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The lies we are told go on and on. The only defense seems to be a combination of strong analytical skills and healthy skepticism of all information we consume.

The lies we are told go on and on. The only defense seems to be a combination of strong analytical skills and healthy skepticism of all information we consume. Some other examples you already know: - Big tobacco and lung cancer, cigarettes sold has healthy for decades [0] - Big Auto and seat belts, they fought mandatory seat belts for decades [1] - Big sugar (this article) - Big Media and the apparent massive degradation in truthfulness of the 2010's It seems that the truth can be purchased at the right price from the right organizations. Teaching analytical skepticism needs to become a core curriculum for our schools. [0] https://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/16/6/1070#:~:text=Senior%20scientists%20and%20executives%20at,1950s%20(30%2D34) https://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/16/6/1070#:~:text=Seni.... [1] https://www.wpr.org/surprisingly-controversial-history-seat-belts https://www.wpr.org/surprisingly-controversial-history-seat-...

vmception 6y ago
> It seems that the truth can be purchased at the right price from the right organizations. Yes, this is an instruction manual.
d26900 6y ago
Yes, powerful lobbying organizations not only had success with the food industry, but with things like Brexit too. There's also an interesting finding[1]: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism." [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
- reedjosh 6y ago
  Wow, fantastic article.
- aaron695 6y ago
  Good. Do we really want QAnon (And on the other side, many of HN's crazy ideas) to be top of our politics? Unfortunately that's 2014, forever ago in internet years, the tide is turning into the mess we have now.
  - d26900 6y ago
    That's an interesting proposition/sentiment. I haven't thought about that. As if "neo-monarchy" (the status quo) is necessary for us "dumb" humans. But there are problems as well with that. Brexit is a good example. Rich people got their way by fooling the masses through targeted propaganda. And the masses got screwed (lost many rights) because of that. But your sentiment is a little cynical/hyperbolic too for my tastes. Not everyone is a QAnon maniac. I think the majority of people are decent.
    - MrMan 6y ago
      But we are all easily manipulated, which is the danger. The link in your post supports this conclusion.
      - d26900 6y ago
        If we had "benevolent monarchs" (riches, people of power) who have always our best interest in mind, I would agree with you. But these "monarchs" aren't benevolent they simply do not care about us other than manipulating us as "dumb sheep". And I still believe that the majority of people (us) are decent. Yes we can be like sheeple, but the best cure for that is education and/or political prevention mechanisms against our ills (lobbying, populism and gullibleness).
  - hoka-one-one 6y ago
    Yeah or Black Lives Matter! Whoops!
- lm28469 6y ago
  In the US the "elite" is literally drafting laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_... > The ALEC website states that its goal is to advance "the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism" It's right there in the open but I would guess most people never heard of it. A rich people private club to steer the country's legislation. I can't even imagine the level of corruption and self-serving interest
dxgarnish 6y ago
So, I've got a highly speculative hypothesis that BIG COFFEE will have a similar tobacco-like health event in the future. These are my semi-conspiratorial circumstantial evidences: 1. It's basically burnt bean water. Roasted is just a marketing term. 2. The constant rate of "New Study Finds Coffee Improves [insert health benefit]" articles 3. The incredibly powerful forces (industrial, corporate, personal) that would hold back such an event I'm not willing to defend this hypothesis, but I would love some steel-manning
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
  > It's basically burnt bean water. Roasted is just a marketing term. So, does that make toast “basically burnt bread”?
  - danesparza 6y ago
    I think you know the answer is "yes".
  - xwdv 6y ago
    Steaks are just basically burnt meat.
    - a_t48 6y ago
      Ideally they aren't
      - wombatpm 6y ago
        Knock the horns off and make sure it doesn’t moo was how my grandfather ordered his steak
  - Teever 6y ago
    I know an acquaintance who refers to bread as raw toast.
  - SilasX 6y ago
parineum 6y ago
The first three are 3 events over nearly 100 years. That's not very common. The last one, I'd argue isn't new but the internet's ability to provide direct-from-the-source accounts of events and access to opposition sources allows the media to be fact checked in real time (or at least to notice incongruities with other stories). I'd be surprised if the situation is at all new. In fact, I'd argue that the media are the root cause of the previous three phenomenon you describe.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I think fact-checking is still in its infancy, and is currently nearly worthless, due to a lack of any ability to verify who is doing the fact-checking. It's just more noise in the same system. Once you can attach web-of-trust or a similar provable system, then fact-checking will have some value.
  - sgtnoodle 6y ago
    It seems like "fact checking" in the snopes sense is just another vector for propaganda. The truth of what happened in the past is only knowable as fact by those who witnessed it, and by what can be proven with evidence. I don't think that's a modern problem.
    - forgotmypw17 6y ago
      The problem itself is not new: you can only trust what you have seen with your own eyes. And, to a lesser extent, you can trust something a trusted party has seen with their own eyes. However, the cost of lying on a large scale has dropped to almost nothing. While the cost of truth verification has remained about the same. (One could argue that with lockdown, it has actually increased.) There is a ray of hope, however, and it's called web of trust. If I can trace my trusted parties to their trusted parties, to their trusted parties, and so on, all the way to the original information source, I'm able to ascertain, with strong mathematical certainty, that the original source of information is reasonably trustworthy. That is, of course, if I assigned my trust correctly, and so on. On the other hand, if the original source cannot be traced, then their information is worthless. The challenge now, for us hackers like no one else, is to build this web-of-trust information system. When it's done, it will usher in a new age of clarity and light, truly a new Age of Enlightenment, and our old way will seem as old and archaic as unsanitary surgery and X-ray shoe fitters. The good news is that all of the technology, mathematical proofs, etc., has already been done. We can build this resilient, trustworthy information system today, with today's technology. Actually, we could have built it 20 years ago. And I think it is inevitable that it will be built.
polote 6y ago
> Big Auto and seat belts, they fought mandatory seat belts for decades The linked article doesn't mention any lie. It was mostly some people saying that it should be up to the person to decide whether or not he wants to wear a belt.
wwww4all 6y ago
