8 ms·

The guy doesn't fit the narrative that's currently oh-so-trendy, thus he is not deemed valuable to the media. Makes you realize how much intentional selective b

The guy doesn't fit the narrative that's currently oh-so-trendy, thus he is not deemed valuable to the media. Makes you realize how much intentional selective bias there is in these publications' portrayals of the world. "Can we cause outrage with this? Nope? Ok, discard this dude, find someone who supports our hypothesis so we get more page views" Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there. They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked.

tomlock 10y ago
Similarly - when reading an article that has a single-line quote from a magazine - people can read all sorts of nefarious motivations into it which conveniently fit their worldview.
abandonliberty 10y ago
It's natural selection, regrettably. Things that won't rile people up display poor fitness. Technically, I think it's a human problem.
- BadassFractal 10y ago
  Indeed. They need to be at that sweet spot where they're maximizing outrage, but the content is still plausibly true vs say.. tabloids, where a ton of content is completely fabricated and people know it.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    A classic about this very phenomenon: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage....
- Banthum 10y ago
  It's an artifact of the article-by-article payment/consumption model. It used to be that people would have to buy a whole issue or subscription to a publication. So you'd choose based on the overall reputation of the publication. So that's what the media maximized. Now, on the Internet, people consume articles for free from many sites based on links. They don't care (and often don't know) anything about the reputation of the publication they're reading. And sites get paid based on views (through ads served). So now the sites are optimizing for getting people to read this article, without much concern about the overall image of the site, which most people won't know anyway. It's an obvious, huge, and very impactful change in incentives for media people.
  - cortesoft 10y ago
    Are you sure that is true? I mean, we had the whole Yellow Journalism phenomenon at the turn of the last century, and they weren't selling on an article by article basis. The publications had reputations, but they still got people to read their paper by sensationalizing everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
    - pillowkusis 10y ago
      >they weren't selling on an article by article basis there were literally newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline and making you pay two cents to read the article itself. I don't think subscription papers existed in large amounts during that time.
      - nerfhammer 10y ago
        > newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline it's weirdly hilarious to me to think that urban sidewalks used to be analogous to facebook...
    - jdietrich 10y ago
      When you paid for a newspaper, you paid for the lurid headlines, the coverage of local politics, the funny pages, the investigative journalism, the sports reporting, the crossword etc etc. Nobody in management was entirely sure what part of that mix actually sold newspapers; editors had a large degree of discretion over what went in the paper and who got paid. Ad-supported online journalism has unbundled news and precisely quantified each part. Management know exactly what each piece of "content" earns. Editors can no longer pretend that the prestige of serious reporting is a worthwhile investment. Ad-supported online journalism is now almost entirely dependent on traffic from social media. As we have learned from the "fake news" imbroglio, reputation means almost nothing in this arena. You're only as good as your next clickbait headline. As I see it, the only future for quality journalism is subscription-based, one way or another. Adsense is killing journalism.
- JBReefer 10y ago
  There's an incredible write-up on this effect by Scott Alexander, that goes into depth about the cultural propagation on the internet of exactly the phenomena you're describing. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...
threeseed 10y ago
You are talking drivel. The "media" is not some cabal of shadowy figures engaged in a conspiracy to trick the public and control the narrative. In fact they are a collection of thousands of organisations across the political spectrum in every country of the world. Some are one person blogs, others are multinational entities and others are state owned. And they all make money in vastly different ways. This guy is not interesting specifically to Inc. Magazine not to the media at large. All you are doing is showing your own bias and paranoia by criticising a straw man situation you invented in your head. I am sure much of the media would love to interview this guy.
- BadassFractal 10y ago
  Nobody is talking about a cabal, I don't see how you extracted that from my post, that's a straw man. I explicitly said that these people follow a very basic desire to be successful in their jobs, make a living, and keep their companies growing. Unfortunately the way they accomplish that is at the cost of objectivity for their readers.
  - threeseed 10y ago
    "Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed". This is a factually baseless statement that you invented and then decided to make an entire point around. The media is not a cohesive entity. It's the equivalent of saying "all people are murderers".
    - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
