10 ms·

"That didn’t stop multiple outlets, including CNBC and Bloomberg, from running headlines Friday saying that laid-off Twitter employees were leaving the building

"That didn’t stop multiple outlets, including CNBC and Bloomberg, from running headlines Friday saying that laid-off Twitter employees were leaving the building carrying boxes." This is the part that scares me. It feels like a lot of news media outlets will publish just about anything. It feels like they have no interest at all in whether or not what they're saying is true, or even likely to be true. That's the part that worries me.

acdha 4y ago
One thing to remember here is that Twitter is disproportionately popular with journalists and other media figures. The idea of major changes where they spend a lot of time is going to cause concern, much as HN would freak out over major changes at GitHub.
millzlane 4y ago
They both corrected the articles after 3 hours. Gotta give credit where credit is due. But it shouldn't scare you that peoples lies are taken at face value. We see it everyday. Hell some politicians are lying right your face.
- Alupis 4y ago
  Journalists are supposed to have more credibility than your friend's gossip though... While retracting and/or correcting the articles is a step towards journalistic integrity, it should be very troubling these articles were published in the first place. After all, how many people bother to go back and review past articles just on the off chance some piece of information was corrected? None...
  - yeuxardents 4y ago
    Honestly it troubles me that anyone believes 'journalists' from any of the major corporations have _any_ credibility, even going back to the 1990s with censorship of stories have been rife within the corporate 'journalism' industry. There are very few journalists that deserve real credibility.
    - Alupis 4y ago
      Journalists should not be afforded legal protections for publishing un-verified, demonstrably false information. We need a system where it's dangerous to not thoroughly vet your story before throwing it over the fence. Currently, they just say "oops" and move on like it never happened... but the damages caused to the public and it's discourse are permanent. The past decade has shown us that much at a minimum. Years from now folks will still howl about Musk marching loyal twitter employees out the front door with boxes full of their belongings... despite it being completely untrue. Heck, there are still folks that feverishly assert the "OK" sign is racist...
      - nradov 4y ago
        Journalists don't have any special protection under US federal law for publishing false information. Anyone can sue them for libel. Although it's difficult for plaintiffs to win such cases, regardless of whether the defendant is a journalist or anyone else.
        Alupis 4y ago
        It does not need to be libel to be permanently damaging to the public. The "OK" sign as a symbol of "white power" is a great example - nobody's reputation was tarnished directly by the reporting... but the entire story was made up and never true. Yet, there's folks today that insist it truly is a symbol of "white power". Libel is also notoriously difficult to establish grounds for, and be successful with a lawsuit. Intent is difficult to prove - yet I would assert a journalist that does not thoroughly vet their story before publishing has a malicious intent, even if it was indirect.
        nemothekid 4y ago
        >The "OK" sign as a symbol of "white power" is a great example - nobody's reputation was tarnished directly by the reporting... but the entire story was made up and never true. Yet, there's folks today that insist it truly is a symbol of "white power". This is strange - the OK symbol was definitely co-opted by white nationalists; it started as a "media troll", then people started to do it non-ironically. It served it's purpose and to say it was "never true" is at the very least controversial. I had personally seen it spread on /pol/ months before it got any mainstream coverage. While I believe the story may have been overblown, I think it stands it would be very difficult to sue a journalist that this was libel or even untrue. At the very least the memes had to have started from somewhere and that posing with the ok symbol wasn't a particularly popular thing to do until after the memes were created.
  - drekipus 4y ago
    I think half the population has already long-ago lost trust in media and journalists, and now the other half is catching up.
    - trendroid 4y ago
      For some reason many of these people that lose trust in traditional media immediately start trusting "independent media" on YouTube that happens to agrees with their views or ways of seeing the world.
      - encryptluks2 4y ago
        Yes, because the education system failed them and taught them to blindly trust in the media and so when they lose that they go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Some of them will come around and find some middle ground, and others will be be content in spewing misinformation as long as it makes them feel better.
