5 ms·

One thing that has really frustrated me with "mainstream media" in the last few years is that the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decli

One thing that has really frustrated me with "mainstream media" in the last few years is that the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline. I feel like half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort. Outrageous claims are just taken at face value, or at best just put alongside quotes from other officials/politicians saying the opposite. As an example, how many times has the strait of Hormuz been declared open by the US, when it turns out it really wasn't? And every time these low-effort articles just echo that statement without even trying to evaluate if that is true. I mean, the transponder data on shipping is publicly available, there's a dozen websites you could use to actually see passage through the strait to verify the claim. If you don't do even the most basic follow ups, is that even a news article? Or is it just a more elaborate form of re-tweeting?

dmoy 2mo ago
This is not exactly a new criticism. See e.g. Fisk's complaint from decades ago r.e. "US Officials Say" https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-farcical-end-of-the-american-dream-6106419.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/rober...
- andy_ppp 2mo ago
  How can we measure if things are worse now? Potentially asking/training an LLM on news stories from different eras might be a fairer comparison than human intelligence at this point.
fyltr 2mo ago
isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? I am not old enough to be able to compare to what journalism might once have been, but it seems that the current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases. Also, I often hear stuff like: don't put too much weight on what X says, he was wrong about Y. Lower journalist wages, a need for immediate reporting that undermines in-depth research and risking your own rep every time you put more than 'facts' out there just don't give any incentive to do more than pick out the quotes you want to use.
- sixtyj 2mo ago
  > a need for immediate reporting This is the key. Nobody wanted to read yesterday’s newspaper and the same applies to recent digital media world. Media are pushed to deliver almost instant news feed. Common news stories are often updated several times an hour. This leads to burnout for the journalist covering the event. This constant focus on breaking news is so common and devastating on society that it has inspired books like Newport’s The Deep Work.
- watwut 2mo ago
  > isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? Yes. > it seems that the current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases No. It is not factual at all. Factual journalism would check facts and said 'Hormuze is not open' or even 'Trump lied again'. The 'neutral journalism' or 'both sides' or 'they say they say' is bias on itself - and harmful one at that.
- TuringTest 2mo ago
  > isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? Neutral journalism is not presenting the claims of all opposing parties, it's fact-checking the claims of both sides without a bias for any of them. If one party says the truth and the other side is not, it's still neutral to repeat only the claims of the first one.
  - pzxc 2mo ago
    Exactly. As the saying goes, if one side says it's raining and the other side says it's not, it's not the job of the journalist to report both. It's the job of the journalist to look out the fucking window to see if it's really raining or not.
- dfxm12 2mo ago
  No. Knowingly reporting lies (including lies by omission) isn't "neutral".
- ericjmorey 2mo ago
  "current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases" The facts chosen to include in a report are chosen with bias. There's no neutral subset of facts about any event.
TacticalCoder 2mo ago
[flagged]
- corndoge 2mo ago
  I mean, people did try to discuss it. YouTube and Facebook actually deleted content discussing it, in possibly the most blatant act of political censorship in recent memory in this country, and barely anyone knows that. Not that the US government has any credibility left after current admin, but the statements in here are factual, they really did take down youtube videos that were speculating about lab leak. I saw it happen. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admits-censorship-under-biden-promises-end-bans-youtube-accounts https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admi...
- cruffle_duffle 2mo ago
  That whole timespan… the absolute nonsense the “trusted media” and their “experts” were pushing with nary a single trace of critical thinking absolutely boggles the mind. How about PCR test results, “opening dates”, death counts, the almost intentional mixing of terms like IFR vs CFR, etc. the list goes on and on and on. The media is absolutely just state propaganda.
- peaseagee 2mo ago
  If it had been a lab leak, how would that change the behaviors that everyday people would have had to take? The social distancing, masking, handwashing, quarantining would have all been identical.
  - bandofthehawk 2mo ago
    Maybe it wouldn't change general hygienic practices, but it might have a impact on voting preferences to find out who was funding the research that led to the creation of the virus and the leak.
    - ericjmorey 2mo ago
      Huh? What person fixated on lab leak claims would have changed their voting behavior?
lovich 2mo ago
I’ve also seen a trend of news organizations sane washing statements when they are too crazy, which is modifying the facts. Take this AP news article for instance[1]. I watched the speech live. He said he’d be running for a fourth term because he’s still claiming that he won in 2020. That’s a crazy lie so AP News helpfully changed it to “quipped about a third presidential term.” That might seem minor on its own but I’ve noticed it’s been occcuring more and more like [2] where the headline calls out the Democrats for blocking a bill and simultaneously calls the bill bi partisans, or [3] which on review actually seems like more of your critique than the sanewashing where they report that a crack in a container vessel reduced pressure but then take the officials statements that nothing leaked out like physics got an update where you can have pressure reduced from material escaping the container but it magically is still all inside the container [1] https://apnews.com/article/correspondents-dinner-trump-shooting-white-house-dfa0ecdbe3552910903d5c23a8e96a35 https://apnews.com/article/correspondents-dinner-trump-shoot... [2] https://apnews.com/article/democrats-senate-fisa-trump-pulte-leverage-71d1d0e70c243e6e41cf3e7853670a02 https://apnews.com/article/democrats-senate-fisa-trump-pulte... [3] https://apnews.com/article/california-tank-leak-explosion-garden-grove-770af6de585b1771824539b163555eaa https://apnews.com/article/california-tank-leak-explosion-ga...
