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> There is no way we're going to come up with something "objectively truthful" because, news as it exists today is not about facts. It's journalism and journali

> There is no way we're going to come up with something "objectively truthful" because, news as it exists today is not about facts. It's journalism and journalism has always been about putting a slant on things --quoting unauthoritative sources ("man named Joe claims," etc.) loose factchecking, and more. All to sell more news (packaged with ads or for subscriptions, where you don't want to alienate your subscriber "base". I look at it much differently: Nothing is perfect, no news source, no politician, no text editor, no scientific theory. They all fail our ideals but some are a lot better than others, some are a little better, and as others have pointed out in this discussion, an essential skill is to differentiate between them and also to assume the uncertainties of imperfection and to read critically. To throw together all journalism as 'imperfect' is like throwing together all science, from the theory of evolution to latest upload to arXiv, as all a failure because it's imperfect. Yes, read Darwin critically, but don't conflate his work with everyone else's. The more I accept inevitable human imperfection, the more I'm amazed by people like Darwin and by organizations like the NY Times, which cranks out a very good, very difficult product on an amazing schedule. That they and others accomplish all of that under the constraints of humanity is truly amazing to me. > The Atlantic is wrong in placing blame on Google when they themselves ... We're kind of stuck with ideas from hypocrites, at least until the great AI awakening - and if it's strong AI, hypocrisy might be the first sign that it's working.

mc32 9y ago
I think the Atlantic wants it's cake and eat it too: >The problems with surfacing this man’s group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human. So it's obvious to any human, yet people aren't good enough to differentiate fake from real news. >Most people who joined the group looking for information presumably don’t know that the founder is notorious for legal and informational hijinks I mean, the author is picking and choosing anecdotes to make a point in order to further their agendum. On the other hand I agree with you but it's irrelevant to the authors' point. The author, I would posit, is not really interested in sourcing better news (it's not impossible, for example, for 4chan to have the best info on a particular issue (via a contributor) while The Atlantic may have none. But they are arguing a 4chan should not be surfaced at all --not that 4chan should be better scrutinized and only surface accurate information. It's an underhanded and opportunistic attempt to delegitimize non professional journos and build a moat around the "profession".

mc32 9y ago

I think the Atlantic wants it's cake and eat it too: >The problems with surfacing this man’s group to Facebook users is obvious to literally any human. So it's obvious to any human, yet people aren't good enough to differentiate fake from real news. >Most people who joined the group looking for information presumably don’t know that the founder is notorious for legal and informational hijinks I mean, the author is picking and choosing anecdotes to make a point in order to further their agendum. On the other hand I agree with you but it's irrelevant to the authors' point. The author, I would posit, is not really interested in sourcing better news (it's not impossible, for example, for 4chan to have the best info on a particular issue (via a contributor) while The Atlantic may have none. But they are arguing a 4chan should not be surfaced at all --not that 4chan should be better scrutinized and only surface accurate information. It's an underhanded and opportunistic attempt to delegitimize non professional journos and build a moat around the "profession".