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> In another exercise, teens were asked to identify which of two pieces of content about Coca-Cola’s plastic waste was more credible: a press release from Coca-

> In another exercise, teens were asked to identify which of two pieces of content about Coca-Cola’s plastic waste was more credible: a press release from Coca-Cola or an article from Reuters. The results were too close for comfort for the report, with only 56% of teens choosing the Reuters article as more trustworthy. So, at the end of the day, you're concerned over which article they're choosing to uncritically put their faith in? If this is the case then I'm not sure `news literacy` is worth anything. I think you'd want "information literacy." The ability to find studies and understand them, to ask questions about them, and to do their own follow up work based off of them. If all you're doing is asking them to choose between two articles then their world view is entirely controlled by publishers, and we've reduced them down to deciding which publisher is more credible, and given them no tools to ask important questions on their own. I can't think of anything less valuable for an education system to involve itself in.

llamaimperative 2y ago
At rock bottom a reader needs to make value judgment between several sources. The Coca Cola v Reuters case is absurd but it is absurd in that it should be blatantly obvious to trust a press release less than an investigative publication. No one said they had to believe everything in the Reuters article. It asked which is more credible. It’s awful seeing people think themselves into a corner like this.
- beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
  It seems like a brand issue for Reuters. The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't, but they might just assume Reuters is no different than some other news site that just reprints press releases wholesale in articles (there are legion). They are teens after all, saying something "is from Reuters" might be meaningless to them in the same way "it came over the wire" would be to them. I wonder if it would be much more stark if you picked Coca Cola vs some well known investigative youtuber. They would probably pick the youtuber much more, I assume.
  - mschuster91 2y ago
    > The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't Yeah, the thing is that there used to be far less outlets back in the day which you'd come into contact with - you had your local newspaper, radio and TV station and the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, Fox or whatever on the national stage. That's it. Anything not on that list at least had some serious money backing it and was thus credible by assumption. These days, the local news have all gone down the drain and got replaced by an army of bloggers, some with actual blogs, some with Medium/Substack and some just doing shit on Twitter/Instagram. National news got increasingly partisan. And on top of that comes an even larger army of influencers of all kinds - game streamers, sometimes porn models pivoting their career, corporate shills, enemy propagandists... It's easy for us old guard to at least roughly size the credibility of an outlet. But the young ones? They grew up in a world where the "household names" factually didn't matter.
  - notahacker 2y ago
    Assuming the source was an aggregator that at worst would simply be reproducing Coca Cola's greenwashing PR was a less reliable source than Coca Cola's greenwashing PR would seem like a pretty bad heuristic... Granted, there are also conspiracy theory websites likely to be less reliable than Coca Cola about Coca Cola, and activist websites whose reliability on the subject of Coca Cola varies from considerably more to considerably less reliable than Coca Coca's own press team, but I don't see any particular reason why teens would assume Reuters was one of those, even if they didn't know what Reuters was. Particularly not if they were showed the article. Sure, there are other ways you can make it make sense like if you substituted "reliable source of Coca Cola's opinion" into the text. But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. Just like similarly large proportions believe that Google's sponsored ads are the most popular or relevant results or that something labelled "Commentary" isn't an opinion...
    - beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
