6 ms·

I'm sure their core subscribers are really satisfied about their reporting. ;( News really is a hard nut to crack; how do you get people to pay for news report

I'm sure their core subscribers are really satisfied about their reporting. ;( News really is a hard nut to crack; how do you get people to pay for news reporting that "offend" them?

johansch 10y ago
Before anyone says public service: I would point to Sweden as a counter example. Swedish public radio/TV (modelled after the BBC - there's a license fee for owning a TV receiver) used to be relatively benign, although leftist-leaning. Still, they had solid, smart and honest people who did good reporting. It used to be a very prestigeous place to work for anyone, regardless of political leaning. And there really wasn't much more money to be made elsewhere unless you started your own company. The past decade has been depressing. As the Internet has killed the newspapers and quality reporting has ceased to pay well, our public TV has become a propaganda organ for low-paid activists. Somehow 99% of these people are leftist. Pretty much all of the younger journalists at our public TV and radio (SVT and SR) are going into their jobs out of a (again, 99% of the time leftist) political conviction. (Smarter and/or less idealistic people get a job in the private sector.) In recent years this created a dangerous scenario: a) You have real humans, living in an actual society. They observe their environment. They do notice the crimes their friends and neighbors are victims of. b) You have the public service media constantly stating/arguing for how everything is fine. Obviously this dissonance creates a massive (and justifiably deserved) mistrust in "media".
- DaUR 10y ago
  This is why the only profession that I'll actually be excited to see replaced by AI is journalism. A few tens of thousands of people out of their (pretty low-paying) jobs, but journalism is so utterly crucial to democracy and societal stability that that could only be celebrated. AI-journalism would be much less expensive, so expect more non-profits delivering high-quality, unbiased journalism thanks to it. A media outlet is only as good as its most mediocre journalist. Open-sourcing and reproducible builds (articles) based on that source code would fix the trust issue.
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias.[0] Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. [0] https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_and_unfairness https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_a...
    - DaUR 10y ago
      > AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. By the way, the IAT has very little credibility, and isn't based on the scientific method but thought up by sociologists. Ironic to use flawed human-made tools to call AI biased. The whole presentation is a joke: she uses a sample size of just a few Trump tweets, and then complains that the output would be biased (duh! sample size!); treated Tay AI tweets that were not written by Tay AI as proof of how "problematic" things can be (Tay could be made to repeat tweets made @ her verbatim, so many of these "problematic tweets" had nothing to do with its AI). She's also arguing that society needs to be reengineered by benevolent """scientists""" (social psychologists) and that people be bombarded with carefully-designed stereotypes to counter the stereotypes we've supposedly internalized. Disappointing to see this from a Princeton grad. > Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both.
      - vertex-four 10y ago
        > Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. I am unconvinced that we've proven that - that seems like a hopeful wish. > Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both. It also involves being very, very careful about presentation of data. "Black people in the US are convicted of more crimes" is a perfectly truthful statement - but it turns out that there's an awful lot of nuance to the reasons as to why, which rarely ever have anything to do with one's genetics. And yet there's a good many people who will take that statement as suggesting that black people are inherently significantly more likely to commit crimes, which isn't even close to what was actually said. Specific speech patterns and words also lead to bias. You can quite easily write two articles stating exactly the same set of facts with very little fluff, and still result in differently biased articles. Or, in other words, facts without reasons behind them tend to further bias, and it's only once you have reasons that you can actually start to suggest policy.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- stenl 10y ago
  Wait, what? The problem is that the facts themselves have a left-wing bias. Crime has fallen over decades, and deadly violence has not changed for a decade (http://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/mord-och-drap.html http://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/mord-och-drap.html). Real humans experience anecdotes, but it's the job of the media to report the facts. A (large) minority prefers the anecdotes but that doesn't invalidate the facts. That this breeds mistrust is obviously a problem (maybe THE problem of our era) but the solution can't be to have the media report what your "real humans" want to hear, instead of the facts.
  - johansch 10y ago
    Hej, Sten. People here in Sweden are quite attuned to both general crime rates as well as the particular factors behind those rates. We are all happy that crime has fallen. You seem to be against it falling further? People in Sweden want the crime rates reported separately for: a) "sorta native Swedes" (people whose families have lived here many hundred years) b) "new Swedes" (e.g. people who arrived last year from Somalia) It is a well-accepted opinion that the people in category b) are grossly (by a factor of 10 or more) over-represented in crime stats. The authority you linked to has famously denied creating fresher stats than their 2005 report on origin vs crime frequency report - simply by saying "it's not needed". This is right. Sweden hasn't extracted and published crime stats based on the perps' origins simply because the results would be inconvenient.
    - stenl 10y ago
      I'm all for less crime, and for crime stats to be reported accurately. But come on, this is Hacker News, we don't do "well-accepted opinion". Find the facts, report them honestly and then we can have a discussion. Truth is, crime has fallen everywhere for decades and we don't really know why. Maybe globalization? The banning of lead in gasoline? That's a real mystery worth solving.
      - johansch 10y ago
        So you support having BRÅ redo their stats on crimes per origin in light of the new immigration since 2005? For any non-swedes who may be interested enough to follow this: BRÅ is the "Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention". The are tasked with doing research on crime and how to prevent it. Meanwhile, this particular authorithy actually published new stats recently. For example: Over the past three years 1.7% of the population of Sweden reported they were subject to sexual crimes. During the period 2005-2012 this number was relatively stable at around 1%. So we are talking about a 70% increase in just a few years. The most obvious thing that changed during these three years? Massive, historically unsurpassed immigration levels from Africa/The Middle-East. https://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/valdtakt-och-sexualbrott.html https://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/valdtakt-och-sexu... (The graph there is quite telling.)
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

