I paid for a newspaper and the only thing factual was the cartoons. Fake news has been around longer than the Internet. Look at Supermarket tabloids. Look at all of the journalists being fired now.
Fake news is paid for with advertising and collecting info on the readers. Sometimes you have to pay for it as well.
Newspaper I paid for reported falsely that a friend of mine's parents had neglected their spinal meningitis daughter and she died. They rushed her to the hospital in their van knocking off the rack on top to get her help because they couldn't wait for an ambulance. She died anyway, and they charged the parents even if they did everything correctly to save her. From that day I learned of fake news.
The parents were not neglectful, they took care of their daughter and took her to the hospital as soon as they noticed the trouble.
Parents were not charged with neglect until after the article was written saying they neglected their daughter. There was no neglect just dirty laundry.
I was involved with a news event that the local news covered once. They got pretty much every fact wrong. It wasn't due to bias (for example, they described the building as a "warehouse" when it was an obvious office building), it was just sloppiness and failure to check any facts.
You don't really understand how accurate the media is until they report on something you know a lot about. Journalists are generalist laymen with strong incentives to be sensationalist and alarmist. Well researched journalism made by somebody who spent long enough on the story to understand what the hell they're talking about is legitimately rare. Uncommon would be an exaggeration.
One of the things that irks me is the rhetoric that Trump-era distrust of the media is somehow undermining democracy or whatever. If you aren't distrustful of the media you are a naive and dangerous fool. I remember the overwhelming majority of US mainstream media pushing the Iraq war with stories that relied on bias and bogus sources. Interviews with officals & experts that had skin in the game. Blind faith in the media is even more dangerous than the also dangerous posture of not paying any heed to what they have to say.
I do pay, just to alt-media companies that I respect more than the NY Times. MSM won't get my dime while they push political agendas instead and target the opposition.
Do these alt-media companies have accredited journalists, held to objective professional and ethical standards laid out by journalist organizations? Do they cite credible sources and facts with every article?
Because that's what we're losing. The idea that JoeBlowKnowsTheTruth.com holds the same level of accountability, rigor, and seriousness as an actual news organization is what's gotten us into this mess.
Why would you go through all that effort just to have the door slammed in your face? It’s like showing up to a random person’s house party uninvited, being booted out, and returning each week. It’s not like you can’t create your own house party or find another house party where you’re invited to.
Anyone who says mainstream media disdainfully enough to abreiviate it msm is usually a conservative nut job.
He's a Trumper who refers to virtually all real media as the msm and the alt left and continually whines about the alt left, entitled millennials, and women.
CLickbait articles where you have to click for each page of the article are the worst. You know they do it for advertising revenue and not for journalistic integrity.
Some of these alt-media sites are political and put a spin on stories as well.
> ..., held to objective professional and ethical standards laid out by journalist organizations?
In other words you are looking for journalists who are good at winning prizes from their peers. But this risks becoming a self-contained system where journalists are "reputable" because they parrot what other "reputable" journalists think.
If IronWolve pays for journalism from sites that strike him as being thorough and trustworthy, then IronWolve's own judgement is as (small) exogenous contribution to the system.
Of course it is also possible that IronWolve is a fool who pays for foolish journalism. But if so, then that's his problem.
>In other words you are looking for journalists who are good at winning prizes from their peers. But this risks becoming a self-contained system where journalists are "reputable" because, they parrot what other "reputable" journalists think.
I think you're missing the difference between journalism and editorialism. The latter has become our standard of "news" nowadays. A quick glance at the top alt-media sites shows literally nothing but unsourced, opinion driven fear mongering and click bait. It's not about winning awards or thinking "correctly", it's about operating within the bounds of good faith arguments, and adherence to ethical standards agreed upon by society at large. You can enjoy all the political opinions you wish, but don't confuse them with fact based news reporting.
The idea that "news organisations" still have any journalistic integrity is an absolute joke. Most now amount to nothing more than opinion blogs and biased propaganda against political party X or Y.
The decline of integrity in mainstream media is actually what has gotten us into this mess. If the quality of mainstream news reporting did not decline so widely there would not be a vacuum for sites like JoeBlowKnowsTheTruth.com to draw an audience.
News organisations and their journalists are completely responsible for the scenario and trying to blame anyone else is just a scapegoat for their own bad work, the consequences (decline in readers/revenue, journalist layoffs) are theirs to face.
> MSM won't get my dime while they push political agendas instead and target the opposition
I think you mean, mostly (with a few exceptions), tell the truth? I feel like you're likely searching specifically with news agendas you agree with, rather than reading a broad range of mainstream sources and pulling the threads together yourself.
I mean, if you really want very dry, just fact news, follow a news agency [1], but I suspect you don't really want facts...
I subscribed to a year of Washington Post and received a ton of spam-ish content, notifications, and pleas to renew during the entire period. Lesson learned, cancelled with predjudice.
I don't know why Bezos doesn't offer the paper for free?
It seems like the Goodwill it would generate might make him wealthier?
Or, at least offer it for free to Prime members?
In all honesty, when I don't see billionaires giving back; I try to avoid their product.
(Yes--I'm on the dislike of the selfish billionaire bandwagon. I know they are easy targets, but just how much money do you need to live a full life? I think about the billions his wife will receive for just being with the man, and don't get it. These people must see how the poor, and homeless are doing, but just don't do much? And I'm sorry, If you grew up in America, and made your wad here; give back to people here. Rant done--waiting for a another Shadowban.)
Not sure about anyone else but every time I read an article about something I'm actually an expert in or few times about myself or a company I've worked for I see at least a handful of factual errors and/or exaggerations that aren't real.
> Not sure about anyone else but every time I read an article about something I'm actually an expert in or few times about myself or a company I've worked for I see at least a handful of factual errors and/or exaggerations that aren't real.
News is only the first rough draft of history [1] [2].
Newspapers are definitely not perfect, and they definitely make errors, but there's no better way to get such a breadth of timely, relatively reliable information to a general reader.
I think the news cycle has to do with the quality of news as well. Sometimes it's just impossible to get the proper facts within the first 24h of breaking news. This is why I read weekly periodicals.
Not really, I still find lots of errors on recounts of past events. Aside from a few articles, that almost always come from rare good journalists, I don't really see any research on most news media, not for recent events, nor for historical accounts.
> Not really, I still find lots of errors on recounts of past events. Aside from a few articles, that almost always come from rare good journalists, I don't really see any research on most news media, not for recent events, nor for historical accounts.
You're looking in the wrong place. You'll find the first rough draft of history in a newspaper, you'll find the final draft in a book (or at least the most polished draft).
I often find lots of bugs in software that's been rushed out the door to fill and urgent need, it's the name with newspapers.
I think these articles are pretty comical coming from the New York Times, a for profit company, that has been cutting costs amidst really serious editorial failures.
I would believe this much more if it was from an independent news source. It’s like a car salesman telling you great buying a car is.
It’s reasonable that the Times would have such a biased, unfounded article. But not so much that anyone pay attention to or make decisions based on it.
In what way is NYT not an independent news source? It's not owned by some giant media conglomerate, it's family owned. And last I checked it was one of few media companies reporting good financial results, not cutting costs.
Good point. I meant that they are not independent from their owners’ profit motive. They are publicly traded [0] so their motive is not truth, it is maximizing shareholder equity under US law.
So arguments like this article, even cloaked under “opinion” don’t carry weight because it’s just propaganda to sell more papers.
> their motive is not truth, it is maximizing shareholder equity under US law.
There's nothing about those things that is mutually exclusive. If your entire business depends upon you being a truth teller it is in the interests of both the company and your shareholders for you to tell the truth. Manufacturing a story could be devastating for NYT's reputation, and consequently for their shareholders.
> a for profit company, that has been cutting costs amidst really serious editorial failures.
Extra care and attention to detail isn't going to just happen unless there's enough money flowing in solid journalism to allow for it.
It's quite possible that the cost cutting is connected to the editorial failures, and is a consequence of falling revenues. And the NYT as a whole is in a position to see how those things relate.
This isn't to place the NYT above criticism. They could stand to up their game. The profession at large could when it comes to painting accurate pictures of the world and the NYT is better than lots of sources. But it isn't going to happen unless people can get paid to do it.
And unless we pay for it, it's another place we'll be the product. Because the other models for journalism are (a) selling our attention to advertisers or (b) propagandists selling our pre-decided opinion.
I have witnessed the same and would also like to include that the journalists often land, shall we say, sub-par 'experts' as interviewees. I can rattle off 50 highly qualified, well respected professionals in my field who have opposing viewpoints yet time and again I read the hyperbolic opinions of an under qualified "Dr Phil".
Yup, most news are either fake news or simply poorly researched/misinterpretated. You cant be in the business of pushing so many stories every single day and pretend that you are covering them properly.
I've seen misquotes in articles on CNN and MSNBC after having just watched the live video on youtube or C-SPAN. Some of them seemed purposeful to fit the journalists narrative, and at least with CNN could not find any official channel for submitting errors.
100% which makes me nervous about reporting in areas I'm not familiar with.
Many people I know who have been interviewed said something to the effect that "newspapers twist words to fit their angle". They also happened to be in positions of power, so it's hard for me to tell if they simply wanted to control the narrative and the newspaper wasn't going along for the ride it if the newspaper was the one with the hidden agenda. Probably a mix of both.
When I make a mistake at my job which could impact others, I report it immediately. Do journalists do the same? Newspapers are infamous for publishing retractions and corrections at the bottom of page 17, in tiny print, 2 weeks later -- if at all.
My parents are conservation biologists who study sea turtles. As sea turtles are relatively charismatic animals that everyone knows, they get a lot of press requests. From as early as I could read the ensuing articles, I could see the divergence between what my parents could have ever possibly said and what made it to print. Even in the complete absence of political bias, journalists are a pretty noisy channel.
One huge leap forward was the rise of Wikipedia. Now the journalists recite Wikipedia facts for background, so I see fewer sentences like "Sea turtles, like other mammals,..."
Stopped reading after this. Whining does not suit the NYT well. It is an outstanding newspaper and has basically, also thanks to the internet, a world wide audience. It is better prepared to the changing business model as most other newspapers. Whining here about google and facebook is rent seeking.
I dont consider BuzzFeed as quality either. Wishing a meme producing site wasnt sharing the name as whats supposed to be a news site. My other issue is when they dont properly check the source of a story like the MAGA teens whom they claimed were doing things they clearly were not if you saw the full video.... Fake News goes both ways... If the "mainstream" media wont check sources better then they are just as much a part of the problem.
Why BuzzFeed chose to use the same brand to cover such different sites is beyond me. Every time a quality article is linked here, almost without fail there is someone who will comment along the lines of "BuzzFeed is trash, I'm not clicking that"
I don't blame them. It's not their fault that the news site decided to share their name with a trash clickbait site.
I've noticed how prevalent the "BuzzFeed News isn't BuzzFeed, it's totally different and actually does some decent journalism" meme has been in the past couple years, to the point where I caught myself explaining it to someone that way, with zero first-hand knowledge, just repeating the meme more or less verbatim.
I acknowledged this in my comment, I also raised a concern about quality of reporting. Sure they can have some good apples, but the bad apples are the ones that poison you.
I'm just incredibly baffled by what you're proposing the solution is if its not a cultural shift towards paying for content? In an exclusively programmatic ad based market, the only long term winning strategy is to write click-bait and fake news.
We should all be extremely concerned about what the writer is getting at. If you're going to call it whining, and say they need to change their business model, what should they change it to?
"I'm just incredibly baffled by what you're proposing the solution is if its not a cultural shift towards paying for content?"
I am not in the news business. Nor am I am in the diesel motor business. It is not my task to suggest solutions to a changing business environment. The NYC can now, thanks to the internet, deliver its content to a world wide audience. A paywall can be easily established. I pay for good news (e.g. "The Economist"). For institutions like the NYT or "The Economist" it would take quite some skill to screw this up. The market may move into "the winners take it all" direction.
I agree that free news is a problem to many newspapers. Fake news are another problem. But solutions like screaming for government subsidiaries (e.g. in Germany) or getting fees from google or facebook are not solutions. Taxing eCars to pay employees that produced diesel engines to save jobs is not a solution either.
If you don't want to get indexed by google because you are afraid they "steal" your content, then this can be solved by one line in your robots.txt file
And it is really hard to ask for redistribution of common news without any further added value.
If we shift toward paying for content, is there not going to be a market for subscriptions to fake news as well as subscriptions to real news? Paying for content alone doesn't solve the problem of fake news. How does Joe Average even know which subscriptions are the right subscriptions? Please don't let an algorithm decide for them.
In terms of payment itself, I feel the going rate is a big issue. Checking the NY Times just now, they're asking $5 per week of me for a basic subscription. Let's make the math easy and call that $250 per year, and assume four subscriptions are needed to be sure we have a well rounded intake, giving a $1000 per year news budget. For a person with a net income of $100k+ per year, maybe this is not a big spend. But for people on lower incomes - who I would argue are likely the people most susceptible to fake news - this becomes a much greater expense and will discourage them from subscribing to anything. Compared to freely available news, it would be putting disadvantaged people at a even greater disadvantage, and let's face it - in a democratic society, I'd rather everybody have access to the same information, than know half the population is making decisions based on garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.
