7 ms·

I know we're being trained to hate journalists these days, but that quoted sentence is just stating a fact: the biggest drop since dotcom bubble... and the arti

I know we're being trained to hate journalists these days, but that quoted sentence is just stating a fact: the biggest drop since dotcom bubble... and the article reads very reasonable. I don't see anything controversial in there - seems to balance the negatives with things like "the rate of decline abated" and "the decline in industry sales didn’t stop investors betting on a future rebound." - how is that sensationalist? Maybe they could have reported it as "19th best year since dot com bubble"?

thrustmaster 7y ago
By "being trained" do you really mean that we are thinking more critically about the information fed to us?
- mrspeaker 7y ago
  We've always been trained to think critically about media (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". If something doesn't fit your world view, just ad hominem it. I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.
  - stevenjohns 7y ago
    It might have something to do with social media making it more obvious that journalists and news agencies are usually partisan and agenda-focused rather than neutral and content-focused. Political journalism (domestic US and international) has completely gone to shit. Tech journalism has slowly fizzled away into just clickbait and financial news has slowly drifted towards interpreting Ouija boards and magic 8-balls.
    - th0ma5 7y ago
      So what are suggesting be done?
    - powowowow 7y ago
      I think it's nostalgia for an age that never existed, multiplied by a US-based demagogue's campaign against facts. Journalism has always been deeply flawed and massively biased, yet still useful. The people of the past knew that. You're not smarter than your great grandparents on that front. Tech wasn't some cure-all that opened your eyes but not theirs. People knew these things.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - perl4ever 7y ago
        In my opinion journalism has been destroyed by tech - the tech that drives journalists to optimize for selling online ads. The problem with what's written is not fundamentally political, nor is it the same old same old; it's the fallout of paperclip maximization. Writing things that leave a false impression, use any and all techniques to inflame, and so on, are becoming the norm due to a runaway optimization process which is massively reshaping society in my lifetime.
        powowowow 7y ago
        Go read some old newspapers. It's clear you haven't.
        perl4ever 7y ago
        What do you consider "old"?
        powowowow 7y ago
        100 years or more would be a reasonable start if we're going to have perspective.
      - DataWorker 7y ago
        No it’s not just nostalgia. The journalism business has totally changed. They once were funded by selling ads and now that business model is failing so they have been pivoting. They have to compete with the free content of blogs, Twitteratti, etc. Totally different now. We used to have serious journalists, they have vanished along with the demand.
    - Roboprog 7y ago
      The “payload “ of this article might be the line that attributes the so called crash to a trade war that damaged free trade. Some partisans consider free trade to be sacred, others, evil. Disclosure: I lean more towards “free trade is evil”, at least if you are labor, rather than capital. Michael Bloomberg might see it differently. Edit: and I didn’t go into the article looking for a fight - I wanted to see news affecting an industry I work in, and the trade line jumped out. It’s probably even true, but it’s not hard to to imagine ulterior motives for mentioning it.
  - dntbnmpls 7y ago
    > We've always been trained to think critically about media If that was true, media wouldn't exist because nobody would consume it. > Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". The criticism was about a bloomberg article, not a journalist. > (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Do you really believe you learned to think critically in a government funded indoctrination center called high school? It's not what high school were designed for. It's certainly not what high schools are equipped for. > I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this. It's always been like this. The media has always lied. People have always criticized it. Nothing has changed. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." -- Thomas Jefferson ( one of the people who gave us free press )
trophycase 7y ago
Well just reading the headline, I immediately thought that in terms of absolute sales numbers, they were as bad as since the dot com bubble burst... Only to learn after that it's talking about a percentage drop?
cbanek 7y ago
As someone who watches the financial news, it almost feels more like baseball statistics, where they say something like, "this batter on sunny days in April has an advantage against left-handed pitchers." While it may be true, it feels more like p-hacking than some kind of useful fact. I felt like the financial industry was really doing this early in 2019, after the huge drop in stocks, everyone was like the S&P is up 20% this year already (forgetting to mention it was down a huge amount in December and ready for a comeback). Of course how you frame these numbers and which numbers you pick is part of the reporting. When taking numbers of out of context, I think it can get a little sensationalist.
- c256 7y ago
  > As someone who watches the financial news, it almost feels more like baseball statistics... If you hear a loud banging noise, don’t buy?
  - snoshy 7y ago
    GP's point is that someone predicting a bang based on increasingly obscure and cherry-picked data does not in fact reliably predict a real bang in the future.
- smabie 7y ago
  According to EMH, all information is subsumed into the price. As such, how could the huge 2018 Christmas drop affect future returns?
  - barbecue_sauce 7y ago
    Maybe EMH isn't correct?
    - hamilyon2 7y ago
      Weak forms of EMH are almost certainty correct. If they were not, you could beat passive investing with relatively little work, and that is impossible.
uoaei 7y ago
The article cannot be distilled to that single sentence. Framing the financial facts as a precursor to a recession by explicitly referencing the last tech bubble that burst carries with it implications that a skimmer may take away from the article if they weren't reading very critically. This is what FUD looks like in the wild. It's much more subtle and devious than the millions of Twitter bots spamming "sell $TSLA".
- DataWorker 7y ago
  You don’t like Mike?
cbhl 7y ago
The headline I'm seeing says "worst sales year", and I would expect that to be measured by the top-line revenue number, not in the y/y drop in revenue.
opencl 7y ago
It was the third best year since the dot com bubble (also the third best year in the entire history of the industry), only worse than 2017 and 2018.

