5 ms·
It feels rather damning that Hersh didn’t verify some of the easily verifiable claims that his source made. Why would you not have researchers do some fact che
by runnerup 4y ago
It feels rather damning that Hersh didn’t verify some of the easily verifiable claims that his source made.
Why would you not have researchers do some fact checking on the story before publishing it so loudly?
- mannerheim 4y agoIf you fact check and you're right, you've wasted your time. If you fact check and you're wrong, you either can't publish (wasting the time you took for the story) or you publish anyway knowing it's wrong, in which case, it's still a waste of time.
- giantrobot 4y agoOr you publish and report the claims made by the source and call out specifically where those claims couldn't be verified. It's like science publishing, too often negative results go unpublished. Knowing what didn't work can be as useful as knowing what did work.
- krisoft 4y ago> If you fact check and you're right, you've wasted your time. That is not how it works. First of all there is no “you’re right”. The journalist doesn’t have first hand observations. They cannot be “right” or “wrong” only their source can be. The journalist goes and checks what can be verified independently. No matter what the outcome of these checks nobody wasted their time. The result is a stronger article, and continued respect for the journalist in his profession.
- mannerheim 4y ago[flagged]
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> If you fact check and you're right, you've wasted your time. I see it differently. I used to be a test engineer. My tests made it onto documentation accompanying a $50,000 RF snooper (in 1985), and were verifications that the item passed the test. I like it when tests don't fail.
- mach5 4y agohe did do fact checking, with people he had previously worked with at New Yorker https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/seymour-hersh-im-interview-joe-biden-sprengte-nord-stream-weil-er-deutschland-nicht-traut-li.317700 https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/politik-gesellschaft/seymour...
- stefan_ 4y agoHersh, fact checking: https://twitter.com/grodira/status/1626150758017015809 https://twitter.com/grodira/status/1626150758017015809
- tptacek 4y agoThen they're apparently not very good, are they?
- runnerup 4y agoThey fact-checked "salinity-matched C4"? My god they're terrible.
- HybridCurve 4y ago"The American explosive devices needed to be camouflaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russian system as part of the natural background—something that required adapting to the specific salinity of the water" This was the most ridiculous part. I can't think of a reason they would prefer to use an explosive charge in a position visible to inspection.
- bhk 4y agoAcoustic impedance of seawater varies with salinity.
- runnerup 4y agoSure but that doesn’t generalize to other materials. Salinity matched C4 won’t be acoustically matched. Definitely a red herring point.