      > But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. This would track in the same way with how the very concept of "selling out" doesn't seem like a big thing for young people anymore. Working with any company for money, or parroting what they say, seems to be pretty popular. Influencer roles have made the wholesale commodification of ones life popular, even earnestly desired. That would seem to promote an atmosphere and general sense of going along with whatever a company says in the same way a lifelong employee might feel compelled to "toe the company line".
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  But they weren't asking about Reuter or Coca Cola, they were asking about screenshots on a mobile phone, correct? So they should've made the decision based on the logo in the header? If they only look at the logo in the header, sure. But if they scanned the whole thing, they would've seen that Coca Cola is claiming to set a goal. Setting a goal is nothing, anyone can do it. There's no point in trying to doubt it. Reuters on the right is verifying Coca Cola on the left by claiming that Coca Cola indeed set this goal. But they are also making other claims, which make it potentially be false. But Coca Cola here is more credible because: 1. The facts are that Coca Cola is announcing a goal. It's the original source. 2. Reuters is reporting on the original source (potential for error), and then they are making additional claims which may or may not be right. "Coca Cola" being criticized. Who is doing that criticism, yada, yada. Reuters is making much stronger claims that are much more difficult to verify. Overall Coca Cola's screenshot by any logical measure is more reliable/credible here.
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    You are way, way overthinking this. The entire study is multiple results all pointing to kids not understanding how incentives distort content. > They did better at recognizing Google’s “sponsored” results as ads, but about 40% of teens said they thought it meant those results were popular or of high quality. Emphasis mine
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      It's both, these results are paid for, but also they are the ones most likely to receive the clicks aka most popular. Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score. You can pay, but still your ads won't be shown, while if you have good ads they will be clicked most at shown in front most frequently. They really should word these exercises better. Here 80% of the kids got it right, because both of those factors influence it. You need both.
      - llamaimperative 2y ago
        I suspect you don't spend much time around your average kid, do you?
n4r9 2y ago
I don't think "uncritical faith" comes into it. Or publishers' inherent credibility. The idea is to consider the motivations and vested interests of the publishers in this specific comparison.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  > The idea is to consider the motivations and vested interests Uh, but the speculation about motivations is the basis of a lot of conspiracy theories.
  - bandyaboot 2y ago
    I think there’s a significant difference between using potential motivation to assess the credibility of sources of information and using potential motivation as the basis for creating a narrative about something.
    - drdaeman 2y ago
      Of course, but the thing about that test ("do you trust Coca Cola or Reuters") doesn't seem make distinction between this. Even if it asked "why", it would still put a considerate reader and a conspiracy believer in the same bin.
      - mewpmewp2 2y ago
        If there's a website showing Coca Cola logo with Coca Cola's contact number being displayed there, and then another screenshot of Reuters logo and a contact number, claiming to be a contact number that Coca Cola shared to them at some point. Which one is more reliable and credible?
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    Is it conspiratorial to think that: 1. Some news will publish anything with the goal of getting clicks. Misleading headlines. 2. News sites will try to hide whether something is sponsored content, because then sponsors are willing to pay more money. 3. News sites are influenced by their leadership views, views in the company and also by the sources that donate money to these news sites. 4 ... believing there are bunch of other incentives that can go against the exact truth or truthful bias.
JohnClark1337 2y ago
[dead]
commandlinefan 2y ago
Honestly, at least with the Coca-Cola press release, I know what their agenda is, so I can at least decide which parts to believe or be skeptical of. News agencies have much more complex agendas, and purveying objective truth isn't part of them.
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  >Honestly, at least with the Coca-Cola press release, I know what their agenda is, so I can at least decide which parts to believe or be skeptical of. Believing this is basically exhibit A of being prone to conspiratorial thinking. In reality, knowing something is propaganda does not make it less effective!
