3 ms·

It’s the register, an outlet that makes the daily star look like a bastion of journalism. What do you expect.

DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
El Reg is irreverent and intentionally apes British tabloids, sure - but their journalism is fine. MediaBiasFactCheck rates them as "High" on their factuality scale: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-register-uk/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-register-uk/ (though MediaBasFactCheck's statement that "we rate The Register Least Biased based on minimal editorializing" seems to be based on their lack of a political bias, but El Reg is certainly biased towards iconoclasm, but that's the way I like 'em)
- ghaff 3y ago
  And this has sort of been a historical thing with, actually, some of the better UK tech trade press. It's often deliberately provocative and snarky, but that doesn't make it wrong, and indeed may be insightful in the way that more staid publications aren't. Add to that the fact that headlines often tease and provoke on their own (as they did before there were clicks much of the time).
- tentacleuno 3y ago
  > but El Reg is certainly biased towards iconoclasm That seems like a strange perspective. Isn't the whole point of a news source not to be editorially biased? They give you the facts, and you use those facts to draw your own conclusion(s).
  - bananapub 3y ago
    > That seems like a strange perspective. Isn't the whole point of a news source not to be editorially biased? They give you the facts, and you use those facts to draw your own conclusion(s). er...what? what news source do you feel does this?
    - defrost 3y ago
      Various subscription industry intelligence news feeds that hold to unbiased standards. Eg: Minerals and Resources sector feeds that endeavour to convey all the relevant factoids in the industry domain - "On <this date> <that company> stated <something>". That's a verifiable fact stated baldly - it's readily provable whether or not a listed company released a statement .. and there is nothing there about whether what the company claimed in their statement was "true". Later that same feed might release a third party independant technical report that may or may not support the claim made. Two weeks later the feed might report that an employee at the third party company was arrested for fraud.
      - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
        > factoids That word does not mean what you think it means. The "-oid" suffix denotes a thing that seems like X, but is not X (e.g. "asteroid" -> "seems like a star, but is not a star (it's a space-rock) - or "cuboid": "seems like a cube, but is not a cube".
        defrost 3y ago
        Definition: A factoid is a statement based on an assumption—something that has never been confirmed. News feeds of "factoids" are a thing - and they are verifiably true if framed as such. See my comment above where I give an example of the recommended framing of domain snippets in unbiased intelligence feeds. No assumptions are made about the veracity of statements by publicly listed statements and such feeds never state that "Today Rio Tinto aquired property X" instead they seperately report * Today Rio Tinto stated they acquired property X (link to statement) and * Today the mineral resources dept. of the Canadian NWT reported a change of ownership in property X to Subsidiary Holdings ABC12 Ltd. Thank you for your unthinking condescension, factoid is exactly the word I meant.
  - swatcoder 3y ago
    I think you're confusing a news source with city council minutes or a police blotter. Journalists are trade professionals whose job is connect dots and follow leads to try to surface deeper issues and ideas in their reporting. They should adhere to facts, but they should also be using their immersion and expertise to contextualizing those facts and make them understood to an audience who isn't so immersed or expert. If they can do that earnestly and with the transparency that lets you see where they're working from, and with a style that helps you read/engage, they're doing good work.
sgjohnson 3y ago
There is nothing wrong at all with that headline for British audience, because virtually nobody in the UK is going to interpet it as “King Charles endorses [...]”. International audience might interpret it exactly like that.
- midasuni 3y ago
  As someone who is British I would disagree. Their content may be fine, but the headline nonsense turned me off the register nearly 20 years ago
dawidpotocki 3y ago
Personally, my experience with The Register has been nothing but positive. When all the websites were reporting on my "discovery" of a security issue, The Register has been the first (by over a week) and one of the few to ask me by email about the details and the only to publish article with correct information. I know they weren't rushing to publish it as they were far from the first. Also they have been fast to respond back. Some other website that I will not name have made a lot of mistakes in their reporting and when asked for fixing, the reporter replied 3 days later and complained that my article has been too complicated! I also have a small suspision that they copy-pasted it from some much smaller website without mentioning it, as that website published earlier than them and had the same exact mistakes, which were very hard to make, unless you decided to skip random paragraphs and stop in the middle. All the other websites have copied from that one without ever checking the authoritative source that was my article and I know this because I explicitly had put a warning to clarify the misinformation :). Some other big website emailed me after all the other ones have published and I answered their questions and I even told them to not put X as a title as that's not what the issue is about as I saw others doing that. Guess what? They did that exact title :).