The lies go on because the establishment media is paid to do propaganda for establishment big business. Jeff Bezos owns Washington Post. The biggest companies own the media distribution channels, Disney, google, facebook, etc. Think about that fact when you see all the people being censored and deplatformed. Think about why the establishment media shouts out racism 24/7, when using anti trust to break up big companies will help all races by improving their economic status? Why is establishment media fermenting animosity amongst the lower classes, while the establishment people are getting richer by the second?
amelius 6y ago
The main problem is we can't blame any kind of conspiracy theorist anymore when there is so much BS science in the things we eat and nobody in power seems to care.
- Ekaros 6y ago
  I would argue even that those in power have setup the system to produce BS science. Maybe inadvertently... Research output is in the end one main criterias that we measure. Actual quality of it not so much. Thus science is driven to deliver publications. Now how valid these are is open to questions. And how many of them actually prove the mechanisms behind the findings? Probably comparatively fewer to those describing some correlation.
DenisM 6y ago
Don't forget alcohol. There was a period where every single movie had the main characters sipping big round glasses of red wine every day. And of course all the studies and articles about red wine being good for you. This became so normal we don't even think about it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Judgmentality 6y ago
The history of leaded gasoline and how it was believed to be incredibly safe for decades is easily my favorite example of buying credibility as a corporation (it's a long story, but I bet this will be the most interesting thing you read this week). https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-sc...
- ricardobayes 6y ago
  NYC cleaned up shortly after gas stations stopped selling leaded gas. Crime was significantly less in a short period of time. "it’s not just New York that has seen a big drop in crime. In city after city, violent crime peaked in the early ’90s and then began a steady and spectacular decline. Washington, DC, didn’t have either Giuliani or Bratton, but its violent crime rate has dropped 58 percent since its peak. Dallas’ has fallen 70 percent. Newark: 74 percent. Los Angeles: 78 percent." https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...
sgtnoodle 6y ago
And most of the time when you point it out on social media, you get downvoted and censored!
eplanit 6y ago
And to me one of the worst, also recently covered by NPR: the big lies we were told about plastic being recyclable[1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...
- merb 6y ago
  well the thing is, it's not impossible to recycle plastic, but the article also explains that really simple: > Recycling plastic is "costly," it says, and sorting it, the report concludes, is "infeasible." 1. no infrastructure for sorting, there is no 100% method as of today (basically no research is done on this topic) 2. even if it is feasible, nobody does it becasue it is expensive. 3. there are countries where plastic recycling works, but these are outliners and countries who heavily invest in sorting, recycling on the consumer side.
  - 88840-8855 6y ago
    This is super interesting to me. Can you help out? - what infrastructure is needed for sorting? - what countries are successfully doing that? Taiwan? - can "expensive" be quantified?
    - mkoubaa 6y ago
      It requires human labor so it is expensive in countries where that is expensive. In countries where it is cheap there it isn't prioritized by the public, who ubderstandably instead want better paying jobs
  - throwmtlsPhD 6y ago
    Disclaimer: So I have a PhD in mtls science, and I studied a bit of plastics thermo. However I never worked on the recycling problem. Plastics, or polymers that aren’t cross linked, are in a sense easy to recycle - Just melt them and recast the part. 3D printing hobbyists even recycle their filament. The problem is that any melted plastic doesn’t mix with any plastic other than itself. So if you have 99% polyethylene and 1% polypropylene and melt them together they won’t mix. But they won’t separate perfectly either (so you can’t skim the PP put). Instead you get inter-penetrating phases (a spinodal). These phases have surfaces that don’t stick well together so the end result is that any parts made of this are exceptionally weak. So this is the dilemma: if you have even 1% of different polymer in your mix, the plastic will suck. But we use at least 4 or 5 different plastics in everyday life all chucked into the same bins, all looking more less the same. Solutions? 1. One solution is to heat all the plastics so that they break apart and therefore use them for feedstock. But this is very expensive, and the feedstocks aren’t very pure. 2 Make cat fuel. Cheaper then above, since the purity requirements aren’t as strong, but it’s basically the same as number 1. This doesnt increase CO2 emissions since the plastic is displacing oil 3. Burn it for energy. This needs far less strict requirements than 2 and lower CO2 emissions (since you don’t have to waste energy getting oil out). However, you’d have to basically ban public use of perfluorinated polymers or make them very expensive, or make them easy to identify (Teflon, gore-Tex.) Frankly I’d ban perfluorinates except for use in critical industries. That chemistry is ecologically nasty. 4. Force companies to color their containers according to plastic type. I.e no more clear Pepsi or Coke bottles - all PE products are color, say green. All PP colors are red, etc.
godelmachine 6y ago
Add to that - 1) Red wine is good for health is consumed little daily. 2) WHO preaching at the start of the pandemic that everyone doesn’t need to wear masks.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I think the WHO wasn't intentionally lying here - the other examples appear to be cases where a truth was hidden in order to promote/protect a product (lobbying for sugar to be considered a health food for example). We do need to be critical of what's told as truth in social or personal circumstances, for sure. I just sincerely doubt the WHO intended to harm people by making that claim.
- ricardobayes 6y ago
  Well, Spaniards drink a lot of it, and coincidentally they have one of the lowest heart disease rate in the world. Also a factor their laid-back culture and olive (oil) consumption.
mncharity 6y ago
> The lies [...] The only defense seems [...] strong analytical skills [...] skepticism Those skills seem unaffordable to many. Suggesting this defense unpacks as belief in conspiracies. Which does seem a widespread strategy in low-trust societies, but doesn't seem helpful. But I'm reminded of recycling's misdirection, encouraging people to act as an individuals to mitigate damage, rather than collectively through representative government to prevent it. Perhaps the most impactful recent measure to increase truthfulness in US society, was making corporate officers personally liable for misleading statements? How might that be improved upon? And there seem divergences between self image and actions, with respect to honesty, in many US subcultures. Potentially providing leverage for change?
ta8645 6y ago
