8 ms·

WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, doub

by malchow 11y ago

WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though they were moral disgraces. Source: I help invest for the chairman of the company.

wolf550e 11y ago
WSJ also has a political agenda, which requires a second source for any story in there, from the other point of view.
- bduerst 11y ago
  What about Reuters and Associated Press?
  - dmoy 11y ago
    Reuters is not US. AP is pretty good for big news, yea.
    - protomyth 11y ago
      AP has its biases, in particular they are seen as anti-Israel with the whole saga of changing a headline from "Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem." to finally "Palestinian kills baby at Jerusalem station." being one of the better know headlines. The original headline remained on many sites.
      - dmoy 11y ago
        Yea, some qualifiers about big news. Also, there's roughly 0 unbiased coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict at this point. You kinda have to just read multiple sides from different news outlets and try to sift through the bias yourself. E.g. most recently, it's hard to tell from a headline about an IDF executing an unarmed guy lying on the ground with a headshot whether or not it's a fair interpretation of the situation.
  - mikekchar 11y ago
    I was absolutely shocked by the abysmal coverage by Reuters of the Fukushima disaster. Many "quotes" from Tepco and the Japanese government were blatantly mistranslated to the point where Reuter's version was the opposite of what was said. I used to keep links to some of those stories, but I seem to have misplaced them. If you dig back into the archives of the wikipedia page you can still find them. One of the most notable incidents was when Tepco was first considering whether or not there had been a meltdown, Reuters reported that Tepco had said that there was no meltdown. What they actually said (in Japanese) was, "There is a possibility that there is a meltdown. We have to wait because the data is consistent with there not being a meltdown as well." I'll have to apologize for not digging up good references because I don't have time. Several years ago there was a scandal in the Japanese press where one of the news outlets admitted to printing fictitous stories with an anti-nuclear agenda. This was before Fukushima (and I'm struggling to remember which news outlet it was, so I won't try to guess). I suspect that what is happening is that Reuters (and probably other news aggregators) are quite happy to take stories from established reporters on the ground. I think they do not rigorously check the facts, though. I have occasionally noticed other similar mistranslations, for example when the Japanese finance minister speaks at G8 summits, etc. Surprisingly often the report that gets picked up in the English news services is virtually the opposite of what is actually said. My rule of thumb: If it is a contentious issue and it is happening in a country where English is not the main language, the odds that you will get an unbiased report in English media is virtually 0. The closer to home you get, the more likely you are to get good reports, but even then if you actually check the sources yourself you can find glaring errors in a shockingly large percentage of the stories. People are people. People are busy. People don't check other people's work. Entertaining fiction sells better than complicated fact. It's really never going to work out. As long as you know that, it's fine.
- techonup 11y ago
  This line of argument really needs to be toned down. While it's obviously true that papers like the WSJ, NYT, WashPo, etc. have influential partisan editorial boards, their newsrooms are filled with reporters and editors of various political leanings. More importantly, these reporters are among the best in the country and do their very best to find and report the truth in an unbiased fashion. That's what makes these papers good sources of information in the US.
  - morcheeba 11y ago
    This article turned me off the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-proposals-18-trillion-1442271511 http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-prop... 18 Trillion -- yikes! It's not until the 5th paragraph that we find out that this includes health insurance and that me and my employer wouldn't have to shell out for that anymore. Does it save me money overall? A question not asked. But they do make a big deal about that number and how alarmed they are at it, even if it it's designed to save money.
    - randyrand 11y ago
      How could it save you money? 18 Trillion is the entire US GDP. It's literally the cost of all our products made annually in the US combined. edit: oops. Its 18 trillion over a decade. So 10% our GDP.
      - dangerlibrary 11y ago
        so, 7% less of our gdp than we spend on healthcare right now.
        randyrand 11y ago
        Interesting. Hmm maybe we should look into centrally planning other industries too.
        11y ago
- randyrand 11y ago
  So do CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, Times, NPR, RollingStone, etc etc etc. No really sure what my point is... but having bias is the norm, not the exception.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    They're not biased when they agree with my point of view.
    - Intermernet 11y ago
      I know you're being tongue in cheek when you make that comment, but one of the more important realizations a person can make is that their personal opinions are biased. This is however, a completely different question to how correct their opinion is. Judging that is a whole different ball-game.
      - randyrand 11y ago
        Do it one better and realize even your own culture is biased and largely arbitrary and then you will really have a broadened POV.
        WalterBright 11y ago
        I don't subscribe to the notion that all cultural values are of equal value, or are even worthy of respect. Just that people tend to not see bias when it agrees with their personal notion of truth.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        randyrand 11y ago
