5 ms·

I think there’s a pretty big difference between something like the AP or Reuters that takes accuracy seriously, and many of the organizations that game the YouT

by 542458 3y ago

I think there’s a pretty big difference between something like the AP or Reuters that takes accuracy seriously, and many of the organizations that game the YouTube algorithm and just publish whatever gets the most engagement to drive themselves to the front page. For example, when the AP caught reporter Christopher Newton fabricating sources, they fired him and immediately conduced a review of everything he had written for them, issuing retractions or corrections as appropriate.

Synaesthesia 3y ago
Some of the biggest lies are by omission.
- baz00 3y ago
  That's the BBC's policy. They either don't run stories or run them when attention is off the issue where they don't get ranked highly.
Prickle 3y ago
Agreed. Back during the Dave chappel Netflix protest, an AP photographer got caught writing false defamatory captions on some of the photos. They didn't issue a correction, but they did edit the photo caption to reflect reality. I would definitely prefer the AP over many other sources.
ysavir 3y ago
Wasn't that 20 years ago? Do they maintain the same integrity and diligence in the modern click-oriented age?
mynameishere 3y ago
When they find some lone wolf breaking the rules, sure they'll punish him. But when they act collectively, there is rarely a correction or (ha ha) compunction. The Russiagate hoax (ie, "Trump is a Russian agent") should have called for widespread reform of the entire media. I can't believe there is a single person who can take CNN/NY Times/LA Times/etc seriously at this point. But when it is 95 percent of the group committing the same outrage, I doubt any of them feel particularly guilty. Years before was the even-worse "Weapons of Mass Destruction" propaganda campaign. Maybe you're too young to remember it, but that was a whopper.
- DonnyV 3y ago
  You are 100% right. Probably why hacker news is down voting you.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
DonnyV 3y ago
If you think the AP hasn't reported blatantly false news. Then you haven't been paying attention. They were one of the first news agency to blame Hamas for blowing up their own hospital. When video was already out that it was an Israeli jet that did it.
- thfuran 3y ago
  What makes you think that someone who describes what AP does when they find that they've published false information believes that AP has never published false information?
- 1234letshaveatw 3y ago
  huh? All the evidence suggests that Israel had nothing to do with it. It is sad to see that there are people still clinging to the misinformation that was initially reported
  - DonnyV 3y ago
    Hamas literally have no weapons that can cause this amount of damage. Most of their weapons are homemade. But yeah Hamas blew up their own hospital. Yeah thats a great way to build local support.
baz00 3y ago
I don't hold much hope. Two days ago we had what I consider to be primary sources i.e. BBC, NYP, CNN all posting unverified information as fact in published articles. This information turned out (a) to be completely incorrect and (b) has far reaching real consequences both in local politics and with respect to actual harm and violence directed at people. The sources are incredibly quiet now and are saying literally nothing about this having corrected articles and erased the history. Their irresponsible reporting caused actual harm to people.
- jjoonathan 3y ago
  If the headline is that Person X said Thing Y, that means the claim is unverified. You should know this. It's basic media literacy 101. When I contrast mainstream media to alternative media, the main difference I see is that alt media is a lot less careful with signaling confidence levels and eventual correctness. No "said X" in the title, no retractions, no requests for comment from affected parties. No journalism. The fact that you can find alt media which is biased in a way that you personally find desirable is not an indication of quality.
  - screye 3y ago
    > It's basic media literacy 101 Can you imagine applying this standard to other professions ? Say you doctor says "The Lab technician read your report and says you have cancer" or a scientist says "Our experiments say that global warming is real". You still hold them accountable for their claims, because THEY are the professionals. The whole point of being an authoritative source is that you don't report things until you have it on good authority. If you can't be held accountable to your claims, then that's the failure of your profession. Your role as the intermediary, is to vet the sources. If I have to do it, you have failed. Is your claim is that : "All media is inherently untrustworthy, but some media is worse than other media"? Because that sounds like a vote in favor of rejecting the premise of authoritative sources. I have looked at every front page of NYT over the last 48 hours. It started with outright accusing Israel strongly, and then steady reduced the degree of accusation indicated in headline over the next 48 hours. The photos and front page still hints towards Israel being the cause of the blast without saying it. The facts on the ground now strongly indicate a misfire from Gaza, that the hospital wasn't directly hit and expects the death toll to be closer to 10-100, rather than the 500 that has been parroted as truth. Have NYT/BBC/AJ reflected any of these changes in their front page headlines ? NO. This is just from the last 48 hours and I was fortunate enough to have accumulated trustworthy 'alt sources' to identify the discrepancies on this issue. Add Gellman Amnesia into the mix, and I wonder how many 'authoritative' lies I've gobbled up from despite a decent degree of scrutiny on my part.
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
Yes. It means the difference is propaganda from the powerful instead of nut jobs. So TV again.
hersko 3y ago
Remember that time when the AP and Reuters published headlines that Israel had bombed a Palestinian hospital with 500 dead? When was that? Two days ago? I very much doubt their journalistic integrity when they publish Gaza Ministry of Health (Hamas) talking points without question. We now know the hospital was not bombed ([1] it hit the parking lot), there is no way there were 500 casualties as was so breathlessly reported by those agencies "that takes accuracy seriously." The consensus also seems to be it was a Palestinian misfire that hit the parking lot, not an Israeli missile as was reported, at the time, as a fact. [1] https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/al-ahli-baptist-hospital-in-gaza-was-not-bombed-rocket-landed-in-parking-lot/ https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/al-ahli-baptist-hospital-in-...
- diggan 3y ago
  > Remember that time when the AP and Reuters published headlines that Israel had bombed a Palestinian hospital with 500 dead? When was that? Two days ago? If I recall those headlines correctly, they all included with "said Palestinian officials" or similar, which makes the reporting factual no matter who actually bombed the hospital. They were reporting on official statements, not making claims about what happened. Similar things happen all the time. "State department officials say X" and similar isn't AP or Reuters making claims about X being true or not, they're just reporting statements.
  - hersko 3y ago
    "...said Palestinian officials" is such a slimy way to absolve them of responsibility. People around the world trust them, like OP over here. They have a responsibility to do even basic verification work before posting something that they know will ignite riots around the world. The IDF seems very open about the strikes they make, were they reached out to for comment? Should the reporter have thought to themselves, "hey, does it make sense that Israel would bomb a hospital packed with civilians right as the US president is about to visit? Would Israel so blatantly destroy the relatively high global goodwill and backing they currently have? What do they have to gain?" It makes no sense if you think about it for half a second, yet these "reputable news sources" sent push notifications to millions of people to spew a complete lie form Hamas when THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACTUAL EVENT SINCE IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
philwelch 3y ago
AP and Reuters both routinely report claims from “Gaza’s Health Ministry” without disclosing that Gaza’s “Health Ministry” is run by Hamas. The AP’s Gaza bureau also shared an office building with Hamas for years and yet AP neglected to disclose this when Israel bombed that building, dishonestly implying that AP themselves were the target. In fact they claimed to have no idea, despite the fact that Hamas would launch rockets just outside their building and occasionally send armed men into their bureau office to threaten them: > When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.) > Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.” (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/ho...)
chiefalchemist 3y ago
Accuracy is not a proxy for Truth. Truth comes from transparency and completeness. That is, just because something was reported truthfully doesn't mean we got the full story, or even the most important part of the story. Narratives are crafted with what they don't say as much as what they do. This works well because it's very hard to point a finger at what isn't there. It's even more effective when so much is consumed so passively (read: no questions asked).