In terms of what the new model should be, I don't think I have any answers. I just know that I have a budget for news and it is not in the order of a thousand dollars a year for a well rounded intake, however I also want everybody to have access to the same news, so I don't think paywalls are a good idea.
> If we shift toward paying for content, is there not going to be a market for subscriptions to fake news as well as subscriptions to real news? Paying for content alone doesn't solve the problem of fake news. How does Joe Average even know which subscriptions are the right subscriptions? Please don't let an algorithm decide for them.
It doesn't solve fake news, except that subscriptions might keep the production of real news economically viable. Internet-ad revenue probably can't support real journalism at all. It's too labor intensive.
Real news is expensive to produce, you have to pay reporters to spend their time finding the facts; fake news is cheap, since lies can be made up in your pajamas.
The internet makes it that they don't need to fill pages and pages every day just to be tossed into the trash bin. A year old article can still be valuable, and it can be augmented with additional sides and updates. It just takes diligence and work, not to mention setting up publishing and formatting abilities way beyond the average cookie cutter CMS. Investing in their own production processes and technology, in other words.
But nobody's doing that. They're just making the churn more efficient. At most they'll link to some previous articles, forcing you to do the sifting yourself, and only linking one way.
By the time a newsworthy event reaches mainstream level, it's already been going for a while. That's the point at which I'd want to read a brief one pager of backstory, before diving into current events, surrounded by more context. Take the conflict in Syria: it might just be me not paying attention and being too busy with other stuff, but I genuinely missed when that started. When it did enter my radar, everyone was talking about it like we all knew how it happened. Well, if you take a random person on the street, someone who was upset at the (staged?) pictures of a dead kid... How many can tell you what that conflict is about and get close to the truth? I bet it's incredibly low, the only difference is I'm being honest about my ignorance instead of doing the stupid primate thing of pretending to be in the know in fear of looking foolish (and, I guess, western propaganda being just that when it comes to these subjects).
There's your hole in the market. That's what people want to pay for: not being the person who can't join in on interesting conversations. Well, are our current journalists up to that task? I very much doubt it, cos most have no ability beyond being a newsperson, jacks of no trade at all. Instead of letting experts do the talking, we're letting self important pretenders do it, and then, mostly to push an agenda.
The Quillette expose linked here about the geneticist bullied into suicide should lead us all to ask: why are we letting these morons tell us anything? They just want to enter industries and scenes they don't know, mine them for brief moments of relevance, and leave behind a wreck of human dignity. All over a ten minute talk they couldn't be bothered to understand, because bullying a sperg was more useful to them.
I agree with this. The 24/7 news cycle ruined us in many ways, even print.
I’d rather have a journalist spend a week on a story (or more) and give more context instead of basically rehashing what was said by both sides.
I like The Atlantic, as it is mostly long form, not breaking news, but the impact of social media and 24/7 news has affected it as well.
Either way, I think the more you focus on the larger picture through long form journalism instead of the daily machinations, the better informed we will be and less spun up all the time.
> setting up publishing and formatting abilities way beyond the average cookie cutter CMS. Investing in their own production processes and technology...
I need to point out that the NYT is doing this. They probably have one of the more advanced CMS setups and their tech team puts out some really interesting things as well.
As to your other point, I want to see good, factual, long form content, but a lot of people will not read that. They only want the headline and bullet points. So newspapers need to adapt to that and ensure the main facts are presented right up front, but then have the detail and back story for those that want to do a deep dive.
Huffington Post occasionally has deep and (what looks like) well researched articles though.
It's a real mix and that's my problem. I want to pay for something that's good. I don't need all the bullshit filler, and in fact seeing the bullshit filler makes me not want to pay at all because it's an insult to my time.
There is no feature of paying for news that makes it more real. The NYT and WaPo should stop mixing news and editorial and relying on "anonymous administration officials" and intelligence agencies; that would set an example to other outlets.
We need some mechanism to actually authenticate anonymous sources if we expect them to continue to be taken seriously. It's exhausting to be bombarded by article after article that makes all sorts of claims where the evidence consists primarily or entirely of testimony by unnamed sources who may or may not actually exist. It's a "tried" practice, yes, but I have my doubts about how "true" it is in this day and age.
I don't pretend to have an actual answer to how we'd build such a mechanism or what it'd look like, but there's a need for it nonetheless. Maybe some trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party that can say "Yes, this unnamed source is legitimate"?
> It's exhausting to be bombarded by article after article that makes all sorts of claims where the evidence consists primarily or entirely of testimony by unnamed sources who may or may not actually exist.
Are you suggesting that reputable newspapers are making up unnamed sources or are too careless to privately confirm that they're real?
> I don't pretend to have an actual answer to how we'd build such a mechanism or what it'd look like, but there's a need for it nonetheless. Maybe some trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party that can say "Yes, this unnamed source is legitimate"?
It's been invented, and it's called journalism. That trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party is the newspaper itself.
"Are you suggesting that reputable newspapers are making up unnamed sources or are too careless to privately confirm that they're real?"
It's a possibility, yes. Are you denying that possibility?
"That trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party is the newspaper itself."
That's not a "third party", by the very definition of "third party". Unless you're suggesting a newspaper (or other publication) that's entirely disconnected from its journalists and editors?
I think any commercial enterprise that thrives on eyeballs will always have a perverse incentive to be "interesting"/sensational to one demographic or another.
This incentive is diminished for news outlets like the BBC, though not completely because they are funded by TV license fees which the British public complain about frequently.
Paying makes theml publisher less beholden to advertisers mean they need fewer fluff/shock pieces, which leaves more money and time for more serious journalism.
It's worth having ads unblocked on Twitter to get the weekly-or-so NYT ad in the form of a sponsored tweet, click on it, and see that out of hundreds, sometimes thousands of replies to the sponsored tweet, literally zero of them have anything positive to say. Allowing all replies to sponsored tweets to be visible seems like a poor marketing strategy but at least it provides ample entertainment.
Paying does not stop people from lying to you,as long as there is interest in it. The crowd has been manipulated throughout the history, and is destined to be so, because there's interest in it. If you want not to be part of the crowd,use your own discretion, which you cannot outsource,by paying.
> Paying does not stop people from lying to you, as long as there is interest in it.
But if you don't pay someone to go out into the world and do the labor-intensive work of investigating the truth, you'll certainly get lies written from the comfort of someone's desk.
Lies and opinion are much cheaper to produce than accurate factual reporting, since there's less overhead.
I pay for the NYT but only after getting a 1 year deal where it works out to $8/mo, after that it jumps to $20/mo. If newspapers want to compete for paid online subscriptions they should be more in line with Netflix and Spotify and be a flat $10/mo
The NYT has been on a crusade against FB for the past two years now. No other major news publication has published as many articles on FB as they have.
I will never support NYT, not because I support FB, but because they disguise their media campaign as one meant to protect the individual's privacy, when in reality NYT has a very strong monetary incentive to go after FB. These ulterior motives further decay the trust the general public has in news media of all kinds and it's disappointing to see HN gobble up NYT article after NYT article just because FB is unpopular here.
Are the articles false? I don't really understand the reasoning here. Facebook is one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world now, why should NYT not report on them? One straightforward way for FB to stop this reporting would be to stop doing shady things.
It doesn't have to be false. What gets picked for reporting reveals a lot about bias as well. The other thing is the magnitude. Being objective would be to consider the truth, the relevancy and the magnitude of issues. If NYT doesn't like FB, they can give front page coverage to every negative news about FB irrespective of how big the issue is and how many people it affects.
It's like raising a sev-1 ticket against a team/project you hate or escalating far and wide every single mistake a coworker makes - it tarnishes the reputation even while being completely truthful with respect to the statement made.
But can the same not be said of every news organisation out there - that they stand to lose at the hands of FB? So who is qualified to report on FB, no one?
You're not wrong that NYT would have a motivation to report negatively about FB. But that doesn't automatically mean that is the motive, though. All their reporting I've seen has been notable, and not hysterical. There's been additional good reporting by TechCrunch and ProPublica, I'm not sure how NYT's coverage differs.
They're at the very least substantially misleading, sometimes to the point where I reckon people would have a more accurate view of the world if they didn't read them. For instance, the one where the New York Times pretended that giving people the ability to use manufacturer-provided smartphone apps to view content their friends shared with them was the same as giving that information to the manufacturer of their smartphone, even when it never left the device: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...
> Facebook allowed the device companies access to the data of users’ friends without their explicit consent, even after declaring that it would no longer share such information with outsiders. Some device makers could retrieve personal information even from users’ friends who believed they had barred any sharing
How do you know this information never left the device? Or, given the nature of the FB API, that it used the device at all?
I want a service where I can subscribe to journalists not news papers. I want to know that they are getting a portion of my subscription and being successful. I want 0 advertising in this news paper.
Where do I get it? Is this something we need to create? I'd love a fact check o meter on each journalist as well, but I think that'd be very open to bias, so I don't know how that'd happen.
Anyway, I don't subscribe to newspapers because I don't like their model, not because I don't want to support the journalist. I have no clue if I'm missing a massive part of how the newspapers actually front a lot of money to make journalism better by paying expenses for journalists. I'm no expert on the ins and outs of journalism. I just see a lot of crap reporting that doesn't hold water and I'm tired of reading op-ed pieces falsely labeled as journalism.
Yes - but I'm not subscribing to 10 news papers. I try to reference CNN, NBC, ABC, MSNBC, Fox News, NPR, Bloomberg, Guardian, NY Post, NY Times. I will even read some of the alt-left and alt-right stuff as well.
I find there are some journalists I'd like to block and never read their trash again from each paper and some I would like to go back to over and over again. (Chris Wallace is a good one)
The fact that I can't get consistency from any one of the above is frustrating and I'm not paying 10 bucks a month per newspaper, the most I'll do is turn my ad blocker off.
I want to give journalists my money, but I don't want to give a newspaper with a single agenda my money.
I can't name many journalists off by heart. I'd like stories (or writers) to be rated based on quality (the way StackExchange does with answers) so that I never have to see the chuff. I don't care if the content comes from a trained journalist or a blogger who happens to be a subject matter expert.
I tried building a version of this in 2015 called Uncoverage. Beacon did too. Not enough people cared enough to support individual journalists. real stories take too long to write, all journalists need editors, and the value prop feels unfamiliar and seems thin for subscribers. Some are trying now on Patreon.
That sounds like your feed would become a series of blogs by the same authors. Perhaps if kept under the thumb of a responsible organization and editor that could work, but in my experience whenever a respected reporter goes off to create their own blog their writing tends to devolve into fringe posts crafted just to please their niche audience.
You are correct. I think that introducing more silo's into a system would be a bad idea.
I was thinking about this last night and I think it'd be interesting to see authors actually have to cite another post that has a good strong counter argument to theirs and point out places where they disagree. It probably wouldn't work on a systemic approach but might work if an individual with this sort of temperament did it.
What if we had a way to signify that an article or a publication meets a certain set of journalistic standards (sourcing, fact checking, no opinions, etc.), such that violating those standards would result in a fine.
Then it might be easier for a casual reader to differentiate between journalism and opinion.
I have this idea I share over and over again because I'm not in a position to pursue it. Usually it gets ignored and every once in a while someone says it's brilliant so here's hoping.
Crowd source investigative reporting. Focus on supporting the reporter instead of the news network. Build a system that creates a reputation for the reporter and a mechanism to crowd source news that the general public is interested in.
I could go on, but then there would be more text for you to read. I guess I could add that cryptocurrencies and blockchain would be useful technologies in a tool like this. (reputation tracking and crowdsourcing)
Sounds like a promising idea, but without the oversight of a responsible organization and editor these independent journalists tend to devolve into fringe circle-jerk territory.
The nature of individual celebrity ensures a slide into pandering to one's fans, regardless of how respectable and worthy that celebrity.
I do, broadly, agree with the sentiment. I pay for The Economist, The Financial Times, and the Australian Financial Review. Plus I read BBC and Thompson Routers regularly.
If there's something particularly contentious I'll have a look at what the Guardian is saying about it to try and get an alternative perspective.
There's definitely a huge bias in almost all news sources. The Economist explicitly states their position on matters, The Financial Times and AFR are much more implicit. The BBC does pretty well on sticking to facts, but now they're appending their stories with opinion pieces from editors.
TR does do a very good job of simply fact reporting.
* https://www.bendbulletin.com/ - the local paper. They're the only ones with a reporter sitting through sometimes excruciatingly long city council meetings full of stuff like 'modifications to the sign code' - but also things like zoning reform that may make housing not so horribly expensive.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/ online - seems to be a decent national level newspaper. You can also get a deal on it via Amazon Prime.
* https://www.economist.com/ - good coverage of events around the world, and some more in depth analysis.
It's probably too much, but... I feel like these are critical times in terms of being informed and involved.
> A version of this op-ed appears in print on June 20, 2003, on Page A00023 of the National edition
You know what an op-ed piece is, right? If you don't, here's a definition:
> An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page" or "opinion editorial", is a written prose piece typically published by a newspaper or magazine which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board.
