8 ms·
I posted the official numbers and report from the BLS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063) but it never
by treyfitty 6y ago
I posted the official numbers and report from the BLS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063) but it never caught traction. Same goes for other times I post from the proper source. However, it seems like HN has a bias for WSJ and NYT articles. In my opinion, the BLS report is more enlightening and breaks down sectors.
Is there a reason why official government reports never catch traction?
- david-gpu 6y agoLink for the lazy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063
- ericmay 6y agoI'm not sure why the WSJ isn't a "proper source". But I think that people want more of a story so they tend to favor news articles over official sources. If you look at the BLS report, it's hard to even read because of the font. I believe both are of value, but that's why I figure people favor the other formats.
- aguyfromnb 6y ago>I'm not sure why the WSJ isn't a "proper source". The paywall I hit on this article could be one reason.
- tomrod 6y agoPaywall, incentives to increase clicks, and so forth.
- ecocentrik 6y agoI canceled my subscription last year because of the soft-core Fox News style "opinion" pieces and fact wrangling they engage in. It is a News Corp publication now. I miss the old WSJ.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoThere is an argument to be made that the opinion pieces are just there to spark sufficient amount of outrage to direct clicks to your website. WSJ, Marketwatch and multiple others follow that principle. Regular reporting still appears to happen.
- wpietri 6y agoThe WSJ has had a... unique... opinion section long before clicks were an issue. I think their purpose is, as with a lot of opinion writing, to make the readers feel good (smart, righteous, wise, important, justified, etc). But the WSJ has a subscriber base unusually dedicated to a) getting money, and b) keeping it. And a lot of Wall Street as an entity is less focused on value creation than cash extraction, which is a particular mindset. So the opinion section is going to reflect what's important to the key audiences. My understanding is that pre-Murdoch, the news and opinion sides were thoroughly separate. Hopefully that isn't getting lost.
- mrscottson 6y agoMarketwatch, Barron's, WSJ, etc... all down the Murdoch tube of no editorial integrity. Had to stop following those news sources when they started the downhill slide.
- dahfizz 6y agoWould you put up with this in any other industry? "It's okay that mega-million corporation X misleads and manipulates people in order to take money from them, because sometimes it uses that money in a meagerly beneficial way"
- A4ET8a8uTh0 6y agoI am confused. I am not sure this is an accurate rephrasing of what I said. Could you elaborate a little bit?
- anoraca 6y agoIt is largely owned and directed by Rupert Murdoch who is infamous for inflammatory tabloid journalism (New York Post, Fox News, etc.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch
- webninja 6y agoLink to the your primary source post for bls.gov? I’ll upvote it.
- treyfitty 6y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23114063
- paulcole 6y agoWhat specifically differs between the BLS report and this WSJ article?
- sojournerc 6y agoOne is the actual primary source.
- paulcole 6y agoSorry didn't realize that. I wonder why the US government is just paraphrasing WSJ articles though??
- jasode 6y ago>I posted the official numbers and report from the BLS but it never caught traction. Same goes for other times I post from the proper source. However, it seems like HN has a bias for WSJ and NYT articles. [...] Is there a reason why official government reports never catch traction? Just a theory but titles of threads do matter. I'm not claiming it's the reason in your case but it might be. - Your previous title with no activity: "BLS Reports 14.7% Unemployment Rate" - This title that attracted upvotes: "April Unemployment Rate Rose to a Record 14.7%" Your title's matter-of-fact tone is clinical and missing the impact of the 14.7%? Hmmm... the 14.7%... so... is that a lot or a little? The phrase "rose to a record" is immediate spoonfeeding of the impact to potential readers. Good newspapers like WSJ, NYT, Buzzfeed, etc know how to craft titles to get readers to click on them. This is often abused and thus disparaged as SEO/clickbait. In this case, providing a little bit of a statistic's impact could be helpful.
