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Crisis is coming. Will country X have it in control? Let's ask some top politicians and government agency directors, do you think you'll have it in control? Of

by sampo 6y ago

Crisis is coming. Will country X have it in control? Let's ask some top politicians and government agency directors, do you think you'll have it in control? Of course they are going to answer yes. Let's run a big story: "Country X has crisis in control". What is the value of news like this? What if in March, a Finnish news agency had interviewed US president Trump's office and maybe US CDC Director Dr. Redfield, asked them if US has the pandemic situation in control, and after they replied yes, then ran a story "US has pandemic in control"? Would you say that's ok – after all they'd be honest about the limits of their reporting, and are just citing their sources.

justin66 6y ago
I'm not sure we have a big disagreement. These sorts of stories are stupid, but in my view, they're just not worthy of retraction because they don't break the rules or tell outright falsehoods. At least not when they're standalone stories. On the other hand, if the NYT ran a large number of stories like this, not blatantly untrue but offering too rosy a picture of the preparedness of the Finnish government as part of a big campaign to alter public opinion, that would be more of an attempt at deception, and more of a problem. I'm not sure why they'd do that, but we could point at analogous series of stories they've done over the last 30 years. (An awful lot of the NYT's behavior in the early 2000s was fairly awful, even when it was superficially within journalistic standards.) > What if in March, a Finnish news agency had interviewed US president Trump's office and maybe US CDC Director Dr. Redfield, asked them if US has the pandemic situation in control, and after they replied yes, then ran a story "US has pandemic in control"? Would you say that's ok – after all they'd be honest about the limits of their reporting, and are just citing their sources. Some of it is about trusting the reader. I would be disappointed in a Finnish reporter who left the US government's employee's rosy assessment unchallenged in the absence of evidence, and in a Finnish editor who decided to run the story, but in 2020, I'd be disappointed in the reader who took such claims by the US Government seriously without evidence.
- franklampard 6y ago
  > they don't break the rules or tell outright falsehoods They don’t but that hardly qualifies as “highest standard of journalism”
  - justin66 6y ago
    No argument here.

by sampo 6y ago

justin66 6y ago

I'm not sure we have a big disagreement. These sorts of stories are stupid, but in my view, they're just not worthy of retraction because they don't break the rules or tell outright falsehoods. At least not when they're standalone stories. On the other hand, if the NYT ran a large number of stories like this, not blatantly untrue but offering too rosy a picture of the preparedness of the Finnish government as part of a big campaign to alter public opinion, that would be more of an attempt at deception, and more of a problem. I'm not sure why they'd do that, but we could point at analogous series of stories they've done over the last 30 years. (An awful lot of the NYT's behavior in the early 2000s was fairly awful, even when it was superficially within journalistic standards.) > What if in March, a Finnish news agency had interviewed US president Trump's office and maybe US CDC Director Dr. Redfield, asked them if US has the pandemic situation in control, and after they replied yes, then ran a story "US has pandemic in control"? Would you say that's ok – after all they'd be honest about the limits of their reporting, and are just citing their sources. Some of it is about trusting the reader. I would be disappointed in a Finnish reporter who left the US government's employee's rosy assessment unchallenged in the absence of evidence, and in a Finnish editor who decided to run the story, but in 2020, I'd be disappointed in the reader who took such claims by the US Government seriously without evidence.

franklampard 6y ago
> they don't break the rules or tell outright falsehoods They don’t but that hardly qualifies as “highest standard of journalism”
- justin66 6y ago
  No argument here.