10 ms·

The Increasing Problem with the Misinformed

195 points by r721 11y ago

appleflaxen 11y ago
Weird that the proposed solution is to make newspapers write better news. What prevents this from being copied over and over again by web-based news outlets, thus destroying their ability to generate revenue?
- CM30 11y ago
  Nothing. That's why news is basically valueless now, because any new story immediately spreads across the internet and becomes available to read for free. It's also why a lot of these 'opinion' articles are being written. Because there's a clear 'original' copy that will never quite be matched by the imitators.
- crispyambulance 11y ago
  Clay Shirky has an interesting essay about exactly this topic (http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking.... "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."
CM30 11y ago
Of course, there are also a few more reasons this sort of 'misinformation' is becoming an issue. Like all the sites online that actively make up news and stories to get clicks on social media, while only saying its 'satire' someone deep in a disclaimer page linked from the footer. It's pretty hard not to be misinformed if the internet is filled with deliberately misleading fake news sites that try and capitalise on people's fears and political opinions to get ad clicks. Just look how many debunked stories on Snopes comes from sites whose sole purpose is to trick people on Facebook. In addition to this, a lot of journalists need to ask themselves whether people's distrust of them comes from them being treated as 'idiots' by the press that's supposed to represent them. There's a point here where the article says: "Only about 20% feel positive towards newspapers today, again following the decline in trust in our politicians." But how about another reason? It's not just the fact the politicians are seen as almost completely non trustworthy, but the fact the press are seen as completely out of touch and more interested in supporting the 'status quo' than the population. It's the fact that having an opinion to the left or right of the media gets you labelled as 'crazy' or 'bigoted' or 'horrible'. That supporting Sanders gets you called a 'Bernie Bro'. Etc. The level of contempt a lot of journalists show towards their audience leads to people hating them, which leads them finding people that exploit that hatred for less noble ends (usually extremist groups and publications). That's something else the press needs to fix, and fast.
- pm90 11y ago
  Agreed. I also see something similar in academia, which might be why the general public tends to view it as 'aloof'.
- JoBrad 11y ago
  Yep. I thought the example Thomas brought up about the New Year's Eve sexual assault incident was a great example of exactly this.
0xabababab 11y ago
Does anyone actually read that many statistics outside of an academic paper?
andrewclunn 11y ago
I'm offended, or at least I assume I should be, since I only read the article's headline.
jccalhoun 11y ago
I don't know if it is increasing or not. The paper doesn't really present evidence that misinformation is actually increasing. Is it worse than during the lead-up to the Spanish-American War? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...
coldtea 11y ago
>But there is a problem with this graph. By ranking the data like this, we don't take into account the severity of the lies a person makes. That's the problem? The fact that you take a site at face value regarding its fact checking score, which could be totally BS, partisan, inaccurate, etc., in real life, isn't a problem? >But look at the above graphs. If PolitiFact was clearly biased, they wouldn't be as wide ranging as this. That still leaves two ways it can be partisan (or, off) wide open: 1) It can be partial to the shared assumptions/ideology of both parties (who are more alike than different compared to how parties are in other western countries). 2) It can be partisan to one party, and still mark as "bad liars" its people -- only for that party it does it for second players, whereas for the other party it does it for the leadership and first-rate players. This still gives a total like "here, we have reported on 100 lies from Democrats and 100 from Republicans" thus we're impartial, while still hurting one or the other party far more.
- nickledave 11y ago
  You have a point. It would be interesting for you to plot the data, or ask the author to plot the data, with rankings of party members, so we could see whether your hypothesis is true. Hypothesis: Politifact gives more "pants-on-fire" ratings to the leadership of one party than another. If true, then there should be a greater number of e.g. Republicans than Democrats that receive the 'pants-on-fire' rating. Of course, there could be other explanations besides bias even if that result turns out to be true. For example, the Politifact site [1] says that they choose which politicians' statements to validate based on how much press a statement gets. You'd have to somehow show that they're not just giving more high-ranking Repubs 'pants-on-fire' ratings because Repubs are getting more press attention overall for things they say. Gee, I can't think of any Republican candidate that keeps saying things mainly to get free publicity in the press. [1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/principles-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/...
  - JoBrad 11y ago
    I think your second sentence was sarcastic, but in case others also miss it: the OP's article specifically plots one party vs the other.
whack 11y ago
