7 ms·
The real kicker is that the most respected publications are also guilty of this. The New York Times is currently being sued for defamation by Project Veritas. T
by marcusverus 6y ago
The real kicker is that the most respected publications are also guilty of this. The New York Times is currently being sued for defamation by Project Veritas. The NYT argued, on the public record, that they should be able to state opinions as fact outside of the Op-Ed section[0]. I read this as the NYT arguing that they have a license to lie with impunity on the front page.
If we live in a post-truth era, it's not because of the internet or the shitty click-bait 'news' sources that proliferate. It's because these institutions, like the NYT and WaPo, in which we used to be able to expect an objective accounting of the facts, have devolved into the personal Pravdas of a few well-educated idiots who thought that they could steer the country in a better direction, but only managed to drive us into a ditch.
[0](see p. 5/16)https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/maEy58HDFCR7qdtFObWXx/46c075c522acef6a169b7ce051f8955c/Order_denying_motion_to_dismiss.pdf https://assets.ctfassets.net/syq3snmxclc9/maEy58HDFCR7qdtFOb...
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoPerhaps it is time to actually start paying for news, like Bloomberg and the finance industry.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- seibelj 6y agoI do pay for news - The Economist, The WSJ, and various podcasts. But I pay because it’s valuable.
- fakedang 6y agoWSJ has declined to a significant level imo. Can't pass by some articles without hearing the phrase "radical left media" or "liberal media" or whatever. Financial news and if US business news coverage isn't super important to be granular for you, then go for the gold standard which is the Financial Times. The Economist approach doesn't appeal much to me, since most of the time they are like a free-market hammer to which everything looks like a nail. Tech news, Stratechery.
- swebs 6y ago>Can't pass by some articles without hearing the phrase "radical left media" or "liberal media" or whatever. Do you have some examples? I don't remember reading that in the WSJ.
- fakedang 6y agohttps://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cuomo-scandals-this-is-cnn-11616783164 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-cuomo-scandals-this-is-cnn-... The video in this article, even though I appreciate the criticism of Cuomo. Also right now, in the front page of WSJ, there is an article criticizing the "woke orthodoxy". I'm no fan of wokeness, but I would have preferred some balanced criticism of the right too from a professional publication. Or just stick to professional reporting like FT.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y agoBloomberg sensationalizes to move markets. They aren't any more trustworthy.
- hobs 6y agoComplaining about the quality of mainstream media while quoting project vertias as your source shows your bias in the extreme - they are not someone you'd present as a trusted source, and in fact present extreme versions of the biases you are purporting others hold.
- goostavos 6y agoWhy isn't Veritas a trusted news source? What does "trusted" mean in this instance? My biases: I tend to think the corporate press has less rigor in terms of sourcing/reporting claims than your average high school homework paper, which makes most of it not trustworthy 'news' to me.
- jolux 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas#Incidents
- totalZero 6y agoNowadays, it's hard to make money by simply telling readers the truth.
- ridethebike 6y ago"Readers" becomes "costumers" "Telling readers the truth" becomes "satisfying the customers" Subtle but important differences edit: replaced "=>" with "becomes"
- dahfizz 6y agoTelling people the truth does not, in fact, satisfy them. They reason low quality, biased punditry as "news" exists is because people actually like it when it agrees with them.
- ridethebike 6y agoExactly my point. Feels like major news corporations need to balance between maintaining credibility (at least ones that care about it) and publishing something that might (for lack of better term) trigger reaction like "wtf my favorite Blah-news is becoming more and more leftist-marxist/racist-fascist. Fk them, I switching to unicorn-patriot-news-or-something". Marked-driven confirmation bias. I wish I had a good idea how to fix it but I don't.
- ridethebike 6y agotypo correction: Market-driven
- jolux 6y agoNo, it's actually a fact that Veritas is deceptive. They have been caught in the act of attempting to deceive multiple times. At some point you lose the benefit of the doubt with regards to your credibility.
- unanswered 6y agoHow does "Project Veritas bad" erase the fact that the NYT argued in front of a judge that what is on its front page should be understood to be opinion and not fact, even when it appears in the form of facts? That claim has nothing at all to do with Project Veritas; the NYT just happened to say it in a related context.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- pydry 6y agoClaiming first amendment rights is the easiest and lowest risk route to winning the case. What would be the point of fighting the case on the basis that you do not have rights that you actually do? Fox News also did the exact same thing on a similar lawsuit. It was used as a "gotcha" moment, but it still wasn't very meaningful.