El Reg is irreverent and intentionally apes British tabloids, sure - but their journalism is fine. MediaBiasFactCheck rates them as "High" on their factuality scale: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-register-uk/ https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/the-register-uk/ (though MediaBasFactCheck's statement that "we rate The Register Least Biased based on minimal editorializing" seems to be based on their lack of a political bias, but El Reg is certainly biased towards iconoclasm, but that's the way I like 'em)

ghaff 3y ago
And this has sort of been a historical thing with, actually, some of the better UK tech trade press. It's often deliberately provocative and snarky, but that doesn't make it wrong, and indeed may be insightful in the way that more staid publications aren't. Add to that the fact that headlines often tease and provoke on their own (as they did before there were clicks much of the time).
tentacleuno 3y ago
> but El Reg is certainly biased towards iconoclasm That seems like a strange perspective. Isn't the whole point of a news source not to be editorially biased? They give you the facts, and you use those facts to draw your own conclusion(s).
- bananapub 3y ago
  > That seems like a strange perspective. Isn't the whole point of a news source not to be editorially biased? They give you the facts, and you use those facts to draw your own conclusion(s). er...what? what news source do you feel does this?
  - defrost 3y ago
    Various subscription industry intelligence news feeds that hold to unbiased standards. Eg: Minerals and Resources sector feeds that endeavour to convey all the relevant factoids in the industry domain - "On <this date> <that company> stated <something>". That's a verifiable fact stated baldly - it's readily provable whether or not a listed company released a statement .. and there is nothing there about whether what the company claimed in their statement was "true". Later that same feed might release a third party independant technical report that may or may not support the claim made. Two weeks later the feed might report that an employee at the third party company was arrested for fraud.
    - DaiPlusPlus 3y ago
      > factoids That word does not mean what you think it means. The "-oid" suffix denotes a thing that seems like X, but is not X (e.g. "asteroid" -> "seems like a star, but is not a star (it's a space-rock) - or "cuboid": "seems like a cube, but is not a cube".
      - defrost 3y ago
        Definition: A factoid is a statement based on an assumption—something that has never been confirmed. News feeds of "factoids" are a thing - and they are verifiably true if framed as such. See my comment above where I give an example of the recommended framing of domain snippets in unbiased intelligence feeds. No assumptions are made about the veracity of statements by publicly listed statements and such feeds never state that "Today Rio Tinto aquired property X" instead they seperately report * Today Rio Tinto stated they acquired property X (link to statement) and * Today the mineral resources dept. of the Canadian NWT reported a change of ownership in property X to Subsidiary Holdings ABC12 Ltd. Thank you for your unthinking condescension, factoid is exactly the word I meant.
- swatcoder 3y ago
  I think you're confusing a news source with city council minutes or a police blotter. Journalists are trade professionals whose job is connect dots and follow leads to try to surface deeper issues and ideas in their reporting. They should adhere to facts, but they should also be using their immersion and expertise to contextualizing those facts and make them understood to an audience who isn't so immersed or expert. If they can do that earnestly and with the transparency that lets you see where they're working from, and with a style that helps you read/engage, they're doing good work.

sgjohnson 3y ago

There is nothing wrong at all with that headline for British audience, because virtually nobody in the UK is going to interpet it as “King Charles endorses [...]”. International audience might interpret it exactly like that.

midasuni 3y ago
As someone who is British I would disagree. Their content may be fine, but the headline nonsense turned me off the register nearly 20 years ago

dawidpotocki 3y ago

Personally, my experience with The Register has been nothing but positive. When all the websites were reporting on my "discovery" of a security issue, The Register has been the first (by over a week) and one of the few to ask me by email about the details and the only to publish article with correct information. I know they weren't rushing to publish it as they were far from the first. Also they have been fast to respond back. Some other website that I will not name have made a lot of mistakes in their reporting and when asked for fixing, the reporter replied 3 days later and complained that my article has been too complicated! I also have a small suspision that they copy-pasted it from some much smaller website without mentioning it, as that website published earlier than them and had the same exact mistakes, which were very hard to make, unless you decided to skip random paragraphs and stop in the middle. All the other websites have copied from that one without ever checking the authoritative source that was my article and I know this because I explicitly had put a warning to clarify the misinformation :). Some other big website emailed me after all the other ones have published and I answered their questions and I even told them to not put X as a title as that's not what the issue is about as I saw others doing that. Guess what? They did that exact title :).