the second fact check, etc. And it's all discussed in detail between anyone who's interested--like here on HN, or on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Let's call it a transition from a monolithic "wait until correct" model to a distributed "eventually correct" model. That said, it may be corrosive to the reputation of news operations in general, because they are so frequently publicly challenged and wrong.
- austenallred 11y ago
  I think reputation matters far less than people think it does in the news industry. Buzzfeed consistently does as much traffic as all local newspapers combined. Maybe in the longterm it all evens out, but right now traffic is traffic.
- macintux 11y ago
  I regret that "eventually" correct is far too optimistic.
2bluesc 11y ago
> Almost every time I read a piece in the mainstream media about something I understand really well I'm baffled at how badly the press machine we've set up (and inexplicably trust) can butcher it. Then I think about that experience the next time I read about something I don't know much about. This is how I feel about press, movies, TV, etc.
- PopeOfNope 11y ago
  Ditto. I learned the media wasn't a reliable source of information when I was 10. What baffles me is so few people feel this way, even here on hacker news. A large percentage, if not most, of the submitted links on HN come from media outlets.
  - bpodgursky 11y ago
    It's not really an innate trust in media. It's the lack of anything better (and no, (most) blogs don't count) if you want to stay informed.
    - PopeOfNope 11y ago
      It's the lack of anything better That's ridiculous. That's like saying 'I know drinking sea water will kill me, but, being stuck out at sea, there isn't anything else to drink and it's better than nothing.' It's completely false. There are better alternatives and yes, blogs are one of them, but even if there weren't, reading/watching nothing is better than reading/watching the news.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
seivan 11y ago
However only Fox News, Breitbart, Telegraph and especially Daily Mail with other news outlets I hate is guilty of this and their readers are idiots for reading that junk. But it's pretty obvious what you brought up doesn't apply to Guardian, Huffington Post Arabic, Vox and Salon which is quality stuff that I like. It's flawed because we let it be flawed from personal bias. I think it was Spiegler that has around 80 fact checkers all around. What's your take on that? But yeah, boo Daily Mail, yay Salon because I am smart enough to tell quality from tabloids.
- coke12 11y ago
  Are you being serious here? I can't tell.
  - seivan 11y ago
    Nah dude, I am just poking fun of someone one complaining about Daily Mail while peddling Guardian and Vox as they were the One True Source with no angle or vested interests.
    - coke12 11y ago
      Okay, no worries!
delish 11y ago
When I came across Gell-Mann Amnesia I thought, "Wow I needed that concept." >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. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel...

archmikhail 11y ago

This is exactly right. I had detailed knowledge of an acquisition and all media articles about it were so completely wrong that it was offensive.

snowwrestler 11y ago

In the good old days, there were just a few news operations. Each had the resources and time to do thorough vetting and deep reporting of each story. Today, there has been an explosion of news outlets, but each one has little time or resources to do deep reporting. But because there are so many, they are highly incentivized to attack each other's stories, to gain traffic. I'm not sure that one way is worse than the other, from the audience perspective. Today's news cycle is in some ways more transparent--the first take goes public, then the fact check goes public, then the second take goes public, then the second fact check, etc. And it's all discussed in detail between anyone who's interested--like here on HN, or on Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. Let's call it a transition from a monolithic "wait until correct" model to a distributed "eventually correct" model. That said, it may be corrosive to the reputation of news operations in general, because they are so frequently publicly challenged and wrong.

austenallred 11y ago
I think reputation matters far less than people think it does in the news industry. Buzzfeed consistently does as much traffic as all local newspapers combined. Maybe in the longterm it all evens out, but right now traffic is traffic.
macintux 11y ago
I regret that "eventually" correct is far too optimistic.

2bluesc 11y ago

> Almost every time I read a piece in the mainstream media about something I understand really well I'm baffled at how badly the press machine we've set up (and inexplicably trust) can butcher it. Then I think about that experience the next time I read about something I don't know much about. This is how I feel about press, movies, TV, etc.

PopeOfNope 11y ago
Ditto. I learned the media wasn't a reliable source of information when I was 10. What baffles me is so few people feel this way, even here on hacker news. A large percentage, if not most, of the submitted links on HN come from media outlets.
- bpodgursky 11y ago
  It's not really an innate trust in media. It's the lack of anything better (and no, (most) blogs don't count) if you want to stay informed.
  - PopeOfNope 11y ago
    It's the lack of anything better That's ridiculous. That's like saying 'I know drinking sea water will kill me, but, being stuck out at sea, there isn't anything else to drink and it's better than nothing.' It's completely false. There are better alternatives and yes, blogs are one of them, but even if there weren't, reading/watching nothing is better than reading/watching the news.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

seivan 11y ago

However only Fox News, Breitbart, Telegraph and especially Daily Mail with other news outlets I hate is guilty of this and their readers are idiots for reading that junk. But it's pretty obvious what you brought up doesn't apply to Guardian, Huffington Post Arabic, Vox and Salon which is quality stuff that I like. It's flawed because we let it be flawed from personal bias. I think it was Spiegler that has around 80 fact checkers all around. What's your take on that? But yeah, boo Daily Mail, yay Salon because I am smart enough to tell quality from tabloids.

coke12 11y ago
Are you being serious here? I can't tell.
- seivan 11y ago
  Nah dude, I am just poking fun of someone one complaining about Daily Mail while peddling Guardian and Vox as they were the One True Source with no angle or vested interests.
  - coke12 11y ago
    Okay, no worries!

delish 11y ago

When I came across Gell-Mann Amnesia I thought, "Wow I needed that concept." >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. http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gel...