3 ms·

I think news articles lacking citations is one of more backwards parts of modern news. How is it that Wikipedia is more reliable and neutral than journalists an

by cdrini 3y ago

I think news articles lacking citations is one of more backwards parts of modern news. How is it that Wikipedia is more reliable and neutral than journalists and news? I think there needs to be a journalistic standard put in place, and all news articles need to be held to that standard. Sort of like passing or failing a health inspection. It should at least include: 1. Citations to other media should be presented inline, like wikipeia, for every claim and every number. 2. Any media (photo, video, etc) should always be presented with metadata about date, place, location, and photographer.

philwelch 3y ago
News stories do contain citations, they just don’t follow the same format as Wikipedia. Whenever a news story says “according to a Gaza health ministry spokesman”, that’s a citation. Does it give you an original statement or document published by that spokesman? No, because traditionally these spokesmen don’t speak to the public; they speak to journalists. In some cases this isn’t true; you can watch or read transcripts of White House press conferences and it turns out clips of these press conferences are great for television, but the expectation is for journalists to intermediate between whats happening and the public. Here’s an example of that sort of thing from the other side of the conflict. During the initial October 7 attacks, Hamas fighters captured a lot of video of what they were doing and some clips were posted to Twitter. Most of the clips were removed from Twitter for content moderation purposes, which is probably for the best because there are certain things I will never unsee. Israel managed to compile some of this footage and recently screened it for journalists. They’re not going to release the footage to the public, and while in principle I disagree with that, they have understandable reasons. Hamas was capturing and in some cases live streaming this footage to their own radicalized audiences with the purpose of radicalizing them even further, and making the footage public serves that goal. It also serves the purpose of literally spreading terror, just like beheading videos. Now, sometimes these citations get very interesting. If you ever see the phrase, “according to sources within <x>”, these are anonymous sources. And you’re right, there’s absolutely no way to verify these anonymous sources. Supposedly, news sources will vet anonymous sources and agree to protect their identities, but to the cynical news reader, “according to sources within” doesn’t actually mean anything more than “just trust me bro”, and YMMV on whether or not you do, in fact, trust them, bro. > I think there needs to be a journalistic standard put in place, and all news articles need to be held to that standard. Sort of like passing or failing a health inspection. Any sort of government “health inspection” that could shut down a newspaper could easily be applied in an uneven and biased fashion, and would undermine the inherently adversarial relationship between a free press and the government. In some countries you could get away with it, and there would be no free press. In the United States we have the First Amendment. Yes, the news media is backwards and untrustworthy, and they always have been. If you do a really good job at journalism, you get a prize named after a guy who published propaganda to incite the Spanish-American War. But the alternatives are even worse.
- cdrini 3y ago
  I think in the internet age we can do better than "according to a Gaza health ministry spokesman". Linking to original sources should be the standard. Almost everything is online. I think exceptions for things like anonymous sources is reasonable, but then explicitly saying "from an anonymous source" is best. Agreed it probably shouldn't be governement based, there's too much of a potential conflict of interest. But since the standards can be externally validated (don't require going into the org like with health inspections), I think it can be an independent third party. I wouldn't go so far as to say news organizations are inherently untrustworthy. I'm sure many are and there are a lot of competing motivations, but many are genuinely trying to provide good information. It's a difficult problem of balancing those motivations, and I think the new motivation of "the way we make money is by having articles that go viral so ads get more eye balls" has introduced a new dent into that balance. Having a set of standards and then "rating" news organizations should help give organisations a path to improve their services, as well as help readers evaluate how much they should trust a paper.
  - philwelch 3y ago
    > I think in the internet age we can do better than "according to a Gaza health ministry spokesman". Linking to original sources should be the standard. Almost everything is online. I think exceptions for things like anonymous sources is reasonable, but then explicitly saying "from an anonymous source" is best. I agree with you! Unfortunately, original primary sources aren’t always available to the public even when they aren’t anonymous. It’s not just the fault of the journalists but of the organizations that the journalists cover. It’s much easier to have a PR team that deals with journalists than to post everything for public consumption. Among other things, journalists at least used to be really good about “on the record” versus “off the record”—there are infamous instances where Lyndon Johnson would literally whip out his penis in front of journalists and nobody ever reported on it. Which is not a great state of affairs in general but you can see why governments would rather communicate through journalists willing to put up with that sort of thing instead of massaging every piece of information into a formal public statement. For Hamas it’s even harder. They probably can’t set up official social media accounts because they’re a designated terrorist organization, and if they hosted their own website, they still probably couldn’t use anything like AWS or Cloudflare, and they would struggle to stay online in the face of DDoS attacks which would go completely unpunished, just like Kiwifarms. It’s much easier to just talk to journalists instead. So you’re not just asking the journalists to do more work here; you’re also asking everyone else to do half the journalist’s job. At which point they might as well cut out the middleman and just talk to the public directly, which is an increasingly popular strategy in the tech industry. In those cases it’s worth the extra work because you get to tell your side of the story, but people only resort to that strategy when the press burns them enough times. If the press is still willing to pretend your terrorist group is a legitimate health ministry or that you didn’t just whip out your penis in front of them because you lost your temper, why would you bother doing that extra work? Likewise, the press goes along with this stuff in exchange for access. > But since the standards can be externally validated (don't require going into the org like with health inspections), I think it can be an independent third party. Agreed. > I wouldn't go so far as to say news organizations are inherently untrustworthy. I'm sure many are and there are a lot of competing motivations, but many are genuinely trying to provide good information. It’s weird because I’m simultaneously trying to give you a devils advocate argument for why the press does what they do, but also I feel I’m more cynical about them than you are. For what it’s worth, I agree in principle. Journalists are not the spawn of Satan, they’re simply ordinary people responding to incentives. > It's a difficult problem of balancing those motivations, and I think the new motivation of "the way we make money is by having articles that go viral so ads get more eye balls" has introduced a new dent into that balance. Except that’s not actually the governing incentive these days. Social media and ad revenue aren’t the business model, paywalls and subscriptions are. The problem with subscription revenue is that it creates a sort of audience capture, where the NYT will only want to publish stuff that doesn’t upset their subscribers. Add in market segmentation by political leaning and you end up in the situation we have today. > Having a set of standards and then "rating" news organizations should help give organisations a path to improve their services, as well as help readers evaluate how much they should trust a paper. The problem with that is that setting up and evaluating these standards is a reputation-based business. If you buy electrical equipment that’s certified by UL, you know it’s good because you know and trust UL. Who does the public know and trust about the news? Historically this was the news media themselves, which is where the “just trust me bro” reporting practices came from in the first place. The good news is that it’s increasingly possible to find primary sources for things, so if you apply enough research and critical thinking of your own, you can sort of self-service this function. As OP is doing here.