And 50 years from now, what will the story be about say Corona virus, or global warming? Why are we so sure that this time everything is on the up and up? For instance Big pharma stands to make billions of dollars on the back of Corona, so it's not like they're just our disinterested saviours. Maybe everything is exactly as it is reported on the news and by the politicians. I mean, they have a great track record so we should probably trust them. But how is everyone so damn sure? I look at the history of manipulation like outlined in this story and am now mostly unmoved by the demands that we "listen to the science" when used as a cudgel.
- reedjosh 6y ago
  Vaccines are highly profitable, and unhealthy things make for a dumber and more easily controlled populace.
  - craftinator 6y ago
    Uracunt
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    Being able to prognosticate about a comments fate doesn't in any way make the comment itself more legitimate.
    - reedjosh 6y ago
      Fair enough. Edited.
- readflaggedcomm 6y ago
  Because science.
  - ta8645 6y ago
    I'm not sure if you meant that sarcastically? The very point of the examples given above is that "the science" isn't a fixed beacon of shining truth. It is an idealized process overseen by flawed and biased humans with their own personal agendas. We often fall short of the ideal, and are led astray by those claiming to have the truth supporting their demands. How do we know today is any different than those examples above?
naebother 6y ago
Wonder what the lie is today?
- ricardobayes 6y ago
  5G? Millimeter wave radiation? EMF of electric cars? I'm no crazy man, but we have no reason to believe these are safe (yet). Just as Marie Curie thought nuclear radiation is safe or asbesthos was the great novel insulating back in the day.
dennis_jeeves 6y ago
>Teaching analytical skepticism needs to become a core curriculum for our schools. Won't work. Half of the world has an IQ of under 100. To question scientific dogma you would at least need an IQ of 110 I would think.
4eor0 6y ago
Since Fourier suggested sun light is likely trapped within the Earth’s atmosphere back in the 1820s others began digging into it. John Tyndall showed in the 1860s C02 from coal was especially good at trapping heat. Fears of MSG were started in a food lab as a racist bet/joke. Propaganda research during wars was gifted to University rather than let the spending “go to waste”. We’ve been indoctrinated by advertising, marketing, as the move from fear of sky wizards to fear of national economic collapse became the new cudgel. The Greeks wrote about hoping the masses never tried to check the top of Olympus. It was easy enough to keep the non-technical masses in check over C02 and the rest. Let’s build more data centers for our start ups. Surely that has no environmental impact! I’m hopeful now that our fear based flock management has shifted from complete nonsense to at least economic nonsense, making it tangible, we’ll start to collectively accept reality. All that energy doesn’t vanish it just goes elsewhere. All that debt isn’t real; it’s what we’ve been told to believe by the latest system of social control.
- ricardobayes 6y ago
  MSG is harmless, chinese food syndrome is a hoax. https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-case-of-dr-ho-man-kwok/ https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-cas...
  - 4eor0 6y ago
    Yes, exactly. My reply was to a post highlighting when we’ve been lied to. I was just piling wood on the fire.
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Saturated fat turns out to be entirely harmless; it turns out that ills blamed on sat fat are caused by sugar and by ... something else ... that is in American-farmed meat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Think of sugar (the fructose in sugar) as a poison. Your liver can neutralize any of myriad poisons at a strictly limited rate, fructose among them. So, choose consciously how much of each poison you want to eat, according to the load on your liver. Fructose and alcohol use the same pathway, so choose wisely. Americans eat way more fructose than their livers can neutralize, and are dying from it in numbers that make COVID-19 look like the common cold. The autopsies don't say "died of sugar poisoning". Instead, they say heart disease, stroke, obesity, complications from diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension... But it's mostly the sugar.
xvedejas 6y ago
Consider adding to your list the normalization of pseudoscience for profit, especially practices like Chiropractic that are allowed to masquerade as a legitimate profession. A lot of lobbying had to happen to make this our reality. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/19/archives/7-years-of-lobbying-finally-brings-chiropractic-under-umbrella-of.html https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/19/archives/7-years-of-lobby...
ArchieMaclean 6y ago
- Oil industry denying climate change [0] [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/13/climate-change-oil-industry-environment-warning-1968 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/13/climate-cha... [1] original source of Guardian article: https://www.smokeandfumes.org/documents/document16 https://www.smokeandfumes.org/documents/document16 edit: add original source
rcpt 6y ago
I've got one: "employment is the opiate of the masses" We don't really need everyone working. Look at California with a $25B budget surplus this year despite record unemployment. With the right tax system cough land value tax cough we should be able to eliminate poverty and fund basic income. But when people aren't working they get together and get ideas. Like storming the capitol or defunding the police. Plus they have time to execute on them. Keeping everyone surviving paycheck to paycheck with the threat of homelessness in plain sight is a good way to keep everyone calm.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  I think you're getting at a bigger issue of personal freedom vs rigid social structure. Personally, I don't think there's any simple right answer to where that balance lies. If nobody had to work, they'd enjoy some benefits of freedom but suffer psychological problems due to feeling useless and become violent like you say. At the other extreme, if we were all slaves, it would be unpleasant too. This extends into many areas - e.g. Religious rituals - compelled or optional? If optional, self-excluding people lose the support and feeling of being part of something bigger and also lose the opportunity to join if they can't make themselves believe. Education - compulsory to train children to grow into productive workers or freedom for children to enjoy their childhood even if it means lacking usefulness and discipline as an adult who then becomes useless and suffers emotionally? Clearly separated gender roles - too separate is bad for people who don't fit well into either but too ambiguous may have consequences for family stability and thus the emotional wellbeing of children and stability of the society. One culture or multiculturism - a common culture helps people function cooperatively and multiple cultures divides people and creates conflict. But a single culture can be harmful to people who it treats badly and they have no other option. I should clarify here that multiculturism in the west seems fairly harmless because it's neutered - minority cultures still have to bend to the laws of the dominant culture. If they had their own laws, the division would be greater but so would the benefits to misfits. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory or derogatory label for these things. Societies try to figure out ways to operate that balance the tradeoffs.