> The fact that they published it (or that they didn't publish something) is hard proof of endorsement.
No, not at all. It's only proof that it's a point of view they thought their readers should know about.
Here's a contemporaneous editorial that expresses a very different view: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/opinion/the-bioweapons-en.... You can find all kinds of contradictory opinions in the NYT op-ed section, so it'd be nonsense to say the NYT endorses the view of every one (or any particular one) it publishes.
> If you think it isn't, I can only suggest you have a bizarre concept of reality.
I'd suggest your concept of reality is more bizarre than mine.
But paying for something via tax is a pretty weak way of ensuring accountability, which is the entire point behind the concept of voting with your wallet.
A few complaints I share with the other people in this thread:
- It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently. As someone in tech I can clearly see what they get and what they don't. Extrapolating it - it's not at all clear they understand economics or foreign policy or policy impact or environmental concerns and how to address them ...etc.
- Bias: every single one of them have bias. The burden is on me to spot bias and think objectively. Why do I have to pay do that? At least present news as it is? I'm not sure if even that would work - there could be bias in what gets chosen for reporting.
- The user experience is pretty bad. That I have to use an adblock after paying for the already expensive subscription is ridiculous. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of pixels and tracking embedded in their site.
- Big picture: By design, news focuses on the now and misses the big picture quite often and usually by a huge margin. E.g., the relentless focus on petty issues in last election (both major party candidates) and not enough attention at all on concrete policy measures. This extends to privacy issues (Facebook and the like) until it's too late. Wars/conflicts, foreign policy, long term economics.
For all these reasons, I have got rid of my NYT & WaPo subscription to FT now and I can't be happier.
This is exceptionally difficult. My favorite example is choosing which photo to run for a story. Let's say a photographer take photos of Trump at an event. He has a photo of Trump smiling, a photo of Trump frowning, a photo of Trump scowling and a photo of Trump laughing. Which one is correct? They are all technically correct because they happened, but they all convey different tones, some of which will be completely inappropriate in the context of the story it runs with.
There was a very famous image of the UK miner's strike, at the battle of Orgreave, 1984. Another photographer captured the same scene that day. They give a very different impression.
One shows a miner and cop each grinning slightly. In the other, the same pair appear to be eyeballing each other. The second seems much more confrontational, to me anyway.
Another problem with that example, at least for me, is that it is not apparent who is looking at who. It's a two dimensional photo and the depth of field is enough that you can't really tell which cop the miner is looking at.
I think this is a common objection, but is it really so reasonable? Why show any image of ephemeral emotion at all? If you must include not strictly necessary multimedia, something that would be obvious would be a long range wide-angle picture of the entire venue.
It's similar to when people try to claim that journalism without bias in writing is not possible. No, it's very possible. See articles of the New York Times from decades ago. This [1] is the first article on what would become "Watergate" from the NYTimes. The article does nothing but provide a detailed and objective recounting of all information available. There is no speculation, and I certainly can't tell anything about the author's biases, political leanings, etc. And keep in mind that this is a huge event - that is what would eventually lead to the impeachment of Richard Nixon. That tempered and impartial reporting, over decades, is what gave the New York Times the reputation that it's rapidly destroying today. Imagine if that article was written by the New New York Times of today.
The problem of course is that that article is 'boring'. It's not going to drive a million clicks and be shared on social media sites getting those upvotes to get to the top which leads to even more clicks and even more money. Hacker News is definitely higher brow than most social media sites. Regardless, this [2] is a list of all submissions to this site from the New York Times. Go and see what gets upvoted and eventually makes its way to the front page (following are all 30+ point submissions from first page):
- Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing (nytimes.com)
- Opinion: A.I. Could Worsen Health Disparities (nytimes.com)
- Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued (nytimes.com)
- This is Your Brain Off Facebook - study offers glimpse of unplugging (nytimes.com)
- Another Side of MeToo: Male Managers Fearful of Mentoring Women (nytimes.com)
- Foxconn Is Reconsidering Plan for Manufacturing in Wisconsin (nytimes.com)
And so on. It's frequently sensationalized and hyperbolic reporting that often even starts the ball rolling with a fake title. No, AI isn't going to worsen health disparities. No, no company wants to get sued. And no, male managers are not fearful of mentoring women. And it's only downhill from there. Even the articles that seem real, often quickly expose they're just click grabbers. For instance the "Foxconn is reconsidering plan" states. The lead paragraph states,
"It was heralded a year and a half ago as the start of a Midwestern manufacturing renaissance: Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics behemoth, would build a $10 billion Wisconsin plant to make flat-screen televisions, creating 13,000 jobs. President Trump later called the project “the eighth wonder of the world.” Now that prospect looks less certain."
Several paragraphs later you get, "Foxconn said that it remained committed to creating 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin and that it was “moving forward with plans to build an advanced manufacturing facility.”" In other words they are doing what they said they would do. This is not meaningful or good reporting. But it gets those clicks, and that's all that matters now a days.
> It's similar to when people try to claim that journalism without bias in writing is not possible. No, it's very possible.
I couldn't put it better. I'm longing for the day someone creates a website that scans all news, detects and removes anything but the facts, and presents it to me as terse prose with a picture or two if strictly necessary. No ads. No cookies. No commentary. No opinion. Just the facts - all of them.
- I am an 11 year old who is 9 feet tall and have won a Nobel Prize for my work in physics.
- Elephants are big.
Which one of these is a fact? English is unusually elegant in this regard. A fact does not mean true, it means something that can be shown to be indisputably true or false -- something that is falsifiable. The first statement is the fact. Because the second statement has no defined or falsifiable meaning it is an opinion. An elephant may be big compared to a mouse, but they're infinitesimally small compared to a planet. What does big mean?
In the New York Times' Watergate article [1] you'll find every statement made is a fact. Compare this to their writing on contemporary issues, particularly ones that are politically charged, and you'll find it's a night and day difference. The articles generally severely lack for facts and what facts are provided are often in the form of quotations which, in turn, are often non-factual.
Of course facts alone are not the end of the story. Facts can be misleading: 'Uber drivers were engaged in 47,341 more accidents including 27 more fatal accidents than all the licensed taxi drivers in New York.' That implies one thing, yet it omits a rather critical piece of information - how many miles did both drive? And there is also a bias in the stories that are covered. A news organization that chooses to only cover stories that reflect positively upon one side of an issue, or those that reflect negatively upon the other side, would be actively misleading their readers even if each story was independently factual and in no way misleading.
So aiming for factual reporting is certainly just a benchmark rather than the finish line. But it's really pretty easy to do, and it's something that'd leave us with magnitudes greater reporting quality than what we have today.
>"It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently."
Doesn't the Washington post charge for articles with named sources?
Almost every time I follow a link to them the source has been "someone familiar with the matter". However, one time I was surprised see there were actual names attached to the quotes, but they obscured most of the page and wanted me to pay a dollar to read it.
It's better following individual journalists via twitter or whatever instead of the organization itself for quality content for subjects you like to read about.
Personally, I use the main site just to scan headlines and see if there's anything interesting.
Everyone's biased, but I don't think I'm more of an objective thinker than a trained journalist who's taken classes to study it and write about it specifically. I don't believe many people can spot bias as well as they think they can just from a reporter's writing.
And yeah, they aren't experts at everything they cover. It's not a scientific journal. They should use sources for that stuff and if they don't, you should move on. Remember they also don't write specifically for experts so details get left out.
I'm a fan of this idea. I've seen many a brand diluted after key journos leave and are replaced essentially by clickbait artists. The problem then is that it's tacit admission that the idea of branding in journalism is prima facie useless, but that feels somewhat natural. A large corporate publication is a large corporation first and foremost -- if it can't effectively create a product, then maybe I don't want that product from that large corporation.
But, where I get worried is what happens to the public commons when the labor of large scale journalism which is out of the reach of a single journalist (or even a small confederation) resources wise gets lost. Would it be replaced by individuals or small federations that are as effective? I mean, I don't think effective journalism will die anytime soon on the whole. But, I wonder if pockets will go extinct, and I'm nervous about what that means. I still don't think I've really seen it all that much yet.
This is an interesting idea. I'd like to see more of this in the future. Large news orgs only existed before because of the necessity of combining resources. These days I bet you can do the same thing with only a couple of people or even solo given the advent of high technology.
There are journalists that do that, e.g. Tim Pool. I watched a series he did on the so-call "no go zones" in Sweden which is worth watching. You can see he tries hard to push through the competing narratives and get to just the facts.
Do you have any proof that he didn't remain independent, or you just want to stir the pot? All I can see in that link is a newspaper saying "this guy got donations by someone we don't like, so he must be lying".
I see it's all video in that investigation, do the videos look like they've been manipulated?
I've found that for issues that are this extremely politically polarized and where there is this much misinformation floating around, the only way to really know would be to buy a plane ticket and go there. You can't trust any source.
A bit of a tangent but: this is how you keep secrets in the Information Age. You can't actually keep a secret, but you can fog up the air with so much competing nonsense that nobody knows what to believe and the secret is indistinguishable from noise.
But not Patreon. Patreon probably will shut them down after the first controversial article. If you want journalistic freedom and independence, relying on Patreon is like investing with Bernie Madoff.
> Maybe journalists should go out on their own via Patreon etc.?
The problem with that is that the person with the byline isn't the only one that matters. Editorial oversight is equally important. You need the guy who's enthusiastically digging into a story and the guy who keeps his enthusiasm in check. I don't think those can be the same person.
We had quite a scandal with something like this over here in Germany some weeks ago.
A young journalist named Relotius who worked for "Der Spiegel" was found to have his stories a little bit too perfect. He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.
So, while the core of a story might still be true, nobody really knows what happened and what was added by him. Nobody believes anything of these stories anymore after all.
It totally blew his career up (he was formerly found to be one of the "rising stars" of German journalism and had already got some awards for his work) and the Spiegel also found himself under heavy criticism, although they already have a concept in place, where another editor always fact-checks the other editors work.
So: Enthusiasm in journalists can go really wrong.
> He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.
I think you are underselling it. Quoting from Der Spiegel[1], "he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. (...) He also made up dialogue and quotes."
Oh, I'm sorry. I read into the story when it was more about things like "there was no music playing, although I wrote there was music and I didn't meet XY at that exact day". Didn't deeply look into it afterwards anymore. Thanks for pointing me to this, will read into it again.
The website I'm aware of is ne.ws (I knew the guy- a seasoned entrepreneur). I don't know what that website is now- same thing but Asian? Anyway I don't think he's doing it any more.
I think that would lead to an echo-chambered niche on its own from incentives. Granted larger groups certainly can go astray as well. Greenpeace went essentially batshit a long time ago and the founders said screw it and left after falling to get through that banning Chlorine is an impossible and stupid idea given its role in health.
> For all these reasons, I have got rid of my NYT & WaPo subscription to FT now and I can't be happier.
I think you have a typo. Are you saying that you switched to FT (Financial Times), or that you got rid of the FT as well?
Anyway, if you are a US-based reader, one way to avoid some of the bias and noise is to subscribe to a non-US paper. You don't have reporters and columnists trying to sway voters, because that's not who the audience is. Plus you might discover that interesting events do take place outside of the US. (And uninteresting events. Brexit seems like it should be interesting, but all the daily political ins and outs are, in my non-UK view, a bit tedious...)
Sadly non-US sources incur the bias of however said source feels about the US. I've seen the BBC home page highlight more random shootings than the actual US mainstream media. And in my experience they'll keep them on the front page longer than CNN when reporting on the same one. It could just be the page I'm being presented via cookie-stored history or whatever, but that seems unlikely as I hardly ever click on said stories.
Unfortunately it seems the only way to effectively reduce bias is to go straight to the primary source and judge for yourself, which is time-consuming.
And what makes you so sure that the BBC's handling of those stories isn't the correct one?
Your personal bias, of course.
We see in this thread many people who condemn newspapers because they report differently than they themselves would, and then have the gall to call that "bias".
The problem is not that they report differently, but that they fixate on a particular part of the whole picture, and emphasize it beyond all proportion, while neglecting other parts of the picture. It's like if you asked somebody to describe an elephant for you and they'd spend 99% of the time on its tail, describing it in a minute detail up to each hair on its end, and then spending only a couple of words on the rest of the animal - would you be able to adequately imagine what an elephant look like? You probably would think it's like some hairy snake or something :) That's the kind of coverage some biased news outlets provide.
You think the other parts are important because you don't like the tail.
But say, do you look forward to daily reports in your newspaper how on XY street there was no traffic accident yesterday? Or that no criminal escaped from YZ prison last month?
It's perfectly legitimate to focus on the interesting parts. You want to learn about an elephant's anatomy? Read a biology textbook, not journalism.
> You think the other parts are important because you don't like the tail.
Thanks for a case study. That's exactly what the press does - describe only the tail and call everyone who objects tail-phobes. No, I'm not going to pay for such baloney. If they find advertisers gullible enough to pay for it - good for them. Otherwise, good riddance.
