6 ms·

As of 2020, I find that journalists are no longer reputable, fact checkers don't check facts, and there are no ramifications when something wrong is published.

As of 2020, I find that journalists are no longer reputable, fact checkers don't check facts, and there are no ramifications when something wrong is published. This is the default state of the world until proven otherwise and is supported by countless examples. The media is not some bastion of truth, it's just as subjective as the rest of us and has progressively gotten worse as all standards are pushed aside for the narrative.

wstrange 6y ago
This is exactly the goal state sponsored disinformation campaigns. To flood the marketplace of ideas with so much "fake news" that no one believes anything anymore. When that happens, people feel free to believe in what is convenient or aligns with their personal world view. The reality is that not all news sources are equally bad or biased. Some do a better job of fact checking than others.
- tomp 6y ago
  Mainstream "reputable" media has ran many campaigns that are obviously not Russia-sponsored, least-of-all the Russia-gate conspiracy theory, and all of "Trump is sexist", "Trump is racist", "Trump supports white supremacy" stories based on fake Trump quotes ("fake" as in, taken out of context and twisted).
- manigandham 6y ago
  Sure, some do better than others. However none are good at it, and therefore the bar is so low that it's better to assume it's all false until proven otherwise.
- pmarreck 6y ago
  It's not a very glamorously-designed site but I've found https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ to be pretty solid. I'm glad they rate political inclination separately from factuality because I've gotten to the point that I only care about the latter, and not the former, and highly suggest others do too. Nothing rated below "HIGH" in Factual Reporting should be passed along, IMHO. They always link to the evidence for their ratings.
Zigurd 6y ago
This is a sad example of techbro subculture. Clever enough to write code, but utterly alienated from culture and institutions.
- manigandham 6y ago
  > "alienated from culture and institutions?" What's that supposed to mean exactly? Try to phrase a better argument than buzzword ad hominems. And blindly following anything definitely isn't clever, that's for sure.
lopmotr 6y ago
The mainstream news media is actually pretty good at being technically factually correct, but it's so heavily biased that normal people can't see the truth behind the spin. What they take away from a story is the emotion, not the facts. It can be the complete opposite of what really happened. Subjective language is one way they do it. For example, an organization might have a "culture of abuse". That's not factually wrong but it has no meaning either. When the Christchurch massacre happened, suddenly there was "growing white supremacy". When they want to suggest a person is dishonest, it's "X claims, without evidence, that ...". Another way is taking advantage of people's inability to distinguish anecdotes from a representative sample. If they want us to believe that crime is increasing, they'll report more on crime so the audience gets the impression that there's more of it. They may even say it's increasing, which it always is if you cherry pick the appropriate time scale. Then there's using quotes from other people to say whatever the journalist wants to say themselves. A technique for interviewing people is to go fishing for someone to say the right thing, which someone inevitably will if you ask enough people. Or worse, telling their subjects what to say or tricking them into saying they thing they want, perhaps by expressing the same belief themselves and using the human nature of agreeableness to get the subject to say they agree, even if they don't really. Sometimes the quotes are written inline with the rest of the sentence so they feel like facts being asserted by the journalist but aren't subject to the usual standard of accuracy. I'd say these are more serious problems than factual errors because they're convey high level feelings and overall sense of the state of the world which are being prefabricated and fed to gullible voters so they don't have to think for themselves. With factual errors, you still have to use those facts to conclude something, which is hard mental work.
- ojnabieoot 6y ago
  > When the Christchurch massacre happened, suddenly there was "growing white supremacy". That white supremacists are expanding their membership and becoming more violent is in fact objectively true and "growing white supremacy" is an objective comment on the political circumstances that led to the Christchurch terrorism attack. Honestly, and I know this is an ad hominem: you declaring that such a view is "subjective" says a lot more about your politics than it does anything about journalism. So I looked at your HN profile. In fact, looking at your comment from 6 days ago[1]: > [James Watson] [b]lasphemed against contemporary morality by taking the "wrong" side in the nature-vs-nurture debate. See his Wikipedia page for details. That is not why James Watson got in trouble. James Watson got in trouble because he said directly that black people were dumber than white people, and that this is due to genetic differences. He has only flawed circumstantial evidence for the former, and absolutely zero for the latter. His claim is strongly disputed by anthropologists and sociologists, who have considerable evidence that African art, technology, and society is just as sophisticated as the European variety. His claim is also disputed by human geneticists - again due to a total lack of evidence. The fact that you a) dishonestly sanitized his actual views with a cowardly euphemism, and b) apparently agree with him that Africans are dumber than Europeans makes me suspect you aren't "objectively" concerned about the media reporting on increasing white nationalism. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24762396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24762396
adamsea 6y ago
You are correct that no one is perfect all the time. Nonetheless sites like Politifact still provide pretty accurate fact-checking more often than not. The New York Times will be more reliable than the National Enquirer, and will (eventually) admit error or wrong doing. It’s not very realistic to see it as black and white, that some bad journalism means all journalism is bad. That’s simply not true. To be honest, considering the incredible number of lies, mistruths, and deceptions President Trump has been spewing for the last four years I’d say the fact-checking has been okay. Of course Democrats and liberals lie or deceive too, and of course some media institutions sometimes screw up or have biases there. But if we step back and look at what fact-checking is the most important, the President of the United States continuously lying his ass off clearly tops the list, so if we’re going to discuss fact-checking let’s start there.
- manigandham 6y ago
  Sure, some are better than others. But even the supposed best are so bad that it makes no difference. You're likely assuming reputation from decades ago rather than the modern state of the media. The hallowed names no longer matter, they're all the same and have been emptied of almost all talent and integrity. Add in the rise of social media, clickbait, impression counts, and ever-dropping attention The problems with the media "tops the list" for me before they can claim to be fact-checking anyone else.
  - adamsea 6y ago
    > But even the supposed best are so bad that it makes no difference. I disagree. And I think there’s empirical data to back me up. We can pick one politician, and look them up on Politifact. https://www.politifact.com/personalities/joe-biden/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/joe-biden/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ Do you really believe Fox News does a better job of fact-checking? Or your media organization of choice. Politifact is solid. Pro Publica is solid. Attempting to reduce it to “all are equally bad, or so bad it doesn’t matter” is disingenuous and actually furthers attempts to deceive the public by undermining sources which are actually trustworthy. Distrust everyone, and you’ll believe anyone. Of course this doesn’t mean you get to turn off your thinking cap - we always have to exercise our own judgement, even when reading information from sources we believe to be trustworthy. If you genuinely believe what you are saying then I encourage you to broaden your sources. For example, ‘Ghost Wars’, which won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and has been broadly acclaimed, covers the CIA and all the stuff it did / has been doing in Afghanistan since 9/11. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Wars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Wars There are plenty of good books on domestic politics too. Books will help broaden your perspective and better evaluate these journalism or media organizations we are talking about. If you’re not engaging in this discussion with good intention, and your goal is to deceive and generally undermine people’s confidence in reputable sources of information because you believe it furthers your own political beliefs, well, then you should feel ashamed of yourself. I’m being honest - I don’t know which one is the case. What you say, however, is demonstrably untrue and a falsehood.