katzgrau 6y ago
The disheartening thing, at least for me, is that there are always plenty of people who disagree with the lie. But their voices are discredited/downvoted/etc. Just try calling anything commonly considered to be "science" or "truth" into question and watch the attacks roll in. At its worst, it can end careers and livelihoods.
CyberRabbi 6y ago
Big pharma and mass produced pointless medications without liability.
BerislavLopac 6y ago
Not to mention the whole copyright mess...
sirmoveon 6y ago
What makes you think academia is not part of the list you just outlined? Part of the academic program is to shape the big lie too. It just happens that along the way, some are able to develop critical thinking and reasoning in greater depth to make the important questions, but "history is written by victors"... Academia is primarely shaping corporate slaves.
harry8 6y ago
Missing: Big tech and the end of privacy plus firing people up with fear and hate using the maximal amount of lies they will individually tolerate and believe.
1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago
There is more than one way react to this paper. The top comment illustrates one way: "Everything is a lie. Distrust everything." Obviously this approach could put the paper itself in question. How do we know it is not funded by "Big Fat". OK, that's silly but honestly where does the skepticism end and the truth begin. Another way to look at this paper is that science is biased. It is biased in that people choose what to study. They decide what is "interesting". Given that resources to do research are limited, this has consequences. If they choose to focus on studying fat, then that may mean not studying something lese, like sugar. Generally, scientists tend to be followers more than leaders. It makes sense to build on the work of others instead of striking out on a new path. New discoveries do not come easy. If the majority of labs are studying fat, then to a majority of people, including those funding research, studying sugar makes less sense. This sort of herd mentality is certainly seen amongst programmers. I think it is even more extreme. As a programmer running with the herd, one lesson you could take from this is that whatever it is you are focused on right now might seem like the "right" choice of what to focus on that will lead you to the truth. If more or less everyone else is focused on it, too, how could the majority be wrong. The truth, however, which may not be recognised until some time in the distant future, is that you may be chasing the wrong thing. I am very skeptical about the programming trends and areas of focus I read about every day on HN. I sense that is a minority viewpoint.
- kaba0 6y ago
  People are biased but proper use of the scientific method and statistics is not. Of course there will always be a n=5 study on some stupid shit against the “mainstream” facts with bad methodology, but that doesn’t make the multiple independent n=insert big number proper studies’ findings bad. And thus, while there are definitely areas that are not yet well mapped, it doesn’t make the already well-known untrue.
rendaw 6y ago
The article you linked on seat belts says that people fought against seatbelts _despite_ research, and there's no mention of big auto.
frEdmbx 6y ago
When all signals are flooded with noise, we can no very little. Trust in individuals, and principles.
javajosh 6y ago
I would get behind a pre-vote cognitive competency test. Nothing fancy, just some reading comprehension, basic syllogisms, common fallacies, common rhetorical dirty tricks, and so on. Something anyone who's actually passed the US citizenship test would solve with ease, I would imagine.
WalterBright 6y ago
> cigarettes Everybody knew cigarettes were unhealthy long before the 1960s. My dad was in high school in the 1930s and the kids called cigarettes "coffin nails". Doctors routinely advised patients to quit smoking. Any doctor who dissected a cadaver in medical school knew it was bad for you. A microscope or a scientific study wasn't necessary to notice the black, ruined lungs of a smoker.
ubertoop 6y ago
Alright, so now I'm left wondering: What about big agriculture? There's a popular YouTube channel [1] with advocates for a plant based diet, low in fat, yet suspiciously says almost nothing about hydrogenated vegetable oils (canola, soy bean, sunflower, etc). These oils - according to many studies - are THE leading source of heart disease, right up there with sugar. They're a highly unnatural food, heavily processed, never before in nature were you able to consume the oil extracted from a f*cking sunflower like you can today. And yet? NutritionFacts.org almost never, and I mean 99.9% of the time never mentions how bad these oils are for you. Coincidence? I mean really, what CAN you believe these days? There's a study for this, and a study for that. Everything is bad for you. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg
- ncmncm 6y ago
  Hydrogenated vegetable oils are mostly outlawed in the US now. (They are on labels as "trans fats".) They were supposed to be entirely eliminated by 2018, but corporations have got FDA waivers to continue selling poison. Fred Kummerow spent his whole career, from 1957 until he was 98, getting trans fats out of stuff sold as food. In India and Brazil people are still trying to stop it.
ClumsyPilot 6y ago
There is only so much analyrics a person can do. I can do my research when it comes to my immediate proffession, and my interests. But there are only so many hours in the day, rely on the rest of society to get it right when it comes to other aspects of my life. I cannot question everything i was ever taught in school. I have to assume that the basics physics is correct, that the fire safety and contruction people do their job, and that the doctor doing ths blood test knows what he is doing, etc.
m463 6y ago
"Nobody cares about privacy" Except if there was a button asking you to opt-in, literally nobody would press it. there are few articles about this because this is biting the hand that feeds.
29athrowaway 6y ago
> Big Media and the apparent massive degradation in truthfulness of the 2010 The "degradation of truthfulness" has been going on since the times of William Randolph Hearst. Each time... - ...a news anchor has an opinion about what is being reported... - ...a political analyst or book author is interviewed in a news show... - ...a news outlet follows a partisan editorial line, tells you who to vote for... ... that's when journalistic integrity is lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard... True journalism is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's about describing events, not forming an opinion about them. That's your job. In this regard, most mainstream American journalism sucks. CNN and Fox News. Both indulge in the same behavior. No news outlet is a replacement for your own critical thinking.
- bollu 6y ago
  I really do believe this, and the project of classical liberalism as a whole. However, I've found myself without a good response to: > But everyone is biased, including journalists. So the best we can do is to get rid of the false narrative that journalism can be descriptive, and simply embrace the prescriptivist journalism-with-a-slant. My gut tells me there's something wrong with this, but I can't spot what. I'd be enlightened if you can point out the problem with the above perspective
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
amai 6y ago
Don't forget Big Oil: CO2 is good for plants.