        How can you be tolerant of culture without being tolerant of cultural values?
- the0nly0ne 11y ago
  only way to get unbiased news is from a source that doesn't have advertisers, so they can truly speak their mind and report on the real news. No Agenda Show [1] (podcast) is pretty reliable source of information as they're 100% listener funded. They basically 'deconstruct' traditional news media, politics and world events and go above and beyond anything that will be ever produced by 'mainstream news' The show is hosted by one of the 'founders' of podcasting. [1] http://www.noagendashow.com http://www.noagendashow.com
  - eru 11y ago
    What makes you think advertisers are the only bias? Listeners want to hear what they want to hear, too. What does help is getting some news from outside the country. At least that will give you a different view. (Eg I remember all the German newspapers blowing in the same direction about something Deutsche Bahn did a while ago, while only the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (from Switzerland) dissented.)
    - talmand 11y ago
      I would see the difference between a non-sponsored host openly displaying bias through their own opinions versus a sponsored host presenting a bias based on their advertisers.
chm 11y ago
I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience. I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP, who has deals with publications such as the WSJ, to offer me access to their articles? I'd rather just browse and read, not manage subscriptions. EDIT: Apparently I'm replying too fast. Note that I quoted Netflix, implying similarity and not identity. I can also see the potential problems concerning Net Neutrality, but I don't think it has to be a problem. If done properly, no throttling is needed as the news sites can still serve ads to non-paying customers. You're just distributing your money in 1 place instead of 10. It's solely for convenience.
- malchow 11y ago
  ISP idea == very interesting !
  - chm 11y ago
    I actually had an Ask HN[1] with this question but it went completely under the radar. I was hoping for some good discussion! [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- morgante 11y ago
  For one thing because it would almost certainly not work economically. More importantly, that would be a major blow to net neutrality. I really don't want my ISP to be negotiating deals of what news I'm able to access.
- aczerepinski 11y ago
  Probably for the same economic reasons that Netflix isn't actually what you're implying it is. I keep a Netflix subscription because I enjoy their original content, but still pay a la carte to rent actual movies elsewhere.
- 11y ago
danieltillett 11y ago
You work for Rupert?
Retric 11y ago
WSJ is one of the wost offenders for this. Their origional content is often a mix of public datasets with a visual and deeply biased stories that are practically propaganda. It's a simple test pick 10 major stories from this time last year and look for inaccuracy's. Last time I did this they and several other papers scored a flat ZERO. Several papers could not even get everyone's name correct. Going this day from last year I picked a short strait factual story at random. http://www.wsj.com/articles/spanish-teacher-killed-with-crossbow-1429524641 http://www.wsj.com/articles/spanish-teacher-killed-with-cros... and reading the two comments I saw at least two possible innacuracy's vs http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/teacher-killed-in-school-crossbow-attack-in-barcelona http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/teacher-killed-... how many wounded and was second teacher shot or stabbed. Thinking about it the spin is the fact they are not rating the attack by a 13 year old as a criminal case. It also starts with "Madrid-" then says the attack is in Barcelona, which is odd but I am willing to let that slide. Feel free to dig into this one or pick something else. PS: I started this first time around because I had seen several stories I knew about in a few papers and not a single one was completely accurate.
- ipsin 11y ago
  It also starts with "Madrid-" then says the attack is in Barcelona A location in the beginning of a newspaper story is taken to mean the location of the reporter, not the event.
  - Retric 11y ago
    To clarify, they are ~400 miles apart so I can see not traveling the distance. But, reading it seems they are reporting what they saw on the news instead of any kind of first hand account. Sure, they called the local police, but in terms of actual reporting it's a bit thin.
Trombone12 11y ago
A+ thread derailing right here. As far as I can tell, all those trained journalists avoided the mistakes other media did while covering apples recycling report by avoiding the subject entirely.
forgotpwtomain 11y ago
> WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. <InsertJournalNameHere> has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. > Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though they were moral disgraces. The reason people don't like the WSJ paywalls is because they behave differently for google (allowing the page to be indexed) than for the readers. Care to provide a source for 'Paywalls as moral disgraces' that would convince me it's not a strawman?
RockyMcNuts 11y ago
are those the guys who said it's a myth that the government played a central role in the development of the Internet? http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904444643045775390... WSJ is not even a shadow of what it once was.
- lukesed 11y ago
  That article is in the opinion section.
  - RockyMcNuts 11y ago
    If your paper has a fantasy fiction section so fools can live in a dream world, it doesn't get my subscription dollars, no matter how many floors of journalists it has.
VonGuard 11y ago
>WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. All of which is taken, considered, and thrown out the window if Rupert wants a story that's mean to Obama run instead.