> It's perfectly legitimate to focus on the interesting parts.
Of course. It's also perfectly legitimate for me not to pay for it if I'm interested in whole picture, not tail hairs. Let the tail hair enthusiasts finance it.
"I don't care about it" is a fundamentally different thing than "they are biased".
Sure, don't pay for it. I don't pay for Magic: The Gathering cards. But I also don't troll message boards how WotC deserve to die because they neglect XBox games, thus showing their bias towards Collectible Card Games.
> "I don't care about it" is a fundamentally different thing than "they are biased".
If they describe only what they care for, and only in a way they care for, it's the definition of biased. I challenge you to provide a definition of this word that would not be equivalent to this.
> But I also don't troll message boards how WotC deserve to die because they neglect XBox games
I don't care if they survive on their own - but they are whining that unless people start en masse paying for them, they'd die. I say - in that case good riddance, just as you would say if somebody asked you to pay for local MtG tournament because otherwise they can't survive. If they want my money - they have to provide quality content and do decent work. If they want to prostitute themselves to partisan politics and clickbait - ok, that's a way to make a living too, but I won't pay for it.
Oh, and another thing: I don't think any MtG club ever driven anybody to suicide or ruined somebody's life or career. Media does it all the time (Gawker, finally and deservedly resting in peace, pretty much was built for it). For example: https://quillette.com/2019/01/30/the-death-of-a-dreamer/
And then they want my sympathy. How about "no"?
P.S. you don't have to like my arguments or agree with it, but calling me "troll" just because you disagree with me is rude. Just so you know.
No it isn't normal. It also isn't common. Gun homicides don't even crack the top 10 causes of death in America, yet the BBC chooses to devote a disproportionate amount of their US front page to it. They certainly front-page shootings more than heart disease, that's the definition of bias.
Right or wrong, noble intentions or not, it's not an accurate portrayal of America as a whole on the part of the BBC. If CNN ran a front page column every time someone in the UK died of alcohol poisoning, would you consider that unbiased coverage of the UK?
There's no "normalization" - nobody treats murders as "normal". However, there's a difference between treating it as normal and treating is as bad, but rare abnormal, and putting it in the context of overall big picture. You can say "66 people are attacked by sharks recently" and it would look like a bloody carnage which warrants very grave concern. Or you can put it in the context that it's over all wide world, and there was one single shark attack fatality in the US over whole past year, and about 10x more people are killed each year by vending machines.
>And what makes you so sure that the BBC's handling of those stories isn't the correct one? Your personal bias, of course.
Well, actual verified accounts and statistics for one. BBC loves nothing more than highlighting USA shootings - despite near historic record lows of gun violence and definitely lows of gun ownership to crime ratios.
BBC does this because they want to “prove” how much better they are not being allowed the choice of how to defend yourself. It’s British smugness 101.
Btw... Did you see the school shooting last week where the aggresor was wearing a smash the patriarchy shirt - no you probably did not, and definitely didn’t see it on BBC.
Narrative and Bias. BBC can be trusted at all on firearms anywhere.
That list of school shootings includes someone firing a gun near a school, and someone shooting a cat a 3am, as well as an officer discharging his gun negligently. Nice list, not hyperbolic at all.
You’ll be happy to know there are less school shootings today than the 90s. [0]
As opposed to other countries, where guns are available they are used... shocker! The fact is that where guns are in the USA, our rural areas have violence rates as near European rural rates. We have a lot of metropolitan areas with populations of 250k+ where our crime is, those are areas with illegal guns, that go with the drug, gang, poverty, inequality of social mobility, and gang problems. We have issues in the cities - but it’s not because of guns. That violence committed with guns is falling, despite record gun availability. The CDC found that where we have 10k homicides including all the drug and gang violence per year, we have 500,000 to 3,000,000 successful and legal defensive gun uses. And... to wrap up the “but other countries” argument, I don’t care what other countries to, in the USA we have a fundemental freedom to defend ourselves with the lost effective means of personal protection ever invented, it’s a natural right enumerated as a civil right.
> That list of school shootings includes someone firing a gun near a school, and someone shooting a cat a 3am, as well as an officer discharging his gun negligently. Nice list, not hyperbolic at all.
All of those things would make national news if they occurred in the UK.
Cool story! When we're talking about UK that will be worth bringing up.
In the UK you go to jail for defending yourself [0,1,2]. The UK police themselves tell you the only legal tool for self-defense is a rape alarm [3].
If you think it's good the UK government has made the choice for people on how best to defend themselves, that's cool. I understand how if you've grown up with that culture, it's probably difficult to understand the freedom of choice we have in the USA.
You're making it out to be irrelevant, but the context here is why it might be given 'disproportionate' (through an American lens) coverage on the website of the British Broadcasting Company.
You make a quick slight-of-hand in this comment. You start off talking about how gun violence, as a whole, is at low historic levels. Then, you go on to talk specifically about school shootings. As far as I can tell, school shootings are at historically high levels.
It seems legitimate to report on that considering schools are places that parents send their kids every day and have historically viewed them as safe. Add that most schools are publicly-run institutions and you have an interesting story of children shooting children at government run locations. If that doesn’t seem newsworthy to you, the bias may be in your own interpretation.
>As far as I can tell, school shootings are at historically high levels.
And you are also wrong about that. [0] My comment wasn’t about number of school shooting - but narrative. You don’t hear about them unless they fall into a given narrative. You don’t question what you are seeing at all, just happily accept it because it fits your bias.
Ah yes, more slight of hand. In this instance, you have moved the goalposts to "mass" school shootings, only counting instances where 4 or more people were killed/injured. This list also doesn't seem to include shootings that took place at colleges, which are also schools (Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and Umpqua come to mind). It almost like you don't question your source at all and just happily accepted it because it fits your bias.
Even if we just focus on K-12, you could download this [1] data from US Naval Postgraduate School and run a trend line all the way back to 1970.
Yes, perhaps the study I linked to that from Northwestern using FBI Unified crime report sources, and a published data set you can examine - is biased and wrong.
While your source that has no data at all - that does seem more trust worthy. Not to mention rate vs incidents.
Your source was a news article from Northeastern, not Northwestern, about a study. That said, the study's data source is cited in the article as: "Fridel and Fox used data collected by USA Today, the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a NYPD report on active shooters."
The source I provided is literally only data, with no editorializing. It comes from this source: "The School Shooting Database Project is conducted as part of the Advanced Thinking in Homeland Security (HSx) program at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS)."[1] It also has a publicized data set you can examine.[2]
You are not biased at all, but anyone who dares disagree with you must be.
"The (K12SSD) table at right shows that the majority of “school shootings” over the last 48 years occur outside while on school campus. When tied in with non-shooting “school shooting” definitions, such as brandishing, we get a very different picture. By this project’s definitions, if someone on the sidewalk outside the school brandished a gun, that was a “school shooting”. Three percent of “school shootings” in the database involve no shots being fired at all. And if we include single shots (regardless of from where they came, or if they were suicides, or if they were late at night, etc.) those add up to 63% of all incidents."
==I hardly think K12SSD's releases come "with no editorializing". ==
We could have a long discussion about what should and shouldn't be included in the data set. Should a bullet that hits a school building be counted? Should brandishing count? Should we only count incidents where people die? Does there need to be 4 or more injured? etc.,
The comment about editorializing was in reference to how one source was a news article interpreting a data set (the definition of a narrative) and the other was simply a data set.
The BBC is a special case, they clearly are biased because their funding is based around them implementing Sharon White’s political agenda.
Sharon White is the unelected, former civil servant and former journalist that runs OFCOM.
They are under specific instructions from Dame Patricia Hodgson and Sharon White from OFCOM to drop impartiality and implement a social justice agenda.
It would be an interesting idea to do analysis on the headlines in the BBC News page to see how the editorial policy has followed edicts from OFCOM. Both are publicly available.
Here is a report from OFCOM itself about a talk given by Ms White on the subject of diversity and how OFCOM can support a “positive change” agenda. [1]
Here are details of Project Diamond a programme to enforce and monitor Ms White’s diversity agenda across the industry [2]
Also [3] where Ms White speaks about punishing the BBC for not meeting her requested standards.
Actually it's more than just hiring practices and directly covers content.
One example would that the BBC now has to have a 50-50 gender split for experts brought onto its flagship Radio 4 Today programme. That was decided to presumably to broaden opinions given to be more inclusive.
Another example would be this speach by Ms White where she clearly states:
"So today we have announced that the BBC will have to agree with Ofcom a new Diversity Code of Practice. This will set out how the BBC will commission programmes that authentically portray the whole UK population." [1]
As to "stooping to my level", I've so far not said anything about whether this process is good or bad or if the ends justify the means. Just that it is going on and you can read about the details if you wish.
You haven't at all backed up the assertion that the BBC are "under _specific_ instructions...to drop impartiality and implement a social justice agenda" (emphasis mine). You provided evidence that the regulator has demanded that they hire and air a more representative mix of gender, ethnic background etc.
Nowhere above has OFCOM directed the BBC to air different opinions. Regarding the Today programme example: Deliberately featuring a female (rather than male) climate science expert after featuring a male vaccination expert is entirely orthogonal to impartiality.
[EDIT:] I'm not specifically arguing that the BBC has no bias. I'm saying you haven't demonstrated that OFCOM have demanded a bias.
It's the definition of selection bias. Gun homicides don't even crack the top 10 causes of death in the United States. But the BBC sure seems to front-page it more than heart disease.
Of course we all have our personal biases that can never be fully eliminated. But if you wanted to summarize the "current state of America" in one web page, statistically speaking some bastard shooting 3 bystanders in a botched robbery in a high crime area of East St. Louis (made up, but similar to stuff I've seen on the front page before) shouldn't even approach making the list.
What non-US paper though? In my experience as an Australian all of our papers are totally fucked. We don't have anything anywhere near as good as NYT or WaPo.
Crinkling News [1] was a surprisingly good Australian newspaper. It ceased publication in January 2018, but I gather they would reopen if they could find the money (Costs $200k/year to run?).
It was written for children, essentially the print equivalent of ABC's Behind The News bulletin [2]. The writing level wasn't too far removed from the "adult" papers (I gather broadsheets are written to a 12 year old reading level and tabloids lower than that). Articles were a mix of mainstream news and kid specific stuff. There were fewer articles than an adult paper, but was basically all there with the extraneous stuff removed. It was completely independent.
The Saturday Paper is quite good. It's only a weekly, but really, there's usually only enough truly important stories around to fill a paper a week, which is why there's so much ephemera and filler in the daily news.
I think we Brits are finding Brexit extremely tedious right about now, with no sign of an end to it. Our government tried for unicorns and rainbows to achieve a better deal in leaving than we had as a member. The EU, obviously, have to ensure it's a worse deal than being a member.
I used to subscribe to the FT. It's pretty balanced in its reporting, with good news coverage. Surprisingly perhaps, without the bias you might expect of a financial paper. For a while I'd be surprised to see well argued pieces making a case for less inequality, higher taxes, or a universal basic income. Then you stop being surprised they're not just a vehicle of the Tory party, like the Telegraph and Times mostly now are.
NYT's feature stories often seamlessly weave in certain choices of words that reflect the author's personal bias/ignorance. It's like enjoying a decent dessert then suddenly chewing on a piece of fingernail in it. Even WSJ doesn't really have this problem.
The WSJ pleasantly keeps its editorial content on the editorial pages. The NYT thinks all pages are editorial pages. Note this is different from choosing what to print. Both papers do that.
A very long time ago, I used to enjoy reading The Times (British newspaper) for exactly that reason. It was a very thin newspaper with 1 page of editorials and virtually no fluff sections (like leisure, travel,etc). Just news.
I haven't seen the print paper in a very long time, but I go to their website and see the following headlines: Sunday Times journalist was murdered by Assad, Bitter split on assisted dying hits Royal College of Physicians, Snow Alert as Britain stuck in deep freeze, Killer driver law a farce - says Olympic star, Labour MPs branded cowards for 'selling votes' to help May's deal, Job interviewer 'was like abusive ex', Giving Statins to older people could save 8000 lives a year, Times Christmas appeal attracts record donations, Improve or face closure - Steiner schools warned, Woman reunited with train driver who stopped her killing herself.
Where is the news? Virtually every headline is either exaggerated or clickbait or both. The article on the killing of the journalist is at least news worthy, but the headline is way over the top -- "US court determines Assad regime liable in journalist killing" would be much more neutral. There is a debate on assisted dying in the Royal College, but when has there not been? What's this about? It might snow in Britain. In February. Wow. "Killer driver law"... obviously a story, but obviously not unbiased... The rest of it is fodder for the tabloids. What the heck happened to the newspaper?
The Times is one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the world. And while it has always been biased (as they all are), it has an amazing reputation for journalism since the latter half of the 1700s! But people don't want news. They want shock and awe. It drives me crazy.
I think the WSJ used to do that - before Murdoch purchased it. Now the "non-editorial" show he apparently breaks out in a cold sweat whenever sexual harassment comes up judging by the concern trolling and his ocerwhelming blonde anchor bias, openly acts like whistleblowers are big business bullying innocent comoanies, lobbyists are underdog small businesses, and the editorial writers are frothing at the mouth declaring well tested concepts are new and dangerously radical.