vmception 6y ago

> It seems that the truth can be purchased at the right price from the right organizations. Yes, this is an instruction manual.

d26900 6y ago

Yes, powerful lobbying organizations not only had success with the food industry, but with things like Brexit too. There's also an interesting finding[1]: "Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism." [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

reedjosh 6y ago
Wow, fantastic article.
aaron695 6y ago
Good. Do we really want QAnon (And on the other side, many of HN's crazy ideas) to be top of our politics? Unfortunately that's 2014, forever ago in internet years, the tide is turning into the mess we have now.
- d26900 6y ago
  That's an interesting proposition/sentiment. I haven't thought about that. As if "neo-monarchy" (the status quo) is necessary for us "dumb" humans. But there are problems as well with that. Brexit is a good example. Rich people got their way by fooling the masses through targeted propaganda. And the masses got screwed (lost many rights) because of that. But your sentiment is a little cynical/hyperbolic too for my tastes. Not everyone is a QAnon maniac. I think the majority of people are decent.
  - MrMan 6y ago
    But we are all easily manipulated, which is the danger. The link in your post supports this conclusion.
    - d26900 6y ago
      If we had "benevolent monarchs" (riches, people of power) who have always our best interest in mind, I would agree with you. But these "monarchs" aren't benevolent they simply do not care about us other than manipulating us as "dumb sheep". And I still believe that the majority of people (us) are decent. Yes we can be like sheeple, but the best cure for that is education and/or political prevention mechanisms against our ills (lobbying, populism and gullibleness).
- hoka-one-one 6y ago
  Yeah or Black Lives Matter! Whoops!
lm28469 6y ago
In the US the "elite" is literally drafting laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_Council https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_... > The ALEC website states that its goal is to advance "the fundamental principles of free-market enterprise, limited government, and federalism" It's right there in the open but I would guess most people never heard of it. A rich people private club to steer the country's legislation. I can't even imagine the level of corruption and self-serving interest

dxgarnish 6y ago

So, I've got a highly speculative hypothesis that BIG COFFEE will have a similar tobacco-like health event in the future. These are my semi-conspiratorial circumstantial evidences: 1. It's basically burnt bean water. Roasted is just a marketing term. 2. The constant rate of "New Study Finds Coffee Improves [insert health benefit]" articles 3. The incredibly powerful forces (industrial, corporate, personal) that would hold back such an event I'm not willing to defend this hypothesis, but I would love some steel-manning

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 6y ago
> It's basically burnt bean water. Roasted is just a marketing term. So, does that make toast “basically burnt bread”?
- danesparza 6y ago
  I think you know the answer is "yes".
- xwdv 6y ago
  Steaks are just basically burnt meat.
  - a_t48 6y ago
    Ideally they aren't
    - wombatpm 6y ago
      Knock the horns off and make sure it doesn’t moo was how my grandfather ordered his steak
- Teever 6y ago
  I know an acquaintance who refers to bread as raw toast.
- SilasX 6y ago

parineum 6y ago

The first three are 3 events over nearly 100 years. That's not very common. The last one, I'd argue isn't new but the internet's ability to provide direct-from-the-source accounts of events and access to opposition sources allows the media to be fact checked in real time (or at least to notice incongruities with other stories). I'd be surprised if the situation is at all new. In fact, I'd argue that the media are the root cause of the previous three phenomenon you describe.

forgotmypw17 6y ago
I think fact-checking is still in its infancy, and is currently nearly worthless, due to a lack of any ability to verify who is doing the fact-checking. It's just more noise in the same system. Once you can attach web-of-trust or a similar provable system, then fact-checking will have some value.
- sgtnoodle 6y ago
  It seems like "fact checking" in the snopes sense is just another vector for propaganda. The truth of what happened in the past is only knowable as fact by those who witnessed it, and by what can be proven with evidence. I don't think that's a modern problem.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    The problem itself is not new: you can only trust what you have seen with your own eyes. And, to a lesser extent, you can trust something a trusted party has seen with their own eyes. However, the cost of lying on a large scale has dropped to almost nothing. While the cost of truth verification has remained about the same. (One could argue that with lockdown, it has actually increased.) There is a ray of hope, however, and it's called web of trust. If I can trace my trusted parties to their trusted parties, to their trusted parties, and so on, all the way to the original information source, I'm able to ascertain, with strong mathematical certainty, that the original source of information is reasonably trustworthy. That is, of course, if I assigned my trust correctly, and so on. On the other hand, if the original source cannot be traced, then their information is worthless. The challenge now, for us hackers like no one else, is to build this web-of-trust information system. When it's done, it will usher in a new age of clarity and light, truly a new Age of Enlightenment, and our old way will seem as old and archaic as unsanitary surgery and X-ray shoe fitters. The good news is that all of the technology, mathematical proofs, etc., has already been done. We can build this resilient, trustworthy information system today, with today's technology. Actually, we could have built it 20 years ago. And I think it is inevitable that it will be built.

polote 6y ago

> Big Auto and seat belts, they fought mandatory seat belts for decades The linked article doesn't mention any lie. It was mostly some people saying that it should be up to the person to decide whether or not he wants to wear a belt.

wwww4all 6y ago

The lies go on because the establishment media is paid to do propaganda for establishment big business. Jeff Bezos owns Washington Post. The biggest companies own the media distribution channels, Disney, google, facebook, etc. Think about that fact when you see all the people being censored and deplatformed. Think about why the establishment media shouts out racism 24/7, when using anti trust to break up big companies will help all races by improving their economic status? Why is establishment media fermenting animosity amongst the lower classes, while the establishment people are getting richer by the second?

amelius 6y ago

The main problem is we can't blame any kind of conspiracy theorist anymore when there is so much BS science in the things we eat and nobody in power seems to care.

