7 ms·

This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. B

This applies to the real world as well. I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. I've brought this up in conversation a few times over the years and quite often a similar experience was reported by others. Yet everyone still seemed happy to trust the accuracy of the other articles being reported.

tobr 3y ago
This is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect mentioned in the post.
nvader 3y ago
When people display this kind of blindness to real-world media the term for it is https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect
nonameiguess 3y ago
Actually, this is an even bigger one after working on classified intelligence projects. Being able to watch in real time what is actually happening in some place a news reporter is speculating about and get wildly wrong makes you despair to the point of wondering what they're ever right about. It's even worse to come on a place like Hacker News and see the kinds of wildly wrong things people believe or speculate on, which is doubly frustrating because you can't even legally correct it or even say you know they're wrong.
- bombcar 3y ago
  That doesn’t bother me as much when people get exceptionally easy to verify completely open facts wrong. If they can’t even bother fact checking to the point of a simple google search, why should I trust anything else in the article?
- teddyh 3y ago
  I assume that you’ve read what Daniel Ellsberg had to say about the effect of having access to such information? <https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsbe...>
Xcelerate 3y ago
> I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. Same. A few years ago, I worked at a large tech company that a certain well-known news organization likes to cover. After a few articles were published relating to work I was involved in, I found myself thinking "Nope, that's totally wrong" or "Technically correct but presented in a biased way". I decided to cancel my news subscription with them because I realized that they have a certain narrative they want to present to the public, and why should I trust any of their reporting on other topics if the one I was involved in firsthand was just completely wrong?
- guidoism 3y ago
  It was Amazon and The NY Times for me. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember specifics but man, it really changed my perception of journalism.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
There's no money in unbiased news. If news organizations want subscribers they need to present a clear voice that is distinct from what other organizations offer, otherwise people will just click the first link on google or facebook and never pay. Unbiased can also mean undiferentiated, so NYT has leaned into technoskepticism, the journal into Karl Rove conservatism(and now just plain old republican or bust), and on and on. A news organization that hasn't made itself into a destination for its readers is forced to rely on cheap farmed out content that's usually either listicles or just straight ripped from a wire service.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  There's no money in unbiased news. I have to believe that's not true. When Bill Gates or Warren Buffett sit down at their breakfast table, do they get fed the same diet of pablum that I do, as an Apple News subscriber? I doubt it. They presumably pay a ton of money for access to unfiltered, unbiased global intelligence. But I have no idea how to get the newsfeed that people like that must have access to, regardless of cost.
  - thatguy0900 3y ago
    Would that be something like the Bloomberg terminal?
    - CamperBob2 3y ago
      Bloomberg is indeed the first source that comes to mind when I think "Pay a lot more than most people for a premium newsfeed," but then, on my list of trusted news sources, Bloomberg is ranked somewhere between Russia Today and the Brothers Grimm. Their reporters are literally paid to move the markets [1]. 1: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
      - hef19898 3y ago
        Because Business Insider is such a great source. And no, I do not believe the ultra rich employ private inteligence serices preparing morning briefings for them. If you want just the facts so, try Reuters or AP, basically the source of the majority of news stroies we are fed by media (the exception being in-house investigated stories, but those are rarer by the day and flanked by so much filler articles that it is hard to filter the facts out). Also, professional inteligence organizations can be spectatularly wrong as well. Sometimes a lone, local jourbalist on the ground witj working internet for soke background research has it better. Local, because some random person from far away will lack the necessary backgroing and context to deliver more than some isolated, uninformed, highly objective opinion.
WalterBright 3y ago
Just think how awful the 737MAX was reported on in the press to a 757 stabilizer trim design engineer (me).
- nottorp 3y ago
  Too bad you can't afford to comment on it if you still work there?
analog31 3y ago
And yet we manage to keep ourselves reasonably informed. I subscribe to one of the major papers, and avail myself to a variety of mainstream sources. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times, over multiple decades, that I've ever looked back on an issue and felt that I had actually been misinformed. "You made one tiny mistake so your entire organization is discredited" would have been an unreasonable reaction. So I think that Gell-Mann Amnesia, while amusing, is overblown.
- alethiophile 3y ago
  Regarding a topic that you never come into personal contact with, your entire knowledge of it throughout your life will be media-mediated. How, then, would you ever learn what you had been misinformed of?
  - analog31 3y ago
    Hindsight. You learn more things later, that allow you to look back on the past.
    - alethiophile 3y ago
      How often do you learn new things later that, even as transmitted through untrustworthy media, allow for clear falsification of the former media presentation? This isn't zero but it's not very common either. Usually, the domain in question is sufficiently subtle that you can't make a rigorous prediction from an untrustworthy media presentation at all; thus, the media accounts are effectively unfalsifiable (unless you go out and seek personal experience).
      - Eisenstein 3y ago
        > Usually, the domain in question is sufficiently subtle that you can't make a rigorous prediction Is it really a big deal then? Experts really care about the details so they will notice inaccuracies, but does that mean that they really matter to the point that the entire notion of journalism and media itself should be discredited?
jaredhallen 3y ago
I've had the same experience. I've been on the "inside" of a news story a few times in my life, and in every case what was reported was wildly different than the actual situation. It's only a few data points, but also 100% unreliable in those cases.

tobr 3y ago

This is the Gell-Mann amnesia effect mentioned in the post.

