4 ms·

Oh please. They publish a lot of journalism and have been covering police abuse for decades including work by Radley Balko back in 2017 when no one cared. Senio

by ch4s3 4y ago

Oh please. They publish a lot of journalism and have been covering police abuse for decades including work by Radley Balko back in 2017 when no one cared. Senior editor Jacob Sullum has won awards for his journalism on drug policy. Elizabeth Nolan Brown does great investigative work around sex workers. It isn’t a click bait farm, even if YOU disagree with their politics.

ajross 4y ago
That may all be true, but it remains the case that every time I see a Reason link being thrown around it's one of these kinda suspect things. You know this is a junk piece. They ran it anyway. Again: how much work does it take to assign a journalist and call the police department to verify the arrest records?
- ch4s3 4y ago
  I can't really speak to this article, and as they've changed the family's name(s) for privacy reasons it's hard to fact check, but other stuff published by Lenore Skenazy about similar cases seems more readily verifiable. That said I don't really pay much attention to this type of story so I'm not well versed on the issue or who is credible in reporting on it. But for issues I do follow, I usually find their reporting to be excellent.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  I didn't believe you (because my blood boiled too) but then I decided to search for this story in Google (without using names but just the incident and location) and didn't find any reputed news organization reporting it, which admittedly surprised me. I found a similar case where parents got in trouble for letting kids walk around alone[0], but not this case (and considering the specifics here are bound to touch the nerves of parents and practically guarantee viewership, I would think that it would be pretty attractive piece to print for them assuming it was found to be genuine). Not trying to agree/disagree but just sharing what I noticed. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-pa...
  - CogitoCogito 4y ago
    The fact that you couldn't find it reported in another "reputed news organization" doesn't mean it didn't happen. News organizations only have limited bandwidth and the extreme power that police and CPS has in these kinds of situations isn't exactly a secret nationally. Maybe the reputed news organizations simply don't consider it news? Or maybe the organizations aren't as reputed as you believe? There are many explanations for the lack of corroborating reporting here that don't imply the original story isn't true.
    - noisy_boy 4y ago
      Maybe - however, we are expected to do our own due diligence for trustworthiness of news and considering that we have limited time and resources at our disposal, one has to set some sort of an approach to do so - in my case, reputed news organisation it is (and people are free to disagree with that approach). Using this approach doesn't mean that whatever doesn't get printed in NYT or WaPo or doesn't get covered on CNN didn't happen but considering police overreach is a hot topic in recent times with prevalent extensive coverage, it is possible but not probable that something like this (involving kids, which makes it a more "newsworthy" story) hasn't been reported, in any of the major news outlets, just because of undue influence of Police/CPS.
    - ajross 4y ago
      > The fact that you couldn't find it reported in another "reputed news organization" doesn't mean it didn't happen. But that's not the standard for good journalism! You appear to be saying we should believe this story in Reason despite the long delay from the events, uncorroborated evidence, and clear bias of the author... because we can't prove it's false? No, that's wrong. The correct way to interpret the data is that this is a suspect piece of writing that someone should try to verify before trusting.
      - CogitoCogito 4y ago
        > But that's not the standard for good journalism! You appear to be saying we should believe this story in Reason despite the long delay from the events, uncorroborated evidence, and clear bias of the author... because we can't prove it's false? I never said that.
jghn 4y ago
> for decades At some point they went deep Tea Party/MAGA type, but seem to have come back to their roots over the last few years. However the commenters are consistently still MAGA types.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  When were they ever publishing MAGA content? Yeah, the comments have always been trash and they openly joke about it.
  - jghn 4y ago
    It predated the actual MAGA label. As the Tea Party shifted from libertarian to Libertarian to "Libertarian" (with about 5 extra pairs of air quotes) they trended with it. I remember I stopped reading when I started seeing pro-military, pro-police, pro-theocracy posts. A number of years later I looked again and they were gone, albeit the comments had remained as we both noted.

by ch4s3 4y ago

ajross 4y ago

That may all be true, but it remains the case that every time I see a Reason link being thrown around it's one of these kinda suspect things. You know this is a junk piece. They ran it anyway. Again: how much work does it take to assign a journalist and call the police department to verify the arrest records?

ch4s3 4y ago
I can't really speak to this article, and as they've changed the family's name(s) for privacy reasons it's hard to fact check, but other stuff published by Lenore Skenazy about similar cases seems more readily verifiable. That said I don't really pay much attention to this type of story so I'm not well versed on the issue or who is credible in reporting on it. But for issues I do follow, I usually find their reporting to be excellent.
noisy_boy 4y ago
I didn't believe you (because my blood boiled too) but then I decided to search for this story in Google (without using names but just the incident and location) and didn't find any reputed news organization reporting it, which admittedly surprised me. I found a similar case where parents got in trouble for letting kids walk around alone[0], but not this case (and considering the specifics here are bound to touch the nerves of parents and practically guarantee viewership, I would think that it would be pretty attractive piece to print for them assuming it was found to be genuine). Not trying to agree/disagree but just sharing what I noticed. [0]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-parents-cleared-in-second-neglect-case-after-children-walked-alone/2015/06/22/82283c24-188c-11e5-bd7f-4611a60dd8e5_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/free-range-pa...
- CogitoCogito 4y ago
  The fact that you couldn't find it reported in another "reputed news organization" doesn't mean it didn't happen. News organizations only have limited bandwidth and the extreme power that police and CPS has in these kinds of situations isn't exactly a secret nationally. Maybe the reputed news organizations simply don't consider it news? Or maybe the organizations aren't as reputed as you believe? There are many explanations for the lack of corroborating reporting here that don't imply the original story isn't true.
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    Maybe - however, we are expected to do our own due diligence for trustworthiness of news and considering that we have limited time and resources at our disposal, one has to set some sort of an approach to do so - in my case, reputed news organisation it is (and people are free to disagree with that approach). Using this approach doesn't mean that whatever doesn't get printed in NYT or WaPo or doesn't get covered on CNN didn't happen but considering police overreach is a hot topic in recent times with prevalent extensive coverage, it is possible but not probable that something like this (involving kids, which makes it a more "newsworthy" story) hasn't been reported, in any of the major news outlets, just because of undue influence of Police/CPS.
  - ajross 4y ago
    > The fact that you couldn't find it reported in another "reputed news organization" doesn't mean it didn't happen. But that's not the standard for good journalism! You appear to be saying we should believe this story in Reason despite the long delay from the events, uncorroborated evidence, and clear bias of the author... because we can't prove it's false? No, that's wrong. The correct way to interpret the data is that this is a suspect piece of writing that someone should try to verify before trusting.
    - CogitoCogito 4y ago
      > But that's not the standard for good journalism! You appear to be saying we should believe this story in Reason despite the long delay from the events, uncorroborated evidence, and clear bias of the author... because we can't prove it's false? I never said that.

jghn 4y ago

> for decades At some point they went deep Tea Party/MAGA type, but seem to have come back to their roots over the last few years. However the commenters are consistently still MAGA types.

ch4s3 4y ago
When were they ever publishing MAGA content? Yeah, the comments have always been trash and they openly joke about it.
- jghn 4y ago
  It predated the actual MAGA label. As the Tea Party shifted from libertarian to Libertarian to "Libertarian" (with about 5 extra pairs of air quotes) they trended with it. I remember I stopped reading when I started seeing pro-military, pro-police, pro-theocracy posts. A number of years later I looked again and they were gone, albeit the comments had remained as we both noted.