I agree with the article's premise that a misinformed public is dangerous to democracy, but I disagree with the premise that this is a new development. The public has always been misinformed for one simple reason: everyone loves to form opinions on how things ought to be, but few people feel the need to do the research and homework needed to actually form credible opinions on the topic. This is not a popular thing to say, but democracy would work a lot better if misinformed people were simply not allowed to vote: https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jury/ https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jur...
- austinjp 11y ago
  Who draws the line, below which are the uninformed/misinformed, above which are the decision makers?
  - dexterdog 11y ago
    Unfortunately the answer is those same decision makers.
- kawera 11y ago
  The problem is how to define "misinformed". The education system could play a role preparing voters, maybe even requiring an exam to become a voter, analog to driving.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Nah, the prospect of misinformation driving elections should be used to terrorize people that are informed into voting. The best standard for the right to vote is the ability to correctly complete a ballot that is designed to be easy to complete. Children shouldn't even be disenfranchised. If someone wants to coach their children to vote for Trump, let em.
  - thesagan 11y ago
    Driving is a routine-type task that's fundamentally different than electing representatives – I don't think those two are analogous at all. I think "preparing voters" would move political pressure into the education system, where similar problems would re-emerge as schools become "rating-agencies" of political ideology.
miguelrochefort 11y ago
If you think the problem with democracy is the public being misinformed, you're part of that group.
known 11y ago
1. "Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion." --Oswald Spengler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West#Democracy.2C_media.2C_and_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West#Democr... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
dforrestwilson1 11y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism Setting the clock back to the 1890s.
pdonis 11y ago
If the public is misinformed, who is misinforming them? The press.
AlldenKope 11y ago
1. Arguably the biggest misinformation problem involves scale. Media spends a lot of time talking about something of relatively small impact, like guns, or transgender bathroom protocols - and these are important - but practically neglible compared with, say, discussing solutions to large-scale problems like poverty/income inequality, or mosquitoes and communicable disease - which is exacerbated by climate change, which drives droughts and more poverty, which makes calls to jihad more appealing to disenfranchised young men, and so on. Not that we must always think big picture - part of solving big problems involves breaking them up into smaller problems, but the amount of time devoted to addressing issues of critical importance to our society is grossly disproportionate compared with issues where the magnetism is primarily emotional. 2. This article doesn’t really address a) Politifact’s cherry-picking or b) its ownership. Want to paint a politician as more honest? Fact check more statements from them that you know to be true. As long as the aggregate score tops the competition you’re against, you’ve nudged your readership. The article also doesn’t go into ownership - Politifact is owned by a newspaper who has endorsed a candidate, who in turn has owners with interests. 3. As for sites that explain the news, there should be more of them to emphasize what’s important and why, and what the potential solutions are. Sites like Vox, however, are biased and often intellectually dishonest. They’ll use opinion as evidence for their conclusions. See for example (adblockers on) an article where they are claiming to assess media bias against Sanders, and say things like he is “at sea in foreign policy” without providing any evidence or analysis to support that claim. Even 538 - though I admire their data-driven approach - write scathing editorials against Trump. I don’t like Trump, but to say 538’s journalism is objective is to admit illiteracy. See headlines like “Trump doesn’t have a monopoly on intolerant supporters”.
- gizmo 11y ago
  Pure objectivity in news is an impossibility, and pursuit of such pure objectivity is a fool's errand. As you pointed out, the editorial process in which a selection is made between newsworthy items is highly subjective. Every day only a few news items make it onto the front page, and there cannot possibly be a neutral metric that can determine which ones. Journalism doesn't just provide the facts, it also has an obligation to educate and inform the readers. Impartiality -- simply printing two opposing viewpoints side-by-side -- doesn't work. After all, giving equal weight to the opinion of a respected biologist and a evolution skeptic will mislead the readership by implying there is a serious debate where there is none. Even the process of selecting which authors get published in the opinion pages is subject to highly ideological forces. By necessity. A higher emphasis on data doesn't fix any of these issues. So instead media should be more upfront about their ideological perspective. The pretense of neutral objectivity doesn't serve anybody. To the contrary, delivering an ideological message in a package of neutral data-driven approach is pernicious. Pernicious because it allows the readers to believe they're the reasonable and fact-based party, while those people are ideological fools. In reality we're all highly illogical and ideological creatures and we should be honest about this, to ourselves and to others.
blfr 11y ago
