8 ms·

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money.

So, I basically agree with everything this article says, but it seems to miss a basic point. If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. Journalists, and the newsmedia corporations and organizations that employ them, don't run with the most inflammatory headline possible as an accidental fluke of a mistake that they were too careless to catch. Even public sector newsmedia organizations use measures of how widely read their articles are, as a figure of merit to how well they are performing. Private sector newsmedia are rewarded financially in more or less direct proportion to how widely read (or at least clicked on) their articles are, not how well informed the reader is after they're done reading it (if they even do read past the headline). If there is one less to be learned from this whole Covid-19 debacle (and I'm sure there are several), it is that our entire news ecosystem, public and private, is fundamentally structured wrong for doing what is supposed to be its purpose, which is to make people better informed. It's not bad at it by mistake, it's bad at it as an inevitable consequence of its design.

jbreckmckye 7y ago
A small (but important) correction: generally, journalists do not write headlines; sub-editors do. Most subs have been journalists but most journalists do not become subs.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  I think the distinction is moot. They all work in the newsroom, and are that side of the "journalistic integrity" divide. Subs are not part of the management team, or commercially motivated.
chris_f 7y ago
Exactly. I stated calling systems that work this way "Bad by Design." Sometimes the design is deliberately setup that way by an individual or group with something to gain, but other times it is just because the system contains different parties with competing interests. Anytime I see a clearly inefficient or ineffective system the first question I try to figure out is whether it works that way by design. In many cases once I learn more about it, the answer is yes.
alharith 7y ago
I don’t think the deficiencies of major news organizations have ever been as blindingly obvious to me as they have been over the past month. I knew it was bad. I didn’t realize exactly how bad it was. For them, even a national crisis is just an occasion to twist against Trump. Yes Trump is far, far, far from perfect, but there’s a huge difference between honest, factual reporting and these transparent efforts to use a tragedy to take him down. Nothing more obvious than the attempt to pit Dr. Fauci as somehow being "against" Trump or being "silenced" only for him to come on national radio and set the record straight.
- parasubvert 7y ago
  The anti-Fauci stuff is mostly posted by GOP-partisan organizations though as a way of bolstering Trump. On the other hand, it is pretty standard mainstream news when in the same presser, the doctors are saying the opposite of what the President is saying.
  - alharith 7y ago
    This is simply not true. MSNBC, NPR and PBS ran stories, podcasts, and discussions for an entire week about the “growing disconnect” during this time.
    - eropple 7y ago
      A disconnect that one can divine for oneself by listening to Fauci talk anytime Trump is not in the room. Birx, too. The difference in messaging and information content when she's on that podium or on Fox programming, versus when she's on normal-people programming, is stark. They're being leaned on and it is starkly apparent when you're not coming in with priors that tend towards conspiracy.
      - alharith 7y ago
        Sorry, this needs to be said: The only conspiracy here is this drivel here that you wrote. Fauci has repeatedly stated, and acted as such, that there is no divide between him and the president. Is it feasible Fauci does not like Trump personally? Of course. But we are adults, and we have to work with people we don't like every day and still be able to perform our duties. Fauci is a professional.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
MaxBarraclough 7y ago
> If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. This is clearly true, but I wonder if must always be so. In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?
- mola 7y ago
  It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. So truth ethics etc. are all secondary values.
  - chrischattin 7y ago
    This sounds good in an edgy r/im14andthisisdeep sort of way. But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term.
    - JadeNB 7y ago
      > > It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. > But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term. Both your parent's view and your view could spring from a belief about how the world is, rather than from non-anecdotal hard data. I'd like to believe the more optimistic version, but I find it hard to do so. Do you have some data to support it?
    - wayoutthere 7y ago
      That really depends on the size of the fish and the size of the pond. If you're a whale in an ocean of minnows (hello Amazon) you can effectively dictate the terms of business, ethics be damned.
    - kick 7y ago
      The two richest people on the planet right now are both known for being almost entirely void of morals when it comes to their business dealings.
watwut 7y ago
The majority of publications and articles did not got it fundamentally wrong. There is subset on right wing that is popular and got it wrong intentionally. But mainstream had bad article here and there while majority being not fundamentally wrong.
renewiltord 7y ago
The problem is on the demand side, not solely on the supply side. People desire reinforcement not challenge. That is natural. I suspect it is true of us all. Those who are capable direct their potential to be challenged in specific ways, allowing themselves to have biases reinforced in the unimportant places. And they have access to the knowledge in their specific areas. This is the reason for the enduring power of the filter bubble: it is a stable equilibrium because it serves both the purposes of the demand and supply side. You can test this by making high-reliability websites that state honest priors. You'll get an audience but the audience will be pretty specific to your subject matter and not be popular. No information source has had all of the following characteristics: * Broad-based popular support * High information content * Novel information, i.e. information you can't get elsewhere * Sustained presence This may actually be desirable. Novel reliable information is an advantage, but it may not be a present sufficient advantage, and species survival may depend on presently boosting those capable of acquiring and utilizing information advantage. i.e. a time may come when we need to be good at it - if we have more people with this characteristic then, it'll lead to better outcomes.