DrewADesign 2mo ago
I was glad to see a bit of a decline in the “Worrying Trend: (a dozen) People (on Twitter) are saying [controversial thing]!” type of articles filter down through whatever algorithm I was subject to at the moment, but notes they’ve just replaced it with TikTok.
- jchw 2mo ago
  I swear to God there are articles on news sites (glorified blogs, but you know) that are along the lines of "people on twitter are saying this" and then if you actually look there is literally one (or perhaps two if you're lucky) person saying it and their post isn't even that popular. It's not that I'm surprised it's just that I know 98-99% of people are just going to take that at face value, and either allow it to confirm their pre-existing notions, or perhaps they will see it and shake their heads disapprovingly. I think this over time leads to people having distorted views of sentiment on issues, sometimes leading to really weird situations where literally most people disagree but nobody wants to be the one to say it.
  - ggregoryarms 2mo ago
    Yeah it really flips things upside down when a journalist has so much access to info that they can essentially pick their own story from the data. Maybe they can't credibly fudge the numbers, but they can find enough data to agenda-set pretty much anything.
  - DrewADesign 2mo ago
    Yeah it’s really just depressing. It’s like every news outlet wants to be just a ‘little bit’ “national enquirer” but still have everyone take them seriously. Our news industry is abjectly sensationalist.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- Gigachad 2mo ago
  This always felt like way to work around libel laws. Where they can claim "People on twitter are saying x", as an indirect way of making a claim without having to be liable for it.
Funes- 2mo ago
>the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline Under late stage capitalism, the main driver in any industry, not just journalism, is unscrupulous opportunism. Profit comes first, at the cost of everything else, including, of course, effort and sincere expression.
- nakedneuron 2mo ago
  Isn't it also true that a quick buck can be made on the stock market with these news? Now Trump offers privileged access to his "tweets" for money. Late stage capitalism indeed.
BeetleB 2mo ago
How much money are you directly paying per month to news organizations? News organizations have been in decline for a few decades because of two reasons: 1. Lack of ad revenue (all vacuumed up by Google) 2. Loss of subscribers because they can get free news online Don't expect quality from people not being paid much.
- josephg 2mo ago
  Yep this. I’m a paid subscriber to the economist’s podcast. A lot of their journalism is excellent. I really enjoyed the recent Tocqueville road trip. And their coverage of AI a few months ago was great - it was really interesting to hear what AI adoption in companies looks like for non technical people. Yesterday I watched a fabulous piece by the Australian 4 Corners on food fraud in our country. They did forensic research into what food on our supermarket shelves actually contains. Shocking, but excellent journalism. Four Corners is a journalism arm of the Australian ABC - our national broadcaster. They’re funded by my tax dollars. I don’t know what people mean when they say “mainstream media”. There’s lots of organisations out there - some of them doing really great work. But journalism is time intensive to do well, so it costs money. News you get for free is often either junk or it’s propaganda.
  - coatmatter 2mo ago
    Whenever I encounter someone who jumps at the first opportunity to criticise "mainstream media", I ask them what their preferred outlets are. I tend to not get a response, which to me is quite telling.
    - NikolaNovak 2mo ago
      I think a mixture of BBC, cnn, al jazeera, economist, will get a casual reader to a decent spot, and they're all mainstream media. Possibly guardian but emlarhically not their opinion pages (I agree with them, but even so they're gratingly opinionated, hate to think what a die hard conservative will think of them :)
      - 2mo ago
dfxm12 2mo ago
I suspect this is more due to cost cutting and the fact that context would likely paint the people who own these media outlets in a bad light. Keeping their readers underinformed is win-win for them.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
jaredwiener 2mo ago
For what its worth, I'm a former journalist looking to automate this. Getting on those newsmaking lists, and automating the rest. Free, consumer website: https://www.forth.news https://www.forth.news Paid site with custom notifications and feeds: https://pro.forth.news https://pro.forth.news
- grvdrm 2mo ago
  Neat. Bookmarking to revisit. Does your team do any headline writing and or manual section? Your site reminds me of Techmeme.
  - jaredwiener 2mo ago
    Right now, no. The Pro site is all self-curated by the user, and forth.news is a series of LLMs doing grouping, summarization/headline writing, measuring urgency, categorization, etc.
- rambambram 2mo ago
  Your 'personal' site in your bio is giving me a browser-warning not to visit. Maybe expired certificate? Btw, nice initiative with Forth! That's why I clicked.
  - jaredwiener 2mo ago
    Thank you! Looks like I didn’t rotate my certificate. Eek
like_any_other 2mo ago
> regurgitated without any additional effort. Wrong. Great effort goes into ensuring only the desired statements are regurgitated, and the undesirable ones omitted: https://www.foxnews.com/media/ap-report-slain-north-dakota-teen-omits-alleged-assailant-thought-victim-republican-extremist https://www.foxnews.com/media/ap-report-slain-north-dakota-t... This is not a cherry-picked example, but the policy of most major media, explicitly outlined in their style guides: https://jfulford.substack.com/p/hiding-the-race-of-criminalsthe-medias https://jfulford.substack.com/p/hiding-the-race-of-criminals...