      It's nothing like that. It's clarifying the definition of a group. The set of people involved in "the media" are, by definition, in the business of creating and publishing media (news, opinion pieces, entertainment, etc). Success in this business does not require keeping the public informed, but it does require selling content. Thus, the group as a whole is in the business of selling content, and not necessarily in the business of keeping the public informed.
- deleted 10y ago
TorKlingberg 10y ago
On the other hand, this article is on HN because it fits an other narrative. There is never just one "the narrative". There are always two or more competing narratives and people publish, share and upvote stories that fit the one they prefer.
- BadassFractal 10y ago
  Conflicting narratives is pretty much how news work, that's just a fact of life, no denying that. Don't know if I would claim that HN has a particular interest in suppressing a certain narrative though, can you explain? Who is to gain here?
  - tomlock 10y ago
    If discrimination is a real barrier to entrepreneurship - that contradicts the narrative that entrepreneurship is an objective meritocracy.
    - BadassFractal 10y ago
      I'd be surprised if people here actually believed that to be a successful entrepreneur your starting conditions do not matter. Your race, your country, your culture, your health, your finances, your dependents, your family all have a massive impact on whether you can stop doing whatever you're doing and focus fully on turning an idea into a high growth business. Maybe it's just me, but I personally believe that it is a huge privilege to have the ability to pursue entrepreneurship. I could be a coal miner in war-torn sub-Saharan Africa trying to make ends meet to pay for my sick child's care, instead I'm sitting in a comfortable air conditioned office in the Bay, able to complain that the snack selection is not sufficiently locally sourced.
      - tomlock 10y ago
        What narrative do you think this guy isn't fitting, then?
      - 10y ago
alaskamiller 10y ago
This is such a juvenile view of how things work. Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there Short circuit logic, here you conflate things to make it disregard the first statement and push your own agenda. 1. A media business is not necessarily the same as a news business. 2. Either way both a media business and a news business are in the business of creating and selling stories. 3. Both a media business and a news business can have objectives of both selling stories that inform the public and sell junk to the public. 4. Stating like any other business doesn't serve any credibility to your argument, rather you're trying to slant a profit motive as evil. Would non-profits providing news services be the only good people in your head? They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked. Because they like jobs therefore they must be willing to take the low road to whatever they can to earn the duckets those jobs? So they create sensationalized and dramatized results, to use generalities to gloss over nuanced matters? Kind of like this post here? Good job. Everyone's in the business of selling stories. You tried to sell yours but I'm not buying it.
logicallee 10y ago
[I've decided to delete this comment as it didn't generate good discussion. The reply it got was a complete non-sequitur.]
- fav_collector 10y ago
  So what you're saying is that I can get into all ivies with a 2200 SAT score and 3.8 GPA? And get internships at top companies based on my race? And have parents and family who can speak proper english and understands American culture? Sign me up.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
yongjik 10y ago
On the other hand, the narrative of a successful black entrepreneur who made it against odds is also the narrative favored by conservatives: "You can overcome discrimination if you work hard. Instead of complaining, just show what you're capable of! If these guys made it you could, too." It all depends on how you view the story.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  That is a good point. This is the kind of story they'd cherry pick out to claim the victim or discrimination narratives are either fabricated or just biased research. That they told him he wasn't a fit for what they're looking for would be evidence of conspiracy to push a false narrative.
MarkMc 10y ago
I think the selective bias is simply to choose interesting stories, not push a narrative. The guy who was 'Not Black Enough' simply did not have a particularly interesting story to tell. Although there is a focus on black urban poverty, the media will sometimes also tell the other side of the story. For example, here [1] is a New York Times from last year: "Poverty is far more prevalent in black households than the general population, but the vast majority of African-Americans do not live in poverty. According to census data released last year, 26 percent of blacks live in poverty, compared with 15 percent of the country as a whole" That sounds like a pretty balanced statement to me. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-black-voters.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-...

tomlock 10y ago

Similarly - when reading an article that has a single-line quote from a magazine - people can read all sorts of nefarious motivations into it which conveniently fit their worldview.

abandonliberty 10y ago

It's natural selection, regrettably. Things that won't rile people up display poor fitness. Technically, I think it's a human problem.