by cdrini 3y ago

philwelch 3y ago

News stories do contain citations, they just don’t follow the same format as Wikipedia. Whenever a news story says “according to a Gaza health ministry spokesman”, that’s a citation. Does it give you an original statement or document published by that spokesman? No, because traditionally these spokesmen don’t speak to the public; they speak to journalists. In some cases this isn’t true; you can watch or read transcripts of White House press conferences and it turns out clips of these press conferences are great for television, but the expectation is for journalists to intermediate between whats happening and the public. Here’s an example of that sort of thing from the other side of the conflict. During the initial October 7 attacks, Hamas fighters captured a lot of video of what they were doing and some clips were posted to Twitter. Most of the clips were removed from Twitter for content moderation purposes, which is probably for the best because there are certain things I will never unsee. Israel managed to compile some of this footage and recently screened it for journalists. They’re not going to release the footage to the public, and while in principle I disagree with that, they have understandable reasons. Hamas was capturing and in some cases live streaming this footage to their own radicalized audiences with the purpose of radicalizing them even further, and making the footage public serves that goal. It also serves the purpose of literally spreading terror, just like beheading videos. Now, sometimes these citations get very interesting. If you ever see the phrase, “according to sources within <x>”, these are anonymous sources. And you’re right, there’s absolutely no way to verify these anonymous sources. Supposedly, news sources will vet anonymous sources and agree to protect their identities, but to the cynical news reader, “according to sources within” doesn’t actually mean anything more than “just trust me bro”, and YMMV on whether or not you do, in fact, trust them, bro. > I think there needs to be a journalistic standard put in place, and all news articles need to be held to that standard. Sort of like passing or failing a health inspection. Any sort of government “health inspection” that could shut down a newspaper could easily be applied in an uneven and biased fashion, and would undermine the inherently adversarial relationship between a free press and the government. In some countries you could get away with it, and there would be no free press. In the United States we have the First Amendment. Yes, the news media is backwards and untrustworthy, and they always have been. If you do a really good job at journalism, you get a prize named after a guy who published propaganda to incite the Spanish-American War. But the alternatives are even worse.