> It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently.
Example: Washington Post pushed the "Covington boys surround and intimidate native man" narrative that's been completely shattered by about 200 hours of video footage in the last week, and led to Twitter disabling the account that spread it, refutations (oddly enough from the NYT) and various apologies from those who came after the child on question.
Example: The narrative in many news outlets that the Covington students were doing nothing wrong. Quote: "It’s not rape if you enjoy it." for example why that's not right.
In many cases it's the same news organizations getting the story wrong both ways. It's a very interesting case study in bias. (and the power of PR firms)
Also I don't see how it's whataboutism when I'm agreeing with the general thesis.
Cool. I thought you were saying that it's OK to lie about bad people but you're not. Totally support reporting on anything that happened (and yes a kid said this)
Edit: it's not me modding you down, I think your second post was quite reasonable. I wish HN didn't downvote civil discussion like this.
That story is a perfect example of perception of a situation and how people view it in many ways. While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right.
As it turns out (Bari Weiss at the NYT viewed over 200 hours of footage) this did not happen. The man moved into the middle of the boys and stood very close to one of them. You can watch this from multiple angles and multiple cameras on YouTube and confirm this for yourself. David Brooks in the NYT also has an excellent summary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/covington-march-f...
I am not disputing the moments before and during. There is no doubt the events going on were a powder keg of problems waiting to tip off.
However my comment was about how that actual scene can be viewed differently by people, and is exactly what is happening. This is not a matter of scientific facts being disputed, it's an interpretation of a real life event that took place. Too many people, the scene of 30-40 boys yelling and acting how they did invoked a sense of fear and intimidation to them. Too many others, it was just 'boys being boys'.
The other reason people are so miffed over this is because of the actual people in it and the narrative. For one, a boys family had the means to hire a PR firm to help with the ordeal (again, a place of privilege). And two, there is so much hand wringing over this boy and this event, but for some reason when many young men have been shot or hurt by cops it's often met with negative depictions of the person hurt. You can call this whataboutism all you want, but that's the reality of it. Why in this instance where a boy and his group of friends, that are clearing acting up and provoking others (not even touching the negative nature of their hats), are given a free ride as 'boys being boys' but yet we chastise people who get in trouble with cops? Aren't those same people "just being boys"?
> I am not disputing the moments before and during.
You mentioned a fact was a matter of people interpreting a narrative. "While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right." That is not how facts work.
> There is no doubt the events going on were a powder keg of problems waiting to tip off.
Nobody is discussing whether there were "many problems".
We are debating whether children surrounded and intimidated an old man as reported by the Washington Post. We are doing so because WaPo was cited as an example of 'real news'.
That did not happen. WaPo was wrong.
> This is not a matter of scientific facts being disputed
Do you think the boys surrounded and intimated the old man?
You keep discussing unrelated issues without specifically answering whether you believe this happened or did not happen.
> You mentioned a fact was a matter of people interpreting a narrative. "While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right." That is not how facts work
I'm speaking to how some watched videos and felt they agreed with WaPo on the matter. There is no 'fact' to this story beyond an interpretation of events. This isn't a situation of clear cut and dry (like the recent released footage of the Chicago officer). It's people reacting to a situation and how it's making them feel.
> We are debating whether children surrounded and intimidated an old man as reported by the Washington Post. We are doing so because WaPo was cited as an example of 'real news'.
> That did not happen. WaPo was wrong.
Your statements are perfectly proving my point. To people that scene and moment gave them a sense of intimidation. You cannot tell them their feelings and interpretation of the situation is wrong. If I walk up to you and stand in your face, and you tell me that it made you feel intimidated I don't have the right to go "Stop, you're wrong".
> You keep discussing unrelated issues without specifically answering whether you believe this happened or did not happen
Im trying to explain to you why that particular situation is not something you can clearly point to as fake news. I'm trying to paint a larger picture to the whole matter and why many took issue with it.
Since you're so hung up on the matter, yes to me I viewed the way those kids acted as intimidating and inappropriate. If I saw that many kids in a group, wearing those hats, and chanting the way they did I would not want to be near it.
> Either the boys surrounded and approached the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported, or they did not
The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him. That is right in the video, clear as day. That is very much a clear fact. What you seem intent on breaking down is whether or not this was seen as some form of intimidation tactic and I'm trying to explain to you that people can, and do, interpret personal encounters like that in varying ways.
You seem to be one who can't understand the way in which people are able to react and interpret actions of people different. You asked me my opinion of the situation and then proceeded to tell me that my perception of reality is wrong. I watch that video and I personally feel that they are being intimidating, how am I in a 'confused nature of reality'. I am watching people confront each other and reacting to the situation.
Your whole argument on this video boils down to "your personal feelings don't match mine, so you're wrong".
> > Either the boys surrounded and approached the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported, or they did not
> The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him.
Did the boys surround and approach the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported?
Answer Y or N.
> > You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality.
> how am I in a 'confused nature of reality'.
That is not the what I wrote. I've included the real quote above.
I say that you're confused about the nature of reality because you repeatedly say a documented fact is a matter of perception, and cannot say whether you believe it is true of false.
We are on Hacker News right now. If someone reported we were having this conversation on Ars Technica, that would be false. That is not a matter of perception or feeling. This is how facts work.
Do you the footage of the old man approaching the group of boys and standing very close to one of them is fake?
I honestly don't even know what you're arguing over anymore. You asked me questions, I answered them and offered context on my responses but yet you continue to tell me how I'm wrong.
Hi Dan. Acknowledged re: tit for tat, I did try and end it earlier as you can see but got lulled back when the other poster misquoted me.
I was being very cafeful to be civil though - even though this is difficult with someone who won't give a firm opinion on something. I succeeded in that.
You haven't said I was uncivil before either - we've had a few discussions about articles I've written that have been on HN and you once disliked me criticising the Bay Area.
Email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss further.
Keep in mind this is someone watching multiple videos that everyone, regardless of politics, agrees depicts something, and the person is saying they depict something else. "You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality" is the most civil way I could have possibly said that.
Please don't do tedious tit-for-tit flamewars on HN. They're not interesting except to the two people who are tangling with each other, and even then not intellectually interesting.
> Bias: every single one of them have bias. The burden is on me to spot bias and think objectively. Why do I have to pay do that? At least present news as it is?
This has always been and will always be the case. There is no possibility for objectivity; unless they compile every fact about the universe and present them all to you (quite a dull read), there’s inherently an editing process and selection of facts the writer thinks is important. You will, and should, always have to think for yourself. Even if news were presented in as dry a fashion as possible, you’d still have to think (or what’s the point?). And the facts will always be incomplete.
Are you sure it is bias or justified criticism? From my POV, the "bias" always seems to me to be justifiable criticism of Trump. I mean, the man lies so frequently it's almost impossible to present "his side".
I worry when I see these comments. They seem to make the same mistake that the BBC did when they presented equal time to climate change deniers as they did to climate change scientists.
I think your latter point is one of the defining sociocultural challenges of our time. We have stressed openness and fairness in public discourse to the point of enabling actors who 1) seek to undermine that public discourse 2) hold positions that are really spurious in relation to the discussions we need to be having. E.g., the public should be arguing over how to respond to climate change ---especially the social and economic trade-offs that might be necessary--- rather than about its existence.
The news as a written medium is losing traction: youtube rules the next generation (anecdotally from what I see with my daughter & friends).
I wouldn't mind paying youtube premium channel if I can get a truly centrist opinion pieces, factual reporting and random excerpts into topics like science/philosophy/comedy/culture.
Sadly afaic again, most of the 'online' content is way too left (or the worse option: way too right). What I wouldn't give for a bbc like channel in the US that runs 1-1.5 hrs every day of content. Any recommendations?
Media in the US has consolidated to a handful of players, who have many conflicts of interest. These result in a big business bias in media today.
It's rare to get news and commentary written from the labor point of view, and that's needed a lot more than financial expansion of entities like the NYT.
Progressive minded people should simply start to fund labor centric media and compete with the big money majors. I'll bet that competition goes pretty well, and some of that can be seen in TYT today, largest online news and opinion entity there is, by views. TYT owns under 35-40, operates on a mix of AD revenue and membership income to avoid having those same conflicts of interest, and that allows it to differentiate nicely from the usual players.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 336 ms ] threadFake news is paid for with advertising and collecting info on the readers. Sometimes you have to pay for it as well.
Newspaper I paid for reported falsely that a friend of mine's parents had neglected their spinal meningitis daughter and she died. They rushed her to the hospital in their van knocking off the rack on top to get her help because they couldn't wait for an ambulance. She died anyway, and they charged the parents even if they did everything correctly to save her. From that day I learned of fake news.
> they charged the parents
So the newspaper just reported the fact that they had been charged?
> From that day I learned of fake news.
You learned to label things you don’t agree with as fake news.
Parents were not charged with neglect until after the article was written saying they neglected their daughter. There was no neglect just dirty laundry.
It made me skeptical of news ever since.
One of the things that irks me is the rhetoric that Trump-era distrust of the media is somehow undermining democracy or whatever. If you aren't distrustful of the media you are a naive and dangerous fool. I remember the overwhelming majority of US mainstream media pushing the Iraq war with stories that relied on bias and bogus sources. Interviews with officals & experts that had skin in the game. Blind faith in the media is even more dangerous than the also dangerous posture of not paying any heed to what they have to say.
Because that's what we're losing. The idea that JoeBlowKnowsTheTruth.com holds the same level of accountability, rigor, and seriousness as an actual news organization is what's gotten us into this mess.
The big MSM companies know they have the power to spread fake news and have a good amount of people blindly believe.
He's a Trumper who refers to virtually all real media as the msm and the alt left and continually whines about the alt left, entitled millennials, and women.
Some of these alt-media sites are political and put a spin on stories as well.
In other words you are looking for journalists who are good at winning prizes from their peers. But this risks becoming a self-contained system where journalists are "reputable" because they parrot what other "reputable" journalists think.
If IronWolve pays for journalism from sites that strike him as being thorough and trustworthy, then IronWolve's own judgement is as (small) exogenous contribution to the system.
Of course it is also possible that IronWolve is a fool who pays for foolish journalism. But if so, then that's his problem.
I think you're missing the difference between journalism and editorialism. The latter has become our standard of "news" nowadays. A quick glance at the top alt-media sites shows literally nothing but unsourced, opinion driven fear mongering and click bait. It's not about winning awards or thinking "correctly", it's about operating within the bounds of good faith arguments, and adherence to ethical standards agreed upon by society at large. You can enjoy all the political opinions you wish, but don't confuse them with fact based news reporting.
The decline of integrity in mainstream media is actually what has gotten us into this mess. If the quality of mainstream news reporting did not decline so widely there would not be a vacuum for sites like JoeBlowKnowsTheTruth.com to draw an audience.
News organisations and their journalists are completely responsible for the scenario and trying to blame anyone else is just a scapegoat for their own bad work, the consequences (decline in readers/revenue, journalist layoffs) are theirs to face.
I think you mean, mostly (with a few exceptions), tell the truth? I feel like you're likely searching specifically with news agendas you agree with, rather than reading a broad range of mainstream sources and pulling the threads together yourself.
I mean, if you really want very dry, just fact news, follow a news agency [1], but I suspect you don't really want facts...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_agency
Did you not unsubscribe to their emails that you didn't wish to receive?
It seems like the Goodwill it would generate might make him wealthier?
Or, at least offer it for free to Prime members?
In all honesty, when I don't see billionaires giving back; I try to avoid their product.
(Yes--I'm on the dislike of the selfish billionaire bandwagon. I know they are easy targets, but just how much money do you need to live a full life? I think about the billions his wife will receive for just being with the man, and don't get it. These people must see how the poor, and homeless are doing, but just don't do much? And I'm sorry, If you grew up in America, and made your wad here; give back to people here. Rant done--waiting for a another Shadowban.)
News is only the first rough draft of history [1] [2].
Newspapers are definitely not perfect, and they definitely make errors, but there's no better way to get such a breadth of timely, relatively reliable information to a general reader.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Barth#Legacy
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Graham#%22First_rough_dra...
You're looking in the wrong place. You'll find the first rough draft of history in a newspaper, you'll find the final draft in a book (or at least the most polished draft).
I often find lots of bugs in software that's been rushed out the door to fill and urgent need, it's the name with newspapers.
I think these articles are pretty comical coming from the New York Times, a for profit company, that has been cutting costs amidst really serious editorial failures.
I would believe this much more if it was from an independent news source. It’s like a car salesman telling you great buying a car is.
It’s reasonable that the Times would have such a biased, unfounded article. But not so much that anyone pay attention to or make decisions based on it.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
So arguments like this article, even cloaked under “opinion” don’t carry weight because it’s just propaganda to sell more papers.
[0] https://www.nyse.com/quote/XNYS:NYT
There's nothing about those things that is mutually exclusive. If your entire business depends upon you being a truth teller it is in the interests of both the company and your shareholders for you to tell the truth. Manufacturing a story could be devastating for NYT's reputation, and consequently for their shareholders.
