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Sure, I cannot claim to defend Coinbase when I know nothing of the matter. But since news is inherently cherry-picked (after all, one cannot report on literally

by ve55 6y ago

Sure, I cannot claim to defend Coinbase when I know nothing of the matter. But since news is inherently cherry-picked (after all, one cannot report on literally everything), there will generally be an inherent slant to the information provided, and such an inherent slant will likely tend more towards an optimization of metrics (clicks, engagement, ad revenue, subscriptions, etc) rather than perfect statistical representation of the baseline (which it turns out people are not excited to read about!).

jolux 6y ago
This is enormously unfair to the journalistic profession. There are quite a lot of leaps from "it's not possible to report every fact" to "all journalism is slanted for metrics." Journalists like getting a big scoop but the good ones do their due diligence and go to great pains to report fairly and accurately.
- ve55 6y ago
  I think there may be a mis-understanding; what I mean is that in the very essence of reporting a scoop, they have already chosen to report that event above other events. So the reporting about the given scoop may be 100% fair and honest, but there is still, in the bigger picture, a large statistical bias, since only some types of things qualify as 'worthy of reporting' and get converted to scoops to begin with. e.g. imagine one news outlet that only reports about homicides, another than only reports about theft, and another that only reports about covid deaths. All three can be perfectly factual, but they still present radically different views of what is wrong with the world to their readers.
  - jolux 6y ago
    Sure, but I for one was not talking about this story as a marker of the general prevalence of racism, and whether or not it's a representative sample of such. I read you as impugning the integrity and consistency of individual stories in isolation, which is legitimate as well, it just requires more evidence than you presented.
    - ve55 6y ago
      Yeah apologies if it seemed like it went too far, I definitely don't intend to claim anything about the story since it hasn't come out (and even when it does, I know little of the matter), thanks for the addition.
- disown 6y ago
  Journalists exist to push a narrative. They don't exist to present facts. Only naive children believe in that fairy tale. Anyone paying attention realizes now that journalists are partisan political activists and should be treated as such. That's all they've ever been really. Just a quick overview of the history of the news industry would reveal as much.

by ve55 6y ago

jolux 6y ago

This is enormously unfair to the journalistic profession. There are quite a lot of leaps from "it's not possible to report every fact" to "all journalism is slanted for metrics." Journalists like getting a big scoop but the good ones do their due diligence and go to great pains to report fairly and accurately.

ve55 6y ago
I think there may be a mis-understanding; what I mean is that in the very essence of reporting a scoop, they have already chosen to report that event above other events. So the reporting about the given scoop may be 100% fair and honest, but there is still, in the bigger picture, a large statistical bias, since only some types of things qualify as 'worthy of reporting' and get converted to scoops to begin with. e.g. imagine one news outlet that only reports about homicides, another than only reports about theft, and another that only reports about covid deaths. All three can be perfectly factual, but they still present radically different views of what is wrong with the world to their readers.
- jolux 6y ago
  Sure, but I for one was not talking about this story as a marker of the general prevalence of racism, and whether or not it's a representative sample of such. I read you as impugning the integrity and consistency of individual stories in isolation, which is legitimate as well, it just requires more evidence than you presented.
  - ve55 6y ago
    Yeah apologies if it seemed like it went too far, I definitely don't intend to claim anything about the story since it hasn't come out (and even when it does, I know little of the matter), thanks for the addition.
disown 6y ago
Journalists exist to push a narrative. They don't exist to present facts. Only naive children believe in that fairy tale. Anyone paying attention realizes now that journalists are partisan political activists and should be treated as such. That's all they've ever been really. Just a quick overview of the history of the news industry would reveal as much.