4 ms·

Agreed, it is also a question of goals. Journalists can bend "facts" to support the argument they want. Title are 99% click-bait anymore. Sure there are some pe

Agreed, it is also a question of goals. Journalists can bend "facts" to support the argument they want. Title are 99% click-bait anymore. Sure there are some people who want to present fair and balanced view points but that takes a ton of work and time. Most "journalism" these days is get likes and move on.

weberc2 8y ago
Right. Many prominent newsrooms seem to regard fact checking as an obstacle to avoid. Still, it seems valuable to make it easy for readers to view the supporting or contradictory evidence. That might’ve stymied many notable media hit-pieces. Of course, many newsrooms wouldn’t want this (at least I can’t imagine The Guardian and it’s ilk would want to draw attention to their own impoverished fact:BS ratios), so it would have to be a browser plugin or similar.
- beat 8y ago
  People post contradictory evidence to journalism they don't like all the time. Their "evidence" is usually conspiracy theory crap that can't pass even logic checking, much less fact checking.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Sure, but it's not easy to find all of the debate about a given assertion in a particular article, much less contribute to that debate (given that it's probably distributed across a bunch of social media venues). One can easily imagine hovering over a given assertion (e.g., "Damore posted an anti-diversity screed") and see the fact-checks, perhaps ranked by fact-checker's credibility in order to suppress conspiracy theory crap as well as contribute to the debate. Anyway, that there is lots of noise among the criticism doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of valid criticism. It's only been a few months since nearly the whole American newsmedia willfully mislead the nation, sending an angry mob after innocent kids, after all.
- smacktoward 8y ago
  > Many prominent newsrooms seem to regard fact checking as an obstacle to avoid. Or they simply can't afford to employ fact checkers anymore, now that people refuse to pay for news.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > now that people refuse to pay for news People (the audience, that is) have historically refused to pay a significant share of the cost for news, what has changed is that advertisers have stopped paying as much for news (because the share of people's attention debited to news, and therefore which news outlets have to sell access to, has dropped.) Paid circulation used to often be important not so much because of direct revenue but because advertisers looked to it as an important measure of reach.
    - smacktoward 8y ago
      That's true as well. The effect is the same either way, though -- news organizations aren't exactly swimming in money these days. They have trouble just paying journalists, much less support staff for those journalists like fact-checkers.
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Maybe that's part of it, but there are plenty of examples of the media deliberately misleading their audience. "Can't afford fact checkers" doesn't really explain that.
gatherhunterer 8y ago
"These days" suggests that this is something new. Tabloids and magazines have been doing bunk journalism for decades. Now they are motivated by getting clicks to inflate ad costs instead of getting sales to inflate ad costs. The only thing that has changed is the delivery method. The reliable sources of journalism are unchanged as well. There are plenty of new online tabloids and "e-zines" but journalism still comes from the same places.
ben509 8y ago
Fact checking was very effective for publications like Readers' Digest that routinely invited guest authors. The publication wanted a variety of authors to contribute, and they also had a reputation to defend. If you've ever been interviewed by a modern journo, you know you just get the same question reworded a dozen different ways. The reason is that they decide what story they want to write up front, and then just go shopping for facts to support it. That story is usually dictated by market pressures, which presently reward sensationalism to feed the addiction of a dwindling number of listeners in an echo chambers. And current fact checkers are typically checking material put out by others, which is completely broken. They have all the same incentives as anyone writing a hit / puff piece, except they put a phony "truth number" at the top and other sites will tally those up as though it means something.

weberc2 8y ago

Right. Many prominent newsrooms seem to regard fact checking as an obstacle to avoid. Still, it seems valuable to make it easy for readers to view the supporting or contradictory evidence. That might’ve stymied many notable media hit-pieces. Of course, many newsrooms wouldn’t want this (at least I can’t imagine The Guardian and it’s ilk would want to draw attention to their own impoverished fact:BS ratios), so it would have to be a browser plugin or similar.

beat 8y ago
People post contradictory evidence to journalism they don't like all the time. Their "evidence" is usually conspiracy theory crap that can't pass even logic checking, much less fact checking.
- weberc2 8y ago
  Sure, but it's not easy to find all of the debate about a given assertion in a particular article, much less contribute to that debate (given that it's probably distributed across a bunch of social media venues). One can easily imagine hovering over a given assertion (e.g., "Damore posted an anti-diversity screed") and see the fact-checks, perhaps ranked by fact-checker's credibility in order to suppress conspiracy theory crap as well as contribute to the debate. Anyway, that there is lots of noise among the criticism doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of valid criticism. It's only been a few months since nearly the whole American newsmedia willfully mislead the nation, sending an angry mob after innocent kids, after all.
smacktoward 8y ago
> Many prominent newsrooms seem to regard fact checking as an obstacle to avoid. Or they simply can't afford to employ fact checkers anymore, now that people refuse to pay for news.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > now that people refuse to pay for news People (the audience, that is) have historically refused to pay a significant share of the cost for news, what has changed is that advertisers have stopped paying as much for news (because the share of people's attention debited to news, and therefore which news outlets have to sell access to, has dropped.) Paid circulation used to often be important not so much because of direct revenue but because advertisers looked to it as an important measure of reach.
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    That's true as well. The effect is the same either way, though -- news organizations aren't exactly swimming in money these days. They have trouble just paying journalists, much less support staff for those journalists like fact-checkers.
- weberc2 8y ago
  Maybe that's part of it, but there are plenty of examples of the media deliberately misleading their audience. "Can't afford fact checkers" doesn't really explain that.

gatherhunterer 8y ago

"These days" suggests that this is something new. Tabloids and magazines have been doing bunk journalism for decades. Now they are motivated by getting clicks to inflate ad costs instead of getting sales to inflate ad costs. The only thing that has changed is the delivery method. The reliable sources of journalism are unchanged as well. There are plenty of new online tabloids and "e-zines" but journalism still comes from the same places.

ben509 8y ago

Fact checking was very effective for publications like Readers' Digest that routinely invited guest authors. The publication wanted a variety of authors to contribute, and they also had a reputation to defend. If you've ever been interviewed by a modern journo, you know you just get the same question reworded a dozen different ways. The reason is that they decide what story they want to write up front, and then just go shopping for facts to support it. That story is usually dictated by market pressures, which presently reward sensationalism to feed the addiction of a dwindling number of listeners in an echo chambers. And current fact checkers are typically checking material put out by others, which is completely broken. They have all the same incentives as anyone writing a hit / puff piece, except they put a phony "truth number" at the top and other sites will tally those up as though it means something.