cdrini 3y ago
I think in the internet age we can do better than "according to a Gaza health ministry spokesman". Linking to original sources should be the standard. Almost everything is online. I think exceptions for things like anonymous sources is reasonable, but then explicitly saying "from an anonymous source" is best. Agreed it probably shouldn't be governement based, there's too much of a potential conflict of interest. But since the standards can be externally validated (don't require going into the org like with health inspections), I think it can be an independent third party. I wouldn't go so far as to say news organizations are inherently untrustworthy. I'm sure many are and there are a lot of competing motivations, but many are genuinely trying to provide good information. It's a difficult problem of balancing those motivations, and I think the new motivation of "the way we make money is by having articles that go viral so ads get more eye balls" has introduced a new dent into that balance. Having a set of standards and then "rating" news organizations should help give organisations a path to improve their services, as well as help readers evaluate how much they should trust a paper.
- philwelch 3y ago
  > I think in the internet age we can do better than "according to a Gaza health ministry spokesman". Linking to original sources should be the standard. Almost everything is online. I think exceptions for things like anonymous sources is reasonable, but then explicitly saying "from an anonymous source" is best. I agree with you! Unfortunately, original primary sources aren’t always available to the public even when they aren’t anonymous. It’s not just the fault of the journalists but of the organizations that the journalists cover. It’s much easier to have a PR team that deals with journalists than to post everything for public consumption. Among other things, journalists at least used to be really good about “on the record” versus “off the record”—there are infamous instances where Lyndon Johnson would literally whip out his penis in front of journalists and nobody ever reported on it. Which is not a great state of affairs in general but you can see why governments would rather communicate through journalists willing to put up with that sort of thing instead of massaging every piece of information into a formal public statement. For Hamas it’s even harder. They probably can’t set up official social media accounts because they’re a designated terrorist organization, and if they hosted their own website, they still probably couldn’t use anything like AWS or Cloudflare, and they would struggle to stay online in the face of DDoS attacks which would go completely unpunished, just like Kiwifarms. It’s much easier to just talk to journalists instead. So you’re not just asking the journalists to do more work here; you’re also asking everyone else to do half the journalist’s job. At which point they might as well cut out the middleman and just talk to the public directly, which is an increasingly popular strategy in the tech industry. In those cases it’s worth the extra work because you get to tell your side of the story, but people only resort to that strategy when the press burns them enough times. If the press is still willing to pretend your terrorist group is a legitimate health ministry or that you didn’t just whip out your penis in front of them because you lost your temper, why would you bother doing that extra work? Likewise, the press goes along with this stuff in exchange for access. > But since the standards can be externally validated (don't require going into the org like with health inspections), I think it can be an independent third party. Agreed. > I wouldn't go so far as to say news organizations are inherently untrustworthy. I'm sure many are and there are a lot of competing motivations, but many are genuinely trying to provide good information. It’s weird because I’m simultaneously trying to give you a devils advocate argument for why the press does what they do, but also I feel I’m more cynical about them than you are. For what it’s worth, I agree in principle. Journalists are not the spawn of Satan, they’re simply ordinary people responding to incentives. > It's a difficult problem of balancing those motivations, and I think the new motivation of "the way we make money is by having articles that go viral so ads get more eye balls" has introduced a new dent into that balance. Except that’s not actually the governing incentive these days. Social media and ad revenue aren’t the business model, paywalls and subscriptions are. The problem with subscription revenue is that it creates a sort of audience capture, where the NYT will only want to publish stuff that doesn’t upset their subscribers. Add in market segmentation by political leaning and you end up in the situation we have today. > Having a set of standards and then "rating" news organizations should help give organisations a path to improve their services, as well as help readers evaluate how much they should trust a paper. The problem with that is that setting up and evaluating these standards is a reputation-based business. If you buy electrical equipment that’s certified by UL, you know it’s good because you know and trust UL. Who does the public know and trust about the news? Historically this was the news media themselves, which is where the “just trust me bro” reporting practices came from in the first place. The good news is that it’s increasingly possible to find primary sources for things, so if you apply enough research and critical thinking of your own, you can sort of self-service this function. As OP is doing here.