The guy who thinks it's OK to slam reporters isn't misinformed. His knowledge of the facts completely matches the journalist's description. Where they differ is in their opinion of what is an appropriate response. Basically, OP argues that people who disagree with him haven't been preached to enough. This condescending article is more of a reason than an explanation for why people think it's OK to slam reporters. PolitiFact does the same thing. They take what is clearly an opinion and rate it: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/dec/04/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-incorrectly-says-obama-forcing-boys-and-g/ http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/dec/04/ted-c... It's not some unsubstantiated claim from politicians that the press is lying. They're simply the closest to the action. Watching Youtube or Liveleak videos of various events posted on social media and then hearing about them on the news is how I have developed a lot of contempt for journalists and journalism. And it's not a new observation. 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. The Internet just made it easier to learn more about various subjects. You don't have to passively listen to some anointed fact-checkers, and you're not limited to your narrow area of expertise.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Please explain this to me. How is the following an expression of opinion? Ted Cruz: "[...] federal government is going after school districts, trying to force them to let boys shower with little girls." Did they leave out something he said beforehand?
  - brbsix 11y ago
    It doesn't seem to be opinion, nor does it appear to be false. PolitiFact only seems to take issue with Cruz's use of gender identities. Apparently it's incorrect to identify genetically male students as boys.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ams6110 11y ago
Who checks the fact-checkers?
- alanwatts 11y ago
  The same people who guard the guards
pnathan 11y ago
Longform content is even more valuable than it was before. Sell deep investigative content on current events and movements; sell the ability of a reporter to spend time combing the facts out. I can read twitter and the drudge report too. Sell me something better.
dlandis 11y ago
Since the article relies on PolitiFact's conclusions so heavily I kept waiting for the author to at least acknowledge some of his assumptions about PolitiFact. And since this article was largely about misinformation, it is hard to ignore the irony of blindly accepting the conclusions of what is really just another partisan site with its own agenda. > "For instance, I thought Sanders was more truthful than Clinton. I has also assumed that Rubio was as bad as Cruz. But, as you can see, my personal assumptions were wrong." Then you see statements like those in the article -- does the author really believe that someone's overall truthfulness can be gauged in this manner?
Animats 11y ago
It's not just reporting. Editorial "news judgement" of what makes the front page has become much worse since news outlets started using clickthrough rates to drive article visibility. There are newspapers where the clickthrough rates are displayed in the newsroom. Some front page content in major newspapers now comes from Outbrain. The Washington Post has gone way downhill in news judgement in the last two years. It's getting hard to find any news source with any decent news judgement. The Reuters RSS feeds are still reasonably good. The Economist remains useful. But it's hard to find a mainstream news source that doesn't suck.
pi-rat 11y ago
To regain some trust from readers: - Stop the clickbait (you won't believe, will shock you, etc..) - Stop ads camouflaged as articles (no, a tiny 10% gray label is not enough..) - Stop the fear mongering. Thank you in advance.
adrenalinelol 11y ago
I'm not a Trump supporter (I feel like it's odd that I need to label myself as such thou) but this article is clearly biased against conservatives (and Trump in particular). As mentioned by another poster, unless there is indiscriminate selection of statements being fact-checked, than the data is little more than infotainment or worse, intellectually dishonest reporting trying to masquerade as some form of scientific reporting. I'd also point out that while a misinformed public is bad, the main-stream-media becoming more and more overt with their biases to justify skewed reporting is fanning the flames of mistrust in the media and large institutions in general. The boy who cried wolf here is a very fitting analogy, when the media wants to report something important, and then proceed to report it straight, there is a large amount of the public which will assume there is a hidden agenda, regardless of the supporting facts. I personally believe this was one of the reasons it took so long for the country's opinion on climate change to beign shifting.
c0g 11y ago
I'm curious - the author talks about the New Years sex assaults then says it was reported incorrectly, and even quotes something. Is there an article that sets it straight? Wikipedia's article has it that more than half of the crimes on New Years were done by refugees or illegal immigrants.
brbsix 11y ago
Maybe I'm missing something here, but can you really make any sort of meaningful comparison between the various entities on PolitiFact? I can only imagine that most politicians and public figures are making several thousand statements per year. PolitiFact has this to say: "Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones." In other words, their selection process is completely arbitrary. They aren't taking representative samples. Just as an example, 10% of Trump's statements might be completely false, but if you're selecting the most outlandish and newsworthy claims to evaluate, it may appear to be 90%. Which is fine and all, until you start believing you can use this to compare the honesty (or whatever criteria) of various candidates.