by 542458 3y ago

Synaesthesia 3y ago

Some of the biggest lies are by omission.

baz00 3y ago
That's the BBC's policy. They either don't run stories or run them when attention is off the issue where they don't get ranked highly.

Prickle 3y ago

Agreed. Back during the Dave chappel Netflix protest, an AP photographer got caught writing false defamatory captions on some of the photos. They didn't issue a correction, but they did edit the photo caption to reflect reality. I would definitely prefer the AP over many other sources.

ysavir 3y ago

Wasn't that 20 years ago? Do they maintain the same integrity and diligence in the modern click-oriented age?

mynameishere 3y ago

When they find some lone wolf breaking the rules, sure they'll punish him. But when they act collectively, there is rarely a correction or (ha ha) compunction. The Russiagate hoax (ie, "Trump is a Russian agent") should have called for widespread reform of the entire media. I can't believe there is a single person who can take CNN/NY Times/LA Times/etc seriously at this point. But when it is 95 percent of the group committing the same outrage, I doubt any of them feel particularly guilty. Years before was the even-worse "Weapons of Mass Destruction" propaganda campaign. Maybe you're too young to remember it, but that was a whopper.

DonnyV 3y ago
You are 100% right. Probably why hacker news is down voting you.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

DonnyV 3y ago

If you think the AP hasn't reported blatantly false news. Then you haven't been paying attention. They were one of the first news agency to blame Hamas for blowing up their own hospital. When video was already out that it was an Israeli jet that did it.

thfuran 3y ago
What makes you think that someone who describes what AP does when they find that they've published false information believes that AP has never published false information?
1234letshaveatw 3y ago
huh? All the evidence suggests that Israel had nothing to do with it. It is sad to see that there are people still clinging to the misinformation that was initially reported
- DonnyV 3y ago
  Hamas literally have no weapons that can cause this amount of damage. Most of their weapons are homemade. But yeah Hamas blew up their own hospital. Yeah thats a great way to build local support.

baz00 3y ago

I don't hold much hope. Two days ago we had what I consider to be primary sources i.e. BBC, NYP, CNN all posting unverified information as fact in published articles. This information turned out (a) to be completely incorrect and (b) has far reaching real consequences both in local politics and with respect to actual harm and violence directed at people. The sources are incredibly quiet now and are saying literally nothing about this having corrected articles and erased the history. Their irresponsible reporting caused actual harm to people.

