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> They want to make you accept their interpretation of the facts. Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without i

> They want to make you accept their interpretation of the facts. Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without imposing an "interpretation" on them. It's an absurd fantasy. There's no possibility for a disembodied, perfectly objective voice conveying facts. So yes, in a sense, every news org favors a certain interpretation of the facts. But these subtle variations used to be accepted as par for the course. The root cause of the widespread distrust of media is the turn on the right towards a form of Orwellian doublespeak in their media outlets, beginning in the 90s and ramping up heavily in the Bush years. You see it's most virulent expression in the way Trump speaks: he accuses the interim AG of "betrayal" for acting on her conscious. Or the way he talks about returning government "to the people" while staffing his cabinet with billionaires. It badly subverts the ability of people on the left and the right to meaningfully speak to one another, because our words no longer signify the same thing.

woah 10y ago
I'm personally opposed to almost everything Trump is trying to do, but don't act like it's only a problem on the right. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy?
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy? You mean the ones contained in a dossier which accurately predicted several Trump related events that were not publicly known to be in planning at the time it was written, but were verifiable to have occurred as predicted before it was published? Seems to me that it was plenty newsworthy. BTW, it also reported that part of the carrot side of the carrot-and-stick blackmail and bribery by Russia was that Trump was promised a bribe of a share of Rosneft coincidentally the same size that was just sold off, on credit, to buyers concealed by various cutouts.
  - imron 10y ago
    If I was Putin and I was trying to interfere in US politics, then after seeing that dossier I would have done this anyway just to mess with people, setting up a bunch of shell companies and essentially selling a 19% share of the company to itself. Gonna need more hard evidence before being concerned about this.
    - intended 10y ago
      This fails ~~occasion~~ occam's razor. By that logic, Putin could also dress up as an orange ballerina while announcing a 15% sale of the company, just to screw with people.
      - imron 10y ago
        > This fails occasion razor Occam's razor, but I'm guessing that was autocorrect. Anyway, no, because there is no incentive for him to do what you are suggesting. If however you believe his goal is to destabilise U.S. politics, then there is large incentive and zero downside for him to fake a sale of 19% of the company.
- e40 10y ago
  Many, and I mean MANY, of the people relaying/pushing the story did it with the caveat 1) it's completely unsubstantiated and 2) this is EXACTLY what the right did to the Clintons for 2 decades. When did the people pushing the N Clinton conspiracies every say "this may or not be true..."??? So, your statement is disingenuous, at best.
- untog 10y ago
  > Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy? Well, that's actually a pretty interesting example to look at. For one, the dossier concerned contained a lot of accusations to do with members of Trump's team travelling to Eastern Europe to meet with Russian contacts, suspect financial transactions and the like - you yourself are doing it a disservice by describing it only as rumours of a "piss orgy". But irrespective of that, the dossier had been known about for months. But the media organisations didn't report on it, specifically because they couldn't verify the information contained within it. But then Buzzfeed decided to publish it anyway, and at that point any responsible news organisation is left in a pretty impossible position - either don't report on the thing everyone is talking about, or report unsubstantiated accusations.
  - dalbasal 10y ago
    If any story includes a presidential piss-orgy everything else is filler. The journalists who ran that story did a lot of damage by running it the way they did.
    - untog 10y ago
      I think it is at least more complicated than you are painting it. If it's something that is widely known in media circles as well as political ones (at least one Democratic senator alluded to it on one of the many occasions Hillary's e-mails were brought up), the media holding it back from the public isn't really a fantastic look either. Sometimes it feels like the media is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't. Report unsubstantiated rumour? You're biased! Hold back information because it isn't verified? You're biased!
  - imron 10y ago
    If you apply the same standard you have displayed here to fake news on the other side of the political spectrum, then almost none of it would be fake news either.
    - untog 10y ago
- delecti 10y ago
  I saw that story as being similar to the "Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" meme going around. It was less that people thought it was true and more that it was funny.
enknamel 10y ago
I'm not arguing to remove all interpretation from the facts. That's impossible with our language. But what we are experiencing from the news every single day is a far cry from objective journalism. We are almost only getting the interpretation without many facts (or facts that are taken out of context or edited to fit a narrative).
gonmf 10y ago
Yes you can convey information much more objective than today. For example, on the more recent migration ban story: "The White House has announced today at 7h30, through speaker ..., a piece of legislation that, quote: ~first paragraph summary of the legislation~. You can read the full text here. On the opinion of Bla bla, this legislation is innefective etc etc. Disclaimer: Bla bla is not related to any of the mentioned organizations, though he declares he tends to agree with the opinion of former president Obama on most issues. You can read more about this commenter here."
- notahacker 10y ago
  Leading with a verbatim reproduction of the text describing the purpose of a bill (almost invariably a statement carefully crafted to make a political point) and adding a disclaimer to any points made in opposition is anything but an objective approach to news reporting.
Strilanc 10y ago
> It's an absurd fantasy. There's no possibility for a disembodied, perfectly objective voice conveying facts. Fallacy of gray. Just because you can't ask for perfect doesn't mean you can't ask for better.
nl 10y ago
Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without imposing an "interpretation" on them. I've addressed this elsewhere, but there is definitely cases where this can be done. No, Tom Cruise is not moving to Buffalo, Missouri[1]. No, there is no attempt by lawmakers to legislate the disposal of unused semen[2]. Etc, etc. Some of these are satire, but some are just complete deliberate fakes. This is a different class of problem to "OMG Hillary is a Nazi/OMG Trump bought Pizza" opinion spam. [1] http://www.snopes.com/celebrity-moving-small-towns/ http://www.snopes.com/celebrity-moving-small-towns/ [2] http://www.snopes.com/unused-semen-bill/ http://www.snopes.com/unused-semen-bill/

woah 10y ago

I'm personally opposed to almost everything Trump is trying to do, but don't act like it's only a problem on the right. Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy?