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    That's not conspiratorial thinking. It's understanding the real world. There's no conspiracy, it's just a massive outcome of different incentives aligning in certain ways. Do I think Coca Cola is bad for your health and the environment? Absolutely. Do I think their screenshot here is more credible than Reuters one here? Yes. If anything, Coca Cola would be more conspiratorial than Reuters, since Reuters is more random combination for incentives, while it's more clear about Coca Cola - they are making money from making people unhealthy, ruining the environment and they are trying to make it look good.
silisili 2y ago
The 'reputable' news(collectively) did this to themselves. They figured out at some point you could get more viewers by confirming their biases one way or another. So much so that ask about anyone, and they'll claim the other side's news sources are a joke. It's not surprising people are all skeptical, and that other sources of varying reputation have entered the fray.
- finnthehuman 2y ago
  Even aside from bias, so much of the news entertainment produced by legacy media was slop. They didn’t act to raise media literacy because it would cut into their margins. Who could have possibly been surprised when their lingering prestige dried up and people preferred the slop on YouTube better?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  One thing that is clear with a press release, that it's biased to highlight good sides of the company. With media, without deep investigation and knowing the background of certain news media, you are in the dark about bias. So in a sense press release is more reliable.
hartator 2y ago
Coca-Cola at least can be sued for false advertising whereas news organizations can say anything with no repercussion.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- chiffre01 2y ago
  I'm pretty sure any company with around $11 billion dollars in operating revenue isn't going to care if they get sued for putting out false information.
  - gruez 2y ago
    Depends on how much they get sued for vs how much the lying benefits them.
- Lendal 2y ago
  Nobody is going to successfully sue Coca-Cola for being fooled into thinking drinking Coke will get them a girlfriend or help them meet Santa. It's advertising. Everyone should be educated in school that marketing and advertising are free speech and cannot be reasonably expected to contain any trustworthy information at all, ever. The purpose of marketing is branding, not information. You are correct though that news organizations can say anything as well. When deciding what to believe with journalism, one should take into account what claims are being made, the journalistic reputation of who is making the claims, and the weight of evidence being presented. Again, more information that should have been part of your education, but apparently our education system no longer functions.
- kube-system 2y ago
  Complete falsehoods can be illegal whether your an advertiser or a news organization. But that's not what media literacy is about. Misleading media is rarely libel or advertising malpractice.
hnfong 2y ago
The education system and the media was traditionally tightly controlled or monopolized by a handful of interests. With few players on the field they could weave together a more-or-less coherent story. But was that actually the truth? We only know that the stuff that was debunked was false. As for "information literacy", it's an ideal to strive for, but impossible in practice. It's simply not possible for everyone to be literate at everything. For the topics a person is not familiar with, they need to trust a source at some point. A bit of knowledge is often a hindrance than helpful. With modern tools at hand and sufficient motivation, one with an agenda can fool anyone except the best experts. TBH I think "objective truth" is going down the drains and it's not coming back. The version of truth you believe in is actually real, other people will vehemently disagree, and there will be no mechanism to objectively decide who is right. It might sound pessimistic, but this kind of "diversity" in subjective beliefs can be very useful for other reasons (which is mostly off-topic).
Lendal 2y ago