Ekaros 6y ago
I would argue even that those in power have setup the system to produce BS science. Maybe inadvertently... Research output is in the end one main criterias that we measure. Actual quality of it not so much. Thus science is driven to deliver publications. Now how valid these are is open to questions. And how many of them actually prove the mechanisms behind the findings? Probably comparatively fewer to those describing some correlation.

DenisM 6y ago

Don't forget alcohol. There was a period where every single movie had the main characters sipping big round glasses of red wine every day. And of course all the studies and articles about red wine being good for you. This became so normal we don't even think about it.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Judgmentality 6y ago

The history of leaded gasoline and how it was believed to be incredibly safe for decades is easily my favorite example of buying credibility as a corporation (it's a long story, but I bet this will be the most interesting thing you read this week). https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-scientist-who-determined-age-earth-and-then-saved-it https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/94569/clair-patterson-sc...

ricardobayes 6y ago
NYC cleaned up shortly after gas stations stopped selling leaded gas. Crime was significantly less in a short period of time. "it’s not just New York that has seen a big drop in crime. In city after city, violent crime peaked in the early ’90s and then began a steady and spectacular decline. Washington, DC, didn’t have either Giuliani or Bratton, but its violent crime rate has dropped 58 percent since its peak. Dallas’ has fallen 70 percent. Newark: 74 percent. Los Angeles: 78 percent." https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure-gasoline-crime-increase-children-health/ https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposur...

sgtnoodle 6y ago

And most of the time when you point it out on social media, you get downvoted and censored!

eplanit 6y ago

And to me one of the worst, also recently covered by NPR: the big lies we were told about plastic being recyclable[1]. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-...

merb 6y ago
well the thing is, it's not impossible to recycle plastic, but the article also explains that really simple: > Recycling plastic is "costly," it says, and sorting it, the report concludes, is "infeasible." 1. no infrastructure for sorting, there is no 100% method as of today (basically no research is done on this topic) 2. even if it is feasible, nobody does it becasue it is expensive. 3. there are countries where plastic recycling works, but these are outliners and countries who heavily invest in sorting, recycling on the consumer side.
- 88840-8855 6y ago
  This is super interesting to me. Can you help out? - what infrastructure is needed for sorting? - what countries are successfully doing that? Taiwan? - can "expensive" be quantified?
  - mkoubaa 6y ago
    It requires human labor so it is expensive in countries where that is expensive. In countries where it is cheap there it isn't prioritized by the public, who ubderstandably instead want better paying jobs
- throwmtlsPhD 6y ago
  Disclaimer: So I have a PhD in mtls science, and I studied a bit of plastics thermo. However I never worked on the recycling problem. Plastics, or polymers that aren’t cross linked, are in a sense easy to recycle - Just melt them and recast the part. 3D printing hobbyists even recycle their filament. The problem is that any melted plastic doesn’t mix with any plastic other than itself. So if you have 99% polyethylene and 1% polypropylene and melt them together they won’t mix. But they won’t separate perfectly either (so you can’t skim the PP put). Instead you get inter-penetrating phases (a spinodal). These phases have surfaces that don’t stick well together so the end result is that any parts made of this are exceptionally weak. So this is the dilemma: if you have even 1% of different polymer in your mix, the plastic will suck. But we use at least 4 or 5 different plastics in everyday life all chucked into the same bins, all looking more less the same. Solutions? 1. One solution is to heat all the plastics so that they break apart and therefore use them for feedstock. But this is very expensive, and the feedstocks aren’t very pure. 2 Make cat fuel. Cheaper then above, since the purity requirements aren’t as strong, but it’s basically the same as number 1. This doesnt increase CO2 emissions since the plastic is displacing oil 3. Burn it for energy. This needs far less strict requirements than 2 and lower CO2 emissions (since you don’t have to waste energy getting oil out). However, you’d have to basically ban public use of perfluorinated polymers or make them very expensive, or make them easy to identify (Teflon, gore-Tex.) Frankly I’d ban perfluorinates except for use in critical industries. That chemistry is ecologically nasty. 4. Force companies to color their containers according to plastic type. I.e no more clear Pepsi or Coke bottles - all PE products are color, say green. All PP colors are red, etc.

godelmachine 6y ago

Add to that - 1) Red wine is good for health is consumed little daily. 2) WHO preaching at the start of the pandemic that everyone doesn’t need to wear masks.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
I think the WHO wasn't intentionally lying here - the other examples appear to be cases where a truth was hidden in order to promote/protect a product (lobbying for sugar to be considered a health food for example). We do need to be critical of what's told as truth in social or personal circumstances, for sure. I just sincerely doubt the WHO intended to harm people by making that claim.
ricardobayes 6y ago
Well, Spaniards drink a lot of it, and coincidentally they have one of the lowest heart disease rate in the world. Also a factor their laid-back culture and olive (oil) consumption.

mncharity 6y ago

> The lies [...] The only defense seems [...] strong analytical skills [...] skepticism Those skills seem unaffordable to many. Suggesting this defense unpacks as belief in conspiracies. Which does seem a widespread strategy in low-trust societies, but doesn't seem helpful. But I'm reminded of recycling's misdirection, encouraging people to act as an individuals to mitigate damage, rather than collectively through representative government to prevent it. Perhaps the most impactful recent measure to increase truthfulness in US society, was making corporate officers personally liable for misleading statements? How might that be improved upon? And there seem divergences between self image and actions, with respect to honesty, in many US subcultures. Potentially providing leverage for change?

ta8645 6y ago

And 50 years from now, what will the story be about say Corona virus, or global warming? Why are we so sure that this time everything is on the up and up? For instance Big pharma stands to make billions of dollars on the back of Corona, so it's not like they're just our disinterested saviours. Maybe everything is exactly as it is reported on the news and by the politicians. I mean, they have a great track record so we should probably trust them. But how is everyone so damn sure? I look at the history of manipulation like outlined in this story and am now mostly unmoved by the demands that we "listen to the science" when used as a cudgel.

