3 ms·

The biggest thing that I’ve seen in the news haven’t come from lies but from removal of context. Anything can be made more inflammatory if you remove key detai

The biggest thing that I’ve seen in the news haven’t come from lies but from removal of context. Anything can be made more inflammatory if you remove key details while still remaining factually correct. - Tim punched Bob - Bob punched Tim - Bob and Tim shake hands Reported as... - Bob punched Tim Factually correct but lacking context. Unless the reader knows the entire story be putting it together from multiple reports, this will create a skewed view of any report. This happens all the time with headline circulation where nobody reads the article. If you’ve ever seen reporting or articles on something where you have deep expertise, you’ll spot it immediately because you know exactly what’s been left out. Nobody else does though. And honestly, I have no idea what to do about it unless somebody can create a site to aggregate news from multiple sources to highlight what’s missing from each one.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
CNN: And here are the results of the golf tournament between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden took the second place. Trump was just one row above the looser. Reflecting the same joke for Fox News is left as an exercise to the reader.
waterhouse 6y ago
The most promising category of approach seems to me to be an adversarial one. Level 1 is having one side present their case—basically the status quo. Level 2 is having some group of people with a strong incentive to find flaws and what's missing, and with a platform on which to present their criticisms. Level 3 is to have people (possibly from the first group, possibly other members of the second group) critique the criticisms, and possibly iterate that. Level 4 might include live debates, although that has pros and cons relative to written arguments. A tactic that I suspect would be useful is the ability to call out specific things—"Yeah, a bunch of this stuff is arguable and murky, but that thing you said right there is wrong and I can prove it; I will stake a chunk of my reputation on this, and we will litigate the issue, and if I'm successful, it should damage your reputation and boost mine"—combined with people expecting to be in the system for long enough that reputations are worthwhile. ("Wrong" will include "factually wrong" and might also include "against the rules of this system"—it might be sensible to have rules about claims needing to be backed up by certain kinds of evidence.) I think at least some parts of academia were supposed to work something like this, and maybe a few parts of it actually do.
disown 6y ago
> The biggest thing that I’ve seen in the news haven’t come from lies but from removal of context. Also, it will be interesting is which "news" outlets label this as riots and which label it as protests.
zamadatix 6y ago
https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news is based around your closing statement. I make no claim about how well they do it, I just know they exist.
- waterhouse 6y ago
  Interesting. "Top stories" are presented with three articles: one "From the Left", one "From the Center", and one "From the Right". For example, an update about the subject of this thread has articles from CNN, Reuters, and New York Post in those respective categories. Looks like the "top stories" are presented with a "headline roundup", presumably written by an AllSides person, which (judging from two examples) tends to say things like "Left-rated outlets were more likely to highlight [...]; Right-rated outlets featured [...]". There are also three general feeds of "News from the (Left|Center|Right)" in parallel at the bottom. This seems at least like the type of experiment that would be worth trying.

AlexTWithBeard 6y ago

CNN: And here are the results of the golf tournament between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Biden took the second place. Trump was just one row above the looser. Reflecting the same joke for Fox News is left as an exercise to the reader.

waterhouse 6y ago

The most promising category of approach seems to me to be an adversarial one. Level 1 is having one side present their case—basically the status quo. Level 2 is having some group of people with a strong incentive to find flaws and what's missing, and with a platform on which to present their criticisms. Level 3 is to have people (possibly from the first group, possibly other members of the second group) critique the criticisms, and possibly iterate that. Level 4 might include live debates, although that has pros and cons relative to written arguments. A tactic that I suspect would be useful is the ability to call out specific things—"Yeah, a bunch of this stuff is arguable and murky, but that thing you said right there is wrong and I can prove it; I will stake a chunk of my reputation on this, and we will litigate the issue, and if I'm successful, it should damage your reputation and boost mine"—combined with people expecting to be in the system for long enough that reputations are worthwhile. ("Wrong" will include "factually wrong" and might also include "against the rules of this system"—it might be sensible to have rules about claims needing to be backed up by certain kinds of evidence.) I think at least some parts of academia were supposed to work something like this, and maybe a few parts of it actually do.

disown 6y ago

> The biggest thing that I’ve seen in the news haven’t come from lies but from removal of context. Also, it will be interesting is which "news" outlets label this as riots and which label it as protests.

zamadatix 6y ago

https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news is based around your closing statement. I make no claim about how well they do it, I just know they exist.

waterhouse 6y ago
Interesting. "Top stories" are presented with three articles: one "From the Left", one "From the Center", and one "From the Right". For example, an update about the subject of this thread has articles from CNN, Reuters, and New York Post in those respective categories. Looks like the "top stories" are presented with a "headline roundup", presumably written by an AllSides person, which (judging from two examples) tends to say things like "Left-rated outlets were more likely to highlight [...]; Right-rated outlets featured [...]". There are also three general feeds of "News from the (Left|Center|Right)" in parallel at the bottom. This seems at least like the type of experiment that would be worth trying.