nvader 3y ago

When people display this kind of blindness to real-world media the term for it is https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect https://theportal.wiki/wiki/The_Gell-Mann_Amnesia_Effect

nonameiguess 3y ago

Actually, this is an even bigger one after working on classified intelligence projects. Being able to watch in real time what is actually happening in some place a news reporter is speculating about and get wildly wrong makes you despair to the point of wondering what they're ever right about. It's even worse to come on a place like Hacker News and see the kinds of wildly wrong things people believe or speculate on, which is doubly frustrating because you can't even legally correct it or even say you know they're wrong.

bombcar 3y ago
That doesn’t bother me as much when people get exceptionally easy to verify completely open facts wrong. If they can’t even bother fact checking to the point of a simple google search, why should I trust anything else in the article?
teddyh 3y ago
I assume that you’ve read what Daniel Ellsberg had to say about the effect of having access to such information? <https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsberg-limitations-knowledge/ https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2010/02/daniel-ellsbe...>

Xcelerate 3y ago

> I've had a couple of times when I've been closely involved in an event that was covered in the national newspapers. Both times the stories were presented with major factual inaccuracies and with clear bias. Same. A few years ago, I worked at a large tech company that a certain well-known news organization likes to cover. After a few articles were published relating to work I was involved in, I found myself thinking "Nope, that's totally wrong" or "Technically correct but presented in a biased way". I decided to cancel my news subscription with them because I realized that they have a certain narrative they want to present to the public, and why should I trust any of their reporting on other topics if the one I was involved in firsthand was just completely wrong?

guidoism 3y ago
It was Amazon and The NY Times for me. It was a long time ago so I don’t remember specifics but man, it really changed my perception of journalism.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

There's no money in unbiased news. If news organizations want subscribers they need to present a clear voice that is distinct from what other organizations offer, otherwise people will just click the first link on google or facebook and never pay. Unbiased can also mean undiferentiated, so NYT has leaned into technoskepticism, the journal into Karl Rove conservatism(and now just plain old republican or bust), and on and on. A news organization that hasn't made itself into a destination for its readers is forced to rely on cheap farmed out content that's usually either listicles or just straight ripped from a wire service.

CamperBob2 3y ago
There's no money in unbiased news. I have to believe that's not true. When Bill Gates or Warren Buffett sit down at their breakfast table, do they get fed the same diet of pablum that I do, as an Apple News subscriber? I doubt it. They presumably pay a ton of money for access to unfiltered, unbiased global intelligence. But I have no idea how to get the newsfeed that people like that must have access to, regardless of cost.
- thatguy0900 3y ago
  Would that be something like the Bloomberg terminal?
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Bloomberg is indeed the first source that comes to mind when I think "Pay a lot more than most people for a premium newsfeed," but then, on my list of trusted news sources, Bloomberg is ranked somewhere between Russia Today and the Brothers Grimm. Their reporters are literally paid to move the markets [1]. 1: https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensation-2013-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/bloomberg-reporters-compensa...
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Because Business Insider is such a great source. And no, I do not believe the ultra rich employ private inteligence serices preparing morning briefings for them. If you want just the facts so, try Reuters or AP, basically the source of the majority of news stroies we are fed by media (the exception being in-house investigated stories, but those are rarer by the day and flanked by so much filler articles that it is hard to filter the facts out). Also, professional inteligence organizations can be spectatularly wrong as well. Sometimes a lone, local jourbalist on the ground witj working internet for soke background research has it better. Local, because some random person from far away will lack the necessary backgroing and context to deliver more than some isolated, uninformed, highly objective opinion.

WalterBright 3y ago

Just think how awful the 737MAX was reported on in the press to a 757 stabilizer trim design engineer (me).

nottorp 3y ago
Too bad you can't afford to comment on it if you still work there?

analog31 3y ago

And yet we manage to keep ourselves reasonably informed. I subscribe to one of the major papers, and avail myself to a variety of mainstream sources. I can count on the fingers of one hand the times, over multiple decades, that I've ever looked back on an issue and felt that I had actually been misinformed. "You made one tiny mistake so your entire organization is discredited" would have been an unreasonable reaction. So I think that Gell-Mann Amnesia, while amusing, is overblown.

alethiophile 3y ago
Regarding a topic that you never come into personal contact with, your entire knowledge of it throughout your life will be media-mediated. How, then, would you ever learn what you had been misinformed of?
- analog31 3y ago
  Hindsight. You learn more things later, that allow you to look back on the past.
  - alethiophile 3y ago
    How often do you learn new things later that, even as transmitted through untrustworthy media, allow for clear falsification of the former media presentation? This isn't zero but it's not very common either. Usually, the domain in question is sufficiently subtle that you can't make a rigorous prediction from an untrustworthy media presentation at all; thus, the media accounts are effectively unfalsifiable (unless you go out and seek personal experience).
    - Eisenstein 3y ago
      > Usually, the domain in question is sufficiently subtle that you can't make a rigorous prediction Is it really a big deal then? Experts really care about the details so they will notice inaccuracies, but does that mean that they really matter to the point that the entire notion of journalism and media itself should be discredited?

jaredhallen 3y ago

I've had the same experience. I've been on the "inside" of a news story a few times in my life, and in every case what was reported was wildly different than the actual situation. It's only a few data points, but also 100% unreliable in those cases.