wstrange 6y ago

This is exactly the goal state sponsored disinformation campaigns. To flood the marketplace of ideas with so much "fake news" that no one believes anything anymore. When that happens, people feel free to believe in what is convenient or aligns with their personal world view. The reality is that not all news sources are equally bad or biased. Some do a better job of fact checking than others.

tomp 6y ago
Mainstream "reputable" media has ran many campaigns that are obviously not Russia-sponsored, least-of-all the Russia-gate conspiracy theory, and all of "Trump is sexist", "Trump is racist", "Trump supports white supremacy" stories based on fake Trump quotes ("fake" as in, taken out of context and twisted).
manigandham 6y ago
Sure, some do better than others. However none are good at it, and therefore the bar is so low that it's better to assume it's all false until proven otherwise.
pmarreck 6y ago
It's not a very glamorously-designed site but I've found https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/ to be pretty solid. I'm glad they rate political inclination separately from factuality because I've gotten to the point that I only care about the latter, and not the former, and highly suggest others do too. Nothing rated below "HIGH" in Factual Reporting should be passed along, IMHO. They always link to the evidence for their ratings.

Zigurd 6y ago

This is a sad example of techbro subculture. Clever enough to write code, but utterly alienated from culture and institutions.

manigandham 6y ago
> "alienated from culture and institutions?" What's that supposed to mean exactly? Try to phrase a better argument than buzzword ad hominems. And blindly following anything definitely isn't clever, that's for sure.