- generalpass 6y agoThe problem is when a submitter wants to follow the site guidelines, as OP did.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- gameswithgo 6y agoYou can be correct, or you can get traction. I think a lot of technical people don't understand this. They get mad at people like say, Greta Thunberg, for not being purely clinical, accurate, scientific and dispassionate. But, meanwhile the people working to make the world believe climate change is fake are emotional, manipulative, and actually get traction against pure, reasoned, calm argument. So do we want to be correct, or do we want to win?
- emeerson 6y agoInteresting to present it as a binary tradeoff. I want to win, but I want to make sure that the thesis has some modeling diligence =)
- wesammikhail 6y agoEric Weinstein posits that the purpose of news organizations isnt to relay raw information to the public, but rather, it has the sole purpose of telling you how to feel about the information. They provide you with narrative. Exposing a person to a dataset without a narrative puts the burden on the person to have to parse through and construct their own narrative. This may be just too much for the average person and hence why they prefer their data to come bundled with a narrative - it is a time saving and bias confirming heuristic. I am not saying that this is true, but it certainly is an interesting idea to consider and think about. Eric´s take on this is worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu_-qV-9hMo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nu_-qV-9hMo Wiki link to the phenomenon in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation
- majewsky 6y ago> This may be just too much for the average person Having to construct your own narrative all the time is most certainly too much for any single person. If I had to come up with my own interpretation of everything, I'd be sitting here crunching data all day long until I go crazy. One always has to choose their fights, and for everything else you have to find someone else to trust.
- wesammikhail 6y agoThat is indeed the point he makes. That rejecting the institutions isnt a viable strategy. Fixing the institutions however, in order for them not to hijack your emotional state, is probably the right way to go.
- ghaff 6y agoTo take something especially apropos to the WSJ... In earnings releases, companies will generally try to spin their earnings in the best possible light by focusing on the positives. Maybe claim extenuating circumstances outside of their control like foreign exchange headwinds. The casual reader probably doesn't have any way to tell whether it's mostly BS or not without doing a bunch of their own research.
- ddevault 6y agoIn this case I recommend writing to hn@ycombinator.com and asking them to merge the threads and swap out the URL in this post.
- freepor 6y agoThere are very few people who want to wade through primary source data. I don't -- doing that is what journalists are paid for.
- hi41 6y agoI think government and scholarly articles are very hard for common man to understand because they use terms and abbreviations which can be understood only by practitioners of that field. For example BBC carried an article about a black hole discovered near our solar system and at the end included a link to the paper published by the researchers. I understood the BBC article but the scholarly article was super hard to understand and I couldn't go beyond the first paragraph. Similarly the comedy shows on TV also have laugh tracks to tell people when to laugh otherwise some of jokes are too complicated to be understood in short duration. Here is the BBC article. You will find the link to the scholarly article at the end. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52560812 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52560812 edit: grammar
- OrgNet 6y agoThe main reason might be because the current government is republican and this forum is mainly democrat but that is just a guess... The admins also manipulate posts, votes and front page visibility so it is hard to say for sure.
- RivieraKid 6y agoOriginal source isn't necessarily the best place to consume the information for many people. (In general, I have no opinion in this specific case) I feel like HN has an original source fetish. I remember there was an IPO and the HN submission was some weirdly formatted document submitted to the SEC, it took me a while to understand what it is about. It would be better to simply link to some article which would contain a link to the document for the 1% of people who are interested in reading it.
- poulsbohemian 6y ago> I feel like HN has an original source fetish It’s the search for veritas. We are a bunch of scientists, engineers, and thinking people. We want to go straight to the source and understand from first principles.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nick_urban 6y agoPerhaps it's that most people have never heard of "BLS", but they trust WSJ / NYT. Newspapers provide context and interpretation. And they are designed to be read. A big block of monospace text is not inviting for most people.
- TickleMeTrumpmo 6y agoThe site favors leftist rags, not really surprising.
- demadog 6y agoYou may think hackers are purely data-driven rational beings, but they are in fact humans too, and prefer an enticing headline.
- ryuukk_ 6y agojust like rust/mozilla news, you need link proper source to get mass upvoted by their bots ;)