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> 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 cit
by JadeNB 7y ago
> 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?
The problem is that these incentives for academics aren't created out of purity of heart, but because of the system to which they belong; you will no longer be highly read and cited once it is clear that your results can't be trusted. Unfortunately, this seems not to be true in journalism—you can purvey intentionally, and explicitly, wrong information, and it will still be consumed actively by those whose biases are confirmed by it. We can discuss how to change that, but changing what kind of news people want to read is surely even harder than changing what kind of news journalists write and publishers publish.
- hutzlibu 7y agoWell, also as a journalist you can not get away with making up stories. There was a recent case of a high class journalist, who did that and was caught. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius But he did so very brutal so to say. The problem with journalism is mostly not straight lying, but missleading and bending the truth until it fits the agenda. So a classic journalist should not have another agenda than the truth. But this type seems to be very rare today.
- DangitBobby 7y agoWhat you're saying is probably broadly speaking true for journalists in general. But what many people actually consume news-wise can only be compared on the surface to actual journalism. Consumers of this material have no interest in determining if what they're reading is true, and there are no consequences for those spreading misinformation while pretending to be journalists. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22784665
- em500 7y agoBest we can tell, Bloomberg's Chinese Big Hack story was completly made up, but it doesn't appear anyone involved suffered any consequences. https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/04/editorial-a-year-later-bloomberg-silently-stands-by-its-big-hack-icloud-spy-chip-story https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/10/04/editorial-a-year-...
- MaxBarraclough 7y ago> The problem is that these incentives for academics aren't created out of purity of heart, but because of the system to which they belong; you will no longer be highly read and cited once it is clear that your results can't be trusted. That's a feature, not a bug. A system which depends on people being saints, isn't going to work. > changing what kind of news people want to read is surely even harder than changing what kind of news journalists write and publishers publish Agreed, I think that's the root here.