4 ms·

I've been in the vicinity of news/magazine press or knew the subjects personally about a dozen times. In every single instance the facts were grossly misrepres

I've been in the vicinity of news/magazine press or knew the subjects personally about a dozen times. In every single instance the facts were grossly misrepresented and in the three cases at Vice/Motherboard told the complete opposite story of the actual truth. Vice's article about "Sugar Weasel, the One and Only Clown Escort" is a complete fabrication (well, other than his own self-delusions) and any basic fact checking shows the story to be false immediately.

3np 6y ago
This made me feel pretty uneasy about Wired's posthumous Holloway story.
coffeefirst 6y ago
Vice has that reputation. This is the problem. There's plenty of newsrooms doing solid work. You can't do this any more than you can talk about restaurants while describing fast food burgers and a fancy tapas bar in the same sentence. There's more interesting problems here. Outlets with actual scientists on staff do better science coverage, local institutions can cover a crisis with a better grasp on the context than a global organization that's sending reporters there for the first time. But before we can have that conversation we need to paint with a narrower brush.
- busterarm 6y ago
  Definitely. I've certainly found my own sources for the kinds of news that I'm interested in. A lot of it is independent journalists/*loggers. Often enough I can check their sources and check multiple points of view on the same topic. The problem is that's a lot of work. Other people I might want to educate about the facts haven't put in that work -- they've just watched CNN/MSNBC/FOX or read the NYT/etc. And most of those get it wrong.
  - coffeefirst 6y ago
    Sure, and I won't defend cable news at all. The 24/7 realtime nature of what they do is set up to be superficial and error-prone.
Viliam1234 6y ago
I was interviewed by journalists twice, both times they published a text that contained some of my words but edited to make it say the opposite of what I actually said. I wonder whether in ten years television will regularly use deepfakes when "interviewing" people, and we will feel equally hopeless about it.
zarkov99 6y ago
I became interested in Jordan Peterson and the my Google feed noticed. The amount of fabrications that started popping in my feed, from famous outlets, opened my eyes to just corrupt the news media is. Its hard to overstate how despicable and toxic this is.

3np 6y ago

This made me feel pretty uneasy about Wired's posthumous Holloway story.

coffeefirst 6y ago

Vice has that reputation. This is the problem. There's plenty of newsrooms doing solid work. You can't do this any more than you can talk about restaurants while describing fast food burgers and a fancy tapas bar in the same sentence. There's more interesting problems here. Outlets with actual scientists on staff do better science coverage, local institutions can cover a crisis with a better grasp on the context than a global organization that's sending reporters there for the first time. But before we can have that conversation we need to paint with a narrower brush.

busterarm 6y ago
Definitely. I've certainly found my own sources for the kinds of news that I'm interested in. A lot of it is independent journalists/*loggers. Often enough I can check their sources and check multiple points of view on the same topic. The problem is that's a lot of work. Other people I might want to educate about the facts haven't put in that work -- they've just watched CNN/MSNBC/FOX or read the NYT/etc. And most of those get it wrong.
- coffeefirst 6y ago
  Sure, and I won't defend cable news at all. The 24/7 realtime nature of what they do is set up to be superficial and error-prone.

Viliam1234 6y ago

I was interviewed by journalists twice, both times they published a text that contained some of my words but edited to make it say the opposite of what I actually said. I wonder whether in ten years television will regularly use deepfakes when "interviewing" people, and we will feel equally hopeless about it.

zarkov99 6y ago

I became interested in Jordan Peterson and the my Google feed noticed. The amount of fabrications that started popping in my feed, from famous outlets, opened my eyes to just corrupt the news media is. Its hard to overstate how despicable and toxic this is.