Computer0 2mo ago
I follow the New York Times, as well as being an avid news follower and have found them to be of poor reporting quality a handful of times over the past year.
bch 2mo ago
I don't know what qualifies as "mainstream media" here, but I feel various public broadcasters have served me well over the years: CBC[0] in Canada, BBC[1] in United Kingdom, NPR[2] in America, ABC[3] in Australia, NHK[4] in Japan... switching around the world also gives reprieve from local politics letting you tune into someone else's local politics practically recreationally, which seems more and more necessary in the modern world of today. Streaming radio is one of the best things about the contemporary internet. [0] https://cbc.ca/ https://cbc.ca/ [1] https://bbc.com/ https://bbc.com/ [2] https://npr.org/ https://npr.org/ [3] https://www.abc.net.au/ https://www.abc.net.au/ [4] https://www.nhk.or.jp/ https://www.nhk.or.jp/
- daniel_iversen 2mo ago
  The ABC in Australia feels so opinionated and tilted to the “left” side of politics whenever I’ve watched it on the TV. And it may just have been that news show or the specific host but it makes it not enjoyable to watch when it seems there’s always an “angle” and negative undertones and people constantly having an axe to grind. I’d personally like a bit more neutral news that also leans a little more on the positive and inspiring side.
  - SturgeonsLaw 2mo ago
    It's "just a blog", but if you're after positive and uplifting, that does exist https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ I like to check this every so often as a palette cleanser for the endless bad news that is available elsewhere
  - protocolture 2mo ago
    >The ABC in Australia feels so opinionated and tilted to the “left” side of politics whenever I’ve watched it on the TV. And it may just have been that news show or the specific host but it makes it not enjoyable to watch when it seems there’s always an “angle” and negative undertones and people constantly having an axe to grind. I’d personally like a bit more neutral news that also leans a little more on the positive and inspiring side. I dont see any bias in their journalism, but they have a tendency to just accept everything at face value. They will also shop around for experts that support their opinions. One person will write an article about housing referring to housing experts, and get one view, and then a few years later another will instead quote a public housing expert getting another view. Theres never any "Lets test the quality of each expert and try and figure out whats true" 4 corners and foreign correspondant however are still absolute top tier journalism. Its a shame they dont apply those standards everywhere.
safety1st 2mo ago
I think a lot of it has to do with the desire and pressure to publish as fast as possible. Online, EVERYTHING is rushed and even published before the facts are known. The story may or may not get updated as the situation develops. Outside of tech because it affects my work, I've stopped reading online news altogether. There's a bookstore down the road from me which sells the daily and weekend editions of a couple papers. On a slow weekend I'll walk over there, buy the weekend edition of some reputable paper, and peruse it over coffee. The stories are invariably better than anything I see online, as well as in the daily editions. None of this stuff is urgent. I don't need up to the minute. I just need to kill some time, preferably with higher quality information. Honestly the old ways were better in this case. Just stop reading online news. Grab a weekend edition of a paper when you're bored instead. Couple bucks. No subscription. Better. They haven't changed much.
partyficial 2mo ago
> half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort that is EXACTLY what i want in news. i do not want your summarization opinion out-of-context clickbait eye-catching headline snippet. just be a parrot.
- avaer 2mo ago
  Parroting seems like the same thing ("out-of-context clickbait eye-catching headline snippet"), except without any checks or oversight.
- sethammons 2mo ago
  No no no. Absolutely not. A parrot repeats, we need verification. "We've always been at war with Eurasia." -Politimouth The news should say this is not true when it is not true.
  - partyficial 2mo ago
    how do you know the news is any more true than the source it is verifying ? Now i have to research whether two sources are true or not.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - sethammons 2mo ago
      Reputation and some fact checking. I want my news to say, "politician say x; and is a liar, here is the evidence." Nobody should want a propaganda parrot. If I look into it and the politician is not lying, I know to trust the source less.
avaer 2mo ago
Look at how many times the current government has tried to shut down reporting that didn't tow the current party line. Selective access, prosecutions, lawsuits, threats to block mergers, comedians being cancelled while the administration cheers, there's a (s)hitlist of journalists on the whitehouse site, etc. It probably has something to do with the decline of quality journalism.
randusername 2mo ago
News is perpetually in decline just like the old perpetually fear the young will bring humanity to ruin. Kierkegaard in the 1850s: "The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control."
- conductr 2mo ago
  While the history of news quality has been cyclical, I think there’s some objective truth if you’re starting reference points is 1970ish-1990ish and on. The internet broke their financial model. They had an integrity and editorial standard; long abandoned. And, the fairness doctrine was abandoned. Fast forward a bit and the industry has or is devolved closer to what it was in your quote. I’m sure there was still some funny business going on. They didn’t report so heavily on tabloid stuff and probably protected people in power more. But there was absolutely some level of investigative journalism in every article.