This is an easy example because one is a press release. It should be well known to everyone that press releases are advertising. They don't even claim to be factual or trustworthy. It's marketing. They're telling you outright that it's company propaganda. You can trust it if you want to, but you can't claim you were fooled. Further investigation is unnecessary. There's nothing to investigate since they've already told you up front it's a press release. The education system's responsibility is to let kids know what a press release is, and how it's different from journalism. Not that all journalism is automatically trustworthy, no. With journalism you also have to take into account track record, and reputation, and so on. If a young person doesn't know what Reuters is, they can use Wikipedia to find out what kind of entity Reuters is, their history, their reputation, etc.. That's how the responsibility of education is involved.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jdietrich 2y ago
  Anyone who believes that there is still a clear delineation between press releases and journalism doesn't know how the sausage is made. Declining revenues and cost-cutting mean that an increasing amount of "reporting" is just an intern paraphrasing press releases. Many news outlets - including Reuters - will happily publish your press release verbatim on their domain, with only a subtle disclaimer to distinguish that paid content from news. I don't fully endorse the sibling comment arguing that news publishers have "brought this on themselves", but the unfortunate reality is that news is a dying business and many publishers are making increasingly desperate decisions at the cost of their reputation. I'm not particularly concerned about bias, because that's usually fairly easy to recognise; what I am concerned about is a very broad decline in quality. The constant pressure to produce more content at lower cost means that most journalists are grimly resigned to churning out articles which they know are poorly researched and thinly sourced. The product is crap, but nobody can admit that it's crap because there's no obvious alternative. https://www.prweek.com/article/1888708/reuters-inks-exclusive-partnership-ez-newswire https://www.prweek.com/article/1888708/reuters-inks-exclusiv... https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/ https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/
dyauspitr 2y ago
99% of people are not going to genuinely do their own research. Their “own research” usually consists of the last thing they heard about it from some influencer. In this paradigm it’s important to be able to have trustworthy information providers and for people to be educated on who those are.
lesuorac 2y ago
IIUC this is from page 40 [1] with the two articles being coca-cola's [2] and reuters [3]. With the key question being "% of teens who say the image on the ___ is more credible (reliable or trustworthy) than the other". I'm not actually sure Reuters is more trustworthy here. The claim being made is that Coca-Cola has a goal to use reusable packaging 25% of the time. Why is a third-party more reliable source of a companies's goals than the company? Hell, if we read the articles, Reuters is bunch of glued together quotes; at least coca-cola has coherency. Like, if we change this to Telsa and ask whether Tesla has a goal of FSD by 2012. I would also think Tesla is more credible in that they had a goal of FSD. Sure, they might not achieve it but the titles are about "pledging" not "achieving". [1]: https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/NLP-Teen-Survey-Report-2024.pdf https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/NLP-Teen-Surv... [2]: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola-announces-industry-leading-target-for-reusable-packaging https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola-anno... [3]: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/coca-cola-criticized-plastic-pollution-pledges-25-reusable-packaging-2022-02-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/coca-c...
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > the claim being made is that Coca-Cola has a goal to use reusable packaging 25% of the time. Why is a third-party more reliable source of a companies's goals than the company? Parsed incredibly literally, sure. But at that point we're asking about reading comprehension and obviously dealing with someone working backwards from the answer they like. The context around the goal is whether it's actually being pursued and whether similar goals have been announced in the past and how those went. That's obviously not going to come reliably from the press release.
  - lesuorac 2y ago
    And doesn't come from the reuter's article either. Reuter's comment about "In 2020, 16% of the company's packaging was reusable. That year, 90% of its refillable glass and plastic containers were collected, it said." is lifted straight from the press release.
  - 2y ago