195 points by r721 11y ago

Weird that the proposed solution is to make newspapers write better news. What prevents this from being copied over and over again by web-based news outlets, thus destroying their ability to generate revenue?

CM30 11y ago
Nothing. That's why news is basically valueless now, because any new story immediately spreads across the internet and becomes available to read for free. It's also why a lot of these 'opinion' articles are being written. Because there's a clear 'original' copy that will never quite be matched by the imitators.
crispyambulance 11y ago
Clay Shirky has an interesting essay about exactly this topic (http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking-the-unthinkable/ http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/03/newspapers-and-thinking.... "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."

CM30 11y ago

Of course, there are also a few more reasons this sort of 'misinformation' is becoming an issue. Like all the sites online that actively make up news and stories to get clicks on social media, while only saying its 'satire' someone deep in a disclaimer page linked from the footer. It's pretty hard not to be misinformed if the internet is filled with deliberately misleading fake news sites that try and capitalise on people's fears and political opinions to get ad clicks. Just look how many debunked stories on Snopes comes from sites whose sole purpose is to trick people on Facebook. In addition to this, a lot of journalists need to ask themselves whether people's distrust of them comes from them being treated as 'idiots' by the press that's supposed to represent them. There's a point here where the article says: "Only about 20% feel positive towards newspapers today, again following the decline in trust in our politicians." But how about another reason? It's not just the fact the politicians are seen as almost completely non trustworthy, but the fact the press are seen as completely out of touch and more interested in supporting the 'status quo' than the population. It's the fact that having an opinion to the left or right of the media gets you labelled as 'crazy' or 'bigoted' or 'horrible'. That supporting Sanders gets you called a 'Bernie Bro'. Etc. The level of contempt a lot of journalists show towards their audience leads to people hating them, which leads them finding people that exploit that hatred for less noble ends (usually extremist groups and publications). That's something else the press needs to fix, and fast.

pm90 11y ago
Agreed. I also see something similar in academia, which might be why the general public tends to view it as 'aloof'.
JoBrad 11y ago
Yep. I thought the example Thomas brought up about the New Year's Eve sexual assault incident was a great example of exactly this.

0xabababab 11y ago

Does anyone actually read that many statistics outside of an academic paper?

andrewclunn 11y ago

I'm offended, or at least I assume I should be, since I only read the article's headline.

jccalhoun 11y ago

I don't know if it is increasing or not. The paper doesn't really present evidence that misinformation is actually increasing. Is it worse than during the lead-up to the Spanish-American War? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%80%93American_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

coldtea 11y ago

>But there is a problem with this graph. By ranking the data like this, we don't take into account the severity of the lies a person makes. That's the problem? The fact that you take a site at face value regarding its fact checking score, which could be totally BS, partisan, inaccurate, etc., in real life, isn't a problem? >But look at the above graphs. If PolitiFact was clearly biased, they wouldn't be as wide ranging as this. That still leaves two ways it can be partisan (or, off) wide open: 1) It can be partial to the shared assumptions/ideology of both parties (who are more alike than different compared to how parties are in other western countries). 2) It can be partisan to one party, and still mark as "bad liars" its people -- only for that party it does it for second players, whereas for the other party it does it for the leadership and first-rate players. This still gives a total like "here, we have reported on 100 lies from Democrats and 100 from Republicans" thus we're impartial, while still hurting one or the other party far more.

nickledave 11y ago
You have a point. It would be interesting for you to plot the data, or ask the author to plot the data, with rankings of party members, so we could see whether your hypothesis is true. Hypothesis: Politifact gives more "pants-on-fire" ratings to the leadership of one party than another. If true, then there should be a greater number of e.g. Republicans than Democrats that receive the 'pants-on-fire' rating. Of course, there could be other explanations besides bias even if that result turns out to be true. For example, the Politifact site [1] says that they choose which politicians' statements to validate based on how much press a statement gets. You'd have to somehow show that they're not just giving more high-ranking Repubs 'pants-on-fire' ratings because Repubs are getting more press attention overall for things they say. Gee, I can't think of any Republican candidate that keeps saying things mainly to get free publicity in the press. [1] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/principles-politifact-punditfact-and-truth-o-meter/ http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2013/nov/01/...
- JoBrad 11y ago
  I think your second sentence was sarcastic, but in case others also miss it: the OP's article specifically plots one party vs the other.