lopmotr 6y ago

The mainstream news media is actually pretty good at being technically factually correct, but it's so heavily biased that normal people can't see the truth behind the spin. What they take away from a story is the emotion, not the facts. It can be the complete opposite of what really happened. Subjective language is one way they do it. For example, an organization might have a "culture of abuse". That's not factually wrong but it has no meaning either. When the Christchurch massacre happened, suddenly there was "growing white supremacy". When they want to suggest a person is dishonest, it's "X claims, without evidence, that ...". Another way is taking advantage of people's inability to distinguish anecdotes from a representative sample. If they want us to believe that crime is increasing, they'll report more on crime so the audience gets the impression that there's more of it. They may even say it's increasing, which it always is if you cherry pick the appropriate time scale. Then there's using quotes from other people to say whatever the journalist wants to say themselves. A technique for interviewing people is to go fishing for someone to say the right thing, which someone inevitably will if you ask enough people. Or worse, telling their subjects what to say or tricking them into saying they thing they want, perhaps by expressing the same belief themselves and using the human nature of agreeableness to get the subject to say they agree, even if they don't really. Sometimes the quotes are written inline with the rest of the sentence so they feel like facts being asserted by the journalist but aren't subject to the usual standard of accuracy. I'd say these are more serious problems than factual errors because they're convey high level feelings and overall sense of the state of the world which are being prefabricated and fed to gullible voters so they don't have to think for themselves. With factual errors, you still have to use those facts to conclude something, which is hard mental work.

ojnabieoot 6y ago
> When the Christchurch massacre happened, suddenly there was "growing white supremacy". That white supremacists are expanding their membership and becoming more violent is in fact objectively true and "growing white supremacy" is an objective comment on the political circumstances that led to the Christchurch terrorism attack. Honestly, and I know this is an ad hominem: you declaring that such a view is "subjective" says a lot more about your politics than it does anything about journalism. So I looked at your HN profile. In fact, looking at your comment from 6 days ago[1]: > [James Watson] [b]lasphemed against contemporary morality by taking the "wrong" side in the nature-vs-nurture debate. See his Wikipedia page for details. That is not why James Watson got in trouble. James Watson got in trouble because he said directly that black people were dumber than white people, and that this is due to genetic differences. He has only flawed circumstantial evidence for the former, and absolutely zero for the latter. His claim is strongly disputed by anthropologists and sociologists, who have considerable evidence that African art, technology, and society is just as sophisticated as the European variety. His claim is also disputed by human geneticists - again due to a total lack of evidence. The fact that you a) dishonestly sanitized his actual views with a cowardly euphemism, and b) apparently agree with him that Africans are dumber than Europeans makes me suspect you aren't "objectively" concerned about the media reporting on increasing white nationalism. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24762396 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24762396

adamsea 6y ago

You are correct that no one is perfect all the time. Nonetheless sites like Politifact still provide pretty accurate fact-checking more often than not. The New York Times will be more reliable than the National Enquirer, and will (eventually) admit error or wrong doing. It’s not very realistic to see it as black and white, that some bad journalism means all journalism is bad. That’s simply not true. To be honest, considering the incredible number of lies, mistruths, and deceptions President Trump has been spewing for the last four years I’d say the fact-checking has been okay. Of course Democrats and liberals lie or deceive too, and of course some media institutions sometimes screw up or have biases there. But if we step back and look at what fact-checking is the most important, the President of the United States continuously lying his ass off clearly tops the list, so if we’re going to discuss fact-checking let’s start there.

manigandham 6y ago
Sure, some are better than others. But even the supposed best are so bad that it makes no difference. You're likely assuming reputation from decades ago rather than the modern state of the media. The hallowed names no longer matter, they're all the same and have been emptied of almost all talent and integrity. Add in the rise of social media, clickbait, impression counts, and ever-dropping attention The problems with the media "tops the list" for me before they can claim to be fact-checking anyone else.
- adamsea 6y ago
  > But even the supposed best are so bad that it makes no difference. I disagree. And I think there’s empirical data to back me up. We can pick one politician, and look them up on Politifact. https://www.politifact.com/personalities/joe-biden/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/joe-biden/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ https://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ Do you really believe Fox News does a better job of fact-checking? Or your media organization of choice. Politifact is solid. Pro Publica is solid. Attempting to reduce it to “all are equally bad, or so bad it doesn’t matter” is disingenuous and actually furthers attempts to deceive the public by undermining sources which are actually trustworthy. Distrust everyone, and you’ll believe anyone. Of course this doesn’t mean you get to turn off your thinking cap - we always have to exercise our own judgement, even when reading information from sources we believe to be trustworthy. If you genuinely believe what you are saying then I encourage you to broaden your sources. For example, ‘Ghost Wars’, which won a Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction and has been broadly acclaimed, covers the CIA and all the stuff it did / has been doing in Afghanistan since 9/11. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Wars https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Wars There are plenty of good books on domestic politics too. Books will help broaden your perspective and better evaluate these journalism or media organizations we are talking about. If you’re not engaging in this discussion with good intention, and your goal is to deceive and generally undermine people’s confidence in reputable sources of information because you believe it furthers your own political beliefs, well, then you should feel ashamed of yourself. I’m being honest - I don’t know which one is the case. What you say, however, is demonstrably untrue and a falsehood.