llamaimperative 2y ago

At rock bottom a reader needs to make value judgment between several sources. The Coca Cola v Reuters case is absurd but it is absurd in that it should be blatantly obvious to trust a press release less than an investigative publication. No one said they had to believe everything in the Reuters article. It asked which is more credible. It’s awful seeing people think themselves into a corner like this.

beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
It seems like a brand issue for Reuters. The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't, but they might just assume Reuters is no different than some other news site that just reprints press releases wholesale in articles (there are legion). They are teens after all, saying something "is from Reuters" might be meaningless to them in the same way "it came over the wire" would be to them. I wonder if it would be much more stark if you picked Coca Cola vs some well known investigative youtuber. They would probably pick the youtuber much more, I assume.
- mschuster91 2y ago
  > The distinction between a press release and investigative journalism is obvious if you know which one is a investigative journalism outlet and which one isn't Yeah, the thing is that there used to be far less outlets back in the day which you'd come into contact with - you had your local newspaper, radio and TV station and the NYT, WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, Fox or whatever on the national stage. That's it. Anything not on that list at least had some serious money backing it and was thus credible by assumption. These days, the local news have all gone down the drain and got replaced by an army of bloggers, some with actual blogs, some with Medium/Substack and some just doing shit on Twitter/Instagram. National news got increasingly partisan. And on top of that comes an even larger army of influencers of all kinds - game streamers, sometimes porn models pivoting their career, corporate shills, enemy propagandists... It's easy for us old guard to at least roughly size the credibility of an outlet. But the young ones? They grew up in a world where the "household names" factually didn't matter.
- notahacker 2y ago
  Assuming the source was an aggregator that at worst would simply be reproducing Coca Cola's greenwashing PR was a less reliable source than Coca Cola's greenwashing PR would seem like a pretty bad heuristic... Granted, there are also conspiracy theory websites likely to be less reliable than Coca Cola about Coca Cola, and activist websites whose reliability on the subject of Coca Cola varies from considerably more to considerably less reliable than Coca Coca's own press team, but I don't see any particular reason why teens would assume Reuters was one of those, even if they didn't know what Reuters was. Particularly not if they were showed the article. Sure, there are other ways you can make it make sense like if you substituted "reliable source of Coca Cola's opinion" into the text. But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. Just like similarly large proportions believe that Google's sponsored ads are the most popular or relevant results or that something labelled "Commentary" isn't an opinion...
  - beezlebroxxxxxx 2y ago
    > But the more obvious explanation is that a large minority of teenagers believe that the most trustworthy authority on anything about Coca Cola is The Coca Cola Company. This would track in the same way with how the very concept of "selling out" doesn't seem like a big thing for young people anymore. Working with any company for money, or parroting what they say, seems to be pretty popular. Influencer roles have made the wholesale commodification of ones life popular, even earnestly desired. That would seem to promote an atmosphere and general sense of going along with whatever a company says in the same way a lifelong employee might feel compelled to "toe the company line".
mewpmewp2 2y ago
But they weren't asking about Reuter or Coca Cola, they were asking about screenshots on a mobile phone, correct? So they should've made the decision based on the logo in the header? If they only look at the logo in the header, sure. But if they scanned the whole thing, they would've seen that Coca Cola is claiming to set a goal. Setting a goal is nothing, anyone can do it. There's no point in trying to doubt it. Reuters on the right is verifying Coca Cola on the left by claiming that Coca Cola indeed set this goal. But they are also making other claims, which make it potentially be false. But Coca Cola here is more credible because: 1. The facts are that Coca Cola is announcing a goal. It's the original source. 2. Reuters is reporting on the original source (potential for error), and then they are making additional claims which may or may not be right. "Coca Cola" being criticized. Who is doing that criticism, yada, yada. Reuters is making much stronger claims that are much more difficult to verify. Overall Coca Cola's screenshot by any logical measure is more reliable/credible here.
- llamaimperative 2y ago
  You are way, way overthinking this. The entire study is multiple results all pointing to kids not understanding how incentives distort content. > They did better at recognizing Google’s “sponsored” results as ads, but about 40% of teens said they thought it meant those results were popular or of high quality. Emphasis mine
  - mewpmewp2 2y ago
    It's both, these results are paid for, but also they are the ones most likely to receive the clicks aka most popular. Ad Rank = Max CPC Bid x Quality Score. You can pay, but still your ads won't be shown, while if you have good ads they will be clicked most at shown in front most frequently. They really should word these exercises better. Here 80% of the kids got it right, because both of those factors influence it. You need both.
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      I suspect you don't spend much time around your average kid, do you?

n4r9 2y ago

I don't think "uncritical faith" comes into it. Or publishers' inherent credibility. The idea is to consider the motivations and vested interests of the publishers in this specific comparison.

drdaeman 2y ago
> The idea is to consider the motivations and vested interests Uh, but the speculation about motivations is the basis of a lot of conspiracy theories.
- bandyaboot 2y ago
  I think there’s a significant difference between using potential motivation to assess the credibility of sources of information and using potential motivation as the basis for creating a narrative about something.
  - drdaeman 2y ago
    Of course, but the thing about that test ("do you trust Coca Cola or Reuters") doesn't seem make distinction between this. Even if it asked "why", it would still put a considerate reader and a conspiracy believer in the same bin.
    - mewpmewp2 2y ago
      If there's a website showing Coca Cola logo with Coca Cola's contact number being displayed there, and then another screenshot of Reuters logo and a contact number, claiming to be a contact number that Coca Cola shared to them at some point. Which one is more reliable and credible?
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  Is it conspiratorial to think that: 1. Some news will publish anything with the goal of getting clicks. Misleading headlines. 2. News sites will try to hide whether something is sponsored content, because then sponsors are willing to pay more money. 3. News sites are influenced by their leadership views, views in the company and also by the sources that donate money to these news sites. 4 ... believing there are bunch of other incentives that can go against the exact truth or truthful bias.