whack 11y ago

I agree with the article's premise that a misinformed public is dangerous to democracy, but I disagree with the premise that this is a new development. The public has always been misinformed for one simple reason: everyone loves to form opinions on how things ought to be, but few people feel the need to do the research and homework needed to actually form credible opinions on the topic. This is not a popular thing to say, but democracy would work a lot better if misinformed people were simply not allowed to vote: https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jury/ https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jur...

austinjp 11y ago
Who draws the line, below which are the uninformed/misinformed, above which are the decision makers?
- dexterdog 11y ago
  Unfortunately the answer is those same decision makers.
kawera 11y ago
The problem is how to define "misinformed". The education system could play a role preparing voters, maybe even requiring an exam to become a voter, analog to driving.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Nah, the prospect of misinformation driving elections should be used to terrorize people that are informed into voting. The best standard for the right to vote is the ability to correctly complete a ballot that is designed to be easy to complete. Children shouldn't even be disenfranchised. If someone wants to coach their children to vote for Trump, let em.
- thesagan 11y ago
  Driving is a routine-type task that's fundamentally different than electing representatives – I don't think those two are analogous at all. I think "preparing voters" would move political pressure into the education system, where similar problems would re-emerge as schools become "rating-agencies" of political ideology.

miguelrochefort 11y ago

If you think the problem with democracy is the public being misinformed, you're part of that group.

known 11y ago

1. "Media does not spread free opinion; it generates opinion." --Oswald Spengler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West#Democracy.2C_media.2C_and_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Decline_of_the_West#Democr... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_asymmetry

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

dforrestwilson1 11y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism Setting the clock back to the 1890s.

pdonis 11y ago

If the public is misinformed, who is misinforming them? The press.

AlldenKope 11y ago

1. Arguably the biggest misinformation problem involves scale. Media spends a lot of time talking about something of relatively small impact, like guns, or transgender bathroom protocols - and these are important - but practically neglible compared with, say, discussing solutions to large-scale problems like poverty/income inequality, or mosquitoes and communicable disease - which is exacerbated by climate change, which drives droughts and more poverty, which makes calls to jihad more appealing to disenfranchised young men, and so on. Not that we must always think big picture - part of solving big problems involves breaking them up into smaller problems, but the amount of time devoted to addressing issues of critical importance to our society is grossly disproportionate compared with issues where the magnetism is primarily emotional. 2. This article doesn’t really address a) Politifact’s cherry-picking or b) its ownership. Want to paint a politician as more honest? Fact check more statements from them that you know to be true. As long as the aggregate score tops the competition you’re against, you’ve nudged your readership. The article also doesn’t go into ownership - Politifact is owned by a newspaper who has endorsed a candidate, who in turn has owners with interests. 3. As for sites that explain the news, there should be more of them to emphasize what’s important and why, and what the potential solutions are. Sites like Vox, however, are biased and often intellectually dishonest. They’ll use opinion as evidence for their conclusions. See for example (adblockers on) an article where they are claiming to assess media bias against Sanders, and say things like he is “at sea in foreign policy” without providing any evidence or analysis to support that claim. Even 538 - though I admire their data-driven approach - write scathing editorials against Trump. I don’t like Trump, but to say 538’s journalism is objective is to admit illiteracy. See headlines like “Trump doesn’t have a monopoly on intolerant supporters”.

gizmo 11y ago
Pure objectivity in news is an impossibility, and pursuit of such pure objectivity is a fool's errand. As you pointed out, the editorial process in which a selection is made between newsworthy items is highly subjective. Every day only a few news items make it onto the front page, and there cannot possibly be a neutral metric that can determine which ones. Journalism doesn't just provide the facts, it also has an obligation to educate and inform the readers. Impartiality -- simply printing two opposing viewpoints side-by-side -- doesn't work. After all, giving equal weight to the opinion of a respected biologist and a evolution skeptic will mislead the readership by implying there is a serious debate where there is none. Even the process of selecting which authors get published in the opinion pages is subject to highly ideological forces. By necessity. A higher emphasis on data doesn't fix any of these issues. So instead media should be more upfront about their ideological perspective. The pretense of neutral objectivity doesn't serve anybody. To the contrary, delivering an ideological message in a package of neutral data-driven approach is pernicious. Pernicious because it allows the readers to believe they're the reasonable and fact-based party, while those people are ideological fools. In reality we're all highly illogical and ideological creatures and we should be honest about this, to ourselves and to others.

