5 ms·

>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seco

by crmd 4y ago

>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying".

analog31 4y ago
>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. I'm struck by the parallel to typing the right prompt into GPT-3.
- dylan604 4y ago
  I've read articles where I'm not convinced GPT-3 was not the author It also sounds like a Wikipedia editor's job
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    For many articles, the one dead giveaway that it was written by a human is the fact that almost all news articles have typos and severe grammar errors in the first hour or so of release. If these Twitter journos had better spelling and grammar, they would likely be indistinguishable from GPT-3 output.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      so to improve GPT-3, have it make spelling/grammar mistakes too?
bombcar 4y ago
It’s really obvious when you follow through some of the “people are saying” links - it’s one thing to report on what Musk said, with fifty billion likes and replies already, and another to back up a statement with a link to a tweet with four likes. Some are obviously “go out and find what you want someone to be saying”.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  A few years ago there was a mild dust-up when a pre-written "response" piece to a pop musician's latest release was leaked (possibly early). It included a bunch of pre-written filler and included several slots for Twitter responses to be filled in prior to actual publication. This is a very poorly-kept secret in journalism, with certain genres (entertainment, politics, business press-releases, fashion industry) being especially prone. See pg's "Submarine" essay. The practice isn't entirely bad or unethical --- obituaries in particular are frequently written in advance with details filled in on publication. For particularly notable names, they're updated regularly. Similarly election outcomes and major technological events (e.g., space mission launches / milestones). It's much easier to have something prepared than to start from scratch as the event occurs, and these in particular have predictable deadlines. From the 1980s through the aughts, the term "fake news" applied to VNR and ANR (video and audio newsreels), which were pre-packaged "news" segments for television and radio prepared by corporations and/or PR firms. See: <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news> But in other cases, especially where something's being sold, it's at the very least deceptive.
busterarm 4y ago
"sources" are taken at face value as well and aren't reported critically at all. If your personal narrative drives clicks it will not be challenged in any way...whether you're a random poster on twitter or a participant in the story itself.
ajross 4y ago
> This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying". That... not remotely true. No one writes stories for major organizations based only on tweets[1]. Go pick up (figuratively) a newspaper and read the front page stories carefully, and make note of how the sources are identified. I'd be beyond shocked if "twitter" appeared even once. IMHO the real reason for "collapse in confidence in journalism" is that this is itself a meme driven by people who, for partisan reasons, simply don't want to have confidence in media reporting things "their side" doesn't want to be true. In a world where truth (about climate change, election results, disease impact, etc...) is a partisan thing, those whose job it is to report the truth become part of the war. But reporters today are doing the same thing reporters have always been doing. [1] Except the occasional circumstance where someone specific says something notable and it happens to be on twitter. Trump said lots of weird stuff and it got reported, but it's not like someone went around filtering his otherwise-not-notable tweets for juicy stuff. "He Just Tweeted it Out" is a meme for a reason.
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  What would you consider a major organization? I'll happily grant that the New York Times won't let you do that, but it's common for your Voxes (https://www.vox.com/culture/23357114/the-little-mermaid-racist-backlash-lotr-rings-of-power-diversity-controversy https://www.vox.com/culture/23357114/the-little-mermaid-raci...) or Rolling Stones (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/black-little-mermaid-racist-outcry-twitter-1234591724/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/black-litt...) to write articles on the topic of "I found some people saying mean things on social media".
  - ajross 4y ago
    So frustrating. I talked about news and reporters, and you try to counter with links to two opinion pieces from their journal's respective "culture" sections. Your point seems to be, what, that people who disagree with you are posting on the internet? Should we make the same criticism of Substack too?
spywaregorilla 4y ago
That being said, they always had this power. It just used to be selectively chosen on the ground interviews with random people. It was slower and much more expensive, but it was there.
- dredmorbius 4y ago
  Or service workers whom they'd be most likely to meet: taxi drivers, barkeepers, restaurant servers, hotel concierges, shoe-shiners, etc. Accessible, yes, and possibly with a fair exposure to at least a range of views/responses from others. But not entirely representative.
naravara 4y ago
Journalists are less likely to do this than various activist groups. Spend 5 minutes on any politically extreme subreddit or forum and you'll see tons of posts that are just compilations of insane tweets from random accounts, some blue checks and some not. Tons of online activity just involved "nut-picking" for unhinged people on Twitter who say crazy or provocative stuff to create a narrative that this type of sentiment is everywhere.
- neodymiumphish 4y ago
  True, but those extremist subreddits or forums are expected to include those views. Journalists are expected to include at least somewhat more objective points of view, but they often don't.
- notriddle 4y ago
  Of course, but there's a difference between a Bud Light ad glorifying beer, and E-B secretly funneling money towards academic studies that show positive impacts from moderate consumption of alcohol. Some groups aren't really expected to be impartial.
JacobThreeThree 4y ago
It's poison for the career of traditional media also. News consumers no longer need the journalist middle man, they can go directly to the source of the news. Journalists should now, more than ever, be focused on traditional journalistic efforts. Succumbing to the temptation to just "find a story on Twitter" is just cementing the fact traditional media is dead and the era of the citizen journalist is here.

by crmd 4y ago

analog31 4y ago

>finding a great source for a story is as easy as finding the right combination of search terms. I'm struck by the parallel to typing the right prompt into GPT-3.

