3 ms·

Supporting Wikitribune means ensuring that that journalists only write articles based on facts that they can verify This is hardly the only source of bias in

Supporting Wikitribune means ensuring that that journalists only write articles based on facts that they can verify This is hardly the only source of bias in the news, which is an age-old problem. We'd be better off just expecting news organizations to announce their bias up front so that we don't have to read between the lines in order to ferret out its nuances.

dagw 10y ago
Also 'verify' doesn't mean much. Even flat earthers can verify everything they believe in.
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  No. That's not 'verifying' at all. They are dismissing facts and make it all come down to something you have to 'believe'. Religion works the same way.
  - Neliquat 10y ago
    I know a christian biologist that steadfastly refuses to belive in any type of evolution. We talked for hours about it, and he is convinced he is intellectually correct. Never underestimate cognative dissonance.
notahacker 10y ago
It's also unclear what he means by "facts they can verify" Wales founded an encyclopedia on the basis that everything had to be "verified" by linking to a "secondary source", which in the case of recent events generally meant linking to a news report by a "reliable" subset of the same media Wikitribune aims to compete with. The other alternative, of course, is to link purely to primary sources like Open Data, online video and public figures' Twitter feeds for recording the fact they made an announcement. Wikipedia tended to frown on such behaviour largely because a "WP:SYNTH" policy recognised that stringing together multiple facts often implied decidedly non-factual conclusions (and if no other reliable source had drawn together those facts then it probably wasn't important and quite possibly wasn't a valid inference to be drawing). And whilst "X responded that" is certainly a fact, whether X's statement can reasonably be interpreted as accurate is generally a matter of opinion. Unqualified reporting of "X said $contentiousclaims" because they can't be conclusively established as non-factual is itself an editorial stance. Most news media doesn't exactly hide its biases though (and the worst news media for factual accuracy tends to be the most explicit about declaring it)

dagw 10y ago

Also 'verify' doesn't mean much. Even flat earthers can verify everything they believe in.

spiderfarmer 10y ago
No. That's not 'verifying' at all. They are dismissing facts and make it all come down to something you have to 'believe'. Religion works the same way.
- Neliquat 10y ago
  I know a christian biologist that steadfastly refuses to belive in any type of evolution. We talked for hours about it, and he is convinced he is intellectually correct. Never underestimate cognative dissonance.

notahacker 10y ago

It's also unclear what he means by "facts they can verify" Wales founded an encyclopedia on the basis that everything had to be "verified" by linking to a "secondary source", which in the case of recent events generally meant linking to a news report by a "reliable" subset of the same media Wikitribune aims to compete with. The other alternative, of course, is to link purely to primary sources like Open Data, online video and public figures' Twitter feeds for recording the fact they made an announcement. Wikipedia tended to frown on such behaviour largely because a "WP:SYNTH" policy recognised that stringing together multiple facts often implied decidedly non-factual conclusions (and if no other reliable source had drawn together those facts then it probably wasn't important and quite possibly wasn't a valid inference to be drawing). And whilst "X responded that" is certainly a fact, whether X's statement can reasonably be interpreted as accurate is generally a matter of opinion. Unqualified reporting of "X said $contentiousclaims" because they can't be conclusively established as non-factual is itself an editorial stance. Most news media doesn't exactly hide its biases though (and the worst news media for factual accuracy tends to be the most explicit about declaring it)