    - kdkdjdsj 4y ago
      Idk, show of hands: who thinks Brian Sicknick was killed with a fire extinguisher? Who thinks there is a tape of Donald Trump pissing on a prostitute, or that he was caught communicating with Alfa Bank, or
    - User23 4y ago
      I trust broadly corroborated video evidence. For example I know that the “mostly peaceful protests” were anything but from watching videos filmed by diverse sources. The Internet and ubiquitous cameras really have revolutionized our ability to see what’s actually going on.
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Journalists are supposed to have more credibility than your friend's gossip though For what is essentially a pop culture scoop, three hours seems like a fine trade-off between accuracy and timeliness.
  - taylodl 4y ago
    Are people paying for credibility? Hate to break the news to you (ha!) but the news you’re going to see the most is the news that sells the best. It’s all about those Benjamins. You can’t expect good things from a society that has compromised all its ideals and prostrates itself for money. Certainly not journalistic integrity - unless it sells. Which it doesn’t.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  People still think that police were murdered by the protesters on Jan 6 two years after being told that every police officer who died on that day died from causes that had nothing to do with the protestors and everything to do with going up a flight of stairs under the influence of donuts. It's not good enough to print a retraction which no one sees and pretend it's solved the problem of spreading lies.
- bhaney 4y ago
  > They both corrected the articles after 3 hours Because they got caught. How long would those articles have remained up if nobody else had done the journalists' investigation jobs for them and then reported the incorrect story? Would the journalists who "broke" the story ever have bothered to verify it themselves? Would they have issued a correction at all if it didn't quickly become public knowledge that the story was fake?
- jwond 4y ago
  I don’t think they are really due any credit for correcting misinformation that they shouldn’t have published in the first place. I understand news outlets are all in a rush to be among the first to cover these trending stories, but in my opinion that is not a valid excuse for failing to verify basic facts prior to publication.
- cocoricamo 4y ago
  Yeah, it's scary. It was obvious the guys were trolling. Last names "Ligma" and "Johnson" very over the top statement holding a Michelle Obama book. The journalists were either too focused on getting the scoop and fooled themselves into believing what is clearly a ruse or they knew and went along with it because it generated views/clicks.
uoaei 4y ago
Now imagine what happens when anyone, anywhere has explicit endorsement from the owner of a public Internet forum to post completely unfactual claims on that forum, under the specious guise of "free speech". Or when "reputable" "news" outlets get to use forum posts as sources for their breaking news (they already do). Imagine how this might revise societal norms also around specious, unfactual claims about racial groups or other segments of the population, to the point where instances of "hate speech" are adjudicated only in the court of public opinion (on a private platform no less, ha, ha). The best outcome for society is for people to stop blindly trusting, or at least be much more skeptical of, what they read on the Internet. This is probably unlikely to happen.
grecy 4y ago
It is scary, and also really illuminating to see how quickly and easily mainstream media will report actual lies as facts. The lesson I continue to learn is that mainstream media is not worth my time.
happytoexplain 4y ago
I don't know all the details, but so far this looks a good example of the opposite irrationality to blind news trust: Jumping at the chance to criticize the news. Hatred of journalists is the default position for a lot of people. In this case, it seems reasonable to report on people saying they were fired who are going so far as to physically act the part. I wouldn't have suspected they were lying. Also, it's not a particularly dramatic thing to get wrong, as long as they correct it. It's not as if they're reporting somebody's death. Commenters are calling this "scary" and "illuminating". Some outlets report some pretty scarily big falsehoods, for sure, but this is not one of them. Another commenter even went so far as to imply that not knowing the word "ligma" is a joke counts as bad journalism. The tone is uncharitable, to put it lightly.
RickJWagner 4y ago
This. Exactly this. Once 'news' sources started publishing anything that pushes their own agenda, a great amount of democracy was lost. Remember the Covington High fiasco and the Kavanaugh hearings.

