7 ms·
>That isn't to say that the media doesn't have biases or get stories wrong. This understates the reality, dramatically. The biases are extreme, and the bar for
by ericd 6y ago
>That isn't to say that the media doesn't have biases or get stories wrong.
This understates the reality, dramatically. The biases are extreme, and the bar for accuracy is generally extraordinarily low, especially in new media, but increasingly in old media trying to adapt. Oftentimes there are a number of lies of ommission/misleading statements/snippets taken out of extremely important context in order to make the reality fit into the desired narrative. Frequently they're actively trying to drum up outrage against someone or something. It's becoming a more and more destructive force.
Just go look for the full quotes any time there's a blog shitstorm about something someone famous says. Sometimes, the outrage is justified, but frequently, the context completely changes the meaning of the snippet, sometimes 180 degrees from the way it's being presented in the media.
I'm not at all surprised that the people you mention who've been in the media a lot are annoyed by it, they're right to be.
Also, why are you on a throwaway account?
PS: This reminds me of the old GW Bush "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me... you can't get fooled again". I don't know if this is true, but I've heard it explained that he realized halfway through that he couldn't say "shame on me", or it would be excerpted and used relentlessly against him.
- throughaweigh 6y agoWhat are specific examples?
- ericd 6y agoBefore I spend more effort on this, why are you on a newly registered throwaway?
- throughaweigh 6y agoI'm trying to quit posting here. I don't have any link to journalism if that's what you are asking. But there shouldn't be any effort involved if all of this is already as obvious as claimed.
- ericd 6y agoFair enough. An example, since PG was mentioned: http://www.paulgraham.com/wids.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wids.html In this case, a word was edited out of even the context-free snippet. Feel free to look up the articles surrounding it.
- throughaweigh 6y agoTo demonstrate an obvious pattern you need to give a set of important examples. Of course you can find selective misquoting and distortions, but that doesn't establish a pattern, much less a pattern for important cases. (But even if that pattern was established each individual story would be true or false on its own merits). That said even the example you linked isn't that strong. The omission of the word "these" in "these women" doesn't change the meaning of the paragraph because it's qualified by "they haven't been hacking for 10 years". Obviously the modified paragraph doesn't apply to women who have been hacking for 10 years. The alteration only matters if many women have been hacking for 10 years relative to men. Therefore, the altered paragraph accurately conveys the author's meaning. The same for the ambiguity as to whether "we" refers to society or YC. Either interpretation has very similar meaning ("Women aren't starting Facebook because they don't have 10 years programming experience and neither YC nor society can undo that without a time machine). Then the author talks about how they misspoke. You can't blame that on a journalist when they quote you. Even if you don't agree the excerpts are clearly not obvious examples of journalistic malpractice. And most claims of misquoting and distortion are much weaker than even this, often completely baseless.
- rayiner 6y agoThat's an obvious example of journalistic malpractice. I wouldn't edit a quote like that in a legal brief--and that is something that is supposed to be slanted rather than objective.
- throughaweigh 6y agoLegal documents have different standards, I explained why I thought the meaning was the same. When there are concrete refutations we can actually discuss them and each come to our own conclusion. But even if we take this case as journalistic bad behavior (obviously there is going to be some), I wouldn't conclude, based on this evidence, that there is systemic journalistic malpractice against tech or elites, nor would I default to taking a critical story on tech as false. There are other areas like foreign policy where you can default to extreme skepticism because people have done concrete analysis and demonstrated a pattern. In tech on the other hand, cases seem to be hard to come by (everyone just "knows" it's true) and people instead resort to name calling and vague accusations. But even in foreign policy where I know the reporting to be untrustworthy I don't discard an article out of hand, I'm just extremely skeptical and search out disconfirming evidence and articles. I can't do that with tech stories because nobody concretely describes why a story is false. The "What I Didn't Say" article is an exception rather than the rule. The most likely reason why nobody explains why something is false is because it isn't. When the facts are on your side people pound the facts otherwise they pound the table.