Extra care and attention to detail isn't going to just happen unless there's enough money flowing in solid journalism to allow for it.
It's quite possible that the cost cutting is connected to the editorial failures, and is a consequence of falling revenues. And the NYT as a whole is in a position to see how those things relate.
This isn't to place the NYT above criticism. They could stand to up their game. The profession at large could when it comes to painting accurate pictures of the world and the NYT is better than lots of sources. But it isn't going to happen unless people can get paid to do it.
And unless we pay for it, it's another place we'll be the product. Because the other models for journalism are (a) selling our attention to advertisers or (b) propagandists selling our pre-decided opinion.
Many people I know who have been interviewed said something to the effect that "newspapers twist words to fit their angle". They also happened to be in positions of power, so it's hard for me to tell if they simply wanted to control the narrative and the newspaper wasn't going along for the ride it if the newspaper was the one with the hidden agenda. Probably a mix of both.
One huge leap forward was the rise of Wikipedia. Now the journalists recite Wikipedia facts for background, so I see fewer sentences like "Sea turtles, like other mammals,..."
I had never considered the click-bait outlet "HuffPost" as "quality journalism".
"We can start with the fact that “free” isn’t a good business model for quality journalism." Well, paid journalism is not a guarantee either: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/claas-relotius...
Stopped reading after this. Whining does not suit the NYT well. It is an outstanding newspaper and has basically, also thanks to the internet, a world wide audience. It is better prepared to the changing business model as most other newspapers. Whining here about google and facebook is rent seeking.
I don't blame them. It's not their fault that the news site decided to share their name with a trash clickbait site.
It is the fault of BuzzFeed News, yes.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051866
We should all be extremely concerned about what the writer is getting at. If you're going to call it whining, and say they need to change their business model, what should they change it to?
I am not in the news business. Nor am I am in the diesel motor business. It is not my task to suggest solutions to a changing business environment. The NYC can now, thanks to the internet, deliver its content to a world wide audience. A paywall can be easily established. I pay for good news (e.g. "The Economist"). For institutions like the NYT or "The Economist" it would take quite some skill to screw this up. The market may move into "the winners take it all" direction.
I agree that free news is a problem to many newspapers. Fake news are another problem. But solutions like screaming for government subsidiaries (e.g. in Germany) or getting fees from google or facebook are not solutions. Taxing eCars to pay employees that produced diesel engines to save jobs is not a solution either.
If you don't want to get indexed by google because you are afraid they "steal" your content, then this can be solved by one line in your robots.txt file
And it is really hard to ask for redistribution of common news without any further added value.
Since that business is integral to democracy, it would seem we all have some stake in its success.
Thanks for clarifying this for me. Based on this, there is nearly no business I am not in. Does that make me a businessman extraordinaire?
If we shift toward paying for content, is there not going to be a market for subscriptions to fake news as well as subscriptions to real news? Paying for content alone doesn't solve the problem of fake news. How does Joe Average even know which subscriptions are the right subscriptions? Please don't let an algorithm decide for them.
In terms of payment itself, I feel the going rate is a big issue. Checking the NY Times just now, they're asking $5 per week of me for a basic subscription. Let's make the math easy and call that $250 per year, and assume four subscriptions are needed to be sure we have a well rounded intake, giving a $1000 per year news budget. For a person with a net income of $100k+ per year, maybe this is not a big spend. But for people on lower incomes - who I would argue are likely the people most susceptible to fake news - this becomes a much greater expense and will discourage them from subscribing to anything. Compared to freely available news, it would be putting disadvantaged people at a even greater disadvantage, and let's face it - in a democratic society, I'd rather everybody have access to the same information, than know half the population is making decisions based on garbage. Garbage in, garbage out.
In terms of what the new model should be, I don't think I have any answers. I just know that I have a budget for news and it is not in the order of a thousand dollars a year for a well rounded intake, however I also want everybody to have access to the same news, so I don't think paywalls are a good idea.
It doesn't solve fake news, except that subscriptions might keep the production of real news economically viable. Internet-ad revenue probably can't support real journalism at all. It's too labor intensive.
Real news is expensive to produce, you have to pay reporters to spend their time finding the facts; fake news is cheap, since lies can be made up in your pajamas.
The internet makes it that they don't need to fill pages and pages every day just to be tossed into the trash bin. A year old article can still be valuable, and it can be augmented with additional sides and updates. It just takes diligence and work, not to mention setting up publishing and formatting abilities way beyond the average cookie cutter CMS. Investing in their own production processes and technology, in other words.
But nobody's doing that. They're just making the churn more efficient. At most they'll link to some previous articles, forcing you to do the sifting yourself, and only linking one way.
By the time a newsworthy event reaches mainstream level, it's already been going for a while. That's the point at which I'd want to read a brief one pager of backstory, before diving into current events, surrounded by more context. Take the conflict in Syria: it might just be me not paying attention and being too busy with other stuff, but I genuinely missed when that started. When it did enter my radar, everyone was talking about it like we all knew how it happened. Well, if you take a random person on the street, someone who was upset at the (staged?) pictures of a dead kid... How many can tell you what that conflict is about and get close to the truth? I bet it's incredibly low, the only difference is I'm being honest about my ignorance instead of doing the stupid primate thing of pretending to be in the know in fear of looking foolish (and, I guess, western propaganda being just that when it comes to these subjects).
There's your hole in the market. That's what people want to pay for: not being the person who can't join in on interesting conversations. Well, are our current journalists up to that task? I very much doubt it, cos most have no ability beyond being a newsperson, jacks of no trade at all. Instead of letting experts do the talking, we're letting self important pretenders do it, and then, mostly to push an agenda.
The Quillette expose linked here about the geneticist bullied into suicide should lead us all to ask: why are we letting these morons tell us anything? They just want to enter industries and scenes they don't know, mine them for brief moments of relevance, and leave behind a wreck of human dignity. All over a ten minute talk they couldn't be bothered to understand, because bullying a sperg was more useful to them.
I’d rather have a journalist spend a week on a story (or more) and give more context instead of basically rehashing what was said by both sides.
I like The Atlantic, as it is mostly long form, not breaking news, but the impact of social media and 24/7 news has affected it as well.
Either way, I think the more you focus on the larger picture through long form journalism instead of the daily machinations, the better informed we will be and less spun up all the time.
I need to point out that the NYT is doing this. They probably have one of the more advanced CMS setups and their tech team puts out some really interesting things as well.
As to your other point, I want to see good, factual, long form content, but a lot of people will not read that. They only want the headline and bullet points. So newspapers need to adapt to that and ensure the main facts are presented right up front, but then have the detail and back story for those that want to do a deep dive.
It's a real mix and that's my problem. I want to pay for something that's good. I don't need all the bullshit filler, and in fact seeing the bullshit filler makes me not want to pay at all because it's an insult to my time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19051866
Would you rather news media only report things so inconsequential that everyone involved is happy to be publicly outed?
I don't pretend to have an actual answer to how we'd build such a mechanism or what it'd look like, but there's a need for it nonetheless. Maybe some trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party that can say "Yes, this unnamed source is legitimate"?
Are you suggesting that reputable newspapers are making up unnamed sources or are too careless to privately confirm that they're real?
> I don't pretend to have an actual answer to how we'd build such a mechanism or what it'd look like, but there's a need for it nonetheless. Maybe some trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party that can say "Yes, this unnamed source is legitimate"?
It's been invented, and it's called journalism. That trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party is the newspaper itself.
No, they would never do that would they?!
It's a possibility, yes. Are you denying that possibility?
"That trusted-to-be-accurate-and-confidential third party is the newspaper itself."
That's not a "third party", by the very definition of "third party". Unless you're suggesting a newspaper (or other publication) that's entirely disconnected from its journalists and editors?
This incentive is diminished for news outlets like the BBC, though not completely because they are funded by TV license fees which the British public complain about frequently.
But if you don't pay someone to go out into the world and do the labor-intensive work of investigating the truth, you'll certainly get lies written from the comfort of someone's desk.
Lies and opinion are much cheaper to produce than accurate factual reporting, since there's less overhead.
I will never support NYT, not because I support FB, but because they disguise their media campaign as one meant to protect the individual's privacy, when in reality NYT has a very strong monetary incentive to go after FB. These ulterior motives further decay the trust the general public has in news media of all kinds and it's disappointing to see HN gobble up NYT article after NYT article just because FB is unpopular here.
It's like raising a sev-1 ticket against a team/project you hate or escalating far and wide every single mistake a coworker makes - it tarnishes the reputation even while being completely truthful with respect to the statement made.
You're not wrong that NYT would have a motivation to report negatively about FB. But that doesn't automatically mean that is the motive, though. All their reporting I've seen has been notable, and not hysterical. There's been additional good reporting by TechCrunch and ProPublica, I'm not sure how NYT's coverage differs.
How do you know this information never left the device? Or, given the nature of the FB API, that it used the device at all?
Where do I get it? Is this something we need to create? I'd love a fact check o meter on each journalist as well, but I think that'd be very open to bias, so I don't know how that'd happen.
Anyway, I don't subscribe to newspapers because I don't like their model, not because I don't want to support the journalist. I have no clue if I'm missing a massive part of how the newspapers actually front a lot of money to make journalism better by paying expenses for journalists. I'm no expert on the ins and outs of journalism. I just see a lot of crap reporting that doesn't hold water and I'm tired of reading op-ed pieces falsely labeled as journalism.
I find there are some journalists I'd like to block and never read their trash again from each paper and some I would like to go back to over and over again. (Chris Wallace is a good one)
The fact that I can't get consistency from any one of the above is frustrating and I'm not paying 10 bucks a month per newspaper, the most I'll do is turn my ad blocker off.
I want to give journalists my money, but I don't want to give a newspaper with a single agenda my money.
I imagine you could get a pay scale based on page views, and a model where if you don't use the subscription you get ads.
It'd be interesting to see built.
I was also thinking it'd be nice to see recommendations separated from the hosting. I guess there just aren't enough people interested in it.
plus a reputation system
that's it, that's all we need to change right now... seriously, it will work
I was thinking about this last night and I think it'd be interesting to see authors actually have to cite another post that has a good strong counter argument to theirs and point out places where they disagree. It probably wouldn't work on a systemic approach but might work if an individual with this sort of temperament did it.
Then it might be easier for a casual reader to differentiate between journalism and opinion.
That's a pretty damning statement to make about yourself.
"Want me to stop lying? Pay me to tell the truth then."
Crowd source investigative reporting. Focus on supporting the reporter instead of the news network. Build a system that creates a reputation for the reporter and a mechanism to crowd source news that the general public is interested in.
I could go on, but then there would be more text for you to read. I guess I could add that cryptocurrencies and blockchain would be useful technologies in a tool like this. (reputation tracking and crowdsourcing)
The nature of individual celebrity ensures a slide into pandering to one's fans, regardless of how respectable and worthy that celebrity.
There's definitely a huge bias in almost all news sources. The Economist explicitly states their position on matters, The Financial Times and AFR are much more implicit. The BBC does pretty well on sticking to facts, but now they're appending their stories with opinion pieces from editors.
TR does do a very good job of simply fact reporting.
https://www.adfontesmedia.com/
* https://www.bendbulletin.com/ - the local paper. They're the only ones with a reporter sitting through sometimes excruciatingly long city council meetings full of stuff like 'modifications to the sign code' - but also things like zoning reform that may make housing not so horribly expensive.
* https://www.washingtonpost.com/ online - seems to be a decent national level newspaper. You can also get a deal on it via Amazon Prime.
* https://www.economist.com/ - good coverage of events around the world, and some more in depth analysis.
It's probably too much, but... I feel like these are critical times in terms of being informed and involved.
You know what an op-ed piece is, right? If you don't, here's a definition:
> An op-ed, short for "opposite the editorial page" or "opinion editorial", is a written prose piece typically published by a newspaper or magazine which expresses the opinion of an author usually not affiliated with the publication's editorial board.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Op-ed
The NYT itself felt it's reporting was bad enough it warranted an apology: https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/30/weekinreview/the-public-e...
If you think it isn't, I can only suggest you have a bizarre concept of reality.
No, not at all. It's only proof that it's a point of view they thought their readers should know about.
Here's a contemporaneous editorial that expresses a very different view: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/01/opinion/the-bioweapons-en.... You can find all kinds of contradictory opinions in the NYT op-ed section, so it'd be nonsense to say the NYT endorses the view of every one (or any particular one) it publishes.
> If you think it isn't, I can only suggest you have a bizarre concept of reality.
I'd suggest your concept of reality is more bizarre than mine.
The result is I didn't pay and didn't read the article.
Seems to be an effective measure if your goal is to reduce clicks and deter readers
But paying for something via tax is a pretty weak way of ensuring accountability, which is the entire point behind the concept of voting with your wallet.
- It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently. As someone in tech I can clearly see what they get and what they don't. Extrapolating it - it's not at all clear they understand economics or foreign policy or policy impact or environmental concerns and how to address them ...etc.