dylan604 4y ago
I've read articles where I'm not convinced GPT-3 was not the author It also sounds like a Wikipedia editor's job
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  For many articles, the one dead giveaway that it was written by a human is the fact that almost all news articles have typos and severe grammar errors in the first hour or so of release. If these Twitter journos had better spelling and grammar, they would likely be indistinguishable from GPT-3 output.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    so to improve GPT-3, have it make spelling/grammar mistakes too?

bombcar 4y ago

It’s really obvious when you follow through some of the “people are saying” links - it’s one thing to report on what Musk said, with fifty billion likes and replies already, and another to back up a statement with a link to a tweet with four likes. Some are obviously “go out and find what you want someone to be saying”.

dredmorbius 4y ago
A few years ago there was a mild dust-up when a pre-written "response" piece to a pop musician's latest release was leaked (possibly early). It included a bunch of pre-written filler and included several slots for Twitter responses to be filled in prior to actual publication. This is a very poorly-kept secret in journalism, with certain genres (entertainment, politics, business press-releases, fashion industry) being especially prone. See pg's "Submarine" essay. The practice isn't entirely bad or unethical --- obituaries in particular are frequently written in advance with details filled in on publication. For particularly notable names, they're updated regularly. Similarly election outcomes and major technological events (e.g., space mission launches / milestones). It's much easier to have something prepared than to start from scratch as the event occurs, and these in particular have predictable deadlines. From the 1980s through the aughts, the term "fake news" applied to VNR and ANR (video and audio newsreels), which were pre-packaged "news" segments for television and radio prepared by corporations and/or PR firms. See: <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Fake_news> But in other cases, especially where something's being sold, it's at the very least deceptive.

busterarm 4y ago

"sources" are taken at face value as well and aren't reported critically at all. If your personal narrative drives clicks it will not be challenged in any way...whether you're a random poster on twitter or a participant in the story itself.

ajross 4y ago

> This is the true poison in my opinion. Journalists can in seconds find random tweets stating any conceivable narrative they want to create, and then launder their personal opinions by pretending to "report" on "what sources are saying". That... not remotely true. No one writes stories for major organizations based only on tweets[1]. Go pick up (figuratively) a newspaper and read the front page stories carefully, and make note of how the sources are identified. I'd be beyond shocked if "twitter" appeared even once. IMHO the real reason for "collapse in confidence in journalism" is that this is itself a meme driven by people who, for partisan reasons, simply don't want to have confidence in media reporting things "their side" doesn't want to be true. In a world where truth (about climate change, election results, disease impact, etc...) is a partisan thing, those whose job it is to report the truth become part of the war. But reporters today are doing the same thing reporters have always been doing. [1] Except the occasional circumstance where someone specific says something notable and it happens to be on twitter. Trump said lots of weird stuff and it got reported, but it's not like someone went around filtering his otherwise-not-notable tweets for juicy stuff. "He Just Tweeted it Out" is a meme for a reason.

SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
What would you consider a major organization? I'll happily grant that the New York Times won't let you do that, but it's common for your Voxes (https://www.vox.com/culture/23357114/the-little-mermaid-racist-backlash-lotr-rings-of-power-diversity-controversy https://www.vox.com/culture/23357114/the-little-mermaid-raci...) or Rolling Stones (https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/black-little-mermaid-racist-outcry-twitter-1234591724/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/black-litt...) to write articles on the topic of "I found some people saying mean things on social media".
- ajross 4y ago
  So frustrating. I talked about news and reporters, and you try to counter with links to two opinion pieces from their journal's respective "culture" sections. Your point seems to be, what, that people who disagree with you are posting on the internet? Should we make the same criticism of Substack too?

spywaregorilla 4y ago

That being said, they always had this power. It just used to be selectively chosen on the ground interviews with random people. It was slower and much more expensive, but it was there.

dredmorbius 4y ago
Or service workers whom they'd be most likely to meet: taxi drivers, barkeepers, restaurant servers, hotel concierges, shoe-shiners, etc. Accessible, yes, and possibly with a fair exposure to at least a range of views/responses from others. But not entirely representative.

naravara 4y ago

Journalists are less likely to do this than various activist groups. Spend 5 minutes on any politically extreme subreddit or forum and you'll see tons of posts that are just compilations of insane tweets from random accounts, some blue checks and some not. Tons of online activity just involved "nut-picking" for unhinged people on Twitter who say crazy or provocative stuff to create a narrative that this type of sentiment is everywhere.

neodymiumphish 4y ago
True, but those extremist subreddits or forums are expected to include those views. Journalists are expected to include at least somewhat more objective points of view, but they often don't.
notriddle 4y ago
Of course, but there's a difference between a Bud Light ad glorifying beer, and E-B secretly funneling money towards academic studies that show positive impacts from moderate consumption of alcohol. Some groups aren't really expected to be impartial.

JacobThreeThree 4y ago

It's poison for the career of traditional media also. News consumers no longer need the journalist middle man, they can go directly to the source of the news. Journalists should now, more than ever, be focused on traditional journalistic efforts. Succumbing to the temptation to just "find a story on Twitter" is just cementing the fact traditional media is dead and the era of the citizen journalist is here.