5 ms·

It's hardly a war between epistemologies, journalists just have to fill time. They've had Nate Silver on to celebrate his work a dozen times when he serves the

It's hardly a war between epistemologies, journalists just have to fill time. They've had Nate Silver on to celebrate his work a dozen times when he serves the purpose, lets them tell a different story than the day before. They're not against his methodology, they're against his current results, which don't make the race as interesting as it could be. (If Nate was the only one saying it was a close race, they'd be pushing his narrative above all others.) News is biased, but not how most people think, it's biased towards conflict (and novelty, doomsaying, and sensationalism). It's just entertainment, there's no permanent epistemology to entertainment.

nas 14y ago
It's like ultra-sound, takes all the fun out of guessing the sex of the baby. If he methods were less reliable or the race was closer so the result was more in doubt, he would be fine feed for the grist mill. Right now he's just a party pooper.
jamesbritt 14y ago
News is biased, but not how most people think, it's biased towards conflict (and novelty, doomsaying, and sensationalism). They could, however, be using those entertainment factors to cover, say, the fall of real wages, or the current state of unions, or what's actually in a Congressional budget, or any number of other topics that seem to get very little air-time.
- greenyoda 14y ago
  I'd also like to see more air time devoted to the Congressional budget, but I can't think of a way of presenting it that the average TV viewer would find entertaining.
  - Tloewald 14y ago
    The problem isn't that it's been tried and found difficult, but it's been assumed to be difficult and not tried (to paraphrase P. G. Wodehouse)
    - colmvp 14y ago
      I disagree. I did work for a startup that specifically showed un-biased news on a variety of pertinent topics from a variety of great sources. Yet the videos that made the most money for them (advertising revenue) were the stupid shit you'd expect. Gossip, memes, sexual related content... At the end of the day the most mainstream news stories/clips were far more lucrative than the topics a typical HNers/New Yorker reader might enjoy.
      - Tloewald 14y ago
        The OP referred to turning various kinds of interesting subject matter into entertainment, versus merely reporting it. I think this is actually an interesting idea, and I don't think it has really been tried. The typical entertaining news story "writes itself". Gossip, stupid pet tricks, etc. Indeed the entertainment industry is itself very conservative in its choices of subject matter.
  - pdonis 14y ago
    That word "entertaining" is the root of the problem. People don't want to actually think about issues; they want to be entertained. You can't fix problems by being entertained.
zecho 14y ago
> News is biased, but not how most people think, it's biased towards conflict Exactly. They're called "stories" for a reason.
- rhizome 14y ago
  What about "articles?"
  - zecho 14y ago
    I work in media, specifically journalism. By and large, they're "stories." What makes news "news" is pretty much the same thing that makes entertainment "entertainment" (uniqueness, continuity, composition, etc.). There's a big difference between gathering and filtering facts of the day and writing a news piece, which requires the gathering and filtering of facts, while presenting them in a narrative format, with quotes and conflict (which is sometimes called balance, but I tend to disagree with that argument). For most news with a short lead time, it's produced by formula (see: the inverted pyramid), and often decided by editors shooting from the hip as to what is a good story.
    - rhizome 14y ago
      Your eliding of news and entertainment is troublesome.
      - zecho 14y ago
        In what way? Conflict itself is a news value. Something may be news precisely because there is conflict, and exponentially so if that conflict affects a news organizations' readers via proximity or other news values. Where no conflict can be found, it can be (and often is) generated via balance. Science writing is full of it, same with education writing and politics. Find one source that says one thing, another source that says the opposite and you've generated built-in conflict. If the conflict is sensational enough, your editor puts it on the front page. This is a real problem in journalism. Journalists are specifically trained as generalists. There's a culture of avoiding becoming experts in their beats, instead they strive for access to experts. The argument is that by not being an expert, one can write for a general audience more clearly. Just follow the formula. Anyway, news is narrative. That is the chosen format. Compelling narratives do better at selling news than dry factual reporting. There's a reason why, for example, when newspapers do polls that are outliers from the consensus they blare that information as loudly as possible. It's not because they honestly think they're right, it's that they've spent upwards of $20,000 conducting the survey and now they're going to get their worth out of it.

nas 14y ago

It's like ultra-sound, takes all the fun out of guessing the sex of the baby. If he methods were less reliable or the race was closer so the result was more in doubt, he would be fine feed for the grist mill. Right now he's just a party pooper.

jamesbritt 14y ago

News is biased, but not how most people think, it's biased towards conflict (and novelty, doomsaying, and sensationalism). They could, however, be using those entertainment factors to cover, say, the fall of real wages, or the current state of unions, or what's actually in a Congressional budget, or any number of other topics that seem to get very little air-time.

greenyoda 14y ago
I'd also like to see more air time devoted to the Congressional budget, but I can't think of a way of presenting it that the average TV viewer would find entertaining.
- Tloewald 14y ago
  The problem isn't that it's been tried and found difficult, but it's been assumed to be difficult and not tried (to paraphrase P. G. Wodehouse)
  - colmvp 14y ago
    I disagree. I did work for a startup that specifically showed un-biased news on a variety of pertinent topics from a variety of great sources. Yet the videos that made the most money for them (advertising revenue) were the stupid shit you'd expect. Gossip, memes, sexual related content... At the end of the day the most mainstream news stories/clips were far more lucrative than the topics a typical HNers/New Yorker reader might enjoy.
    - Tloewald 14y ago
      The OP referred to turning various kinds of interesting subject matter into entertainment, versus merely reporting it. I think this is actually an interesting idea, and I don't think it has really been tried. The typical entertaining news story "writes itself". Gossip, stupid pet tricks, etc. Indeed the entertainment industry is itself very conservative in its choices of subject matter.
- pdonis 14y ago
  That word "entertaining" is the root of the problem. People don't want to actually think about issues; they want to be entertained. You can't fix problems by being entertained.

zecho 14y ago

> News is biased, but not how most people think, it's biased towards conflict Exactly. They're called "stories" for a reason.

rhizome 14y ago
What about "articles?"
- zecho 14y ago
  I work in media, specifically journalism. By and large, they're "stories." What makes news "news" is pretty much the same thing that makes entertainment "entertainment" (uniqueness, continuity, composition, etc.). There's a big difference between gathering and filtering facts of the day and writing a news piece, which requires the gathering and filtering of facts, while presenting them in a narrative format, with quotes and conflict (which is sometimes called balance, but I tend to disagree with that argument). For most news with a short lead time, it's produced by formula (see: the inverted pyramid), and often decided by editors shooting from the hip as to what is a good story.
  - rhizome 14y ago
    Your eliding of news and entertainment is troublesome.
    - zecho 14y ago
      In what way? Conflict itself is a news value. Something may be news precisely because there is conflict, and exponentially so if that conflict affects a news organizations' readers via proximity or other news values. Where no conflict can be found, it can be (and often is) generated via balance. Science writing is full of it, same with education writing and politics. Find one source that says one thing, another source that says the opposite and you've generated built-in conflict. If the conflict is sensational enough, your editor puts it on the front page. This is a real problem in journalism. Journalists are specifically trained as generalists. There's a culture of avoiding becoming experts in their beats, instead they strive for access to experts. The argument is that by not being an expert, one can write for a general audience more clearly. Just follow the formula. Anyway, news is narrative. That is the chosen format. Compelling narratives do better at selling news than dry factual reporting. There's a reason why, for example, when newspapers do polls that are outliers from the consensus they blare that information as loudly as possible. It's not because they honestly think they're right, it's that they've spent upwards of $20,000 conducting the survey and now they're going to get their worth out of it.