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That misinformation comes in different flavors. The NYT's reporting on "WMD" to legitimize the Iraq Invasion is a stain on their reputation, but I still conside

That misinformation comes in different flavors. The NYT's reporting on "WMD" to legitimize the Iraq Invasion is a stain on their reputation, but I still consider them to be "as reliable as one could hope for". That vs. Fox News, which was designed from the start as arm of the GOP and is a fount of intentional misinformation. I think the path forward is curated collections of sources with trusted reviewers. Edit: defenders can question my assertion of intention regarding Fox News, but its origin and goals are indisputable: https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-news-2011-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/roger-ailes-blueprint-fox-ne...

P-ala-din 6y ago
Another stain on NYT's history is this: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/43144/did-an-unmarried-couple-in-iran-get-shot-for-holding-hands-in-2007 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/43144/did-an-un...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- pstuart 6y ago
  There's plenty more for sure :-) I don't trust any source to be 100% accurate, but I prefer those that ostensibly try to be so.
Proziam 6y ago
> The NYT's reporting on "WMD" to legitimize the Iraq Invasion is a stain on their reputation, but I still consider them to be "as reliable as one could hope for". If the best we can hope for from major news organizations is that they'll spread misinformation to get people in favor of going to war then I'm honestly not sure what to think.
- jjk166 6y ago
  The real issue is that we shouldn't just trust any news source. It doesn't matter how many times I've correctly told you that fire is hot, you should still be skeptical when I tell you this fire is not. It's becoming rarer and rarer nowadays but you still come across pieces of real investigative journalism where claims are backed up by evidence. For example, a great piece of reporting from the Atlantic sometime a year or two ago was on truck drivers being abused by their employer. Of course it had plenty of anonymous interviews with some of the victims, but they went beyond that. One of the claims was that the employer was changing the log of when trucks were returning at night, so the authors sat outside and recorded when the trucks were actually arriving for a few nights and compared it with the employer's statement. They included their data in an excel sheet. Could they have filled that sheet with fictional data? Sure, but no one ever published the data from their own stakeout which contradicted it. When journalists include verifiable evidence in their stories, it takes their reporting to another level where you no longer rely on their trustworthiness and everything that doesn't looks like a tabloid in comparison. Rather than maintain those high journalistic standards, many traditional media organizations have rested on their laurels and relied on their reputation to distinguish them from their competitors whose reporting is otherwise indistinguishable. Calling their competitors fake news is just an extreme form of competing on brand awareness instead of quality. Now obviously in the modern world with instantaneous communication a lot of stories are going to break before someone has had the time to thoroughly dot all the i's and cross all the t's - that a rumor exists is newsworthy regardless of whether the rumor is true, and the full details of many stories will not become clear until months or years after the fact. If the white house claims there are WMDs in Iraq, the NYT should tell us that the white house is claiming that. The difference between a good source and a bad one is that a good source will publish the evidence they were shown or include prominently that the white house made those claims despite offering no evidence. Trust no one, especially those asking for blind trust.
  - pstuart 6y ago
    Trust but verify :-)
andreilys 6y ago
NYT also tried to doxx Scott Alexander to drive more clicks. So yea my faith in NYT is pretty low if I’m going to be honest.
- pstuart 6y ago
  Again, they are far from perfect. But I'm guessing that the depth and accuracy of the reporting as a whole is worthy of consideration when assessing the state of the world.
disown 6y ago
> That vs. Fox News, which was designed from the start as arm of the GOP and is a fount of intentional misinformation. What do you think the NYT was designed from the start as? Charitable saints interested in the truth didn't create the NYT. The preference for fox news or nyt is a reflection on the individual rather than the merits/bias/objectivity of the news organizations. People support the news that reflect their "values" which incidentally was created by the news/media organizations themselves. It becomes a vicious, certainly not virtuous, cycle.

P-ala-din 6y ago

Another stain on NYT's history is this: https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/43144/did-an-unmarried-couple-in-iran-get-shot-for-holding-hands-in-2007 https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/43144/did-an-un...

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
pstuart 6y ago
There's plenty more for sure :-) I don't trust any source to be 100% accurate, but I prefer those that ostensibly try to be so.

Proziam 6y ago

> The NYT's reporting on "WMD" to legitimize the Iraq Invasion is a stain on their reputation, but I still consider them to be "as reliable as one could hope for". If the best we can hope for from major news organizations is that they'll spread misinformation to get people in favor of going to war then I'm honestly not sure what to think.

jjk166 6y ago
The real issue is that we shouldn't just trust any news source. It doesn't matter how many times I've correctly told you that fire is hot, you should still be skeptical when I tell you this fire is not. It's becoming rarer and rarer nowadays but you still come across pieces of real investigative journalism where claims are backed up by evidence. For example, a great piece of reporting from the Atlantic sometime a year or two ago was on truck drivers being abused by their employer. Of course it had plenty of anonymous interviews with some of the victims, but they went beyond that. One of the claims was that the employer was changing the log of when trucks were returning at night, so the authors sat outside and recorded when the trucks were actually arriving for a few nights and compared it with the employer's statement. They included their data in an excel sheet. Could they have filled that sheet with fictional data? Sure, but no one ever published the data from their own stakeout which contradicted it. When journalists include verifiable evidence in their stories, it takes their reporting to another level where you no longer rely on their trustworthiness and everything that doesn't looks like a tabloid in comparison. Rather than maintain those high journalistic standards, many traditional media organizations have rested on their laurels and relied on their reputation to distinguish them from their competitors whose reporting is otherwise indistinguishable. Calling their competitors fake news is just an extreme form of competing on brand awareness instead of quality. Now obviously in the modern world with instantaneous communication a lot of stories are going to break before someone has had the time to thoroughly dot all the i's and cross all the t's - that a rumor exists is newsworthy regardless of whether the rumor is true, and the full details of many stories will not become clear until months or years after the fact. If the white house claims there are WMDs in Iraq, the NYT should tell us that the white house is claiming that. The difference between a good source and a bad one is that a good source will publish the evidence they were shown or include prominently that the white house made those claims despite offering no evidence. Trust no one, especially those asking for blind trust.
- pstuart 6y ago
  Trust but verify :-)

andreilys 6y ago

NYT also tried to doxx Scott Alexander to drive more clicks. So yea my faith in NYT is pretty low if I’m going to be honest.

pstuart 6y ago
Again, they are far from perfect. But I'm guessing that the depth and accuracy of the reporting as a whole is worthy of consideration when assessing the state of the world.

disown 6y ago

> That vs. Fox News, which was designed from the start as arm of the GOP and is a fount of intentional misinformation. What do you think the NYT was designed from the start as? Charitable saints interested in the truth didn't create the NYT. The preference for fox news or nyt is a reflection on the individual rather than the merits/bias/objectivity of the news organizations. People support the news that reflect their "values" which incidentally was created by the news/media organizations themselves. It becomes a vicious, certainly not virtuous, cycle.