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But I have never seen journalists report accurately on any story that I knew well. And their failure to even attempt it causes great harm to the American public

by kick 7y ago

But I have never seen journalists report accurately on any story that I knew well. And their failure to even attempt it causes great harm to the American public. What publications do you read? For a random example off the top of my head, I've found that Glenn Greenwald's reporting is exceptional on topics I know well.

btilly 7y ago
You are right, I overstated the case. My impression is that Glenn Greenwald's reporting is indeed excellent. However my knowledge of secret surveillance is from the writings of people like him - it is not a subject that I have independent knowledge that I can verify anything from. Furthermore at this point I would consider him more of a subject matter expert than a general journalist. Reporting on the same topics in CNN or the NYT tends to be pretty shoddy. That said, there are some publications, such as Propublica and The Economist that seem to consistently do a good job of reporting. So it is not all. But it is a lot. That said, I was basing my comments on my personal expertise on programming, math, physics and a handful of celebrities that I happen to know personally. Reporting on all of those is pretty uniformly terrible.
- thomasmeeks 7y ago
  I agree though I think blaming journalists is a red herring. Ultimately most journalists are just trying to make ends meet and are in no better position to change the rules of the game than any other average person (the ad-revenue game). Or, to use a Bezos quote: “Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen.” There are outliers, of course, but that’s the nature of large groups of people. If we as a society want deep, accurate, journalism we have to figure out a way to make it more profitable than clickbait.
malandrew 7y ago
His reporting on anything related to Brazilian politics certainly suffers from his own ideological biases that leftyted pointed out in another reply to the comment you’re replying too.
dahfizz 7y ago
To play devils advocate, how much do you personally know about the Snowden leaks that you didn't read from news articles? There are (exceedingly rare) examples where journalist do get it right, but your example is a journalist reporting on classified material. Unless you're a higher-up in the NSA, you would have no clue if he got details wrong.
- kick 7y ago
  To spray holy water on your Devil's advocacy, there have been multiple occasions where documents from NSA have been released to all. Greenwald's reporting has held up when cross-referencing the documents.
  - lern_too_spel 7y ago
    Greenwald's reporting doesn't even match the documents he released himself.
rayiner 7y ago
Literally the first Greenwald article I came across in a Google search was propaganda: https://theintercept.com/2019/12/16/evo-morales-interview-glenn-greenwald https://theintercept.com/2019/12/16/evo-morales-interview-gl.... Greenwald heaps praise on Evo Morales, calling his ouster from the Presidency a “coup.” The story of Morales’ ouster is as follows: 1) In his first term, Morales pushes through a new constitution, which among other things dissolves the Bolivian Supreme Court. In its place, it creates a high court comprising judges elected from a slate of candidates appointed by the legislature controlled by his party. This constitution has a two term limit. 2) Morales runs for a third term, after getting the high court to rule that his first term didn’t count since it started before the new constitution. 3) In his third term, he solicits a public referendum asking whether the term limit should be waived to allow him to run for a fourth term. In a vote that had very good turn out, the people vote “no.” 4) Morales ignores the referendum. Instead, he goes back to the high court, which rules that the term limits violate Morales’ “human rights.” The court allows him to run for a fourth term. 5) Morales wins the election, but the Organization of American States releases a report finding “overwhelming evidence of vote rigging.” Massive protests start in response to the report. 6) Morales slowly loses the support of key institutions, including the police. Many members of his own party resigned. A major labor union called for him to resign. 7) The account is disputed at this point. Morales supporters contend that the military then withdrew its support and encouraged him to resign. Morales opponents say that he ordered the military to crack down on protestors, and they refused. Even taking Morales’ supporters at face value, at most what happened is that the military encouraged him to resign after he lost the support of key institutions and many members of his own party. 8) Claiming that he was deposed in a coup, Morales flees to Mexico. 9) Subsequently, Morales’ party basically told him not to come back. Aside from hunting at the term limits, Greenwald mentions none of the real story.
- kick 7y ago
  Morales's oust was a coup by any real definition of the word, and your story is ignoring reality.
  - rayiner 7y ago
    A military coup is where the military overthrows a legally elected government and seizes power for itself. Morales was illegally and corruptly elected, and the military did not seize control: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/472356-dispelling-myths-about-the-battle-for-democracy-in-bolivia https://thehill.com/opinion/international/472356-dispelling-.... It’s not a coup for the military to withdraw its support for a head of state that’s taking illegal action. (Consider a similar situation. Trump packs the Supreme Court and runs for a third term in violation of the term limit. He wins, but in an election where UN election monitors find “overwhelming evidence” of fraud. Military officials, who take an oath to defend the constitution, would have a duty to refuse to accept his authority.) More to the point, Greenwald omits all the background information necessary for the reader to decide whether there was a coup. The military didn’t just one day decide to stop supporting Morales after 14 years. It happened only after a series of events—illegal actions by Morales and key institutions abandoning him.
noparity 7y ago
Greenwald has a very clear agenda, so his reporting is exceptional only if you agree with his anti-US stance on almost everything...
lern_too_spel 7y ago
I know the topic of Internet communication reasonably well, and in that domain, Greenwald's reporting (PRISM and related stories) is so abysmal that people who read his articles are less informed than people who don't.

