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You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as be

You're totally correct. But if you just want to document something for your own future review, screenshots work fine. The thing is, journalism sees itself as being above citations. Journalists are primarily relying on their reputations as journalists, not evidence; the word of a journalist is supposed to be evidence, valid as a citation elsewhere. Journalists don't even record all of their interviews, a lot of them just get jotted down on paper and pieced together later. When they do record interviews, they don't include ways for the public to independently review those recordings to make sure that the written word corresponds 1:1 with what was spoken. You're supposed to trust them, even though we have plenty of examples of journalists who lied or just got sloppy. The profession needs a serious makeover. Historians used to be viewed this way, too. I'm forgetting the details, but there was an historian in the late 1800s who was actually criticised for meticulously citing his sources rather than relying on his reputation as an historian and letting historians of the future decide the merit of his work based on that.

stinkytaco 8y ago
Journalism is also not peer-review. It should never be viewed as such. Anonymous sources, the tendency for people to shy away from being recorded and just the speed of the news preclude some of what you are talking about. That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  Yeah, I totally understand and agree with your reservations. I do think there should be an outlet for Deep Throat situations (as in Mark Felt, not Linda Lovelace). But if a journalist is claiming that something was said by a named source, there should be evidence of that in the vast majority of situations. If a journalist claims something was posted on the surface web, there should be independent archives that back the claim up.
simonsaidit 8y ago
A usecase for blockchain.
- elwell 8y ago
  https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master/contracts/ProofOfExistence.sol https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master...
- azernik 8y ago
  How exactly does blockchain help here? It would allow you to enter a read-only entry that you interviewed a subject and they said XXX, but how would it verify that this is a truthful entry?
  - simonsaidit 8y ago
    That’s Not my point. You would be able to store history and news and later being unable to rewrite it. A creditable source eg if you trust waybackmachine or some journalist or organization then you have a record that it happend... that is a step up from a screenshot. I believe there is a saying that the winner of a war writes the history and I believe we have seen many wars which tried to destroy information and history of a people. Or recently people/ companies trying to erase their internet history. A example would be simple system would be to log eg url to New York Times article you request and blockchain does the logging so perhaps it’s wrong what the journalist wrote but it’s true that they did write it.. and eg trump getting control of all all media in us would still leave a trail for historians even if us were fucked today ;) See https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims-of-manipulated-blog-posts-in-the-wayback-machine/ https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims... Besides that there is nothing that prevents us from in the future to store voice/video and digital/biometric signatures and whatever to document interviews or events. For some part it will still be based on trust of a source in others it will be based on evidence. In science based on ability to reproduce methods and data.
shaki-dora 8y ago
What level of "evidence" would you accept? You reference science publishing as the gold standard, but why not require the standards of the criminal justice system? Indeed, why does science get away with a lesser standard? Each professions has the standard it deems optimal within the trade-offs of risks, costs, etc. Those obviously differ: holding journalism to the standards of a criminal trial would essentially make it impossible. That's especially true if you require to personally inspect all the evidence. Because if you don't trust a journalist, why trust any other person? Say the story is "Senator used campaign funds for vacation". The reporter sees bank statements to that effect. Are (photos of) bank statements "evidence"? Because they aren't signed. And even if they were, the photo could easily be faked. You wouldn't even have a specimen to compare signatures. In a trial, they'd get someone from the bank as a witness. But you don't accept just the journalist's assurance that any quote is accurate. So... Should the guy from the bank stop by at your place? In fact, I can't think of any evidence you can transmit over http that wouldn't just be attacked as "fake" by those motivated to believe that. Case in point: birth certificates. Meanwhile, there is like no evidence of respected news organisations making up facts. The whole narrative of these supposed failures of "mainstream media" is essentially fiction[0]. Journalism also doesn't work like science publishing in that it relies less on synthesis of previously reported facts. Scientists also don't offer any "evidence" for the meat of their papers, i. e. the stuff that's new. Almost by definition, citations can only cover old information. So there would be footnotes referencing election results to support the claim that "President Trump" is an accurate representation of the guy's name and title. Plus a lot of footnotes like "as told to me by XX". That wouldn't help anybody. In fact, the source is typically named in every article using interviews, and even for anonymous sources that fact is disclosed. Those references are just embedded in the text, not referenced via footnotes. So, is this a debate about formatting? 0: The example you're thinking of happened 18 years ago. You should come up with a more recent one, or you're liable to just proof that these events are extremely rare.
- blotter_paper 8y ago
  18 years ago? Are you thinking of Jayson Blair? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fabrication_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fa... That broke 15 years ago, not 18. Also, it's a highly relevant example, from the same news outlet as TFA. That's exactly the sort of thing we need better citations for; it would have been way harder to fake all those interviews if he had to upload recordings of them. Harder still if we expected dash-cam footage of him driving around West Virginia. He described video footage that didn't exist -- even if we can justifiably question whether a video was faked or not, releasing the actual video would certainly make it harder to fake than a written description is. Of course absolute evidence is hard, if not impossible; Bertrand Russel spent over 300 pages trying to prove that 1+1=2, and ultimately concluded that he failed. We have to accept that our knowledge is probabilistic, but that doesn't mean we can't try to improve our probabilities of being right. Edit: I removed the mobile part of the URL. Other edit: s/spend/spent
skybrian 8y ago
Journalists rely on phone calls and interviews, and on their reputation that they didn't fake the phone calls and interviews. This isn't all that different for academics. If they interview someone themselves then they'll cite it as "personal communication". On Wikipedia, you can't do that, but that's because everything we do is as anonymous editors with no reputation. The whole thing runs on trust. It has to bottom out on people making observations in the real world, so betrayal is always possible. Trustless knowledge gathering is a fantasy for crypto-enthusiasts.