- jlawson 7y ago
  Definitely true. We could compare it to the food industry (from production to retail including restaurants). Its ideal purpose is to provide people with nourishing, healthy, enjoyable food. But its actual incentive is to give people the food they choose to buy, which often isn't nourishing or healthy.
- marcus_holmes 7y ago
  This is true. You can do good journalism and lose money (or have a wealthy backer who funds your loss-making newspaper) or you can make a profit by getting your "journalists" to publish lots of sensationalist stories. Y'know, Clickbait. (source: I ran a newspaper).
- Viliam1234 7y ago
  The problem is also in the change of how the demand can manifest. For example, I would never buy a clickbait newspaper. But sometimes I click on clickbait articles online. In both cases, there is a part of me that is interested, and a part of me that knows better. If it only requires a mouse click, the interested part sometimes wins. If it requires taking out my purse, the interested part loses this fight. The horrible thing about online advertising is that it allows people to make profit from making you look at something, even if it immediately makes you disappointed. From that moment, the need to write non-disappointing articles has decreased significantly.
sah2ed 7y ago
> If there is one less to be learned from this whole Covid-19 debacle (and I'm sure there are several), it is that our entire news ecosystem, public and private, is fundamentally structured wrong for doing what is supposed to be its purpose, which is to make people better informed. It's not bad at it by mistake, it's bad at it as an inevitable consequence of its design. You speak of a failure in design as the root cause of the failure to achieve the purpose of “to inform”. From a teleological perspective, viewing the media as a tool designed “to inform” would be a mistake, it would amount to nothing more than a supposition. Having “better informed” people was never the stated purpose of mass media so it would be wrong to say it is not fulfilling its design objectives. What would be applicable here to help us better understand the actual purpose of the media is POSIWID: ”the purpose of a system is what it does”[0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_what_it_does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
- rytill 7y ago
  > POSIWID Can we either make a reasonable-sounding word or phrase that means the thing or just say the thing? Who is going around really saying “POSIWID”?
- perl4ever 7y ago
  "From a teleological perspective, viewing the media as a tool designed “to inform” would be a mistake, it would amount to nothing more than a supposition." I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people; that is a statement of its purpose, and it appears that the collective actions of people in society have redesigned it to eliminate most of the informing. It doesn't have to have ever been designed to inform by specific and aware human intention; if it informed as a side effect of being unoptimized for disinformation, then in that sense it was designed to inform. By analogy, natural foods are not designed, in one sense, to keep you healthy, as evolution can make some things good for you and others bad. ...but the purpose of eating them is healthy nutrition, and if we started systematically only eating the toxic ones, then we would say something about our society is structured wrong for the purpose that we have of getting nutrition.
  - 7y ago
sgustard 7y ago
I get why corrupt politicans hate the media, which is because it holds them accountable. Why do you choose to help them tear it down? Are we better off with no media and just the raw tweets of our leaders?
- AgentME 7y ago
  The article here is about how the media can often help spread misinformation, which can be really bad in a pandemic, so going to guess that's what they're concerned about.
lonelappde 7y ago
Thia isn't specific to news. It's everything in the marketplace. Anything for sale is optimized for short term profit -- lowest cost of production, highest impulse purchase pressure -- junk food, fake healthy food, furniture made of shoddy materials, shiny appliances that will break, etc.
dntbnmpls 7y ago
> If there is one less to be learned from this whole Covid-19 debacle (and I'm sure there are several), it is that our entire news ecosystem, public and private, is fundamentally structured wrong for doing what is supposed to be its purpose, which is to make people better informed. No. What is wrong is that people believe the news industry exists to make people better informed. That is an industry PR lie such as "Do no evil", "Fair and Balanced", "Serve and Protect", etc. The truth is that newspapers have always lied because they were created to lie. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." "I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." -- Thomas Jefferson The NY Post was created by Alexander Hamilton solely to attack his political opponents. The lies hamilton printed in the ny post about aaron burr is one of the reasons why he got killed in the duel. Your frustration stems from a false premise : News industry exists to keep you informed. Instead of banging your head trying to make your conclusions fit a false premise, why not do away with a false premise? All men are good. Harvey Weinstein is a man. Therefore, Harvey Weinstein is good. Would you waste your life trying to find ways to show Weinstein is good? Of course not. You'd work your way through your logic and conclude your premise was wrong and that all men are not good.
wavegeek 7y ago
Incentives matter
mxcrossb 7y ago
Let me start with the following caveat: I’m not convinced journalism’s quality now is worse than any time in the past. That being said, I think content aggregators are partly to blame. I mean if you’re just reading the daily paper, maybe the front page has exaggerated headlines, but once you’re in the issue it can mellow out. But content aggregators are always trying to find the latest splash.