dmoy 2mo ago

This is not exactly a new criticism. See e.g. Fisk's complaint from decades ago r.e. "US Officials Say" https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-farcical-end-of-the-american-dream-6106419.html https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/fisk/rober...

andy_ppp 2mo ago
How can we measure if things are worse now? Potentially asking/training an LLM on news stories from different eras might be a fairer comparison than human intelligence at this point.

fyltr 2mo ago

isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? I am not old enough to be able to compare to what journalism might once have been, but it seems that the current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases. Also, I often hear stuff like: don't put too much weight on what X says, he was wrong about Y. Lower journalist wages, a need for immediate reporting that undermines in-depth research and risking your own rep every time you put more than 'facts' out there just don't give any incentive to do more than pick out the quotes you want to use.

sixtyj 2mo ago
> a need for immediate reporting This is the key. Nobody wanted to read yesterday’s newspaper and the same applies to recent digital media world. Media are pushed to deliver almost instant news feed. Common news stories are often updated several times an hour. This leads to burnout for the journalist covering the event. This constant focus on breaking news is so common and devastating on society that it has inspired books like Newport’s The Deep Work.
watwut 2mo ago
> isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? Yes. > it seems that the current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases No. It is not factual at all. Factual journalism would check facts and said 'Hormuze is not open' or even 'Trump lied again'. The 'neutral journalism' or 'both sides' or 'they say they say' is bias on itself - and harmful one at that.
TuringTest 2mo ago
> isn't this an attempt at 'neutral journalism'? Neutral journalism is not presenting the claims of all opposing parties, it's fact-checking the claims of both sides without a bias for any of them. If one party says the truth and the other side is not, it's still neutral to repeat only the claims of the first one.
- pzxc 2mo ago
  Exactly. As the saying goes, if one side says it's raining and the other side says it's not, it's not the job of the journalist to report both. It's the job of the journalist to look out the fucking window to see if it's really raining or not.
dfxm12 2mo ago
No. Knowingly reporting lies (including lies by omission) isn't "neutral".
ericjmorey 2mo ago
"current trend in journalism is to be as factual as possible, without adding in one's own biases" The facts chosen to include in a report are chosen with bias. There's no neutral subset of facts about any event.