- salawat 6y agoBecause there's a point where you end up going full ouruboros, which undermines the integrity of the institution all tpgether. The major established players want to be able to say other attempts at news outlets are deceptive, then turn around and do the same stuff, and yet still not be subject to the same loss of credibility.
- stupendousyappi 6y agoI think public opinion is pretty clear at this point that no one cares about the specifics of the legal arguments made in any court cases other than lawyers and activists trying to gin up arguments for their side, and perhaps a very small number of people who care about the rule of law for its own sake. Everyone else just cares about the outcome of the case. No credibility is at stake, because 95% of the population has no interest in the contents of legal briefs.
- staticman2 6y agoThat's not a great example because if there's any profession that was always post truth throughout all of history, it's lawyers. If you hire a lawyer, the lawyer generally decides what argument to make in court. The things the lawyer says do not necessarily reflect what you believe, or even reality as you see it. The lawyer is expected to say whatever is calculated to make it more likely you will win in court. While there are some rules governing what a lawyer can and cannot say, they are limited to certain egregious behavior. The client generally only decides whether to plead guilty, not guilty, or whether to settle in a civil case, or whether to fire the lawyer. While a client could try to pressure a lawyer to make certain arguments, the lawyer is not ethically required to listen as long as they think it's better for the client if they don't listen to the client.
- mountainb 6y agoThis is a misrepresentation of how lawyers manipulate facts. Lawyers take a serious professional risk of sanction from the court and/or disbarment if they make material misstatements of fact. Unlike journalists, the facts are also carefully examined by the opposing side (if they are doing their job) and there is a more open exchange of documents/evidence than in any other context. If an attorney lies in a court filing, they can be sanctioned, they could be held liable for malpractice / other civil liabilities, be criminally liable, fined, lose their job, or even lose their career. If a journalist misstates a fact that harms someone else or ruins their reputation, they add a little thingy in italics a few months later saying "oops lol guess we wuz wrong." Occasionally serial fabulists lose their reputations and careers, but generally do not suffer criminal or civil liability for their mistakes. The two professions are not terribly comparable in that respect. The moral expectations a lawyer is under are also not the same as those of a normal person in the American system. In the American system, even if you are defending a pedophile cannibal, part of your role is to ensure the integrity of the system by providing said reprehensible person the best possible defense without lying about the facts. This ensures the good reputation of the court and, in criminal cases, builds public faith in the integrity of the prosecution. That is the ideal, even if the reality does not always live up to it. Clients make tons of decisions in either civil or criminal cases while being advised by counsel. A lawyer cannot ethically take an action without the express approval of their client. True, clients are not generally in the driver's seat, but attorneys are limited to advising the client and only acting with the express consent of said client at every step in any kind of process. Should journalists be held to similarly high ethical standards? That was what the professional journalistic organizations once aspired to, but they have slipped a great deal over the decades.
- MikeUt 6y ago> arguing that they have a license to lie with impunity on the front page. The NYT did in fact argue that they have a license to lie, and won: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times_Co._v._Sullivan
- Kranar 6y agoI see no such thing in the article you linked to. All that ruling says is that a defendant is not liable for defamation against a public official strictly the basis that what was published was false and caused injury to a person. However, the ruling explicitly states that if the publication knew that the information was false or disregarded whether it was true, then a defendant would be liable for damages. That seems completely reasonable and in no way suggests that anyone has a license to lie.
- MikeUt 6y agoYou're right regarding the court's decision, my apologies. Yet the NYT did choose to go to court instead of publishing a retraction of what they then knew to be false: Sullivan sent such a [retraction] request. The Times did not publish a retraction in response to the demand.
- Kranar 6y agoI am not an expert in this, but from the source you provided the NYT did publish a retraction of the advertisement. Your post makes it seem like the NYT knowingly published false information about someone and refused to retract it, as if the NYT believed that they had the right to publish lies about someone. Your source, however, paints a very different and much more nuanced picture. The NYT published an advertisement paid for by an independent organization, the ad contained false information, the NYT did retract the ad, the police commissioner, Sullivan, who is unnamed in the ad but potentially implicated by it sued the NYT for defamation, a court case was fought over whether the ad actually implicated him or not, the Alabama courts decided that the ad did implicate Sullivan and awarded Sullivan damages, the NYT appealed the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court and they overturned the Alabama's Supreme Court decision on the basis that Sullivan being implicated by the ad is not sufficient to award damages for defamation. At no point did the NYT try to justify lying or claim that they have a license to lie. What the NYT's argued was that Sullivan had no grounds to sue because he was not implicated by the ad.
- einpoklum 6y ago"The most respected" publications? The NYT is highly disrespected around the world, and considered a mouthpiece for the US government (or key factions within it).