JohnClark1337 2y ago

[dead]

commandlinefan 2y ago

Honestly, at least with the Coca-Cola press release, I know what their agenda is, so I can at least decide which parts to believe or be skeptical of. News agencies have much more complex agendas, and purveying objective truth isn't part of them.

mrguyorama 2y ago
>Honestly, at least with the Coca-Cola press release, I know what their agenda is, so I can at least decide which parts to believe or be skeptical of. Believing this is basically exhibit A of being prone to conspiratorial thinking. In reality, knowing something is propaganda does not make it less effective!
- mewpmewp2 2y ago
  That's not conspiratorial thinking. It's understanding the real world. There's no conspiracy, it's just a massive outcome of different incentives aligning in certain ways. Do I think Coca Cola is bad for your health and the environment? Absolutely. Do I think their screenshot here is more credible than Reuters one here? Yes. If anything, Coca Cola would be more conspiratorial than Reuters, since Reuters is more random combination for incentives, while it's more clear about Coca Cola - they are making money from making people unhealthy, ruining the environment and they are trying to make it look good.

silisili 2y ago

The 'reputable' news(collectively) did this to themselves. They figured out at some point you could get more viewers by confirming their biases one way or another. So much so that ask about anyone, and they'll claim the other side's news sources are a joke. It's not surprising people are all skeptical, and that other sources of varying reputation have entered the fray.

finnthehuman 2y ago
Even aside from bias, so much of the news entertainment produced by legacy media was slop. They didn’t act to raise media literacy because it would cut into their margins. Who could have possibly been surprised when their lingering prestige dried up and people preferred the slop on YouTube better?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mewpmewp2 2y ago
One thing that is clear with a press release, that it's biased to highlight good sides of the company. With media, without deep investigation and knowing the background of certain news media, you are in the dark about bias. So in a sense press release is more reliable.

hartator 2y ago

Coca-Cola at least can be sued for false advertising whereas news organizations can say anything with no repercussion.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
chiffre01 2y ago
I'm pretty sure any company with around $11 billion dollars in operating revenue isn't going to care if they get sued for putting out false information.
- gruez 2y ago
  Depends on how much they get sued for vs how much the lying benefits them.
Lendal 2y ago
Nobody is going to successfully sue Coca-Cola for being fooled into thinking drinking Coke will get them a girlfriend or help them meet Santa. It's advertising. Everyone should be educated in school that marketing and advertising are free speech and cannot be reasonably expected to contain any trustworthy information at all, ever. The purpose of marketing is branding, not information. You are correct though that news organizations can say anything as well. When deciding what to believe with journalism, one should take into account what claims are being made, the journalistic reputation of who is making the claims, and the weight of evidence being presented. Again, more information that should have been part of your education, but apparently our education system no longer functions.
kube-system 2y ago
Complete falsehoods can be illegal whether your an advertiser or a news organization. But that's not what media literacy is about. Misleading media is rarely libel or advertising malpractice.

hnfong 2y ago

The education system and the media was traditionally tightly controlled or monopolized by a handful of interests. With few players on the field they could weave together a more-or-less coherent story. But was that actually the truth? We only know that the stuff that was debunked was false. As for "information literacy", it's an ideal to strive for, but impossible in practice. It's simply not possible for everyone to be literate at everything. For the topics a person is not familiar with, they need to trust a source at some point. A bit of knowledge is often a hindrance than helpful. With modern tools at hand and sufficient motivation, one with an agenda can fool anyone except the best experts. TBH I think "objective truth" is going down the drains and it's not coming back. The version of truth you believe in is actually real, other people will vehemently disagree, and there will be no mechanism to objectively decide who is right. It might sound pessimistic, but this kind of "diversity" in subjective beliefs can be very useful for other reasons (which is mostly off-topic).