BadassFractal 10y ago
Indeed. They need to be at that sweet spot where they're maximizing outrage, but the content is still plausibly true vs say.. tabloids, where a ton of content is completely fabricated and people know it.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  A classic about this very phenomenon: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage....
Banthum 10y ago
It's an artifact of the article-by-article payment/consumption model. It used to be that people would have to buy a whole issue or subscription to a publication. So you'd choose based on the overall reputation of the publication. So that's what the media maximized. Now, on the Internet, people consume articles for free from many sites based on links. They don't care (and often don't know) anything about the reputation of the publication they're reading. And sites get paid based on views (through ads served). So now the sites are optimizing for getting people to read this article, without much concern about the overall image of the site, which most people won't know anyway. It's an obvious, huge, and very impactful change in incentives for media people.
- cortesoft 10y ago
  Are you sure that is true? I mean, we had the whole Yellow Journalism phenomenon at the turn of the last century, and they weren't selling on an article by article basis. The publications had reputations, but they still got people to read their paper by sensationalizing everything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism
  - pillowkusis 10y ago
    >they weren't selling on an article by article basis there were literally newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline and making you pay two cents to read the article itself. I don't think subscription papers existed in large amounts during that time.
    - nerfhammer 10y ago
      > newspaper boys on the streets yelling an outrageous headline it's weirdly hilarious to me to think that urban sidewalks used to be analogous to facebook...
  - jdietrich 10y ago
    When you paid for a newspaper, you paid for the lurid headlines, the coverage of local politics, the funny pages, the investigative journalism, the sports reporting, the crossword etc etc. Nobody in management was entirely sure what part of that mix actually sold newspapers; editors had a large degree of discretion over what went in the paper and who got paid. Ad-supported online journalism has unbundled news and precisely quantified each part. Management know exactly what each piece of "content" earns. Editors can no longer pretend that the prestige of serious reporting is a worthwhile investment. Ad-supported online journalism is now almost entirely dependent on traffic from social media. As we have learned from the "fake news" imbroglio, reputation means almost nothing in this arena. You're only as good as your next clickbait headline. As I see it, the only future for quality journalism is subscription-based, one way or another. Adsense is killing journalism.
JBReefer 10y ago
There's an incredible write-up on this effect by Scott Alexander, that goes into depth about the cultural propagation on the internet of exactly the phenomena you're describing. https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage...

threeseed 10y ago

You are talking drivel. The "media" is not some cabal of shadowy figures engaged in a conspiracy to trick the public and control the narrative. In fact they are a collection of thousands of organisations across the political spectrum in every country of the world. Some are one person blogs, others are multinational entities and others are state owned. And they all make money in vastly different ways. This guy is not interesting specifically to Inc. Magazine not to the media at large. All you are doing is showing your own bias and paranoia by criticising a straw man situation you invented in your head. I am sure much of the media would love to interview this guy.

BadassFractal 10y ago
Nobody is talking about a cabal, I don't see how you extracted that from my post, that's a straw man. I explicitly said that these people follow a very basic desire to be successful in their jobs, make a living, and keep their companies growing. Unfortunately the way they accomplish that is at the cost of objectivity for their readers.
- threeseed 10y ago
  "Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed". This is a factually baseless statement that you invented and then decided to make an entire point around. The media is not a cohesive entity. It's the equivalent of saying "all people are murderers".
  - SAI_Peregrinus 10y ago
    It's nothing like that. It's clarifying the definition of a group. The set of people involved in "the media" are, by definition, in the business of creating and publishing media (news, opinion pieces, entertainment, etc). Success in this business does not require keeping the public informed, but it does require selling content. Thus, the group as a whole is in the business of selling content, and not necessarily in the business of keeping the public informed.
deleted 10y ago

TorKlingberg 10y ago

On the other hand, this article is on HN because it fits an other narrative. There is never just one "the narrative". There are always two or more competing narratives and people publish, share and upvote stories that fit the one they prefer.