I'm sure their core subscribers are really satisfied about their reporting. ;( News really is a hard nut to crack; how do you get people to pay for news reporting that "offend" them?

johansch 10y ago

Before anyone says public service: I would point to Sweden as a counter example. Swedish public radio/TV (modelled after the BBC - there's a license fee for owning a TV receiver) used to be relatively benign, although leftist-leaning. Still, they had solid, smart and honest people who did good reporting. It used to be a very prestigeous place to work for anyone, regardless of political leaning. And there really wasn't much more money to be made elsewhere unless you started your own company. The past decade has been depressing. As the Internet has killed the newspapers and quality reporting has ceased to pay well, our public TV has become a propaganda organ for low-paid activists. Somehow 99% of these people are leftist. Pretty much all of the younger journalists at our public TV and radio (SVT and SR) are going into their jobs out of a (again, 99% of the time leftist) political conviction. (Smarter and/or less idealistic people get a job in the private sector.) In recent years this created a dangerous scenario: a) You have real humans, living in an actual society. They observe their environment. They do notice the crimes their friends and neighbors are victims of. b) You have the public service media constantly stating/arguing for how everything is fine. Obviously this dissonance creates a massive (and justifiably deserved) mistrust in "media".

DaUR 10y ago
This is why the only profession that I'll actually be excited to see replaced by AI is journalism. A few tens of thousands of people out of their (pretty low-paying) jobs, but journalism is so utterly crucial to democracy and societal stability that that could only be celebrated. AI-journalism would be much less expensive, so expect more non-profits delivering high-quality, unbiased journalism thanks to it. A media outlet is only as good as its most mediocre journalist. Open-sourcing and reproducible builds (articles) based on that source code would fix the trust issue.
- vertex-four 10y ago
  AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias.[0] Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. [0] https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_and_unfairness https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8026-a_story_of_discrimination_a...
  - DaUR 10y ago
    > AI can and does have significant bias, as long as it learns from sources influenced by humans with bias Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. By the way, the IAT has very little credibility, and isn't based on the scientific method but thought up by sociologists. Ironic to use flawed human-made tools to call AI biased. The whole presentation is a joke: she uses a sample size of just a few Trump tweets, and then complains that the output would be biased (duh! sample size!); treated Tay AI tweets that were not written by Tay AI as proof of how "problematic" things can be (Tay could be made to repeat tweets made @ her verbatim, so many of these "problematic tweets" had nothing to do with its AI). She's also arguing that society needs to be reengineered by benevolent """scientists""" (social psychologists) and that people be bombarded with carefully-designed stereotypes to counter the stereotypes we've supposedly internalized. Disappointing to see this from a Princeton grad. > Additionally, you still need to be really careful to write in ways that avoid furthering existing human bias. Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both.
    - vertex-four 10y ago