TacticalCoder 2mo ago

[flagged]

corndoge 2mo ago
I mean, people did try to discuss it. YouTube and Facebook actually deleted content discussing it, in possibly the most blatant act of political censorship in recent memory in this country, and barely anyone knows that. Not that the US government has any credibility left after current admin, but the statements in here are factual, they really did take down youtube videos that were speculating about lab leak. I saw it happen. https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admits-censorship-under-biden-promises-end-bans-youtube-accounts https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/google-admi...
cruffle_duffle 2mo ago
That whole timespan… the absolute nonsense the “trusted media” and their “experts” were pushing with nary a single trace of critical thinking absolutely boggles the mind. How about PCR test results, “opening dates”, death counts, the almost intentional mixing of terms like IFR vs CFR, etc. the list goes on and on and on. The media is absolutely just state propaganda.
peaseagee 2mo ago
If it had been a lab leak, how would that change the behaviors that everyday people would have had to take? The social distancing, masking, handwashing, quarantining would have all been identical.
- bandofthehawk 2mo ago
  Maybe it wouldn't change general hygienic practices, but it might have a impact on voting preferences to find out who was funding the research that led to the creation of the virus and the leak.
  - ericjmorey 2mo ago
    Huh? What person fixated on lab leak claims would have changed their voting behavior?

lovich 2mo ago

I’ve also seen a trend of news organizations sane washing statements when they are too crazy, which is modifying the facts. Take this AP news article for instance[1]. I watched the speech live. He said he’d be running for a fourth term because he’s still claiming that he won in 2020. That’s a crazy lie so AP News helpfully changed it to “quipped about a third presidential term.” That might seem minor on its own but I’ve noticed it’s been occcuring more and more like [2] where the headline calls out the Democrats for blocking a bill and simultaneously calls the bill bi partisans, or [3] which on review actually seems like more of your critique than the sanewashing where they report that a crack in a container vessel reduced pressure but then take the officials statements that nothing leaked out like physics got an update where you can have pressure reduced from material escaping the container but it magically is still all inside the container [1] https://apnews.com/article/correspondents-dinner-trump-shooting-white-house-dfa0ecdbe3552910903d5c23a8e96a35 https://apnews.com/article/correspondents-dinner-trump-shoot... [2] https://apnews.com/article/democrats-senate-fisa-trump-pulte-leverage-71d1d0e70c243e6e41cf3e7853670a02 https://apnews.com/article/democrats-senate-fisa-trump-pulte... [3] https://apnews.com/article/california-tank-leak-explosion-garden-grove-770af6de585b1771824539b163555eaa https://apnews.com/article/california-tank-leak-explosion-ga...

DrewADesign 2mo ago

I was glad to see a bit of a decline in the “Worrying Trend: (a dozen) People (on Twitter) are saying [controversial thing]!” type of articles filter down through whatever algorithm I was subject to at the moment, but notes they’ve just replaced it with TikTok.

jchw 2mo ago
I swear to God there are articles on news sites (glorified blogs, but you know) that are along the lines of "people on twitter are saying this" and then if you actually look there is literally one (or perhaps two if you're lucky) person saying it and their post isn't even that popular. It's not that I'm surprised it's just that I know 98-99% of people are just going to take that at face value, and either allow it to confirm their pre-existing notions, or perhaps they will see it and shake their heads disapprovingly. I think this over time leads to people having distorted views of sentiment on issues, sometimes leading to really weird situations where literally most people disagree but nobody wants to be the one to say it.
- ggregoryarms 2mo ago
  Yeah it really flips things upside down when a journalist has so much access to info that they can essentially pick their own story from the data. Maybe they can't credibly fudge the numbers, but they can find enough data to agenda-set pretty much anything.
- DrewADesign 2mo ago
  Yeah it’s really just depressing. It’s like every news outlet wants to be just a ‘little bit’ “national enquirer” but still have everyone take them seriously. Our news industry is abjectly sensationalist.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
Gigachad 2mo ago
This always felt like way to work around libel laws. Where they can claim "People on twitter are saying x", as an indirect way of making a claim without having to be liable for it.

