5 ms·

True and within articles those experiences can serve to inform, which isn't a bad thing. It's actually sort of the point; interpreting the facts and outputting

True and within articles those experiences can serve to inform, which isn't a bad thing. It's actually sort of the point; interpreting the facts and outputting them through your lens of experience

trentlott 8y ago
And generally journalists are aware of their biases and good ones actively work against their impulse to favor one side. The idea that journalists can be biased is not something the profession was somehow unaware of previously. In the same way that scientists understand that they probably can make up data plausibly, they realize that they make their name with their credibility. But of course society is presently at the adolescent phase of realizing you can physically say and do whatever you want...whether bad science and bad journalism are confronted by the social analog of thr prefrontal cortex is uncertain. Maybe repercussions will help (collapse of democracy and global warming being the two most likely)
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  And generally journalists are aware of their biases and good ones actively work against their impulse to favor one side. From what I can tell, virtually none of those work at Slate.
- briandear 8y ago
  > In the same way that scientists understand that they probably can make up data plausibly, they realize that they make their name with their credibility Unless what they are saying (journalists and scientists) conform to the dominate politics of the day. Plenty of major media outlets run stories with anonymous, non-corroborated sources but since those stories fit the desired narrative of their consumers, they get away with it, credibility intact. A conservative outlet can have corroborated evidence, multiple sources and be chastised strictly on the basis of their conservative angle, while an outlet like The NY Times can publish anonymous op-eds without any corroboration and it doesn’t make a dent in their credibility among the majority of their readers. How many anti-Trump stories feature “anonymous” sources without a single shred of on-the-record corroboration? Yet, since the story confirms the bias of the readership, again, credibility remains intact. The Supermicro story is another example: completely uncorroborated, yet I bet not a single person cancelled their terminal subscription because of it. Credibility only matters if the writer is going against the biases of their readers. As far as global warming, plenty of scandals, such as Climategate, but the credibility of the climate-alarmists hasn’t been affected one bit among those that are predisposed to believe that the sky is, in fact, falling. Climategate was a serious scandal that calls into question the entire premise upon which the climate industry is based, yet that probably changed not a single person’s mind. It’s would be like telling Christians that Jesus never existed. It wouldn’t convince anyone who is already a believer. Global Warming is the modern world’s version of “going to hell if you don’t repent.” Credibility doesn’t matter as long as you affirm fashionable biases. To be completely fair, this isn’t a leftist phenomenon: plenty of anti-Obama news outlets could play loose with the facts and still have “credibility” with those predisposed to have opposed Obama’s policies. Same for the anti-vax crowd, the anti-GMO crowd and every other crowd where any challenge of their reality is tantamount to sacrilege.

True and within articles those experiences can serve to inform, which isn't a bad thing. It's actually sort of the point; interpreting the facts and outputting them through your lens of experience

trentlott 8y ago

And generally journalists are aware of their biases and good ones actively work against their impulse to favor one side. The idea that journalists can be biased is not something the profession was somehow unaware of previously. In the same way that scientists understand that they probably can make up data plausibly, they realize that they make their name with their credibility. But of course society is presently at the adolescent phase of realizing you can physically say and do whatever you want...whether bad science and bad journalism are confronted by the social analog of thr prefrontal cortex is uncertain. Maybe repercussions will help (collapse of democracy and global warming being the two most likely)

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
And generally journalists are aware of their biases and good ones actively work against their impulse to favor one side. From what I can tell, virtually none of those work at Slate.
briandear 8y ago
> In the same way that scientists understand that they probably can make up data plausibly, they realize that they make their name with their credibility Unless what they are saying (journalists and scientists) conform to the dominate politics of the day. Plenty of major media outlets run stories with anonymous, non-corroborated sources but since those stories fit the desired narrative of their consumers, they get away with it, credibility intact. A conservative outlet can have corroborated evidence, multiple sources and be chastised strictly on the basis of their conservative angle, while an outlet like The NY Times can publish anonymous op-eds without any corroboration and it doesn’t make a dent in their credibility among the majority of their readers. How many anti-Trump stories feature “anonymous” sources without a single shred of on-the-record corroboration? Yet, since the story confirms the bias of the readership, again, credibility remains intact. The Supermicro story is another example: completely uncorroborated, yet I bet not a single person cancelled their terminal subscription because of it. Credibility only matters if the writer is going against the biases of their readers. As far as global warming, plenty of scandals, such as Climategate, but the credibility of the climate-alarmists hasn’t been affected one bit among those that are predisposed to believe that the sky is, in fact, falling. Climategate was a serious scandal that calls into question the entire premise upon which the climate industry is based, yet that probably changed not a single person’s mind. It’s would be like telling Christians that Jesus never existed. It wouldn’t convince anyone who is already a believer. Global Warming is the modern world’s version of “going to hell if you don’t repent.” Credibility doesn’t matter as long as you affirm fashionable biases. To be completely fair, this isn’t a leftist phenomenon: plenty of anti-Obama news outlets could play loose with the facts and still have “credibility” with those predisposed to have opposed Obama’s policies. Same for the anti-vax crowd, the anti-GMO crowd and every other crowd where any challenge of their reality is tantamount to sacrilege.