blfr 11y ago

The guy who thinks it's OK to slam reporters isn't misinformed. His knowledge of the facts completely matches the journalist's description. Where they differ is in their opinion of what is an appropriate response. Basically, OP argues that people who disagree with him haven't been preached to enough. This condescending article is more of a reason than an explanation for why people think it's OK to slam reporters. PolitiFact does the same thing. They take what is clearly an opinion and rate it: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/dec/04/ted-cruz/ted-cruz-incorrectly-says-obama-forcing-boys-and-g/ http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/dec/04/ted-c... It's not some unsubstantiated claim from politicians that the press is lying. They're simply the closest to the action. Watching Youtube or Liveleak videos of various events posted on social media and then hearing about them on the news is how I have developed a lot of contempt for journalists and journalism. And it's not a new observation. 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. The Internet just made it easier to learn more about various subjects. You don't have to passively listen to some anointed fact-checkers, and you're not limited to your narrow area of expertise.

Mithaldu 11y ago
Please explain this to me. How is the following an expression of opinion? Ted Cruz: "[...] federal government is going after school districts, trying to force them to let boys shower with little girls." Did they leave out something he said beforehand?
- brbsix 11y ago
  It doesn't seem to be opinion, nor does it appear to be false. PolitiFact only seems to take issue with Cruz's use of gender identities. Apparently it's incorrect to identify genetically male students as boys.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ams6110 11y ago

Who checks the fact-checkers?

alanwatts 11y ago
The same people who guard the guards

pnathan 11y ago

Longform content is even more valuable than it was before. Sell deep investigative content on current events and movements; sell the ability of a reporter to spend time combing the facts out. I can read twitter and the drudge report too. Sell me something better.

dlandis 11y ago

Since the article relies on PolitiFact's conclusions so heavily I kept waiting for the author to at least acknowledge some of his assumptions about PolitiFact. And since this article was largely about misinformation, it is hard to ignore the irony of blindly accepting the conclusions of what is really just another partisan site with its own agenda. > "For instance, I thought Sanders was more truthful than Clinton. I has also assumed that Rubio was as bad as Cruz. But, as you can see, my personal assumptions were wrong." Then you see statements like those in the article -- does the author really believe that someone's overall truthfulness can be gauged in this manner?

Animats 11y ago

It's not just reporting. Editorial "news judgement" of what makes the front page has become much worse since news outlets started using clickthrough rates to drive article visibility. There are newspapers where the clickthrough rates are displayed in the newsroom. Some front page content in major newspapers now comes from Outbrain. The Washington Post has gone way downhill in news judgement in the last two years. It's getting hard to find any news source with any decent news judgement. The Reuters RSS feeds are still reasonably good. The Economist remains useful. But it's hard to find a mainstream news source that doesn't suck.

pi-rat 11y ago

To regain some trust from readers: - Stop the clickbait (you won't believe, will shock you, etc..) - Stop ads camouflaged as articles (no, a tiny 10% gray label is not enough..) - Stop the fear mongering. Thank you in advance.

adrenalinelol 11y ago

I'm not a Trump supporter (I feel like it's odd that I need to label myself as such thou) but this article is clearly biased against conservatives (and Trump in particular). As mentioned by another poster, unless there is indiscriminate selection of statements being fact-checked, than the data is little more than infotainment or worse, intellectually dishonest reporting trying to masquerade as some form of scientific reporting. I'd also point out that while a misinformed public is bad, the main-stream-media becoming more and more overt with their biases to justify skewed reporting is fanning the flames of mistrust in the media and large institutions in general. The boy who cried wolf here is a very fitting analogy, when the media wants to report something important, and then proceed to report it straight, there is a large amount of the public which will assume there is a hidden agenda, regardless of the supporting facts. I personally believe this was one of the reasons it took so long for the country's opinion on climate change to beign shifting.

c0g 11y ago

I'm curious - the author talks about the New Years sex assaults then says it was reported incorrectly, and even quotes something. Is there an article that sets it straight? Wikipedia's article has it that more than half of the crimes on New Years were done by refugees or illegal immigrants.

brbsix 11y ago

Maybe I'm missing something here, but can you really make any sort of meaningful comparison between the various entities on PolitiFact? I can only imagine that most politicians and public figures are making several thousand statements per year. PolitiFact has this to say: "Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones." In other words, their selection process is completely arbitrary. They aren't taking representative samples. Just as an example, 10% of Trump's statements might be completely false, but if you're selecting the most outlandish and newsworthy claims to evaluate, it may appear to be 90%. Which is fine and all, until you start believing you can use this to compare the honesty (or whatever criteria) of various candidates.