Funes- 2mo ago

>the level of effort being put into journalism seems to be on decline Under late stage capitalism, the main driver in any industry, not just journalism, is unscrupulous opportunism. Profit comes first, at the cost of everything else, including, of course, effort and sincere expression.

nakedneuron 2mo ago
Isn't it also true that a quick buck can be made on the stock market with these news? Now Trump offers privileged access to his "tweets" for money. Late stage capitalism indeed.

BeetleB 2mo ago

How much money are you directly paying per month to news organizations? News organizations have been in decline for a few decades because of two reasons: 1. Lack of ad revenue (all vacuumed up by Google) 2. Loss of subscribers because they can get free news online Don't expect quality from people not being paid much.

josephg 2mo ago
Yep this. I’m a paid subscriber to the economist’s podcast. A lot of their journalism is excellent. I really enjoyed the recent Tocqueville road trip. And their coverage of AI a few months ago was great - it was really interesting to hear what AI adoption in companies looks like for non technical people. Yesterday I watched a fabulous piece by the Australian 4 Corners on food fraud in our country. They did forensic research into what food on our supermarket shelves actually contains. Shocking, but excellent journalism. Four Corners is a journalism arm of the Australian ABC - our national broadcaster. They’re funded by my tax dollars. I don’t know what people mean when they say “mainstream media”. There’s lots of organisations out there - some of them doing really great work. But journalism is time intensive to do well, so it costs money. News you get for free is often either junk or it’s propaganda.
- coatmatter 2mo ago
  Whenever I encounter someone who jumps at the first opportunity to criticise "mainstream media", I ask them what their preferred outlets are. I tend to not get a response, which to me is quite telling.
  - NikolaNovak 2mo ago
    I think a mixture of BBC, cnn, al jazeera, economist, will get a casual reader to a decent spot, and they're all mainstream media. Possibly guardian but emlarhically not their opinion pages (I agree with them, but even so they're gratingly opinionated, hate to think what a die hard conservative will think of them :)
    - 2mo ago

dfxm12 2mo ago

I suspect this is more due to cost cutting and the fact that context would likely paint the people who own these media outlets in a bad light. Keeping their readers underinformed is win-win for them.

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

jaredwiener 2mo ago

For what its worth, I'm a former journalist looking to automate this. Getting on those newsmaking lists, and automating the rest. Free, consumer website: https://www.forth.news https://www.forth.news Paid site with custom notifications and feeds: https://pro.forth.news https://pro.forth.news

grvdrm 2mo ago
Neat. Bookmarking to revisit. Does your team do any headline writing and or manual section? Your site reminds me of Techmeme.
- jaredwiener 2mo ago
  Right now, no. The Pro site is all self-curated by the user, and forth.news is a series of LLMs doing grouping, summarization/headline writing, measuring urgency, categorization, etc.
rambambram 2mo ago
Your 'personal' site in your bio is giving me a browser-warning not to visit. Maybe expired certificate? Btw, nice initiative with Forth! That's why I clicked.
- jaredwiener 2mo ago
  Thank you! Looks like I didn’t rotate my certificate. Eek

like_any_other 2mo ago

> regurgitated without any additional effort. Wrong. Great effort goes into ensuring only the desired statements are regurgitated, and the undesirable ones omitted: https://www.foxnews.com/media/ap-report-slain-north-dakota-teen-omits-alleged-assailant-thought-victim-republican-extremist https://www.foxnews.com/media/ap-report-slain-north-dakota-t... This is not a cherry-picked example, but the policy of most major media, explicitly outlined in their style guides: https://jfulford.substack.com/p/hiding-the-race-of-criminalsthe-medias https://jfulford.substack.com/p/hiding-the-race-of-criminals...

Computer0 2mo ago

I follow the New York Times, as well as being an avid news follower and have found them to be of poor reporting quality a handful of times over the past year.