jbreckmckye 7y ago

A small (but important) correction: generally, journalists do not write headlines; sub-editors do. Most subs have been journalists but most journalists do not become subs.

marcus_holmes 7y ago
I think the distinction is moot. They all work in the newsroom, and are that side of the "journalistic integrity" divide. Subs are not part of the management team, or commercially motivated.

chris_f 7y ago

Exactly. I stated calling systems that work this way "Bad by Design." Sometimes the design is deliberately setup that way by an individual or group with something to gain, but other times it is just because the system contains different parties with competing interests. Anytime I see a clearly inefficient or ineffective system the first question I try to figure out is whether it works that way by design. In many cases once I learn more about it, the answer is yes.

alharith 7y ago

I don’t think the deficiencies of major news organizations have ever been as blindingly obvious to me as they have been over the past month. I knew it was bad. I didn’t realize exactly how bad it was. For them, even a national crisis is just an occasion to twist against Trump. Yes Trump is far, far, far from perfect, but there’s a huge difference between honest, factual reporting and these transparent efforts to use a tragedy to take him down. Nothing more obvious than the attempt to pit Dr. Fauci as somehow being "against" Trump or being "silenced" only for him to come on national radio and set the record straight.

parasubvert 7y ago
The anti-Fauci stuff is mostly posted by GOP-partisan organizations though as a way of bolstering Trump. On the other hand, it is pretty standard mainstream news when in the same presser, the doctors are saying the opposite of what the President is saying.
- alharith 7y ago
  This is simply not true. MSNBC, NPR and PBS ran stories, podcasts, and discussions for an entire week about the “growing disconnect” during this time.
  - eropple 7y ago
    A disconnect that one can divine for oneself by listening to Fauci talk anytime Trump is not in the room. Birx, too. The difference in messaging and information content when she's on that podium or on Fox programming, versus when she's on normal-people programming, is stark. They're being leaned on and it is starkly apparent when you're not coming in with priors that tend towards conspiracy.
    - alharith 7y ago
      Sorry, this needs to be said: The only conspiracy here is this drivel here that you wrote. Fauci has repeatedly stated, and acted as such, that there is no divide between him and the president. Is it feasible Fauci does not like Trump personally? Of course. But we are adults, and we have to work with people we don't like every day and still be able to perform our duties. Fauci is a professional.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

MaxBarraclough 7y ago

> If journalists do what this paper suggests, they make less money. This is clearly true, but I wonder if must always be so. In academia, lying in a publication can be career-ending, which acts to broadly 'scare them straight'. For academics, it's desirable to be highly read and cited, but to be seen to be dishonest is the end of the road. Could it be possible to create similar incentives for journalists?

mola 7y ago
It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. So truth ethics etc. are all secondary values.
- chrischattin 7y ago
  This sounds good in an edgy r/im14andthisisdeep sort of way. But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term.
  - JadeNB 7y ago
    > > It's easy to lie without lying. As a society we replaced any sort of value for our value proxy, money. > But in reality, having integrity and ethics in business is actually more profitable over the long term. Both your parent's view and your view could spring from a belief about how the world is, rather than from non-anecdotal hard data. I'd like to believe the more optimistic version, but I find it hard to do so. Do you have some data to support it?
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    That really depends on the size of the fish and the size of the pond. If you're a whale in an ocean of minnows (hello Amazon) you can effectively dictate the terms of business, ethics be damned.
  - kick 7y ago
    The two richest people on the planet right now are both known for being almost entirely void of morals when it comes to their business dealings.

watwut 7y ago

The majority of publications and articles did not got it fundamentally wrong. There is subset on right wing that is popular and got it wrong intentionally. But mainstream had bad article here and there while majority being not fundamentally wrong.