jjoonathan 3y ago
If the headline is that Person X said Thing Y, that means the claim is unverified. You should know this. It's basic media literacy 101. When I contrast mainstream media to alternative media, the main difference I see is that alt media is a lot less careful with signaling confidence levels and eventual correctness. No "said X" in the title, no retractions, no requests for comment from affected parties. No journalism. The fact that you can find alt media which is biased in a way that you personally find desirable is not an indication of quality.
- screye 3y ago
  > It's basic media literacy 101 Can you imagine applying this standard to other professions ? Say you doctor says "The Lab technician read your report and says you have cancer" or a scientist says "Our experiments say that global warming is real". You still hold them accountable for their claims, because THEY are the professionals. The whole point of being an authoritative source is that you don't report things until you have it on good authority. If you can't be held accountable to your claims, then that's the failure of your profession. Your role as the intermediary, is to vet the sources. If I have to do it, you have failed. Is your claim is that : "All media is inherently untrustworthy, but some media is worse than other media"? Because that sounds like a vote in favor of rejecting the premise of authoritative sources. I have looked at every front page of NYT over the last 48 hours. It started with outright accusing Israel strongly, and then steady reduced the degree of accusation indicated in headline over the next 48 hours. The photos and front page still hints towards Israel being the cause of the blast without saying it. The facts on the ground now strongly indicate a misfire from Gaza, that the hospital wasn't directly hit and expects the death toll to be closer to 10-100, rather than the 500 that has been parroted as truth. Have NYT/BBC/AJ reflected any of these changes in their front page headlines ? NO. This is just from the last 48 hours and I was fortunate enough to have accumulated trustworthy 'alt sources' to identify the discrepancies on this issue. Add Gellman Amnesia into the mix, and I wonder how many 'authoritative' lies I've gobbled up from despite a decent degree of scrutiny on my part.

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

Yes. It means the difference is propaganda from the powerful instead of nut jobs. So TV again.

hersko 3y ago

Remember that time when the AP and Reuters published headlines that Israel had bombed a Palestinian hospital with 500 dead? When was that? Two days ago? I very much doubt their journalistic integrity when they publish Gaza Ministry of Health (Hamas) talking points without question. We now know the hospital was not bombed ([1] it hit the parking lot), there is no way there were 500 casualties as was so breathlessly reported by those agencies "that takes accuracy seriously." The consensus also seems to be it was a Palestinian misfire that hit the parking lot, not an Israeli missile as was reported, at the time, as a fact. [1] https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/al-ahli-baptist-hospital-in-gaza-was-not-bombed-rocket-landed-in-parking-lot/ https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/al-ahli-baptist-hospital-in-...

diggan 3y ago
> Remember that time when the AP and Reuters published headlines that Israel had bombed a Palestinian hospital with 500 dead? When was that? Two days ago? If I recall those headlines correctly, they all included with "said Palestinian officials" or similar, which makes the reporting factual no matter who actually bombed the hospital. They were reporting on official statements, not making claims about what happened. Similar things happen all the time. "State department officials say X" and similar isn't AP or Reuters making claims about X being true or not, they're just reporting statements.
- hersko 3y ago
  "...said Palestinian officials" is such a slimy way to absolve them of responsibility. People around the world trust them, like OP over here. They have a responsibility to do even basic verification work before posting something that they know will ignite riots around the world. The IDF seems very open about the strikes they make, were they reached out to for comment? Should the reporter have thought to themselves, "hey, does it make sense that Israel would bomb a hospital packed with civilians right as the US president is about to visit? Would Israel so blatantly destroy the relatively high global goodwill and backing they currently have? What do they have to gain?" It makes no sense if you think about it for half a second, yet these "reputable news sources" sent push notifications to millions of people to spew a complete lie form Hamas when THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACTUAL EVENT SINCE IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

philwelch 3y ago

AP and Reuters both routinely report claims from “Gaza’s Health Ministry” without disclosing that Gaza’s “Health Ministry” is run by Hamas. The AP’s Gaza bureau also shared an office building with Hamas for years and yet AP neglected to disclose this when Israel bombed that building, dishonestly implying that AP themselves were the target. In fact they claimed to have no idea, despite the fact that Hamas would launch rockets just outside their building and occasionally send armed men into their bureau office to threaten them: > When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.) > Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.” (https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/ https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/ho...)

chiefalchemist 3y ago

Accuracy is not a proxy for Truth. Truth comes from transparency and completeness. That is, just because something was reported truthfully doesn't mean we got the full story, or even the most important part of the story. Narratives are crafted with what they don't say as much as what they do. This works well because it's very hard to point a finger at what isn't there. It's even more effective when so much is consumed so passively (read: no questions asked).