acdha 4y ago

One thing to remember here is that Twitter is disproportionately popular with journalists and other media figures. The idea of major changes where they spend a lot of time is going to cause concern, much as HN would freak out over major changes at GitHub.

millzlane 4y ago

They both corrected the articles after 3 hours. Gotta give credit where credit is due. But it shouldn't scare you that peoples lies are taken at face value. We see it everyday. Hell some politicians are lying right your face.

Alupis 4y ago
Journalists are supposed to have more credibility than your friend's gossip though... While retracting and/or correcting the articles is a step towards journalistic integrity, it should be very troubling these articles were published in the first place. After all, how many people bother to go back and review past articles just on the off chance some piece of information was corrected? None...
- yeuxardents 4y ago
  Honestly it troubles me that anyone believes 'journalists' from any of the major corporations have _any_ credibility, even going back to the 1990s with censorship of stories have been rife within the corporate 'journalism' industry. There are very few journalists that deserve real credibility.
  - Alupis 4y ago
    Journalists should not be afforded legal protections for publishing un-verified, demonstrably false information. We need a system where it's dangerous to not thoroughly vet your story before throwing it over the fence. Currently, they just say "oops" and move on like it never happened... but the damages caused to the public and it's discourse are permanent. The past decade has shown us that much at a minimum. Years from now folks will still howl about Musk marching loyal twitter employees out the front door with boxes full of their belongings... despite it being completely untrue. Heck, there are still folks that feverishly assert the "OK" sign is racist...
    - nradov 4y ago
      Journalists don't have any special protection under US federal law for publishing false information. Anyone can sue them for libel. Although it's difficult for plaintiffs to win such cases, regardless of whether the defendant is a journalist or anyone else.
      - Alupis 4y ago
        It does not need to be libel to be permanently damaging to the public. The "OK" sign as a symbol of "white power" is a great example - nobody's reputation was tarnished directly by the reporting... but the entire story was made up and never true. Yet, there's folks today that insist it truly is a symbol of "white power". Libel is also notoriously difficult to establish grounds for, and be successful with a lawsuit. Intent is difficult to prove - yet I would assert a journalist that does not thoroughly vet their story before publishing has a malicious intent, even if it was indirect.
        nemothekid 4y ago
        >The "OK" sign as a symbol of "white power" is a great example - nobody's reputation was tarnished directly by the reporting... but the entire story was made up and never true. Yet, there's folks today that insist it truly is a symbol of "white power". This is strange - the OK symbol was definitely co-opted by white nationalists; it started as a "media troll", then people started to do it non-ironically. It served it's purpose and to say it was "never true" is at the very least controversial. I had personally seen it spread on /pol/ months before it got any mainstream coverage. While I believe the story may have been overblown, I think it stands it would be very difficult to sue a journalist that this was libel or even untrue. At the very least the memes had to have started from somewhere and that posing with the ok symbol wasn't a particularly popular thing to do until after the memes were created.
- drekipus 4y ago
  I think half the population has already long-ago lost trust in media and journalists, and now the other half is catching up.
  - trendroid 4y ago
    For some reason many of these people that lose trust in traditional media immediately start trusting "independent media" on YouTube that happens to agrees with their views or ways of seeing the world.
    - encryptluks2 4y ago
      Yes, because the education system failed them and taught them to blindly trust in the media and so when they lose that they go to the opposite end of the spectrum. Some of them will come around and find some middle ground, and others will be be content in spewing misinformation as long as it makes them feel better.
  - kdkdjdsj 4y ago
    Idk, show of hands: who thinks Brian Sicknick was killed with a fire extinguisher? Who thinks there is a tape of Donald Trump pissing on a prostitute, or that he was caught communicating with Alfa Bank, or
  - User23 4y ago
    I trust broadly corroborated video evidence. For example I know that the “mostly peaceful protests” were anything but from watching videos filmed by diverse sources. The Internet and ubiquitous cameras really have revolutionized our ability to see what’s actually going on.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Journalists are supposed to have more credibility than your friend's gossip though For what is essentially a pop culture scoop, three hours seems like a fine trade-off between accuracy and timeliness.
- taylodl 4y ago
  Are people paying for credibility? Hate to break the news to you (ha!) but the news you’re going to see the most is the news that sells the best. It’s all about those Benjamins. You can’t expect good things from a society that has compromised all its ideals and prostrates itself for money. Certainly not journalistic integrity - unless it sells. Which it doesn’t.
thrown_22 4y ago
People still think that police were murdered by the protesters on Jan 6 two years after being told that every police officer who died on that day died from causes that had nothing to do with the protestors and everything to do with going up a flight of stairs under the influence of donuts. It's not good enough to print a retraction which no one sees and pretend it's solved the problem of spreading lies.
bhaney 4y ago
> They both corrected the articles after 3 hours Because they got caught. How long would those articles have remained up if nobody else had done the journalists' investigation jobs for them and then reported the incorrect story? Would the journalists who "broke" the story ever have bothered to verify it themselves? Would they have issued a correction at all if it didn't quickly become public knowledge that the story was fake?
jwond 4y ago
I don’t think they are really due any credit for correcting misinformation that they shouldn’t have published in the first place. I understand news outlets are all in a rush to be among the first to cover these trending stories, but in my opinion that is not a valid excuse for failing to verify basic facts prior to publication.
cocoricamo 4y ago
Yeah, it's scary. It was obvious the guys were trolling. Last names "Ligma" and "Johnson" very over the top statement holding a Michelle Obama book. The journalists were either too focused on getting the scoop and fooled themselves into believing what is clearly a ruse or they knew and went along with it because it generated views/clicks.

uoaei 4y ago

Now imagine what happens when anyone, anywhere has explicit endorsement from the owner of a public Internet forum to post completely unfactual claims on that forum, under the specious guise of "free speech". Or when "reputable" "news" outlets get to use forum posts as sources for their breaking news (they already do). Imagine how this might revise societal norms also around specious, unfactual claims about racial groups or other segments of the population, to the point where instances of "hate speech" are adjudicated only in the court of public opinion (on a private platform no less, ha, ha). The best outcome for society is for people to stop blindly trusting, or at least be much more skeptical of, what they read on the Internet. This is probably unlikely to happen.

grecy 4y ago

It is scary, and also really illuminating to see how quickly and easily mainstream media will report actual lies as facts. The lesson I continue to learn is that mainstream media is not worth my time.

happytoexplain 4y ago

I don't know all the details, but so far this looks a good example of the opposite irrationality to blind news trust: Jumping at the chance to criticize the news. Hatred of journalists is the default position for a lot of people. In this case, it seems reasonable to report on people saying they were fired who are going so far as to physically act the part. I wouldn't have suspected they were lying. Also, it's not a particularly dramatic thing to get wrong, as long as they correct it. It's not as if they're reporting somebody's death. Commenters are calling this "scary" and "illuminating". Some outlets report some pretty scarily big falsehoods, for sure, but this is not one of them. Another commenter even went so far as to imply that not knowing the word "ligma" is a joke counts as bad journalism. The tone is uncharitable, to put it lightly.

RickJWagner 4y ago

This. Exactly this. Once 'news' sources started publishing anything that pushes their own agenda, a great amount of democracy was lost. Remember the Covington High fiasco and the Kavanaugh hearings.