by malchow 11y ago

wolf550e 11y ago

WSJ also has a political agenda, which requires a second source for any story in there, from the other point of view.

bduerst 11y ago
What about Reuters and Associated Press?
- dmoy 11y ago
  Reuters is not US. AP is pretty good for big news, yea.
  - protomyth 11y ago
    AP has its biases, in particular they are seen as anti-Israel with the whole saga of changing a headline from "Israeli police shoot man in east Jerusalem." to finally "Palestinian kills baby at Jerusalem station." being one of the better know headlines. The original headline remained on many sites.
    - dmoy 11y ago
      Yea, some qualifiers about big news. Also, there's roughly 0 unbiased coverage of the Israel/Palestine conflict at this point. You kinda have to just read multiple sides from different news outlets and try to sift through the bias yourself. E.g. most recently, it's hard to tell from a headline about an IDF executing an unarmed guy lying on the ground with a headshot whether or not it's a fair interpretation of the situation.
- mikekchar 11y ago
  I was absolutely shocked by the abysmal coverage by Reuters of the Fukushima disaster. Many "quotes" from Tepco and the Japanese government were blatantly mistranslated to the point where Reuter's version was the opposite of what was said. I used to keep links to some of those stories, but I seem to have misplaced them. If you dig back into the archives of the wikipedia page you can still find them. One of the most notable incidents was when Tepco was first considering whether or not there had been a meltdown, Reuters reported that Tepco had said that there was no meltdown. What they actually said (in Japanese) was, "There is a possibility that there is a meltdown. We have to wait because the data is consistent with there not being a meltdown as well." I'll have to apologize for not digging up good references because I don't have time. Several years ago there was a scandal in the Japanese press where one of the news outlets admitted to printing fictitous stories with an anti-nuclear agenda. This was before Fukushima (and I'm struggling to remember which news outlet it was, so I won't try to guess). I suspect that what is happening is that Reuters (and probably other news aggregators) are quite happy to take stories from established reporters on the ground. I think they do not rigorously check the facts, though. I have occasionally noticed other similar mistranslations, for example when the Japanese finance minister speaks at G8 summits, etc. Surprisingly often the report that gets picked up in the English news services is virtually the opposite of what is actually said. My rule of thumb: If it is a contentious issue and it is happening in a country where English is not the main language, the odds that you will get an unbiased report in English media is virtually 0. The closer to home you get, the more likely you are to get good reports, but even then if you actually check the sources yourself you can find glaring errors in a shockingly large percentage of the stories. People are people. People are busy. People don't check other people's work. Entertaining fiction sells better than complicated fact. It's really never going to work out. As long as you know that, it's fine.
techonup 11y ago
This line of argument really needs to be toned down. While it's obviously true that papers like the WSJ, NYT, WashPo, etc. have influential partisan editorial boards, their newsrooms are filled with reporters and editors of various political leanings. More importantly, these reporters are among the best in the country and do their very best to find and report the truth in an unbiased fashion. That's what makes these papers good sources of information in the US.
- morcheeba 11y ago
  This article turned me off the WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-proposals-18-trillion-1442271511 http://www.wsj.com/articles/price-tag-of-bernie-sanders-prop... 18 Trillion -- yikes! It's not until the 5th paragraph that we find out that this includes health insurance and that me and my employer wouldn't have to shell out for that anymore. Does it save me money overall? A question not asked. But they do make a big deal about that number and how alarmed they are at it, even if it it's designed to save money.
  - randyrand 11y ago
    How could it save you money? 18 Trillion is the entire US GDP. It's literally the cost of all our products made annually in the US combined. edit: oops. Its 18 trillion over a decade. So 10% our GDP.
    - dangerlibrary 11y ago
      so, 7% less of our gdp than we spend on healthcare right now.
      - randyrand 11y ago
        Interesting. Hmm maybe we should look into centrally planning other industries too.
        11y ago
randyrand 11y ago
So do CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, Times, NPR, RollingStone, etc etc etc. No really sure what my point is... but having bias is the norm, not the exception.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  They're not biased when they agree with my point of view.
  - Intermernet 11y ago
    I know you're being tongue in cheek when you make that comment, but one of the more important realizations a person can make is that their personal opinions are biased. This is however, a completely different question to how correct their opinion is. Judging that is a whole different ball-game.
    - randyrand 11y ago
      Do it one better and realize even your own culture is biased and largely arbitrary and then you will really have a broadened POV.
      - WalterBright 11y ago
        I don't subscribe to the notion that all cultural values are of equal value, or are even worthy of respect. Just that people tend to not see bias when it agrees with their personal notion of truth.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        randyrand 11y ago
        How can you be tolerant of culture without being tolerant of cultural values?
the0nly0ne 11y ago
only way to get unbiased news is from a source that doesn't have advertisers, so they can truly speak their mind and report on the real news. No Agenda Show [1] (podcast) is pretty reliable source of information as they're 100% listener funded. They basically 'deconstruct' traditional news media, politics and world events and go above and beyond anything that will be ever produced by 'mainstream news' The show is hosted by one of the 'founders' of podcasting. [1] http://www.noagendashow.com http://www.noagendashow.com
- eru 11y ago
  What makes you think advertisers are the only bias? Listeners want to hear what they want to hear, too. What does help is getting some news from outside the country. At least that will give you a different view. (Eg I remember all the German newspapers blowing in the same direction about something Deutsche Bahn did a while ago, while only the Neue Zurcher Zeitung (from Switzerland) dissented.)
  - talmand 11y ago
    I would see the difference between a non-sponsored host openly displaying bias through their own opinions versus a sponsored host presenting a bias based on their advertisers.

