6 ms·

It would be great if people writing articles like this (I hesitate to call them journalists these days) could take the time to provide more context. According

It would be great if people writing articles like this (I hesitate to call them journalists these days) could take the time to provide more context. According to the county dashboard, Alameda County had 2,564 cases on May 20, 2 days after Tesla reopened: https://ac-hcsa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/1e0ac4385cbe4cc1bffe2cf7f8e7f0d9 https://ac-hcsa.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html... With a population of 1,671,000, that means about 0.15% of Alameda County residents had been diagnosed with covid-19 at that point. So we could reasonably expect 15 cases out of the 10,000 employees at Tesla's factory. Why the breathless article about 2 cases?

pathseeker 6y ago
>Why the breathless article about 2 cases? Because articles are now written to confirm people's preconceived notions. Articles that confirm your biases are more likely to be shared than articles which don't.
- mistermann 6y ago
  I honestly wonder if this writing style is conscious and intentional though, or rather un(sub)conscious and accidental. Look at comments in forums...in that case, people have no profit motive, although they do have a "get upvotes" motive (so, virtue signalling is a legit motive, to some degree, but one notion to consider is that people very often no longer discriminate between that which is concrete factual and that which is inferred (imagined) "factual". If you look for it, you'll see that this behaviour is everywhere.
  - pathseeker 6y ago
    Oh, it's likely not conscious by the author. The most convincing of these one-sided views are the ones written by people who are "true believers" in their agendas. Don't tell authors to take extreme stances, just ensure that stories get assigned to the ones that have strong views about the topic. Even better, let the authors themselves decide what to cover. They will pretty quickly focus on their pet political propaganda and produce the click bait needed to drive eyes.
    - mistermann 6y ago
      That actually makes a lot of sense....the desirable qualities for a journalist in 2020: a) good/popular writing style b) an ideologue in subjects that have high ideological "weight" in the population Honesty, accuracy, fact checking, nuance, all of the traditional desirable attributes for journalists are now not only not required, but extremely undesirable. And depending on the particular organization (say, a relatively reputable organization like the NYT), the only thing you need are editors who can proofread the article before publishing, replacing explicit assertions with a variety of weasel words, a big chunk of which could likely even be automated to insert suggested edits that just need a manual review.
WetBurd 6y ago
The original article is by a writer of the Washington Post. If this doesn't count as journalism, I struggle to find examples that do. The journalist spoke with two workers within the production facility. "One of the workers said a supervisor confirmed two positive cases to a group at the Fremont-based seat assembly facility" This is an example of just one supervisor confirming two positive cases. It is likely that there are many more. Furthermore, "But because Tesla restarted production a week earlier, there could have been cases that were never reported to the county because Tesla was “not required to directly report known cases” before the agreement, county officials said."
- nwienert 6y ago
  We’re they confirmed not positive before it reopened? Otherwise, this literally means nothing.
  - WetBurd 6y ago
    I wouldn't go so far to say it "means nothing". If they were confirmed not-positive before the reopening how come this information was not publicly made available beforehand? If they weren't tested and then went back to work during the reopening, doesn't this indicate a lack of diligence in screening returning employees? In any case the main issue is that Musk reopened the plant against local authorities' wishes and thus the consequences of such action should be held under scrutiny.
    - nwienert 6y ago
      The employees were and are free to do as they wish. The main issue for you, perhaps, is violating authorities “wishes”. Wishes, because in fact it wasn’t illegal.. freedom of assembly gives us that, we aren’t in wartime, and until tested in court those local orders are just recommendations that need be judged in court... where they’d be struck down. Not that they weren’t good common sense at the time, but the coronavirus very clearly now is not only a smaller risk than we thought, but also only specifically a risk to very certain vulnerable groups who are easy to identify. If you are so worried about authorities’ wishes, I wonder what you think of the protests? Do you think the authorities’ wishes were generally right in the case of George Floyd? Should the protestors have been rounded up for violating wishes and causing massive risk? Seems you care a ton about people not dying from the virus, so I’d assume so.
devtul 6y ago
"Alameda County's Tesla to resume operations despite 0.15% infected" Here is a more precise but still infuriating headline.
jhowell 6y ago
> Why the breathless article about 2 cases? If I worked at Tesla and came to find out about positive tests in this manner, in an environment with what appears to be a more rapid return to work inclination, I might breathlessly express my concern to as many as would listen. I don't find that offensive.
radioactivist 6y ago
While I agree the article doesn't properly contextualize the number, that's not really the right comparison. Alameda county has had 2564 cases in total since March (up to May 20th) -- so you'd have expected 15 employees to have tested positive for COVID since March. This is a very different statement than 2 of its employees have tested positive shortly after it re-opened. Loosely one might compare it to those that tested positive in the week of May 20th, which, according to your link, is about 400-500 new cases (about 5x fewer than the cumulative total). So you might reasonably expect something like ~3 cases if you assume the Tesla workers had the same positive test rate as the general population of the county.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

pathseeker 6y ago

>Why the breathless article about 2 cases? Because articles are now written to confirm people's preconceived notions. Articles that confirm your biases are more likely to be shared than articles which don't.

