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Your last sentence is my point, particularly this phrase: 'but that would nevertheless be a biased presentation'. Who cares? Trying to eliminate bias from ever

Your last sentence is my point, particularly this phrase: 'but that would nevertheless be a biased presentation'. Who cares? Trying to eliminate bias from everything is a fool's errand that will tie people up in pointless minutiae - just like whatever happens when warming sceptics are let near anything resembling a debate. These people want to sow confusion and division, so much better to ignore them, especially when their position adds nothing to the discourse. We've already solved this problem: Professionalism. Quality professional culture is preferable to pointless nitpicking anyday.

ckastner 10y ago
I see, but doesn't that just shift the question from bias to "How can WikiTribune ensure quality professional culture?"
- te_chris 10y ago
  I think so, but IMO that's a much more productive question :)
smsm42 10y ago
The point is not eliminating bias in each message. The point is adequately representing what's going on and providing tools for people to make informed decision. If some information source hides parts of information and distorts another parts of information, this goes contrary to that goal. > We've already solved this problem: Professionalism You say it as if it explains something. But it doesn't - what's "professionalism"? There are a lot of people that are literally paid millions to deliver news, and if you're interested in news (and not, for example, in making fun of the person you disagree with or reinforcing your preconceived notions about people disagreeing with you being evil and stupid) they are doing a spectacularly crappy job. Are they "professionals"? And if not, where does one gets them? Are people that fake scientific data "professionals" (happens all the time)? Are people that make grand political claims based on shoddy research or no research at all "professionals" or not? Where does one get that "quality culture" which would eliminate those common occurrences?
- te_chris 10y ago
  You seem determined to focus on outliers rather than averages. There are lots of examples of professional news gathering and reporting organisations around the world that are trusted and reliable sources of information. A key part of this professionalism is that they have robust internal processes for self-criticism. You seem to have an agenda to try and prove that journalism as a vocation is fundamentally broken, and this leads you to make hyperbolic statements and clutch at strawmen. Take a look a little deeper and you'll see that journalism is a profession with ethical standards and is actually pretty robust and, perhaps, even honourable - it's the funding and business models that are the issue, but the actual practice is quite sound.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    > A key part of this professionalism is that they have robust internal processes for self-criticism. I am not observing any evidence of such processes existing. In fact, I am observing exactly the opposite - people freely moving between being political operatives and newspeople, political parties coordinating propaganda campaigns with friendly news anchors, known news personalities being openly hyper-partisan and not being challenged on it in their organization, independent thinking people being forced out (e.g. Sharyl Attkisson) and so on. I don't see any self-criticism going on. > You seem to have an agenda to try and prove that journalism as a vocation is fundamentally broken Journalism as a vocation is not broken. Journalists as a practitioners of the profession as it is practiced now are. Yes, there exist professional journalists, who do what they are supposed to do, honestly. Many of them. But now they are going against the stream, and working against the odds. And one has to be blind to not see that situation is getting worse, the trust in media reporting is dropping and the quality of news content coming from major outlets is terrible. You can call it "broken" or you can call it "temporary difficulties which do not influence averages which are still excellent" but its in plain view for everybody to see. And it's not my agenda - there are a lot of people around recognizing the same. Otherwise we wouldn't need special startups to do what journalists were supposed to do. > you'll see that journalism is a profession with ethical standards Ideally, yes. However, I don't see these standards being really enforced or even seriously heeded to. Very rarely I see any analysis done on bad reporting, and only in a case the organization was externally caught and called out on it. Maybe you're right and I am focusing on the visible outliers, but it seems to be that there are too many "outliers"...

ckastner 10y ago

I see, but doesn't that just shift the question from bias to "How can WikiTribune ensure quality professional culture?"

te_chris 10y ago
I think so, but IMO that's a much more productive question :)

smsm42 10y ago

The point is not eliminating bias in each message. The point is adequately representing what's going on and providing tools for people to make informed decision. If some information source hides parts of information and distorts another parts of information, this goes contrary to that goal. > We've already solved this problem: Professionalism You say it as if it explains something. But it doesn't - what's "professionalism"? There are a lot of people that are literally paid millions to deliver news, and if you're interested in news (and not, for example, in making fun of the person you disagree with or reinforcing your preconceived notions about people disagreeing with you being evil and stupid) they are doing a spectacularly crappy job. Are they "professionals"? And if not, where does one gets them? Are people that fake scientific data "professionals" (happens all the time)? Are people that make grand political claims based on shoddy research or no research at all "professionals" or not? Where does one get that "quality culture" which would eliminate those common occurrences?

te_chris 10y ago
You seem determined to focus on outliers rather than averages. There are lots of examples of professional news gathering and reporting organisations around the world that are trusted and reliable sources of information. A key part of this professionalism is that they have robust internal processes for self-criticism. You seem to have an agenda to try and prove that journalism as a vocation is fundamentally broken, and this leads you to make hyperbolic statements and clutch at strawmen. Take a look a little deeper and you'll see that journalism is a profession with ethical standards and is actually pretty robust and, perhaps, even honourable - it's the funding and business models that are the issue, but the actual practice is quite sound.
- smsm42 10y ago
  > A key part of this professionalism is that they have robust internal processes for self-criticism. I am not observing any evidence of such processes existing. In fact, I am observing exactly the opposite - people freely moving between being political operatives and newspeople, political parties coordinating propaganda campaigns with friendly news anchors, known news personalities being openly hyper-partisan and not being challenged on it in their organization, independent thinking people being forced out (e.g. Sharyl Attkisson) and so on. I don't see any self-criticism going on. > You seem to have an agenda to try and prove that journalism as a vocation is fundamentally broken Journalism as a vocation is not broken. Journalists as a practitioners of the profession as it is practiced now are. Yes, there exist professional journalists, who do what they are supposed to do, honestly. Many of them. But now they are going against the stream, and working against the odds. And one has to be blind to not see that situation is getting worse, the trust in media reporting is dropping and the quality of news content coming from major outlets is terrible. You can call it "broken" or you can call it "temporary difficulties which do not influence averages which are still excellent" but its in plain view for everybody to see. And it's not my agenda - there are a lot of people around recognizing the same. Otherwise we wouldn't need special startups to do what journalists were supposed to do. > you'll see that journalism is a profession with ethical standards Ideally, yes. However, I don't see these standards being really enforced or even seriously heeded to. Very rarely I see any analysis done on bad reporting, and only in a case the organization was externally caught and called out on it. Maybe you're right and I am focusing on the visible outliers, but it seems to be that there are too many "outliers"...