chm 11y ago

I don't see it as a moral disgrace at all, but it really is an inconvenience. I have no way of creating this myself, but why doesn't the "Netflix" of journalism exist? Or why can't I just pay X$ more to my ISP, who has deals with publications such as the WSJ, to offer me access to their articles? I'd rather just browse and read, not manage subscriptions. EDIT: Apparently I'm replying too fast. Note that I quoted Netflix, implying similarity and not identity. I can also see the potential problems concerning Net Neutrality, but I don't think it has to be a problem. If done properly, no throttling is needed as the news sites can still serve ads to non-paying customers. You're just distributing your money in 1 place instead of 10. It's solely for convenience.

malchow 11y ago
ISP idea == very interesting !
- chm 11y ago
  I actually had an Ask HN[1] with this question but it went completely under the radar. I was hoping for some good discussion! [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11467942
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
morgante 11y ago
For one thing because it would almost certainly not work economically. More importantly, that would be a major blow to net neutrality. I really don't want my ISP to be negotiating deals of what news I'm able to access.
aczerepinski 11y ago
Probably for the same economic reasons that Netflix isn't actually what you're implying it is. I keep a Netflix subscription because I enjoy their original content, but still pay a la carte to rent actual movies elsewhere.
11y ago

danieltillett 11y ago

You work for Rupert?

Retric 11y ago

WSJ is one of the wost offenders for this. Their origional content is often a mix of public datasets with a visual and deeply biased stories that are practically propaganda. It's a simple test pick 10 major stories from this time last year and look for inaccuracy's. Last time I did this they and several other papers scored a flat ZERO. Several papers could not even get everyone's name correct. Going this day from last year I picked a short strait factual story at random. http://www.wsj.com/articles/spanish-teacher-killed-with-crossbow-1429524641 http://www.wsj.com/articles/spanish-teacher-killed-with-cros... and reading the two comments I saw at least two possible innacuracy's vs http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/teacher-killed-in-school-crossbow-attack-in-barcelona http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/teacher-killed-... how many wounded and was second teacher shot or stabbed. Thinking about it the spin is the fact they are not rating the attack by a 13 year old as a criminal case. It also starts with "Madrid-" then says the attack is in Barcelona, which is odd but I am willing to let that slide. Feel free to dig into this one or pick something else. PS: I started this first time around because I had seen several stories I knew about in a few papers and not a single one was completely accurate.

ipsin 11y ago
It also starts with "Madrid-" then says the attack is in Barcelona A location in the beginning of a newspaper story is taken to mean the location of the reporter, not the event.
- Retric 11y ago
  To clarify, they are ~400 miles apart so I can see not traveling the distance. But, reading it seems they are reporting what they saw on the news instead of any kind of first hand account. Sure, they called the local police, but in terms of actual reporting it's a bit thin.

Trombone12 11y ago

A+ thread derailing right here. As far as I can tell, all those trained journalists avoided the mistakes other media did while covering apples recycling report by avoiding the subject entirely.

forgotpwtomain 11y ago

> WSJ has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. <InsertJournalNameHere> has floors of smart, trained, inquisitive journalists who assemble real original data and break real original stories, and who try hard–through single, double, and triple verification–to ensure the accuracy of every single figure and fact they report. > Which is why it's sometimes annoying to see people treat paywalls as though they were moral disgraces. The reason people don't like the WSJ paywalls is because they behave differently for google (allowing the page to be indexed) than for the readers. Care to provide a source for 'Paywalls as moral disgraces' that would convince me it's not a strawman?

RockyMcNuts 11y ago

are those the guys who said it's a myth that the government played a central role in the development of the Internet? http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100008723963904444643045775390... WSJ is not even a shadow of what it once was.

lukesed 11y ago
That article is in the opinion section.
- RockyMcNuts 11y ago
  If your paper has a fantasy fiction section so fools can live in a dream world, it doesn't get my subscription dollars, no matter how many floors of journalists it has.

VonGuard 11y ago