reedjosh 6y ago
Vaccines are highly profitable, and unhealthy things make for a dumber and more easily controlled populace.
- craftinator 6y ago
  Uracunt
- SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
  Being able to prognosticate about a comments fate doesn't in any way make the comment itself more legitimate.
  - reedjosh 6y ago
    Fair enough. Edited.
readflaggedcomm 6y ago
Because science.
- ta8645 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you meant that sarcastically? The very point of the examples given above is that "the science" isn't a fixed beacon of shining truth. It is an idealized process overseen by flawed and biased humans with their own personal agendas. We often fall short of the ideal, and are led astray by those claiming to have the truth supporting their demands. How do we know today is any different than those examples above?

naebother 6y ago

Wonder what the lie is today?

ricardobayes 6y ago
5G? Millimeter wave radiation? EMF of electric cars? I'm no crazy man, but we have no reason to believe these are safe (yet). Just as Marie Curie thought nuclear radiation is safe or asbesthos was the great novel insulating back in the day.

dennis_jeeves 6y ago

>Teaching analytical skepticism needs to become a core curriculum for our schools. Won't work. Half of the world has an IQ of under 100. To question scientific dogma you would at least need an IQ of 110 I would think.

4eor0 6y ago

Since Fourier suggested sun light is likely trapped within the Earth’s atmosphere back in the 1820s others began digging into it. John Tyndall showed in the 1860s C02 from coal was especially good at trapping heat. Fears of MSG were started in a food lab as a racist bet/joke. Propaganda research during wars was gifted to University rather than let the spending “go to waste”. We’ve been indoctrinated by advertising, marketing, as the move from fear of sky wizards to fear of national economic collapse became the new cudgel. The Greeks wrote about hoping the masses never tried to check the top of Olympus. It was easy enough to keep the non-technical masses in check over C02 and the rest. Let’s build more data centers for our start ups. Surely that has no environmental impact! I’m hopeful now that our fear based flock management has shifted from complete nonsense to at least economic nonsense, making it tangible, we’ll start to collectively accept reality. All that energy doesn’t vanish it just goes elsewhere. All that debt isn’t real; it’s what we’ve been told to believe by the latest system of social control.

ricardobayes 6y ago
MSG is harmless, chinese food syndrome is a hoax. https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-case-of-dr-ho-man-kwok/ https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-cas...
- 4eor0 6y ago
  Yes, exactly. My reply was to a post highlighting when we’ve been lied to. I was just piling wood on the fire.
ncmncm 6y ago
Saturated fat turns out to be entirely harmless; it turns out that ills blamed on sat fat are caused by sugar and by ... something else ... that is in American-farmed meat. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM Think of sugar (the fructose in sugar) as a poison. Your liver can neutralize any of myriad poisons at a strictly limited rate, fructose among them. So, choose consciously how much of each poison you want to eat, according to the load on your liver. Fructose and alcohol use the same pathway, so choose wisely. Americans eat way more fructose than their livers can neutralize, and are dying from it in numbers that make COVID-19 look like the common cold. The autopsies don't say "died of sugar poisoning". Instead, they say heart disease, stroke, obesity, complications from diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hypertension... But it's mostly the sugar.

xvedejas 6y ago

Consider adding to your list the normalization of pseudoscience for profit, especially practices like Chiropractic that are allowed to masquerade as a legitimate profession. A lot of lobbying had to happen to make this our reality. https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/19/archives/7-years-of-lobbying-finally-brings-chiropractic-under-umbrella-of.html https://www.nytimes.com/1972/11/19/archives/7-years-of-lobby...

ArchieMaclean 6y ago

- Oil industry denying climate change [0] [1] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/13/climate-change-oil-industry-environment-warning-1968 https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/13/climate-cha... [1] original source of Guardian article: https://www.smokeandfumes.org/documents/document16 https://www.smokeandfumes.org/documents/document16 edit: add original source

rcpt 6y ago

I've got one: "employment is the opiate of the masses" We don't really need everyone working. Look at California with a $25B budget surplus this year despite record unemployment. With the right tax system cough land value tax cough we should be able to eliminate poverty and fund basic income. But when people aren't working they get together and get ideas. Like storming the capitol or defunding the police. Plus they have time to execute on them. Keeping everyone surviving paycheck to paycheck with the threat of homelessness in plain sight is a good way to keep everyone calm.

exporectomy 6y ago
I think you're getting at a bigger issue of personal freedom vs rigid social structure. Personally, I don't think there's any simple right answer to where that balance lies. If nobody had to work, they'd enjoy some benefits of freedom but suffer psychological problems due to feeling useless and become violent like you say. At the other extreme, if we were all slaves, it would be unpleasant too. This extends into many areas - e.g. Religious rituals - compelled or optional? If optional, self-excluding people lose the support and feeling of being part of something bigger and also lose the opportunity to join if they can't make themselves believe. Education - compulsory to train children to grow into productive workers or freedom for children to enjoy their childhood even if it means lacking usefulness and discipline as an adult who then becomes useless and suffers emotionally? Clearly separated gender roles - too separate is bad for people who don't fit well into either but too ambiguous may have consequences for family stability and thus the emotional wellbeing of children and stability of the society. One culture or multiculturism - a common culture helps people function cooperatively and multiple cultures divides people and creates conflict. But a single culture can be harmful to people who it treats badly and they have no other option. I should clarify here that multiculturism in the west seems fairly harmless because it's neutered - minority cultures still have to bend to the laws of the dominant culture. If they had their own laws, the division would be greater but so would the benefits to misfits. There doesn't have to be a conspiracy theory or derogatory label for these things. Societies try to figure out ways to operate that balance the tradeoffs.

katzgrau 6y ago

The disheartening thing, at least for me, is that there are always plenty of people who disagree with the lie. But their voices are discredited/downvoted/etc. Just try calling anything commonly considered to be "science" or "truth" into question and watch the attacks roll in. At its worst, it can end careers and livelihoods.

