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When journalists hear hoof beats, you want them to think ‘horses’ not ‘zebras’, though, right? When party A is causing a lot of explosions in general in land c

When journalists hear hoof beats, you want them to think ‘horses’ not ‘zebras’, though, right? When party A is causing a lot of explosions in general in land controlled by party B, and party B is broadly not trying to cause explosions in its own land, when an explosion happens in land controlled by party B you should have a strong prior that the most likely culprit is party A. Journalists should be allowed to assume you will read more than the headline. Good journalists do the work to attribute claims to sources and they report that in their writing.

perihelions 3y ago
Professional journalists have the responsibility to be epistemologically correct—to accurately say "X told us Y", "our reporter observed Z", etc. You can't jump the gun and launder speculation into truth. That's what Silver's complaining about in the OP: not that the NYT got it wrong, but how in particular they got it wrong, making claims of confidence and certainty that weren't supported by what they had.
- jameshart 3y ago
  The article in question about Israel identified the sources in the headline. What more do you want them to do?
- DoughnutHole 3y ago
  It's a more subtle mistake than that - they did say "X told us Y": > Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say The problem isn't that they presented an unverified claim as fact - they told us that this was a claim by an official. The problem is one of framing and headline crafting. All people took away from the headline was the "fact", because the headline did not adequately stress the providence of the information or the fact that the claim was unverified. If you want people to come away with "X claims Y" rather than "X happened", you need to in some way stress the fact that it's an unverified claim. I'd honestly chalk this up less to malice or journalistic malpractice in the hunt for clicks, but to simple bad writing. I'm amazed it got past the editors.
  - jameshart 3y ago
    The headline is not the story. The headline is never the whole story. If the headline was the whole story you wouldn’t need the story. People who claim ‘they write the headline to get you to click’ are onto something. You’re meant to click on the headline and read the story. A heck of a lot of news reports take this form, and all it takes to read them accurately is basic media literacy: CLAIM, PARTY SAYS Claim was made today by party. More detail about claim, and how newspaper came to be aware of claim. But counterclaim, according to other party. Opinion on trustworthiness of parties, according to expert, with credentials.
DoughnutHole 3y ago
Sometimes it's not horse and zebras, but horses and donkeys - both are reasonably plausible. This is generally the case in a war zone, where stuff goes wrong and friendly fire occurs all the time. If a journalist tells me that it's horses I'd hope they've done the leg work and checked that it's not donkeys first. The way that the NYT reported on this isn't technically incorrect or *obviously wrong ("Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say") - they basically said "Hoofbeats from horses, party A says". But it stresses the account rather than the source, despite it being fraught to take claims from either side at face value. All people took in was "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital" despite that claim being far from confirmed. Journalists can absolutely publish what officials with a vested interest say - but if you're going to frame it in a way that suggests that their claims are more than unverified chatter you'd better make sure that the preponderance of evidence supports that claim.
- jameshart 3y ago
  When NYT put a source attribution in the headline, that is them saying that this information is unverified, but the fact that the claim was made by that party is newsworthy.
PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
> When journalists hear hoof beats, you want them to think ‘horses’ not ‘zebras’, though, right? No. If they hear hoof beats, but don't know the animals involved, I want them to write "I heard hoof beats". If they manage to collect enough evidence to be confident of the animals involved, then I want them to say "The hoof beats were those of the lesser Siberian Elk" (or whatever it was). If they are unable to collect enough evidence to be confident (and they should have a high bar for this), I want them to say "It appears difficult or impossible to identify the creatures that made the hoof beats". These do not all need to be a part of the same report or appear on the same day.
- lazystar 3y ago
  to sum it up... reporters should use static typing instead of duck typing.

perihelions 3y ago

Professional journalists have the responsibility to be epistemologically correct—to accurately say "X told us Y", "our reporter observed Z", etc. You can't jump the gun and launder speculation into truth. That's what Silver's complaining about in the OP: not that the NYT got it wrong, but how in particular they got it wrong, making claims of confidence and certainty that weren't supported by what they had.

jameshart 3y ago
The article in question about Israel identified the sources in the headline. What more do you want them to do?
DoughnutHole 3y ago
It's a more subtle mistake than that - they did say "X told us Y": > Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say The problem isn't that they presented an unverified claim as fact - they told us that this was a claim by an official. The problem is one of framing and headline crafting. All people took away from the headline was the "fact", because the headline did not adequately stress the providence of the information or the fact that the claim was unverified. If you want people to come away with "X claims Y" rather than "X happened", you need to in some way stress the fact that it's an unverified claim. I'd honestly chalk this up less to malice or journalistic malpractice in the hunt for clicks, but to simple bad writing. I'm amazed it got past the editors.
- jameshart 3y ago
  The headline is not the story. The headline is never the whole story. If the headline was the whole story you wouldn’t need the story. People who claim ‘they write the headline to get you to click’ are onto something. You’re meant to click on the headline and read the story. A heck of a lot of news reports take this form, and all it takes to read them accurately is basic media literacy: CLAIM, PARTY SAYS Claim was made today by party. More detail about claim, and how newspaper came to be aware of claim. But counterclaim, according to other party. Opinion on trustworthiness of parties, according to expert, with credentials.

DoughnutHole 3y ago

Sometimes it's not horse and zebras, but horses and donkeys - both are reasonably plausible. This is generally the case in a war zone, where stuff goes wrong and friendly fire occurs all the time. If a journalist tells me that it's horses I'd hope they've done the leg work and checked that it's not donkeys first. The way that the NYT reported on this isn't technically incorrect or *obviously wrong ("Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say") - they basically said "Hoofbeats from horses, party A says". But it stresses the account rather than the source, despite it being fraught to take claims from either side at face value. All people took in was "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital" despite that claim being far from confirmed. Journalists can absolutely publish what officials with a vested interest say - but if you're going to frame it in a way that suggests that their claims are more than unverified chatter you'd better make sure that the preponderance of evidence supports that claim.

jameshart 3y ago
When NYT put a source attribution in the headline, that is them saying that this information is unverified, but the fact that the claim was made by that party is newsworthy.

PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago

> When journalists hear hoof beats, you want them to think ‘horses’ not ‘zebras’, though, right? No. If they hear hoof beats, but don't know the animals involved, I want them to write "I heard hoof beats". If they manage to collect enough evidence to be confident of the animals involved, then I want them to say "The hoof beats were those of the lesser Siberian Elk" (or whatever it was). If they are unable to collect enough evidence to be confident (and they should have a high bar for this), I want them to say "It appears difficult or impossible to identify the creatures that made the hoof beats". These do not all need to be a part of the same report or appear on the same day.

lazystar 3y ago
to sum it up... reporters should use static typing instead of duck typing.