BadassFractal 10y ago
Conflicting narratives is pretty much how news work, that's just a fact of life, no denying that. Don't know if I would claim that HN has a particular interest in suppressing a certain narrative though, can you explain? Who is to gain here?
- tomlock 10y ago
  If discrimination is a real barrier to entrepreneurship - that contradicts the narrative that entrepreneurship is an objective meritocracy.
  - BadassFractal 10y ago
    I'd be surprised if people here actually believed that to be a successful entrepreneur your starting conditions do not matter. Your race, your country, your culture, your health, your finances, your dependents, your family all have a massive impact on whether you can stop doing whatever you're doing and focus fully on turning an idea into a high growth business. Maybe it's just me, but I personally believe that it is a huge privilege to have the ability to pursue entrepreneurship. I could be a coal miner in war-torn sub-Saharan Africa trying to make ends meet to pay for my sick child's care, instead I'm sitting in a comfortable air conditioned office in the Bay, able to complain that the snack selection is not sufficiently locally sourced.
    - tomlock 10y ago
      What narrative do you think this guy isn't fitting, then?
    - 10y ago

alaskamiller 10y ago

This is such a juvenile view of how things work. Remember, the media are not in the business of keeping the public informed, they're first and foremost interested in putting bread on their own tables, like any other business out there Short circuit logic, here you conflate things to make it disregard the first statement and push your own agenda. 1. A media business is not necessarily the same as a news business. 2. Either way both a media business and a news business are in the business of creating and selling stories. 3. Both a media business and a news business can have objectives of both selling stories that inform the public and sell junk to the public. 4. Stating like any other business doesn't serve any credibility to your argument, rather you're trying to slant a profit motive as evil. Would non-profits providing news services be the only good people in your head? They like having a job, and these days, given how high our tolerance for absurdity has become, their job requires they come up with the most dramatic and outrageous content they can in order to keep people hooked. Because they like jobs therefore they must be willing to take the low road to whatever they can to earn the duckets those jobs? So they create sensationalized and dramatized results, to use generalities to gloss over nuanced matters? Kind of like this post here? Good job. Everyone's in the business of selling stories. You tried to sell yours but I'm not buying it.

logicallee 10y ago

[I've decided to delete this comment as it didn't generate good discussion. The reply it got was a complete non-sequitur.]

fav_collector 10y ago
So what you're saying is that I can get into all ivies with a 2200 SAT score and 3.8 GPA? And get internships at top companies based on my race? And have parents and family who can speak proper english and understands American culture? Sign me up.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

yongjik 10y ago

On the other hand, the narrative of a successful black entrepreneur who made it against odds is also the narrative favored by conservatives: "You can overcome discrimination if you work hard. Instead of complaining, just show what you're capable of! If these guys made it you could, too." It all depends on how you view the story.

nickpsecurity 10y ago
That is a good point. This is the kind of story they'd cherry pick out to claim the victim or discrimination narratives are either fabricated or just biased research. That they told him he wasn't a fit for what they're looking for would be evidence of conspiracy to push a false narrative.

MarkMc 10y ago

I think the selective bias is simply to choose interesting stories, not push a narrative. The guy who was 'Not Black Enough' simply did not have a particularly interesting story to tell. Although there is a focus on black urban poverty, the media will sometimes also tell the other side of the story. For example, here [1] is a New York Times from last year: "Poverty is far more prevalent in black households than the general population, but the vast majority of African-Americans do not live in poverty. According to census data released last year, 26 percent of blacks live in poverty, compared with 15 percent of the country as a whole" That sounds like a pretty balanced statement to me. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-black-voters.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/us/politics/donald-trump-...