renewiltord 7y ago

The problem is on the demand side, not solely on the supply side. People desire reinforcement not challenge. That is natural. I suspect it is true of us all. Those who are capable direct their potential to be challenged in specific ways, allowing themselves to have biases reinforced in the unimportant places. And they have access to the knowledge in their specific areas. This is the reason for the enduring power of the filter bubble: it is a stable equilibrium because it serves both the purposes of the demand and supply side. You can test this by making high-reliability websites that state honest priors. You'll get an audience but the audience will be pretty specific to your subject matter and not be popular. No information source has had all of the following characteristics: * Broad-based popular support * High information content * Novel information, i.e. information you can't get elsewhere * Sustained presence This may actually be desirable. Novel reliable information is an advantage, but it may not be a present sufficient advantage, and species survival may depend on presently boosting those capable of acquiring and utilizing information advantage. i.e. a time may come when we need to be good at it - if we have more people with this characteristic then, it'll lead to better outcomes.

jlawson 7y ago
Definitely true. We could compare it to the food industry (from production to retail including restaurants). Its ideal purpose is to provide people with nourishing, healthy, enjoyable food. But its actual incentive is to give people the food they choose to buy, which often isn't nourishing or healthy.
marcus_holmes 7y ago
This is true. You can do good journalism and lose money (or have a wealthy backer who funds your loss-making newspaper) or you can make a profit by getting your "journalists" to publish lots of sensationalist stories. Y'know, Clickbait. (source: I ran a newspaper).
Viliam1234 7y ago
The problem is also in the change of how the demand can manifest. For example, I would never buy a clickbait newspaper. But sometimes I click on clickbait articles online. In both cases, there is a part of me that is interested, and a part of me that knows better. If it only requires a mouse click, the interested part sometimes wins. If it requires taking out my purse, the interested part loses this fight. The horrible thing about online advertising is that it allows people to make profit from making you look at something, even if it immediately makes you disappointed. From that moment, the need to write non-disappointing articles has decreased significantly.

sah2ed 7y ago

rytill 7y ago
> POSIWID Can we either make a reasonable-sounding word or phrase that means the thing or just say the thing? Who is going around really saying “POSIWID”?
perl4ever 7y ago
"From a teleological perspective, viewing the media as a tool designed “to inform” would be a mistake, it would amount to nothing more than a supposition." I and perhaps many other people think the media should inform people; that is a statement of its purpose, and it appears that the collective actions of people in society have redesigned it to eliminate most of the informing. It doesn't have to have ever been designed to inform by specific and aware human intention; if it informed as a side effect of being unoptimized for disinformation, then in that sense it was designed to inform. By analogy, natural foods are not designed, in one sense, to keep you healthy, as evolution can make some things good for you and others bad. ...but the purpose of eating them is healthy nutrition, and if we started systematically only eating the toxic ones, then we would say something about our society is structured wrong for the purpose that we have of getting nutrition.
- 7y ago

sgustard 7y ago

I get why corrupt politicans hate the media, which is because it holds them accountable. Why do you choose to help them tear it down? Are we better off with no media and just the raw tweets of our leaders?

AgentME 7y ago
The article here is about how the media can often help spread misinformation, which can be really bad in a pandemic, so going to guess that's what they're concerned about.

lonelappde 7y ago

Thia isn't specific to news. It's everything in the marketplace. Anything for sale is optimized for short term profit -- lowest cost of production, highest impulse purchase pressure -- junk food, fake healthy food, furniture made of shoddy materials, shiny appliances that will break, etc.

dntbnmpls 7y ago

> If there is one less to be learned from this whole Covid-19 debacle (and I'm sure there are several), it is that our entire news ecosystem, public and private, is fundamentally structured wrong for doing what is supposed to be its purpose, which is to make people better informed. No. What is wrong is that people believe the news industry exists to make people better informed. That is an industry PR lie such as "Do no evil", "Fair and Balanced", "Serve and Protect", etc. The truth is that newspapers have always lied because they were created to lie. "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle." "I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors." -- Thomas Jefferson The NY Post was created by Alexander Hamilton solely to attack his political opponents. The lies hamilton printed in the ny post about aaron burr is one of the reasons why he got killed in the duel. Your frustration stems from a false premise : News industry exists to keep you informed. Instead of banging your head trying to make your conclusions fit a false premise, why not do away with a false premise? All men are good. Harvey Weinstein is a man. Therefore, Harvey Weinstein is good. Would you waste your life trying to find ways to show Weinstein is good? Of course not. You'd work your way through your logic and conclude your premise was wrong and that all men are not good.

wavegeek 7y ago

Incentives matter

mxcrossb 7y ago

Let me start with the following caveat: I’m not convinced journalism’s quality now is worse than any time in the past. That being said, I think content aggregators are partly to blame. I mean if you’re just reading the daily paper, maybe the front page has exaggerated headlines, but once you’re in the issue it can mellow out. But content aggregators are always trying to find the latest splash.