thrustmaster 7y ago

By "being trained" do you really mean that we are thinking more critically about the information fed to us?

mrspeaker 7y ago
We've always been trained to think critically about media (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". If something doesn't fit your world view, just ad hominem it. I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this.
- stevenjohns 7y ago
  It might have something to do with social media making it more obvious that journalists and news agencies are usually partisan and agenda-focused rather than neutral and content-focused. Political journalism (domestic US and international) has completely gone to shit. Tech journalism has slowly fizzled away into just clickbait and financial news has slowly drifted towards interpreting Ouija boards and magic 8-balls.
  - th0ma5 7y ago
    So what are suggesting be done?
  - powowowow 7y ago
    I think it's nostalgia for an age that never existed, multiplied by a US-based demagogue's campaign against facts. Journalism has always been deeply flawed and massively biased, yet still useful. The people of the past knew that. You're not smarter than your great grandparents on that front. Tech wasn't some cure-all that opened your eyes but not theirs. People knew these things.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      In my opinion journalism has been destroyed by tech - the tech that drives journalists to optimize for selling online ads. The problem with what's written is not fundamentally political, nor is it the same old same old; it's the fallout of paperclip maximization. Writing things that leave a false impression, use any and all techniques to inflame, and so on, are becoming the norm due to a runaway optimization process which is massively reshaping society in my lifetime.
      - powowowow 7y ago
        Go read some old newspapers. It's clear you haven't.
        perl4ever 7y ago
        What do you consider "old"?
        powowowow 7y ago
        100 years or more would be a reasonable start if we're going to have perspective.
    - DataWorker 7y ago
      No it’s not just nostalgia. The journalism business has totally changed. They once were funded by selling ads and now that business model is failing so they have been pivoting. They have to compete with the free content of blogs, Twitteratti, etc. Totally different now. We used to have serious journalists, they have vanished along with the demand.
  - Roboprog 7y ago
    The “payload “ of this article might be the line that attributes the so called crash to a trade war that damaged free trade. Some partisans consider free trade to be sacred, others, evil. Disclosure: I lean more towards “free trade is evil”, at least if you are labor, rather than capital. Michael Bloomberg might see it differently. Edit: and I didn’t go into the article looking for a fight - I wanted to see news affecting an industry I work in, and the trade line jumped out. It’s probably even true, but it’s not hard to to imagine ulterior motives for mentioning it.
- dntbnmpls 7y ago
  > We've always been trained to think critically about media If that was true, media wouldn't exist because nobody would consume it. > Seems like now it's just "hate journalists" not "think critically". The criticism was about a bloomberg article, not a journalist. > (I even had classes on it in high school - one called "critical thinking"!). Do you really believe you learned to think critically in a government funded indoctrination center called high school? It's not what high school were designed for. It's certainly not what high schools are equipped for. > I'm hoping I'm just imagining it though (confirmation bias!), and it's really always been like this. It's always been like this. The media has always lied. People have always criticized it. Nothing has changed. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." -- Thomas Jefferson ( one of the people who gave us free press )

trophycase 7y ago

Well just reading the headline, I immediately thought that in terms of absolute sales numbers, they were as bad as since the dot com bubble burst... Only to learn after that it's talking about a percentage drop?

cbanek 7y ago

As someone who watches the financial news, it almost feels more like baseball statistics, where they say something like, "this batter on sunny days in April has an advantage against left-handed pitchers." While it may be true, it feels more like p-hacking than some kind of useful fact. I felt like the financial industry was really doing this early in 2019, after the huge drop in stocks, everyone was like the S&P is up 20% this year already (forgetting to mention it was down a huge amount in December and ready for a comeback). Of course how you frame these numbers and which numbers you pick is part of the reporting. When taking numbers of out of context, I think it can get a little sensationalist.

c256 7y ago
> As someone who watches the financial news, it almost feels more like baseball statistics... If you hear a loud banging noise, don’t buy?
- snoshy 7y ago
  GP's point is that someone predicting a bang based on increasingly obscure and cherry-picked data does not in fact reliably predict a real bang in the future.
smabie 7y ago
According to EMH, all information is subsumed into the price. As such, how could the huge 2018 Christmas drop affect future returns?
- barbecue_sauce 7y ago
  Maybe EMH isn't correct?
  - hamilyon2 7y ago
    Weak forms of EMH are almost certainty correct. If they were not, you could beat passive investing with relatively little work, and that is impossible.

uoaei 7y ago

The article cannot be distilled to that single sentence. Framing the financial facts as a precursor to a recession by explicitly referencing the last tech bubble that burst carries with it implications that a skimmer may take away from the article if they weren't reading very critically. This is what FUD looks like in the wild. It's much more subtle and devious than the millions of Twitter bots spamming "sell $TSLA".

DataWorker 7y ago
You don’t like Mike?

cbhl 7y ago

The headline I'm seeing says "worst sales year", and I would expect that to be measured by the top-line revenue number, not in the y/y drop in revenue.

opencl 7y ago

It was the third best year since the dot com bubble (also the third best year in the entire history of the industry), only worse than 2017 and 2018.