- Bias: every single one of them have bias. The burden is on me to spot bias and think objectively. Why do I have to pay do that? At least present news as it is? I'm not sure if even that would work - there could be bias in what gets chosen for reporting.
- The user experience is pretty bad. That I have to use an adblock after paying for the already expensive subscription is ridiculous. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of pixels and tracking embedded in their site.
- Big picture: By design, news focuses on the now and misses the big picture quite often and usually by a huge margin. E.g., the relentless focus on petty issues in last election (both major party candidates) and not enough attention at all on concrete policy measures. This extends to privacy issues (Facebook and the like) until it's too late. Wars/conflicts, foreign policy, long term economics.
For all these reasons, I have got rid of my NYT & WaPo subscription to FT now and I can't be happier.
This is exceptionally difficult. My favorite example is choosing which photo to run for a story. Let's say a photographer take photos of Trump at an event. He has a photo of Trump smiling, a photo of Trump frowning, a photo of Trump scowling and a photo of Trump laughing. Which one is correct? They are all technically correct because they happened, but they all convey different tones, some of which will be completely inappropriate in the context of the story it runs with.
There was a very famous image of the UK miner's strike, at the battle of Orgreave, 1984. Another photographer captured the same scene that day. They give a very different impression.
Both images compared: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/06/photogr...
It’s just that one doesn’t give much context, it’s just a miner.
It's similar to when people try to claim that journalism without bias in writing is not possible. No, it's very possible. See articles of the New York Times from decades ago. This [1] is the first article on what would become "Watergate" from the NYTimes. The article does nothing but provide a detailed and objective recounting of all information available. There is no speculation, and I certainly can't tell anything about the author's biases, political leanings, etc. And keep in mind that this is a huge event - that is what would eventually lead to the impeachment of Richard Nixon. That tempered and impartial reporting, over decades, is what gave the New York Times the reputation that it's rapidly destroying today. Imagine if that article was written by the New New York Times of today.
The problem of course is that that article is 'boring'. It's not going to drive a million clicks and be shared on social media sites getting those upvotes to get to the top which leads to even more clicks and even more money. Hacker News is definitely higher brow than most social media sites. Regardless, this [2] is a list of all submissions to this site from the New York Times. Go and see what gets upvoted and eventually makes its way to the front page (following are all 30+ point submissions from first page):
- Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing (nytimes.com)
- Opinion: A.I. Could Worsen Health Disparities (nytimes.com)
- Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued (nytimes.com)
- This is Your Brain Off Facebook - study offers glimpse of unplugging (nytimes.com)
- Another Side of MeToo: Male Managers Fearful of Mentoring Women (nytimes.com)
- Foxconn Is Reconsidering Plan for Manufacturing in Wisconsin (nytimes.com)
And so on. It's frequently sensationalized and hyperbolic reporting that often even starts the ball rolling with a fake title. No, AI isn't going to worsen health disparities. No, no company wants to get sued. And no, male managers are not fearful of mentoring women. And it's only downhill from there. Even the articles that seem real, often quickly expose they're just click grabbers. For instance the "Foxconn is reconsidering plan" states. The lead paragraph states,
"It was heralded a year and a half ago as the start of a Midwestern manufacturing renaissance: Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics behemoth, would build a $10 billion Wisconsin plant to make flat-screen televisions, creating 13,000 jobs. President Trump later called the project “the eighth wonder of the world.” Now that prospect looks less certain."
Several paragraphs later you get, "Foxconn said that it remained committed to creating 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin and that it was “moving forward with plans to build an advanced manufacturing facility.”" In other words they are doing what they said they would do. This is not meaningful or good reporting. But it gets those clicks, and that's all that matters now a days.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/22/archives/4-being-hunted-i...
[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com
I couldn't put it better. I'm longing for the day someone creates a website that scans all news, detects and removes anything but the facts, and presents it to me as terse prose with a picture or two if strictly necessary. No ads. No cookies. No commentary. No opinion. Just the facts - all of them.
- Elephants are big.
Which one of these is a fact? English is unusually elegant in this regard. A fact does not mean true, it means something that can be shown to be indisputably true or false -- something that is falsifiable. The first statement is the fact. Because the second statement has no defined or falsifiable meaning it is an opinion. An elephant may be big compared to a mouse, but they're infinitesimally small compared to a planet. What does big mean?
In the New York Times' Watergate article [1] you'll find every statement made is a fact. Compare this to their writing on contemporary issues, particularly ones that are politically charged, and you'll find it's a night and day difference. The articles generally severely lack for facts and what facts are provided are often in the form of quotations which, in turn, are often non-factual.
Of course facts alone are not the end of the story. Facts can be misleading: 'Uber drivers were engaged in 47,341 more accidents including 27 more fatal accidents than all the licensed taxi drivers in New York.' That implies one thing, yet it omits a rather critical piece of information - how many miles did both drive? And there is also a bias in the stories that are covered. A news organization that chooses to only cover stories that reflect positively upon one side of an issue, or those that reflect negatively upon the other side, would be actively misleading their readers even if each story was independently factual and in no way misleading.
So aiming for factual reporting is certainly just a benchmark rather than the finish line. But it's really pretty easy to do, and it's something that'd leave us with magnitudes greater reporting quality than what we have today.
[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/22/archives/4-being-hunted-i...
The journalistic emphasis in selecting just one ( viewpoint, photo,lede ) is partly why the news is so broken.
If the photo supports the central truth of the piece then run it, otherwise you’re undermining yourself.
Doesn't the Washington post charge for articles with named sources?
Almost every time I follow a link to them the source has been "someone familiar with the matter". However, one time I was surprised see there were actual names attached to the quotes, but they obscured most of the page and wanted me to pay a dollar to read it.
Personally, I use the main site just to scan headlines and see if there's anything interesting.
Everyone's biased, but I don't think I'm more of an objective thinker than a trained journalist who's taken classes to study it and write about it specifically. I don't believe many people can spot bias as well as they think they can just from a reporter's writing.
And yeah, they aren't experts at everything they cover. It's not a scientific journal. They should use sources for that stuff and if they don't, you should move on. Remember they also don't write specifically for experts so details get left out.
But, where I get worried is what happens to the public commons when the labor of large scale journalism which is out of the reach of a single journalist (or even a small confederation) resources wise gets lost. Would it be replaced by individuals or small federations that are as effective? I mean, I don't think effective journalism will die anytime soon on the whole. But, I wonder if pockets will go extinct, and I'm nervous about what that means. I still don't think I've really seen it all that much yet.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxQaod7tWvYK_Naia54Gc...
The question is, has he remained independent from his decidedly partial funder?
I see it's all video in that investigation, do the videos look like they've been manipulated?
A bit of a tangent but: this is how you keep secrets in the Information Age. You can't actually keep a secret, but you can fog up the air with so much competing nonsense that nobody knows what to believe and the secret is indistinguishable from noise.
Murders in Chicago the last 10 years:
2009 - 463
2010 - 456
2011 - 449
2012 - 514
2013 - 455
2014 - 464
2015 - 512
2016 - 808
2017 - 683
2018 - 588
The problem with that is that the person with the byline isn't the only one that matters. Editorial oversight is equally important. You need the guy who's enthusiastically digging into a story and the guy who keeps his enthusiasm in check. I don't think those can be the same person.
A young journalist named Relotius who worked for "Der Spiegel" was found to have his stories a little bit too perfect. He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.
So, while the core of a story might still be true, nobody really knows what happened and what was added by him. Nobody believes anything of these stories anymore after all.
It totally blew his career up (he was formerly found to be one of the "rising stars" of German journalism and had already got some awards for his work) and the Spiegel also found himself under heavy criticism, although they already have a concept in place, where another editor always fact-checks the other editors work.
So: Enthusiasm in journalists can go really wrong.
I think you are underselling it. Quoting from Der Spiegel[1], "he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. (...) He also made up dialogue and quotes."
[1] http://m.spiegel.de/international/the-relotius-case-answers-...
[1] https://digiday.com/media/inside-spiegels-70-person-fact-che...
I think you have a typo. Are you saying that you switched to FT (Financial Times), or that you got rid of the FT as well?
Anyway, if you are a US-based reader, one way to avoid some of the bias and noise is to subscribe to a non-US paper. You don't have reporters and columnists trying to sway voters, because that's not who the audience is. Plus you might discover that interesting events do take place outside of the US. (And uninteresting events. Brexit seems like it should be interesting, but all the daily political ins and outs are, in my non-UK view, a bit tedious...)
Unfortunately it seems the only way to effectively reduce bias is to go straight to the primary source and judge for yourself, which is time-consuming.
Your personal bias, of course.
We see in this thread many people who condemn newspapers because they report differently than they themselves would, and then have the gall to call that "bias".
But say, do you look forward to daily reports in your newspaper how on XY street there was no traffic accident yesterday? Or that no criminal escaped from YZ prison last month?
It's perfectly legitimate to focus on the interesting parts. You want to learn about an elephant's anatomy? Read a biology textbook, not journalism.
Thanks for a case study. That's exactly what the press does - describe only the tail and call everyone who objects tail-phobes. No, I'm not going to pay for such baloney. If they find advertisers gullible enough to pay for it - good for them. Otherwise, good riddance.
> It's perfectly legitimate to focus on the interesting parts.
Of course. It's also perfectly legitimate for me not to pay for it if I'm interested in whole picture, not tail hairs. Let the tail hair enthusiasts finance it.
Sure, don't pay for it. I don't pay for Magic: The Gathering cards. But I also don't troll message boards how WotC deserve to die because they neglect XBox games, thus showing their bias towards Collectible Card Games.
If they describe only what they care for, and only in a way they care for, it's the definition of biased. I challenge you to provide a definition of this word that would not be equivalent to this.
> But I also don't troll message boards how WotC deserve to die because they neglect XBox games
I don't care if they survive on their own - but they are whining that unless people start en masse paying for them, they'd die. I say - in that case good riddance, just as you would say if somebody asked you to pay for local MtG tournament because otherwise they can't survive. If they want my money - they have to provide quality content and do decent work. If they want to prostitute themselves to partisan politics and clickbait - ok, that's a way to make a living too, but I won't pay for it.
Oh, and another thing: I don't think any MtG club ever driven anybody to suicide or ruined somebody's life or career. Media does it all the time (Gawker, finally and deservedly resting in peace, pretty much was built for it). For example: https://quillette.com/2019/01/30/the-death-of-a-dreamer/ And then they want my sympathy. How about "no"?
P.S. you don't have to like my arguments or agree with it, but calling me "troll" just because you disagree with me is rude. Just so you know.
Right or wrong, noble intentions or not, it's not an accurate portrayal of America as a whole on the part of the BBC. If CNN ran a front page column every time someone in the UK died of alcohol poisoning, would you consider that unbiased coverage of the UK?
Well, actual verified accounts and statistics for one. BBC loves nothing more than highlighting USA shootings - despite near historic record lows of gun violence and definitely lows of gun ownership to crime ratios.
BBC does this because they want to “prove” how much better they are not being allowed the choice of how to defend yourself. It’s British smugness 101.
Btw... Did you see the school shooting last week where the aggresor was wearing a smash the patriarchy shirt - no you probably did not, and definitely didn’t see it on BBC.
Narrative and Bias. BBC can be trusted at all on firearms anywhere.
Now look at this list of only school shootings in America and tell me again that the BBC is unfairly reporting on too many of them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_...
What percentage have they reported on, anyway? Low single digit?
Your "near historic record lows" are how many orders of magnitude more than in other countries?
You’ll be happy to know there are less school shootings today than the 90s. [0]
As opposed to other countries, where guns are available they are used... shocker! The fact is that where guns are in the USA, our rural areas have violence rates as near European rural rates. We have a lot of metropolitan areas with populations of 250k+ where our crime is, those are areas with illegal guns, that go with the drug, gang, poverty, inequality of social mobility, and gang problems. We have issues in the cities - but it’s not because of guns. That violence committed with guns is falling, despite record gun availability. The CDC found that where we have 10k homicides including all the drug and gang violence per year, we have 500,000 to 3,000,000 successful and legal defensive gun uses. And... to wrap up the “but other countries” argument, I don’t care what other countries to, in the USA we have a fundemental freedom to defend ourselves with the lost effective means of personal protection ever invented, it’s a natural right enumerated as a civil right.
[0] https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-o...
All of those things would make national news if they occurred in the UK.
In the UK you go to jail for defending yourself [0,1,2]. The UK police themselves tell you the only legal tool for self-defense is a rape alarm [3].
If you think it's good the UK government has made the choice for people on how best to defend themselves, that's cool. I understand how if you've grown up with that culture, it's probably difficult to understand the freedom of choice we have in the USA.
[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1461346/Five-years-i...
[1] https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/11/pensioner-jailed-shooting-bur...
[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-43639183
[3] https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q589.htm
It seems legitimate to report on that considering schools are places that parents send their kids every day and have historically viewed them as safe. Add that most schools are publicly-run institutions and you have an interesting story of children shooting children at government run locations. If that doesn’t seem newsworthy to you, the bias may be in your own interpretation.
