5 ms·

This article is a soup of crisscrossing claims and motives, but after thinking that, I realize that's what the news is actually like, and whenever it appears ot

This article is a soup of crisscrossing claims and motives, but after thinking that, I realize that's what the news is actually like, and whenever it appears otherwise, it's because of narrative-building.

InitialLastName 5y ago
I would argue that narrative-building isn't necessarily wrong or insidious, as that's how some people understand their relationship to the world around them. The fundamental premise of journalism as "writing the first draft of history" (in the best-faith interpretation) is that most significant things that happen are a confluence of conflicting claims, motivations, and understandings of circumstance and context. The work of the journalist is to piece those conflicts into a coherent essay such that a reader outside of the context of an event can piece together a mental model for actionable decisions relative to the event.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  There's also a place for journalists who leave the assembly to the critical-thinking reader and future historians, knowing that if they tried too much analysis, it would leave a permanent imprint on the record and potentially frustrate later work.
  - otterley 5y ago
    > if they tried too much analysis, it would leave a permanent imprint on the record and potentially frustrate later work. That's interesting. Can you elaborate on this?
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      Let's say contemporary journalists are considering three separate stories that could tie together the facts, with each story tying together a random subset, about half of the facts each. If the journalists decide on one story, and ignore the half that it doesn't tie together as irrelevant, a large number of things that could actually be important would go unrecorded - if they were wrong to focus on that one story out of the ones they were considering, which may not even have included the real trend driving it all. It's also worth nothing that false claims made by important people are historically significant, but a paper that's trying to build a cohesive narrative but lacked the ability to outright quote something and call it false (for cultural reasons, stating the author's position on a quote is considered too aggressively opinionated for something published in the news section of a paper), would probably choose not to report the quotes.
  - InitialLastName 5y ago
    For sure, that's why it's also healthy to have a broad and diversified news media covering important issues. It's also why I worry about the centralization and collapse of local journalism; it's the boots on the ground who are best able to contextualize a story when it goes from local to national.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      History shows us that sometimes the real story was entirely inaccessible to the culture of the time; even diverse editorializing could still hide facts nobody thought were relevant.
      - a_conservative 5y ago
        A hypothesis: We are all narrative building, all of the time. It's what humans do. I can't really tell if that is 100% true, but I think it might be. I think confirmation bias could be looked at through this lens. We have an internal story that makes sense to us, and we tend to give more weight to data that fits our internal story (narrative) and discard the rest. I don't know really, I'm more thinking out loud here than trying to present The Truth.
- jollybean 5y ago
  That's nice, and rational, but 'Narratives' I believe are more often than not misleading and are used to contextualize towards advocacy instead of journalism. I factually believe Lindell is a hustling liar, but just because that's true in general, doesn't mean that everything he says or presents is fabricated. Part of a scheme to misrepresent? Almost assuredly, but however unlikely, it's possible he might have uncovered some legit China attempt to interfere in something, after all, we know they do that. So it's a matter of perspective and context. A little bit of historical context is really important, but I think we need to be careful about it. This article in particular is very confusing and poorly written sadly.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    You don't need to psychoanalyze Lindell to assess this situation. He released data at this event. It's on Github now. It's nonsensical.
    - fokinsean 5y ago
      Do you happen to have a link to it?
kmonsen 5y ago
Can you provide examples? I just see this as an example of Gish gallop creating a situation were multiple claims are put forward and it is hard to counter them all at the same time.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  The article contains many contradicting claims from separate people, spanning the spectrum. It is reporting on basically everything the author could get, which is confusing but reflects well on the idea of journalism. I will reproduce a couple examples but there are more. >“We were handed a turd,” he said. “And I had to take that turd and turn it into a diamond. And that’s what I think we did.” That claim states that the data was terrible, but someone thinks they found something good in it. >“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Mr. Merritt said on Wednesday, the second day of the symposium. This makes it sound like nothing good was found. >He had offered $5 million to any in-person attendee who can disprove his claims. The offer is no longer on the table, Mr. Merritt said. This claims that the $5M is not on the table right now. >Kurt Olsen, a lawyer on Mr. Lindell’s team said there were multiple sources of the data that Mr. Lindell claims to have, and did not confirm that Mr. Mongtomery was the source of the data. He also clarified that the $5 million challenge has not been canceled and that Mr. Merritt would not be privy to that information. This claims that it is.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    They published hex dumps of RTF files of IP address lists, and a corpus of "lorem ipsum"-style Chinese text scraped from ad copy. You can see it on Github. There is no reason any of us need to take this seriously, or to be at all skeptical of news stories about how it's a scam.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      I think you're possibly misinterpreting it - the news article is unequivocally clear about what its sources are saying, the sources are the ones who are contradicting each other. We are so used to newspaper editorialization / tunnel vision that to see two disagreeing sources on the same page is surprising.
scoopertrooper 5y ago
What? This is an article from a right leaning news provider that backs up every claim that it makes with a named source including some from within the team appointed by Lindell.
- whatshisface 5y ago
  The article's claims are all that someone said something, which are indeed backed up with names - but the things they're quoting do not line up with each other, because the situation they are reporting on is not exactly being arranged forthrightly by all participants.
  - tptacek 5y ago
    We don't have to parse the quotes. The garbage data is on Github.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      It would be difficult for a human brain to read a news paper article without parsing any of the quotes. :-)
  - scoopertrooper 5y ago
    Is this the first time you've read a news article? If all the quotes lined up exactly then it'd be propaganda.