bch 2mo ago

I don't know what qualifies as "mainstream media" here, but I feel various public broadcasters have served me well over the years: CBC[0] in Canada, BBC[1] in United Kingdom, NPR[2] in America, ABC[3] in Australia, NHK[4] in Japan... switching around the world also gives reprieve from local politics letting you tune into someone else's local politics practically recreationally, which seems more and more necessary in the modern world of today. Streaming radio is one of the best things about the contemporary internet. [0] https://cbc.ca/ https://cbc.ca/ [1] https://bbc.com/ https://bbc.com/ [2] https://npr.org/ https://npr.org/ [3] https://www.abc.net.au/ https://www.abc.net.au/ [4] https://www.nhk.or.jp/ https://www.nhk.or.jp/

daniel_iversen 2mo ago
The ABC in Australia feels so opinionated and tilted to the “left” side of politics whenever I’ve watched it on the TV. And it may just have been that news show or the specific host but it makes it not enjoyable to watch when it seems there’s always an “angle” and negative undertones and people constantly having an axe to grind. I’d personally like a bit more neutral news that also leans a little more on the positive and inspiring side.
- SturgeonsLaw 2mo ago
  It's "just a blog", but if you're after positive and uplifting, that does exist https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ I like to check this every so often as a palette cleanser for the endless bad news that is available elsewhere
- protocolture 2mo ago
  >The ABC in Australia feels so opinionated and tilted to the “left” side of politics whenever I’ve watched it on the TV. And it may just have been that news show or the specific host but it makes it not enjoyable to watch when it seems there’s always an “angle” and negative undertones and people constantly having an axe to grind. I’d personally like a bit more neutral news that also leans a little more on the positive and inspiring side. I dont see any bias in their journalism, but they have a tendency to just accept everything at face value. They will also shop around for experts that support their opinions. One person will write an article about housing referring to housing experts, and get one view, and then a few years later another will instead quote a public housing expert getting another view. Theres never any "Lets test the quality of each expert and try and figure out whats true" 4 corners and foreign correspondant however are still absolute top tier journalism. Its a shame they dont apply those standards everywhere.

safety1st 2mo ago

I think a lot of it has to do with the desire and pressure to publish as fast as possible. Online, EVERYTHING is rushed and even published before the facts are known. The story may or may not get updated as the situation develops. Outside of tech because it affects my work, I've stopped reading online news altogether. There's a bookstore down the road from me which sells the daily and weekend editions of a couple papers. On a slow weekend I'll walk over there, buy the weekend edition of some reputable paper, and peruse it over coffee. The stories are invariably better than anything I see online, as well as in the daily editions. None of this stuff is urgent. I don't need up to the minute. I just need to kill some time, preferably with higher quality information. Honestly the old ways were better in this case. Just stop reading online news. Grab a weekend edition of a paper when you're bored instead. Couple bucks. No subscription. Better. They haven't changed much.

partyficial 2mo ago

> half of the news articles are just a collection of quotes from officials or politicians in public statements, being regurgitated without any additional effort that is EXACTLY what i want in news. i do not want your summarization opinion out-of-context clickbait eye-catching headline snippet. just be a parrot.

avaer 2mo ago
Parroting seems like the same thing ("out-of-context clickbait eye-catching headline snippet"), except without any checks or oversight.
sethammons 2mo ago
No no no. Absolutely not. A parrot repeats, we need verification. "We've always been at war with Eurasia." -Politimouth The news should say this is not true when it is not true.
- partyficial 2mo ago
  how do you know the news is any more true than the source it is verifying ? Now i have to research whether two sources are true or not.
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  - sethammons 2mo ago
    Reputation and some fact checking. I want my news to say, "politician say x; and is a liar, here is the evidence." Nobody should want a propaganda parrot. If I look into it and the politician is not lying, I know to trust the source less.

avaer 2mo ago

Look at how many times the current government has tried to shut down reporting that didn't tow the current party line. Selective access, prosecutions, lawsuits, threats to block mergers, comedians being cancelled while the administration cheers, there's a (s)hitlist of journalists on the whitehouse site, etc. It probably has something to do with the decline of quality journalism.

randusername 2mo ago

News is perpetually in decline just like the old perpetually fear the young will bring humanity to ruin. Kierkegaard in the 1850s: "The daily press is the evil principle of the modern world, and time will only serve to disclose this fact with greater and greater clearness. The capacity of the newspaper for degeneration is sophistically without limit, since it can always sink lower and lower in its choice of readers. At last it will stir up all those dregs of humanity which no state or government can control."

conductr 2mo ago
While the history of news quality has been cyclical, I think there’s some objective truth if you’re starting reference points is 1970ish-1990ish and on. The internet broke their financial model. They had an integrity and editorial standard; long abandoned. And, the fairness doctrine was abandoned. Fast forward a bit and the industry has or is devolved closer to what it was in your quote. I’m sure there was still some funny business going on. They didn’t report so heavily on tabloid stuff and probably protected people in power more. But there was absolutely some level of investigative journalism in every article.