mistermann 6y ago
I honestly wonder if this writing style is conscious and intentional though, or rather un(sub)conscious and accidental. Look at comments in forums...in that case, people have no profit motive, although they do have a "get upvotes" motive (so, virtue signalling is a legit motive, to some degree, but one notion to consider is that people very often no longer discriminate between that which is concrete factual and that which is inferred (imagined) "factual". If you look for it, you'll see that this behaviour is everywhere.
- pathseeker 6y ago
  Oh, it's likely not conscious by the author. The most convincing of these one-sided views are the ones written by people who are "true believers" in their agendas. Don't tell authors to take extreme stances, just ensure that stories get assigned to the ones that have strong views about the topic. Even better, let the authors themselves decide what to cover. They will pretty quickly focus on their pet political propaganda and produce the click bait needed to drive eyes.
  - mistermann 6y ago
    That actually makes a lot of sense....the desirable qualities for a journalist in 2020: a) good/popular writing style b) an ideologue in subjects that have high ideological "weight" in the population Honesty, accuracy, fact checking, nuance, all of the traditional desirable attributes for journalists are now not only not required, but extremely undesirable. And depending on the particular organization (say, a relatively reputable organization like the NYT), the only thing you need are editors who can proofread the article before publishing, replacing explicit assertions with a variety of weasel words, a big chunk of which could likely even be automated to insert suggested edits that just need a manual review.

WetBurd 6y ago

The original article is by a writer of the Washington Post. If this doesn't count as journalism, I struggle to find examples that do. The journalist spoke with two workers within the production facility. "One of the workers said a supervisor confirmed two positive cases to a group at the Fremont-based seat assembly facility" This is an example of just one supervisor confirming two positive cases. It is likely that there are many more. Furthermore, "But because Tesla restarted production a week earlier, there could have been cases that were never reported to the county because Tesla was “not required to directly report known cases” before the agreement, county officials said."

nwienert 6y ago
We’re they confirmed not positive before it reopened? Otherwise, this literally means nothing.
- WetBurd 6y ago
  I wouldn't go so far to say it "means nothing". If they were confirmed not-positive before the reopening how come this information was not publicly made available beforehand? If they weren't tested and then went back to work during the reopening, doesn't this indicate a lack of diligence in screening returning employees? In any case the main issue is that Musk reopened the plant against local authorities' wishes and thus the consequences of such action should be held under scrutiny.
  - nwienert 6y ago
    The employees were and are free to do as they wish. The main issue for you, perhaps, is violating authorities “wishes”. Wishes, because in fact it wasn’t illegal.. freedom of assembly gives us that, we aren’t in wartime, and until tested in court those local orders are just recommendations that need be judged in court... where they’d be struck down. Not that they weren’t good common sense at the time, but the coronavirus very clearly now is not only a smaller risk than we thought, but also only specifically a risk to very certain vulnerable groups who are easy to identify. If you are so worried about authorities’ wishes, I wonder what you think of the protests? Do you think the authorities’ wishes were generally right in the case of George Floyd? Should the protestors have been rounded up for violating wishes and causing massive risk? Seems you care a ton about people not dying from the virus, so I’d assume so.

devtul 6y ago

"Alameda County's Tesla to resume operations despite 0.15% infected" Here is a more precise but still infuriating headline.

jhowell 6y ago

> Why the breathless article about 2 cases? If I worked at Tesla and came to find out about positive tests in this manner, in an environment with what appears to be a more rapid return to work inclination, I might breathlessly express my concern to as many as would listen. I don't find that offensive.

radioactivist 6y ago

While I agree the article doesn't properly contextualize the number, that's not really the right comparison. Alameda county has had 2564 cases in total since March (up to May 20th) -- so you'd have expected 15 employees to have tested positive for COVID since March. This is a very different statement than 2 of its employees have tested positive shortly after it re-opened. Loosely one might compare it to those that tested positive in the week of May 20th, which, according to your link, is about 400-500 new cases (about 5x fewer than the cumulative total). So you might reasonably expect something like ~3 cases if you assume the Tesla workers had the same positive test rate as the general population of the county.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]