And you are also wrong about that. [0] My comment wasn’t about number of school shooting - but narrative. You don’t hear about them unless they fall into a given narrative. You don’t question what you are seeing at all, just happily accept it because it fits your bias.
[0] https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-o...
Even if we just focus on K-12, you could download this [1] data from US Naval Postgraduate School and run a trend line all the way back to 1970.
[1] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/
While your source that has no data at all - that does seem more trust worthy. Not to mention rate vs incidents.
The source I provided is literally only data, with no editorializing. It comes from this source: "The School Shooting Database Project is conducted as part of the Advanced Thinking in Homeland Security (HSx) program at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS)."[1] It also has a publicized data set you can examine.[2]
You are not biased at all, but anyone who dares disagree with you must be.
[1] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/about/
[2] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/dataset/
"The (K12SSD) table at right shows that the majority of “school shootings” over the last 48 years occur outside while on school campus. When tied in with non-shooting “school shooting” definitions, such as brandishing, we get a very different picture. By this project’s definitions, if someone on the sidewalk outside the school brandished a gun, that was a “school shooting”. Three percent of “school shootings” in the database involve no shots being fired at all. And if we include single shots (regardless of from where they came, or if they were suicides, or if they were late at night, etc.) those add up to 63% of all incidents."
http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/school-shooting-database-and-p...
I hardly think K12SSD's releases come "with no editorializing".
We could have a long discussion about what should and shouldn't be included in the data set. Should a bullet that hits a school building be counted? Should brandishing count? Should we only count incidents where people die? Does there need to be 4 or more injured? etc.,
The comment about editorializing was in reference to how one source was a news article interpreting a data set (the definition of a narrative) and the other was simply a data set.
Sharon White is the unelected, former civil servant and former journalist that runs OFCOM.
They are under specific instructions from Dame Patricia Hodgson and Sharon White from OFCOM to drop impartiality and implement a social justice agenda.
It would be an interesting idea to do analysis on the headlines in the BBC News page to see how the editorial policy has followed edicts from OFCOM. Both are publicly available.
Here is a report from OFCOM itself about a talk given by Ms White on the subject of diversity and how OFCOM can support a “positive change” agenda. [1]
Here are details of Project Diamond a programme to enforce and monitor Ms White’s diversity agenda across the industry [2]
Also [3] where Ms White speaks about punishing the BBC for not meeting her requested standards.
[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/speeches/2...
[2] http://creativediversitynetwork.com/diamond/
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/27/tv-industry-di...
If you can’t see the distinction, I doubt you will find any journalism stooping to your level.
One example would that the BBC now has to have a 50-50 gender split for experts brought onto its flagship Radio 4 Today programme. That was decided to presumably to broaden opinions given to be more inclusive.
Another example would be this speach by Ms White where she clearly states:
"So today we have announced that the BBC will have to agree with Ofcom a new Diversity Code of Practice. This will set out how the BBC will commission programmes that authentically portray the whole UK population." [1]
As to "stooping to my level", I've so far not said anything about whether this process is good or bad or if the ends justify the means. Just that it is going on and you can read about the details if you wish.
[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/speeches/2...
Nowhere above has OFCOM directed the BBC to air different opinions. Regarding the Today programme example: Deliberately featuring a female (rather than male) climate science expert after featuring a male vaccination expert is entirely orthogonal to impartiality.
[EDIT:] I'm not specifically arguing that the BBC has no bias. I'm saying you haven't demonstrated that OFCOM have demanded a bias.
Of course we all have our personal biases that can never be fully eliminated. But if you wanted to summarize the "current state of America" in one web page, statistically speaking some bastard shooting 3 bystanders in a botched robbery in a high crime area of East St. Louis (made up, but similar to stuff I've seen on the front page before) shouldn't even approach making the list.
It was written for children, essentially the print equivalent of ABC's Behind The News bulletin [2]. The writing level wasn't too far removed from the "adult" papers (I gather broadsheets are written to a 12 year old reading level and tabloids lower than that). Articles were a mix of mainstream news and kid specific stuff. There were fewer articles than an adult paper, but was basically all there with the extraneous stuff removed. It was completely independent.
[1] https://www.crinklingnews.com.au/
[2] http://www.abc.net.au/btn/
I used to subscribe to the FT. It's pretty balanced in its reporting, with good news coverage. Surprisingly perhaps, without the bias you might expect of a financial paper. For a while I'd be surprised to see well argued pieces making a case for less inequality, higher taxes, or a universal basic income. Then you stop being surprised they're not just a vehicle of the Tory party, like the Telegraph and Times mostly now are.
I haven't seen the print paper in a very long time, but I go to their website and see the following headlines: Sunday Times journalist was murdered by Assad, Bitter split on assisted dying hits Royal College of Physicians, Snow Alert as Britain stuck in deep freeze, Killer driver law a farce - says Olympic star, Labour MPs branded cowards for 'selling votes' to help May's deal, Job interviewer 'was like abusive ex', Giving Statins to older people could save 8000 lives a year, Times Christmas appeal attracts record donations, Improve or face closure - Steiner schools warned, Woman reunited with train driver who stopped her killing herself.
Where is the news? Virtually every headline is either exaggerated or clickbait or both. The article on the killing of the journalist is at least news worthy, but the headline is way over the top -- "US court determines Assad regime liable in journalist killing" would be much more neutral. There is a debate on assisted dying in the Royal College, but when has there not been? What's this about? It might snow in Britain. In February. Wow. "Killer driver law"... obviously a story, but obviously not unbiased... The rest of it is fodder for the tabloids. What the heck happened to the newspaper?
The Times is one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the world. And while it has always been biased (as they all are), it has an amazing reputation for journalism since the latter half of the 1700s! But people don't want news. They want shock and awe. It drives me crazy.
Example: Washington Post pushed the "Covington boys surround and intimidate native man" narrative that's been completely shattered by about 200 hours of video footage in the last week, and led to Twitter disabling the account that spread it, refutations (oddly enough from the NYT) and various apologies from those who came after the child on question.
Also I don't see how it's whataboutism when I'm agreeing with the general thesis.
Edit: it's not me modding you down, I think your second post was quite reasonable. I wish HN didn't downvote civil discussion like this.
Either the children surrounded the man and one boy stood threateningly close (as the Washington Post reorted at https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/20/it-was-gett...), or this did not happen.
As it turns out (Bari Weiss at the NYT viewed over 200 hours of footage) this did not happen. The man moved into the middle of the boys and stood very close to one of them. You can watch this from multiple angles and multiple cameras on YouTube and confirm this for yourself. David Brooks in the NYT also has an excellent summary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/covington-march-f...
Reality is not a matter of perception.
However my comment was about how that actual scene can be viewed differently by people, and is exactly what is happening. This is not a matter of scientific facts being disputed, it's an interpretation of a real life event that took place. Too many people, the scene of 30-40 boys yelling and acting how they did invoked a sense of fear and intimidation to them. Too many others, it was just 'boys being boys'.
The other reason people are so miffed over this is because of the actual people in it and the narrative. For one, a boys family had the means to hire a PR firm to help with the ordeal (again, a place of privilege). And two, there is so much hand wringing over this boy and this event, but for some reason when many young men have been shot or hurt by cops it's often met with negative depictions of the person hurt. You can call this whataboutism all you want, but that's the reality of it. Why in this instance where a boy and his group of friends, that are clearing acting up and provoking others (not even touching the negative nature of their hats), are given a free ride as 'boys being boys' but yet we chastise people who get in trouble with cops? Aren't those same people "just being boys"?
You mentioned a fact was a matter of people interpreting a narrative. "While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right." That is not how facts work.
> There is no doubt the events going on were a powder keg of problems waiting to tip off.
Nobody is discussing whether there were "many problems".
We are debating whether children surrounded and intimidated an old man as reported by the Washington Post. We are doing so because WaPo was cited as an example of 'real news'.
That did not happen. WaPo was wrong.
> This is not a matter of scientific facts being disputed
Do you think the boys surrounded and intimated the old man?
You keep discussing unrelated issues without specifically answering whether you believe this happened or did not happen.
I'm speaking to how some watched videos and felt they agreed with WaPo on the matter. There is no 'fact' to this story beyond an interpretation of events. This isn't a situation of clear cut and dry (like the recent released footage of the Chicago officer). It's people reacting to a situation and how it's making them feel.
> We are debating whether children surrounded and intimidated an old man as reported by the Washington Post. We are doing so because WaPo was cited as an example of 'real news'. > That did not happen. WaPo was wrong.
Your statements are perfectly proving my point. To people that scene and moment gave them a sense of intimidation. You cannot tell them their feelings and interpretation of the situation is wrong. If I walk up to you and stand in your face, and you tell me that it made you feel intimidated I don't have the right to go "Stop, you're wrong".
> You keep discussing unrelated issues without specifically answering whether you believe this happened or did not happen
Im trying to explain to you why that particular situation is not something you can clearly point to as fake news. I'm trying to paint a larger picture to the whole matter and why many took issue with it.
Since you're so hung up on the matter, yes to me I viewed the way those kids acted as intimidating and inappropriate. If I saw that many kids in a group, wearing those hats, and chanting the way they did I would not want to be near it.
Yes there is. Either the boys surrounded and approached the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported, or they did not.
>> Do you think the boys surrounded and intimated the old man?
> that particular situation is not something you can clearly point to as fake news.
Yes it is. Things are real, or they are not.
You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality.
Let's not continue communicating.
The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him. That is right in the video, clear as day. That is very much a clear fact. What you seem intent on breaking down is whether or not this was seen as some form of intimidation tactic and I'm trying to explain to you that people can, and do, interpret personal encounters like that in varying ways.
You seem to be one who can't understand the way in which people are able to react and interpret actions of people different. You asked me my opinion of the situation and then proceeded to tell me that my perception of reality is wrong. I watch that video and I personally feel that they are being intimidating, how am I in a 'confused nature of reality'. I am watching people confront each other and reacting to the situation.
Your whole argument on this video boils down to "your personal feelings don't match mine, so you're wrong".
> The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him.
Did the boys surround and approach the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported?
Answer Y or N.
> > You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality.
> how am I in a 'confused nature of reality'.
That is not the what I wrote. I've included the real quote above.
I say that you're confused about the nature of reality because you repeatedly say a documented fact is a matter of perception, and cannot say whether you believe it is true of false.
We are on Hacker News right now. If someone reported we were having this conversation on Ars Technica, that would be false. That is not a matter of perception or feeling. This is how facts work.
Do you the footage of the old man approaching the group of boys and standing very close to one of them is fake?
>> Did the boys surround and approach the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported? Answer Y or N.
>>Do you the footage of the old man approaching the group of boys and standing very close to one of them is fake?
You have not answered any of these questions. Instead, you've either changed topic or made up your own questions and answered those.
The issue is not that I think your answers are wrong, it's that your answers don't exist.
I was being very cafeful to be civil though - even though this is difficult with someone who won't give a firm opinion on something. I succeeded in that.
You haven't said I was uncivil before either - we've had a few discussions about articles I've written that have been on HN and you once disliked me criticising the Bay Area.
Email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss further.
Mike
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> > The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him.
I suspect they've only seen the short context-less clip, not the actual video, and that's why they can't answer yes or no.
> If I walk up to you and stand in your face, and you tell me that it made you feel intimidated I don't have the right to go "Stop, you're wrong".
Makes me think they never watched the many videos of the old man doing this, not the boys.
But they said they watched the videos and it wouldn't be civil to say they're not telling the truth.
This has always been and will always be the case. There is no possibility for objectivity; unless they compile every fact about the universe and present them all to you (quite a dull read), there’s inherently an editing process and selection of facts the writer thinks is important. You will, and should, always have to think for yourself. Even if news were presented in as dry a fashion as possible, you’d still have to think (or what’s the point?). And the facts will always be incomplete.
NYT went berserk after the 2016 elections if you ask me. Now every article feels like an opinion piece.
Since then It is extremely difficult to find a neutral news with clear facts. I distrust the NYT as much as I distrust Fox news.
I worry when I see these comments. They seem to make the same mistake that the BBC did when they presented equal time to climate change deniers as they did to climate change scientists.
I wouldn't mind paying youtube premium channel if I can get a truly centrist opinion pieces, factual reporting and random excerpts into topics like science/philosophy/comedy/culture.
Sadly afaic again, most of the 'online' content is way too left (or the worse option: way too right). What I wouldn't give for a bbc like channel in the US that runs 1-1.5 hrs every day of content. Any recommendations?
He's got both a news channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/Timcasts/videos) and an Op-Ed channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe02lGcO-ahAURWuxAJnjdA).
Media in the US has consolidated to a handful of players, who have many conflicts of interest. These result in a big business bias in media today.
It's rare to get news and commentary written from the labor point of view, and that's needed a lot more than financial expansion of entities like the NYT.
Progressive minded people should simply start to fund labor centric media and compete with the big money majors. I'll bet that competition goes pretty well, and some of that can be seen in TYT today, largest online news and opinion entity there is, by views. TYT owns under 35-40, operates on a mix of AD revenue and membership income to avoid having those same conflicts of interest, and that allows it to differentiate nicely from the usual players.