CyberRabbi 6y ago

Big pharma and mass produced pointless medications without liability.

BerislavLopac 6y ago

Not to mention the whole copyright mess...

sirmoveon 6y ago

What makes you think academia is not part of the list you just outlined? Part of the academic program is to shape the big lie too. It just happens that along the way, some are able to develop critical thinking and reasoning in greater depth to make the important questions, but "history is written by victors"... Academia is primarely shaping corporate slaves.

harry8 6y ago

Missing: Big tech and the end of privacy plus firing people up with fear and hate using the maximal amount of lies they will individually tolerate and believe.

1vuio0pswjnm7 6y ago

There is more than one way react to this paper. The top comment illustrates one way: "Everything is a lie. Distrust everything." Obviously this approach could put the paper itself in question. How do we know it is not funded by "Big Fat". OK, that's silly but honestly where does the skepticism end and the truth begin. Another way to look at this paper is that science is biased. It is biased in that people choose what to study. They decide what is "interesting". Given that resources to do research are limited, this has consequences. If they choose to focus on studying fat, then that may mean not studying something lese, like sugar. Generally, scientists tend to be followers more than leaders. It makes sense to build on the work of others instead of striking out on a new path. New discoveries do not come easy. If the majority of labs are studying fat, then to a majority of people, including those funding research, studying sugar makes less sense. This sort of herd mentality is certainly seen amongst programmers. I think it is even more extreme. As a programmer running with the herd, one lesson you could take from this is that whatever it is you are focused on right now might seem like the "right" choice of what to focus on that will lead you to the truth. If more or less everyone else is focused on it, too, how could the majority be wrong. The truth, however, which may not be recognised until some time in the distant future, is that you may be chasing the wrong thing. I am very skeptical about the programming trends and areas of focus I read about every day on HN. I sense that is a minority viewpoint.

kaba0 6y ago
People are biased but proper use of the scientific method and statistics is not. Of course there will always be a n=5 study on some stupid shit against the “mainstream” facts with bad methodology, but that doesn’t make the multiple independent n=insert big number proper studies’ findings bad. And thus, while there are definitely areas that are not yet well mapped, it doesn’t make the already well-known untrue.

rendaw 6y ago

The article you linked on seat belts says that people fought against seatbelts _despite_ research, and there's no mention of big auto.

frEdmbx 6y ago

When all signals are flooded with noise, we can no very little. Trust in individuals, and principles.

javajosh 6y ago

I would get behind a pre-vote cognitive competency test. Nothing fancy, just some reading comprehension, basic syllogisms, common fallacies, common rhetorical dirty tricks, and so on. Something anyone who's actually passed the US citizenship test would solve with ease, I would imagine.

WalterBright 6y ago

> cigarettes Everybody knew cigarettes were unhealthy long before the 1960s. My dad was in high school in the 1930s and the kids called cigarettes "coffin nails". Doctors routinely advised patients to quit smoking. Any doctor who dissected a cadaver in medical school knew it was bad for you. A microscope or a scientific study wasn't necessary to notice the black, ruined lungs of a smoker.

ubertoop 6y ago

Alright, so now I'm left wondering: What about big agriculture? There's a popular YouTube channel [1] with advocates for a plant based diet, low in fat, yet suspiciously says almost nothing about hydrogenated vegetable oils (canola, soy bean, sunflower, etc). These oils - according to many studies - are THE leading source of heart disease, right up there with sugar. They're a highly unnatural food, heavily processed, never before in nature were you able to consume the oil extracted from a f*cking sunflower like you can today. And yet? NutritionFacts.org almost never, and I mean 99.9% of the time never mentions how bad these oils are for you. Coincidence? I mean really, what CAN you believe these days? There's a study for this, and a study for that. Everything is bad for you. [1] https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg https://www.youtube.com/user/NutritionFactsOrg

ncmncm 6y ago
Hydrogenated vegetable oils are mostly outlawed in the US now. (They are on labels as "trans fats".) They were supposed to be entirely eliminated by 2018, but corporations have got FDA waivers to continue selling poison. Fred Kummerow spent his whole career, from 1957 until he was 98, getting trans fats out of stuff sold as food. In India and Brazil people are still trying to stop it.

ClumsyPilot 6y ago

There is only so much analyrics a person can do. I can do my research when it comes to my immediate proffession, and my interests. But there are only so many hours in the day, rely on the rest of society to get it right when it comes to other aspects of my life. I cannot question everything i was ever taught in school. I have to assume that the basics physics is correct, that the fire safety and contruction people do their job, and that the doctor doing ths blood test knows what he is doing, etc.

m463 6y ago

"Nobody cares about privacy" Except if there was a button asking you to opt-in, literally nobody would press it. there are few articles about this because this is biting the hand that feeds.

29athrowaway 6y ago

> Big Media and the apparent massive degradation in truthfulness of the 2010 The "degradation of truthfulness" has been going on since the times of William Randolph Hearst. Each time... - ...a news anchor has an opinion about what is being reported... - ...a political analyst or book author is interviewed in a news show... - ...a news outlet follows a partisan editorial line, tells you who to vote for... ... that's when journalistic integrity is lost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard... True journalism is descriptive, not prescriptive. It's about describing events, not forming an opinion about them. That's your job. In this regard, most mainstream American journalism sucks. CNN and Fox News. Both indulge in the same behavior. No news outlet is a replacement for your own critical thinking.

bollu 6y ago
I really do believe this, and the project of classical liberalism as a whole. However, I've found myself without a good response to: > But everyone is biased, including journalists. So the best we can do is to get rid of the false narrative that journalism can be descriptive, and simply embrace the prescriptivist journalism-with-a-slant. My gut tells me there's something wrong with this, but I can't spot what. I'd be enlightened if you can point out the problem with the above perspective

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

amai 6y ago

Don't forget Big Oil: CO2 is good for plants.