Lendal 2y ago

This is an easy example because one is a press release. It should be well known to everyone that press releases are advertising. They don't even claim to be factual or trustworthy. It's marketing. They're telling you outright that it's company propaganda. You can trust it if you want to, but you can't claim you were fooled. Further investigation is unnecessary. There's nothing to investigate since they've already told you up front it's a press release. The education system's responsibility is to let kids know what a press release is, and how it's different from journalism. Not that all journalism is automatically trustworthy, no. With journalism you also have to take into account track record, and reputation, and so on. If a young person doesn't know what Reuters is, they can use Wikipedia to find out what kind of entity Reuters is, their history, their reputation, etc.. That's how the responsibility of education is involved.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
jdietrich 2y ago
Anyone who believes that there is still a clear delineation between press releases and journalism doesn't know how the sausage is made. Declining revenues and cost-cutting mean that an increasing amount of "reporting" is just an intern paraphrasing press releases. Many news outlets - including Reuters - will happily publish your press release verbatim on their domain, with only a subtle disclaimer to distinguish that paid content from news. I don't fully endorse the sibling comment arguing that news publishers have "brought this on themselves", but the unfortunate reality is that news is a dying business and many publishers are making increasingly desperate decisions at the cost of their reputation. I'm not particularly concerned about bias, because that's usually fairly easy to recognise; what I am concerned about is a very broad decline in quality. The constant pressure to produce more content at lower cost means that most journalists are grimly resigned to churning out articles which they know are poorly researched and thinly sourced. The product is crap, but nobody can admit that it's crap because there's no obvious alternative. https://www.prweek.com/article/1888708/reuters-inks-exclusive-partnership-ez-newswire https://www.prweek.com/article/1888708/reuters-inks-exclusiv... https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/ https://www.reuters.com/press-releases/

dyauspitr 2y ago

99% of people are not going to genuinely do their own research. Their “own research” usually consists of the last thing they heard about it from some influencer. In this paradigm it’s important to be able to have trustworthy information providers and for people to be educated on who those are.

lesuorac 2y ago

IIUC this is from page 40 [1] with the two articles being coca-cola's [2] and reuters [3]. With the key question being "% of teens who say the image on the ___ is more credible (reliable or trustworthy) than the other". I'm not actually sure Reuters is more trustworthy here. The claim being made is that Coca-Cola has a goal to use reusable packaging 25% of the time. Why is a third-party more reliable source of a companies's goals than the company? Hell, if we read the articles, Reuters is bunch of glued together quotes; at least coca-cola has coherency. Like, if we change this to Telsa and ask whether Tesla has a goal of FSD by 2012. I would also think Tesla is more credible in that they had a goal of FSD. Sure, they might not achieve it but the titles are about "pledging" not "achieving". [1]: https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/NLP-Teen-Survey-Report-2024.pdf https://newslit.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/NLP-Teen-Surv... [2]: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola-announces-industry-leading-target-for-reusable-packaging https://www.coca-colacompany.com/media-center/coca-cola-anno... [3]: https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/coca-cola-criticized-plastic-pollution-pledges-25-reusable-packaging-2022-02-10/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/coca-c...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> the claim being made is that Coca-Cola has a goal to use reusable packaging 25% of the time. Why is a third-party more reliable source of a companies's goals than the company? Parsed incredibly literally, sure. But at that point we're asking about reading comprehension and obviously dealing with someone working backwards from the answer they like. The context around the goal is whether it's actually being pursued and whether similar goals have been announced in the past and how those went. That's obviously not going to come reliably from the press release.
- lesuorac 2y ago
  And doesn't come from the reuter's article either. Reuter's comment about "In 2020, 16% of the company's packaging was reusable. That year, 90% of its refillable glass and plastic containers were collected, it said." is lifted straight from the press release.
- 2y ago