by kick 7y ago

btilly 7y ago

You are right, I overstated the case. My impression is that Glenn Greenwald's reporting is indeed excellent. However my knowledge of secret surveillance is from the writings of people like him - it is not a subject that I have independent knowledge that I can verify anything from. Furthermore at this point I would consider him more of a subject matter expert than a general journalist. Reporting on the same topics in CNN or the NYT tends to be pretty shoddy. That said, there are some publications, such as Propublica and The Economist that seem to consistently do a good job of reporting. So it is not all. But it is a lot. That said, I was basing my comments on my personal expertise on programming, math, physics and a handful of celebrities that I happen to know personally. Reporting on all of those is pretty uniformly terrible.

thomasmeeks 7y ago
I agree though I think blaming journalists is a red herring. Ultimately most journalists are just trying to make ends meet and are in no better position to change the rules of the game than any other average person (the ad-revenue game). Or, to use a Bezos quote: “Good intentions never work, you need good mechanisms to make anything happen.” There are outliers, of course, but that’s the nature of large groups of people. If we as a society want deep, accurate, journalism we have to figure out a way to make it more profitable than clickbait.

malandrew 7y ago

His reporting on anything related to Brazilian politics certainly suffers from his own ideological biases that leftyted pointed out in another reply to the comment you’re replying too.

dahfizz 7y ago

To play devils advocate, how much do you personally know about the Snowden leaks that you didn't read from news articles? There are (exceedingly rare) examples where journalist do get it right, but your example is a journalist reporting on classified material. Unless you're a higher-up in the NSA, you would have no clue if he got details wrong.

kick 7y ago
To spray holy water on your Devil's advocacy, there have been multiple occasions where documents from NSA have been released to all. Greenwald's reporting has held up when cross-referencing the documents.
- lern_too_spel 7y ago
  Greenwald's reporting doesn't even match the documents he released himself.

rayiner 7y ago

Literally the first Greenwald article I came across in a Google search was propaganda: https://theintercept.com/2019/12/16/evo-morales-interview-glenn-greenwald https://theintercept.com/2019/12/16/evo-morales-interview-gl.... Greenwald heaps praise on Evo Morales, calling his ouster from the Presidency a “coup.” The story of Morales’ ouster is as follows: 1) In his first term, Morales pushes through a new constitution, which among other things dissolves the Bolivian Supreme Court. In its place, it creates a high court comprising judges elected from a slate of candidates appointed by the legislature controlled by his party. This constitution has a two term limit. 2) Morales runs for a third term, after getting the high court to rule that his first term didn’t count since it started before the new constitution. 3) In his third term, he solicits a public referendum asking whether the term limit should be waived to allow him to run for a fourth term. In a vote that had very good turn out, the people vote “no.” 4) Morales ignores the referendum. Instead, he goes back to the high court, which rules that the term limits violate Morales’ “human rights.” The court allows him to run for a fourth term. 5) Morales wins the election, but the Organization of American States releases a report finding “overwhelming evidence of vote rigging.” Massive protests start in response to the report. 6) Morales slowly loses the support of key institutions, including the police. Many members of his own party resigned. A major labor union called for him to resign. 7) The account is disputed at this point. Morales supporters contend that the military then withdrew its support and encouraged him to resign. Morales opponents say that he ordered the military to crack down on protestors, and they refused. Even taking Morales’ supporters at face value, at most what happened is that the military encouraged him to resign after he lost the support of key institutions and many members of his own party. 8) Claiming that he was deposed in a coup, Morales flees to Mexico. 9) Subsequently, Morales’ party basically told him not to come back. Aside from hunting at the term limits, Greenwald mentions none of the real story.

kick 7y ago
Morales's oust was a coup by any real definition of the word, and your story is ignoring reality.
- rayiner 7y ago
  A military coup is where the military overthrows a legally elected government and seizes power for itself. Morales was illegally and corruptly elected, and the military did not seize control: https://thehill.com/opinion/international/472356-dispelling-myths-about-the-battle-for-democracy-in-bolivia https://thehill.com/opinion/international/472356-dispelling-.... It’s not a coup for the military to withdraw its support for a head of state that’s taking illegal action. (Consider a similar situation. Trump packs the Supreme Court and runs for a third term in violation of the term limit. He wins, but in an election where UN election monitors find “overwhelming evidence” of fraud. Military officials, who take an oath to defend the constitution, would have a duty to refuse to accept his authority.) More to the point, Greenwald omits all the background information necessary for the reader to decide whether there was a coup. The military didn’t just one day decide to stop supporting Morales after 14 years. It happened only after a series of events—illegal actions by Morales and key institutions abandoning him.

noparity 7y ago

Greenwald has a very clear agenda, so his reporting is exceptional only if you agree with his anti-US stance on almost everything...

lern_too_spel 7y ago

I know the topic of Internet communication reasonably well, and in that domain, Greenwald's reporting (PRISM and related stories) is so abysmal that people who read his articles are less informed than people who don't.