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When I read the news, I filter out the verifiable bits and simply discard all weak or low quality evidence, not unlike the reasoning used by the investigators i

by Natsu 2y ago

When I read the news, I filter out the verifiable bits and simply discard all weak or low quality evidence, not unlike the reasoning used by the investigators in this story on HN the other day when they were looking for missing persons: https://suanto.com/2024/06/06/the-time-I-built-an-ROV-01/ https://suanto.com/2024/06/06/the-time-I-built-an-ROV-01/ Legal reporting is some of the worst, so I am frequently hunting for actual court documents, transcripts, etc. which are often significantly different from what you see reported. One favorite trick is that media will report things selectively in a way that is misleading. You get a more complete picture when you see, e.g., how a witness holds up under cross-examination and what details could or could not be corroborated.

Spivak 2y ago
This is my approach as well just usually without the news part. For local politics and court cases I get emails from the legislative bill tracker and my state supreme court has an RSS feed every time they make a ruling. If it weren't for the fact that I read the opinion or the bill itself I would think I was going mad with how news outlets report on it. I swear we're reading two different documents. I've pretty much given up on anything of the form "journalist reporting on primary source material" which is what the OP is about. They should have just linked to the guy's YouTube so everyone could see first hand what's happening. The average news article tells me more about how people are reacting to a thing than the thing itself.
- Natsu 2y ago
  This is a good approach, I get a lot more information by going directly to the source in cases like that. Unfortunately, it makes some things like Wikipedia less useful because they explicitly want to use secondary sources rather than primary source material. I know they have their own reasons for that due to dealing with pseudoscientific cranks and whatnot, but it does make anything politically charged less useful as reference material.

by Natsu 2y ago

Spivak 2y ago

This is my approach as well just usually without the news part. For local politics and court cases I get emails from the legislative bill tracker and my state supreme court has an RSS feed every time they make a ruling. If it weren't for the fact that I read the opinion or the bill itself I would think I was going mad with how news outlets report on it. I swear we're reading two different documents. I've pretty much given up on anything of the form "journalist reporting on primary source material" which is what the OP is about. They should have just linked to the guy's YouTube so everyone could see first hand what's happening. The average news article tells me more about how people are reacting to a thing than the thing itself.

Natsu 2y ago
This is a good approach, I get a lot more information by going directly to the source in cases like that. Unfortunately, it makes some things like Wikipedia less useful because they explicitly want to use secondary sources rather than primary source material. I know they have their own reasons for that due to dealing with pseudoscientific cranks and whatnot, but it does make anything politically charged less useful as reference material.