      > Sufficiently advanced AI would be aware of the bias of its data, much more than any human ever could. I am unconvinced that we've proven that - that seems like a hopeful wish. > Usually that involves not using emotionally-loaded "hand grenade words" that bypass peoples' rational minds, and using clickbait headlines written by malicious editors. AI could be made to avoid both. It also involves being very, very careful about presentation of data. "Black people in the US are convicted of more crimes" is a perfectly truthful statement - but it turns out that there's an awful lot of nuance to the reasons as to why, which rarely ever have anything to do with one's genetics. And yet there's a good many people who will take that statement as suggesting that black people are inherently significantly more likely to commit crimes, which isn't even close to what was actually said. Specific speech patterns and words also lead to bias. You can quite easily write two articles stating exactly the same set of facts with very little fluff, and still result in differently biased articles. Or, in other words, facts without reasons behind them tend to further bias, and it's only once you have reasons that you can actually start to suggest policy.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
stenl 10y ago
Wait, what? The problem is that the facts themselves have a left-wing bias. Crime has fallen over decades, and deadly violence has not changed for a decade (http://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/mord-och-drap.html http://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/mord-och-drap.html). Real humans experience anecdotes, but it's the job of the media to report the facts. A (large) minority prefers the anecdotes but that doesn't invalidate the facts. That this breeds mistrust is obviously a problem (maybe THE problem of our era) but the solution can't be to have the media report what your "real humans" want to hear, instead of the facts.
- johansch 10y ago
  Hej, Sten. People here in Sweden are quite attuned to both general crime rates as well as the particular factors behind those rates. We are all happy that crime has fallen. You seem to be against it falling further? People in Sweden want the crime rates reported separately for: a) "sorta native Swedes" (people whose families have lived here many hundred years) b) "new Swedes" (e.g. people who arrived last year from Somalia) It is a well-accepted opinion that the people in category b) are grossly (by a factor of 10 or more) over-represented in crime stats. The authority you linked to has famously denied creating fresher stats than their 2005 report on origin vs crime frequency report - simply by saying "it's not needed". This is right. Sweden hasn't extracted and published crime stats based on the perps' origins simply because the results would be inconvenient.
  - stenl 10y ago
    I'm all for less crime, and for crime stats to be reported accurately. But come on, this is Hacker News, we don't do "well-accepted opinion". Find the facts, report them honestly and then we can have a discussion. Truth is, crime has fallen everywhere for decades and we don't really know why. Maybe globalization? The banning of lead in gasoline? That's a real mystery worth solving.
    - johansch 10y ago
      So you support having BRÅ redo their stats on crimes per origin in light of the new immigration since 2005? For any non-swedes who may be interested enough to follow this: BRÅ is the "Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention". The are tasked with doing research on crime and how to prevent it. Meanwhile, this particular authorithy actually published new stats recently. For example: Over the past three years 1.7% of the population of Sweden reported they were subject to sexual crimes. During the period 2005-2012 this number was relatively stable at around 1%. So we are talking about a 70% increase in just a few years. The most obvious thing that changed during these three years? Massive, historically unsurpassed immigration levels from Africa/The Middle-East. https://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/valdtakt-och-sexualbrott.html https://www.bra.se/bra/brott-och-statistik/valdtakt-och-sexu... (The graph there is quite telling.)

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]