> Legal documents have different standards
The standard for journalism should be stricter than for legal documents. In legal documents, it’s okay to edit the quotes to emphasize the point you want, or edit out throat clearing. But you must accurately represent the context. That’s not what happened with the Paul Graham quote. The author edited a reference to specific people (applicants to YC) and made it into a general reference to women. You would not edit out an antecedent reference like that in a legal document, because it changes the literal meaning. (It doesn’t matter if you think the substance of the meaning remains the same. You don’t get to make that call. If you want to argue that the more specific point is logically equivalent to the more general point, you’re welcome to make that argument.)
Just thinking off the top of my head, the media ran with a quote from Steve Mnuchin that made it seem like he was saying that the $1,200 stimulus checks should last people 10 weeks: https://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchin-criticized-seemingly-suggesting-stimulus-checks-could-last-10-weeks-2020-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchin-criticized-seemingly.... If you actually play the whole video, the parts everyone quoted were actually tens of seconds apart. Mnuchin describes the $2 trillion package of reforms, including many months of adding $600 per week to unemployment benefits. A reporter asked “how long is $1,200 supposed to last people?” This was a deceptive question to begin with: The $1,200 was a stimulus, not a replacement for lost income. It’s not supposed to “last” any amount of time. That’s what the massively increased unemployment benefits were for. So Mnuchin refocused the question on the whole $2 trillion package. He spent several seconds doing that, which almost all the mainstream media sources edited out. Then he finally said that the whole package was supposed to last 10 weeks. Then the story blew up that he said the $1,200 was supposed to last 10 weeks: https://www.themarysue.com/steve-mnuchin-wants-us-to-survive-on-1200-for-10-weeks-america-disagrees https://www.themarysue.com/steve-mnuchin-wants-us-to-survive.... AOC tweeted “how much is your rent, $10?” Again—the $2,600 per month in extra unemployment benefits was supposed to pay the rent. The $1,200 was stimulus.
Then there is a bigger issue of how journalists frame facts and what context they leave out. When New York City was seeing 750 deaths per day, the media was showing beach goers celebrating spring break in Florida. Now, they’re showing “spikes in cases” in Florida and Texas, even though death rates in Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, etc., remain higher than in Florida and Texas (which are bigger states). Quick: without looking it up, what’s the ratio of COVID-19 deaths in New York to Texas? Florida?
To pick another example: news stories about healthcare routinely mention that Western European countries have universal healthcare. Then they talk about wealth taxes and taxes on the rich. Have you ever read a story in the NYT talking about how European countries pay for universal healthcare? (Regressive taxes like payroll taxes and VAT.) Isn’t it weird to talk about healthcare systems and taxes, and reference Europe to talk about the benefits they offer, but ignore Europe when talking about the taxes they levy to pay for those benefits?
Along those same lines, journalists always reference Europe when it’s favorable to a liberal narrative, but ignore comparisons to Europe when its favorable to a conservative narrative. So Europe always comes up in the context of healthcare and gun control. But it never comes up when talking about say corporate tax cuts (countries like Sweden, Canada, France, the UK, etc. have massively cut corporate taxes in the last 30 years). Reporters will write an article where they talk about how Warren or Sanders want universal healthcare, like Sweden has. Then they’ll talk about Warren’s wealth tax. But now they’ve forgotten Sweden—which got rid of it’s wealth tax. I’ve read so many articles that say “we should have universal healthcare, like every other developed country” or “we should have gun control, like every other developed country.” I have never seen “we should have a 20% VAT like every other developed country.”
Journalists also mentioned Europe early in Trump’s presidency when talking about how great it was that Germany, under CDU leadership, took so many refugees in 2015. Did any US media report on the follow up, where the leader of the dominant CDU, Merkel’s successor, said: “We have made it clear that we will do everything we can to ensure that 2015 won’t ever be repeated. We must make clear that we have learnt our lesson.”
Oh, another example. During COVID-19, the media made a big deal about how Trump wouldn’t issue a national shutdown order. And they talked about Germany’s testing. But they never mentioned that Germany never issued a national shutdown order (just like us, Germany left those decisions to the states).
The result of this is that Americans are completely without their bearings. They have no idea of the context in which our political debates take place. I had a Facebook friend recently say, while ranting about Trump, that Angela Merkel was a “progressive.” Merkel leads the Christian Democratic Union. She has championed massive corporate tax cuts in Germany during her tenure. She opposes gay marriage, and supports Germany’s restrictive abortion system (where abortion is technically still illegal, though not prosecuted under 12 weeks, and the abortion rate is 70% lower than in the US). Her successor in the CDU is anti-abortion period. Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world, and doesn’t call herself a “feminist” because of the optics to her conservative base. I wondered what could possibly have made him think Merkel was a “progressive” but then I realized it was because the American media only ever mentions Merkel as a foil to Trump. Merkel hates Trump, progressives hate Trump, so Merkel must be a progressive.
Another example. We have seen a lot of stories recently about the tragic black-white gap in maternal mortality rate. The maternal mortality rate among black women is 2.5x as high as for white women: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/u-s-finally-has-better-maternal-mortality-data-black-mothers-n1125896 https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/u-s-finally-has...
Invariably, media coverage of the issue starts talking about universal healthcare. But have you ever seen a US media report mention that the gap is twice as big in the UK, which has universal healthcare? https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-47115305 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-47115305. There, black mothers are five times as likely to die in childbirth. In reality, the black maternal mortality rate in the US is the same or slightly lower than in the UK, despite the lack of universal healthcare. In fact, by talking about universal healthcare without bothering to check if universal healthcare actually reduces black maternal mortality, journalists actively divert the reader away from thinking about real solutions to the problem.
We have made it clear that we will do everything we can to ensure that 2015 [when nearly 1 million refugees entered Germany] won’t ever be repeated,” Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Monday. “We must make clear that we have learnt our lesson It’s not that the media doesn’t sprinkle in facts for context. They do, when it’s to contradict a conservative viewpoint. They will never do that extra research to contradict a liberal viewpoint. So you never see a reporter confront someone who says “we need to spend more on education” with the fact that we spend more on education than almost every country in the OECD.
People who read the NYT like to think they have “the facts” on their side. You don’t know all the facts, because the NYT doesn’t tell you.
> Invariably, media coverage of the issue starts talking about universal healthcare.
So you're saying I won't find a single media article about the black/white mortality gap that doesn't mention universal healthcare?
I'm nitpicking here, but you're complaining about journalists bringing their own agenda to the table while yourself giving in to the temptation to hyperbole. Surprise: It's really hard (and often dull as dishwater) to write the kind of utterly deracinated just-the-facts prose you wish the media would produce.
Quick: without looking it up, what’s the ratio of COVID-19 deaths in New York to Texas? Florida?
It's about 2:1 Florida to New York. 2:1 Florida to Illinois, too.
What strikes me about your comment --- besides the fact that it looks like you somehow have the rates flipped between the lockdown states and the southern states --- is that almost nothing you're commenting here is really the subject of much reporting at all. It reads as if you're summarizing the bad takes of opinion writers, not of reporters. If you want to build a case against the Take Factory, I'm right there with you. But, in reality, very little of newsroom journalism involves evaluating how progressive Angela Merkel is.