stinkytaco 8y ago

Journalism is also not peer-review. It should never be viewed as such. Anonymous sources, the tendency for people to shy away from being recorded and just the speed of the news preclude some of what you are talking about. That said, I agree that journalists should be held to account. One of the victims of the decline of print media are local news outlets who are checking each other. I've noticed a trend in my own local paper to view themselves as above reproach, the singular check on all that is evil, but not likely to correct their own mistakes. Perhaps some of what you are talking about could check that.

blotter_paper 8y ago
Yeah, I totally understand and agree with your reservations. I do think there should be an outlet for Deep Throat situations (as in Mark Felt, not Linda Lovelace). But if a journalist is claiming that something was said by a named source, there should be evidence of that in the vast majority of situations. If a journalist claims something was posted on the surface web, there should be independent archives that back the claim up.

simonsaidit 8y ago

A usecase for blockchain.

elwell 8y ago
https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master/contracts/ProofOfExistence.sol https://github.com/ramyhardan/proof-of-existence/blob/master...
azernik 8y ago
How exactly does blockchain help here? It would allow you to enter a read-only entry that you interviewed a subject and they said XXX, but how would it verify that this is a truthful entry?
- simonsaidit 8y ago
  That’s Not my point. You would be able to store history and news and later being unable to rewrite it. A creditable source eg if you trust waybackmachine or some journalist or organization then you have a record that it happend... that is a step up from a screenshot. I believe there is a saying that the winner of a war writes the history and I believe we have seen many wars which tried to destroy information and history of a people. Or recently people/ companies trying to erase their internet history. A example would be simple system would be to log eg url to New York Times article you request and blockchain does the logging so perhaps it’s wrong what the journalist wrote but it’s true that they did write it.. and eg trump getting control of all all media in us would still leave a trail for historians even if us were fucked today ;) See https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims-of-manipulated-blog-posts-in-the-wayback-machine/ https://blog.archive.org/2018/04/24/addressing-recent-claims... Besides that there is nothing that prevents us from in the future to store voice/video and digital/biometric signatures and whatever to document interviews or events. For some part it will still be based on trust of a source in others it will be based on evidence. In science based on ability to reproduce methods and data.

shaki-dora 8y ago

What level of "evidence" would you accept? You reference science publishing as the gold standard, but why not require the standards of the criminal justice system? Indeed, why does science get away with a lesser standard? Each professions has the standard it deems optimal within the trade-offs of risks, costs, etc. Those obviously differ: holding journalism to the standards of a criminal trial would essentially make it impossible. That's especially true if you require to personally inspect all the evidence. Because if you don't trust a journalist, why trust any other person? Say the story is "Senator used campaign funds for vacation". The reporter sees bank statements to that effect. Are (photos of) bank statements "evidence"? Because they aren't signed. And even if they were, the photo could easily be faked. You wouldn't even have a specimen to compare signatures. In a trial, they'd get someone from the bank as a witness. But you don't accept just the journalist's assurance that any quote is accurate. So... Should the guy from the bank stop by at your place? In fact, I can't think of any evidence you can transmit over http that wouldn't just be attacked as "fake" by those motivated to believe that. Case in point: birth certificates. Meanwhile, there is like no evidence of respected news organisations making up facts. The whole narrative of these supposed failures of "mainstream media" is essentially fiction[0]. Journalism also doesn't work like science publishing in that it relies less on synthesis of previously reported facts. Scientists also don't offer any "evidence" for the meat of their papers, i. e. the stuff that's new. Almost by definition, citations can only cover old information. So there would be footnotes referencing election results to support the claim that "President Trump" is an accurate representation of the guy's name and title. Plus a lot of footnotes like "as told to me by XX". That wouldn't help anybody. In fact, the source is typically named in every article using interviews, and even for anonymous sources that fact is disclosed. Those references are just embedded in the text, not referenced via footnotes. So, is this a debate about formatting? 0: The example you're thinking of happened 18 years ago. You should come up with a more recent one, or you're liable to just proof that these events are extremely rare.

blotter_paper 8y ago
18 years ago? Are you thinking of Jayson Blair? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fabrication_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayson_Blair#Plagiarism_and_fa... That broke 15 years ago, not 18. Also, it's a highly relevant example, from the same news outlet as TFA. That's exactly the sort of thing we need better citations for; it would have been way harder to fake all those interviews if he had to upload recordings of them. Harder still if we expected dash-cam footage of him driving around West Virginia. He described video footage that didn't exist -- even if we can justifiably question whether a video was faked or not, releasing the actual video would certainly make it harder to fake than a written description is. Of course absolute evidence is hard, if not impossible; Bertrand Russel spent over 300 pages trying to prove that 1+1=2, and ultimately concluded that he failed. We have to accept that our knowledge is probabilistic, but that doesn't mean we can't try to improve our probabilities of being right. Edit: I removed the mobile part of the URL. Other edit: s/spend/spent

skybrian 8y ago

Journalists rely on phone calls and interviews, and on their reputation that they didn't fake the phone calls and interviews. This isn't all that different for academics. If they interview someone themselves then they'll cite it as "personal communication". On Wikipedia, you can't do that, but that's because everything we do is as anonymous editors with no reputation. The whole thing runs on trust. It has to bottom out on people making observations in the real world, so betrayal is always possible. Trustless knowledge gathering is a fantasy for crypto-enthusiasts.