dragonwriter 10y ago
> Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy? You mean the ones contained in a dossier which accurately predicted several Trump related events that were not publicly known to be in planning at the time it was written, but were verifiable to have occurred as predicted before it was published? Seems to me that it was plenty newsworthy. BTW, it also reported that part of the carrot side of the carrot-and-stick blackmail and bribery by Russia was that Trump was promised a bribe of a share of Rosneft coincidentally the same size that was just sold off, on credit, to buyers concealed by various cutouts.
- imron 10y ago
  If I was Putin and I was trying to interfere in US politics, then after seeing that dossier I would have done this anyway just to mess with people, setting up a bunch of shell companies and essentially selling a 19% share of the company to itself. Gonna need more hard evidence before being concerned about this.
  - intended 10y ago
    This fails ~~occasion~~ occam's razor. By that logic, Putin could also dress up as an orange ballerina while announcing a 15% sale of the company, just to screw with people.
    - imron 10y ago
      > This fails occasion razor Occam's razor, but I'm guessing that was autocorrect. Anyway, no, because there is no incentive for him to do what you are suggesting. If however you believe his goal is to destabilise U.S. politics, then there is large incentive and zero downside for him to fake a sale of 19% of the company.
e40 10y ago
Many, and I mean MANY, of the people relaying/pushing the story did it with the caveat 1) it's completely unsubstantiated and 2) this is EXACTLY what the right did to the Clintons for 2 decades. When did the people pushing the N Clinton conspiracies every say "this may or not be true..."??? So, your statement is disingenuous, at best.
untog 10y ago
> Wasn't it just a couple of weeks ago that the left wing newspapers were reporting wild unsubstantiated rumors of a full-on Moscow piss orgy? Well, that's actually a pretty interesting example to look at. For one, the dossier concerned contained a lot of accusations to do with members of Trump's team travelling to Eastern Europe to meet with Russian contacts, suspect financial transactions and the like - you yourself are doing it a disservice by describing it only as rumours of a "piss orgy". But irrespective of that, the dossier had been known about for months. But the media organisations didn't report on it, specifically because they couldn't verify the information contained within it. But then Buzzfeed decided to publish it anyway, and at that point any responsible news organisation is left in a pretty impossible position - either don't report on the thing everyone is talking about, or report unsubstantiated accusations.
- dalbasal 10y ago
  If any story includes a presidential piss-orgy everything else is filler. The journalists who ran that story did a lot of damage by running it the way they did.
  - untog 10y ago
    I think it is at least more complicated than you are painting it. If it's something that is widely known in media circles as well as political ones (at least one Democratic senator alluded to it on one of the many occasions Hillary's e-mails were brought up), the media holding it back from the public isn't really a fantastic look either. Sometimes it feels like the media is damned if it does, and damned if it doesn't. Report unsubstantiated rumour? You're biased! Hold back information because it isn't verified? You're biased!
- imron 10y ago
  If you apply the same standard you have displayed here to fake news on the other side of the political spectrum, then almost none of it would be fake news either.
  - untog 10y ago
delecti 10y ago
I saw that story as being similar to the "Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer" meme going around. It was less that people thought it was true and more that it was funny.

enknamel 10y ago

I'm not arguing to remove all interpretation from the facts. That's impossible with our language. But what we are experiencing from the news every single day is a far cry from objective journalism. We are almost only getting the interpretation without many facts (or facts that are taken out of context or edited to fit a narrative).

gonmf 10y ago

Yes you can convey information much more objective than today. For example, on the more recent migration ban story: "The White House has announced today at 7h30, through speaker ..., a piece of legislation that, quote: ~first paragraph summary of the legislation~. You can read the full text here. On the opinion of Bla bla, this legislation is innefective etc etc. Disclaimer: Bla bla is not related to any of the mentioned organizations, though he declares he tends to agree with the opinion of former president Obama on most issues. You can read more about this commenter here."

notahacker 10y ago
Leading with a verbatim reproduction of the text describing the purpose of a bill (almost invariably a statement carefully crafted to make a political point) and adding a disclaimer to any points made in opposition is anything but an objective approach to news reporting.

Strilanc 10y ago

> It's an absurd fantasy. There's no possibility for a disembodied, perfectly objective voice conveying facts. Fallacy of gray. Just because you can't ask for perfect doesn't mean you can't ask for better.

nl 10y ago

Please, describe to me how someone can convey pure unadulterated facts in language, without imposing an "interpretation" on them. I've addressed this elsewhere, but there is definitely cases where this can be done. No, Tom Cruise is not moving to Buffalo, Missouri[1]. No, there is no attempt by lawmakers to legislate the disposal of unused semen[2]. Etc, etc. Some of these are satire, but some are just complete deliberate fakes. This is a different class of problem to "OMG Hillary is a Nazi/OMG Trump bought Pizza" opinion spam. [1] http://www.snopes.com/celebrity-moving-small-towns/ http://www.snopes.com/celebrity-moving-small-towns/ [2] http://www.snopes.com/unused-semen-bill/ http://www.snopes.com/unused-semen-bill/