InitialLastName 5y ago

I would argue that narrative-building isn't necessarily wrong or insidious, as that's how some people understand their relationship to the world around them. The fundamental premise of journalism as "writing the first draft of history" (in the best-faith interpretation) is that most significant things that happen are a confluence of conflicting claims, motivations, and understandings of circumstance and context. The work of the journalist is to piece those conflicts into a coherent essay such that a reader outside of the context of an event can piece together a mental model for actionable decisions relative to the event.

whatshisface 5y ago
There's also a place for journalists who leave the assembly to the critical-thinking reader and future historians, knowing that if they tried too much analysis, it would leave a permanent imprint on the record and potentially frustrate later work.
- otterley 5y ago
  > if they tried too much analysis, it would leave a permanent imprint on the record and potentially frustrate later work. That's interesting. Can you elaborate on this?
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Let's say contemporary journalists are considering three separate stories that could tie together the facts, with each story tying together a random subset, about half of the facts each. If the journalists decide on one story, and ignore the half that it doesn't tie together as irrelevant, a large number of things that could actually be important would go unrecorded - if they were wrong to focus on that one story out of the ones they were considering, which may not even have included the real trend driving it all. It's also worth nothing that false claims made by important people are historically significant, but a paper that's trying to build a cohesive narrative but lacked the ability to outright quote something and call it false (for cultural reasons, stating the author's position on a quote is considered too aggressively opinionated for something published in the news section of a paper), would probably choose not to report the quotes.
- InitialLastName 5y ago
  For sure, that's why it's also healthy to have a broad and diversified news media covering important issues. It's also why I worry about the centralization and collapse of local journalism; it's the boots on the ground who are best able to contextualize a story when it goes from local to national.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    History shows us that sometimes the real story was entirely inaccessible to the culture of the time; even diverse editorializing could still hide facts nobody thought were relevant.
    - a_conservative 5y ago
      A hypothesis: We are all narrative building, all of the time. It's what humans do. I can't really tell if that is 100% true, but I think it might be. I think confirmation bias could be looked at through this lens. We have an internal story that makes sense to us, and we tend to give more weight to data that fits our internal story (narrative) and discard the rest. I don't know really, I'm more thinking out loud here than trying to present The Truth.
jollybean 5y ago
That's nice, and rational, but 'Narratives' I believe are more often than not misleading and are used to contextualize towards advocacy instead of journalism. I factually believe Lindell is a hustling liar, but just because that's true in general, doesn't mean that everything he says or presents is fabricated. Part of a scheme to misrepresent? Almost assuredly, but however unlikely, it's possible he might have uncovered some legit China attempt to interfere in something, after all, we know they do that. So it's a matter of perspective and context. A little bit of historical context is really important, but I think we need to be careful about it. This article in particular is very confusing and poorly written sadly.
- tptacek 5y ago
  You don't need to psychoanalyze Lindell to assess this situation. He released data at this event. It's on Github now. It's nonsensical.
  - fokinsean 5y ago
    Do you happen to have a link to it?

kmonsen 5y ago

Can you provide examples? I just see this as an example of Gish gallop creating a situation were multiple claims are put forward and it is hard to counter them all at the same time.

whatshisface 5y ago
The article contains many contradicting claims from separate people, spanning the spectrum. It is reporting on basically everything the author could get, which is confusing but reflects well on the idea of journalism. I will reproduce a couple examples but there are more. >“We were handed a turd,” he said. “And I had to take that turd and turn it into a diamond. And that’s what I think we did.” That claim states that the data was terrible, but someone thinks they found something good in it. >“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Mr. Merritt said on Wednesday, the second day of the symposium. This makes it sound like nothing good was found. >He had offered $5 million to any in-person attendee who can disprove his claims. The offer is no longer on the table, Mr. Merritt said. This claims that the $5M is not on the table right now. >Kurt Olsen, a lawyer on Mr. Lindell’s team said there were multiple sources of the data that Mr. Lindell claims to have, and did not confirm that Mr. Mongtomery was the source of the data. He also clarified that the $5 million challenge has not been canceled and that Mr. Merritt would not be privy to that information. This claims that it is.
- tptacek 5y ago
  They published hex dumps of RTF files of IP address lists, and a corpus of "lorem ipsum"-style Chinese text scraped from ad copy. You can see it on Github. There is no reason any of us need to take this seriously, or to be at all skeptical of news stories about how it's a scam.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    I think you're possibly misinterpreting it - the news article is unequivocally clear about what its sources are saying, the sources are the ones who are contradicting each other. We are so used to newspaper editorialization / tunnel vision that to see two disagreeing sources on the same page is surprising.

scoopertrooper 5y ago

What? This is an article from a right leaning news provider that backs up every claim that it makes with a named source including some from within the team appointed by Lindell.

whatshisface 5y ago
The article's claims are all that someone said something, which are indeed backed up with names - but the things they're quoting do not line up with each other, because the situation they are reporting on is not exactly being arranged forthrightly by all participants.
- tptacek 5y ago
  We don't have to parse the quotes. The garbage data is on Github.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    It would be difficult for a human brain to read a news paper article without parsing any of the quotes. :-)
- scoopertrooper 5y ago
  Is this the first time you've read a news article? If all the quotes lined up exactly then it'd be propaganda.