Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#161

Post by dclowd9901 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:30 PM UTC

rootusrootus wrote: post #59

Great project, but this seems like a classic example of a programmer naively assuming a technical solution can solve a social problem.

I think to solve the problem, you need to do it in steps, kind of like how chained logic works. You start with something simple: "Can we verify what someone says with public record?" Yes, here's how we do it.

As one problem is solved, it starts hinting at solutions to subsequent problems. This is not a problem with a silver bullet. It's going to take a fundamental shift in how we understand and verify truth.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#162

Post by novok » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:39 PM UTC

paulsutter wrote: post #116

beat wrote: post #109

Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact checking" could have detected it? Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the facts right.

Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497

It would be interesting to add a journo jargon extension to this website so you can understand what certain phrases could be referring to. Kind of like "a stranger"

https://twitter.com/patio11/status/1111683961447567360

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#163

Post by rfeather » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

I like the idea and genuinely hope that fact checking becomes more mainstream. Seriously, kudos to the author for building something. But what I'm not getting is why a news platform would use this, unless this is intending on becoming a news platform itself?

I think there is an underlying assumption that the general world cares about things like "primary sources" and "logical fallacies" enough to bother hovering over the text or viewing the content, and that there isn't an intentional manipulation of these things by media organizations to fit a narrative. Maybe if this was a browser plugin that came with by default and automatically highlighted fact checked statements in exiting articles. That way folks wouldn't have to opt in, but as it is, whats the incentive for either the populace or the media to participate? Think of it this way- how did the fact checking in the examples get done? Someone spent 2 minutes on their favorite search engine. People willing to do that will do it if they have the time, and people not willing probably aren't interested in information that would contradict their opinions anyway - unless it comes from a source they already trust, like someone in their bubble. My own experience with this is that the folks who will care exist but are rare. Others, you can literally watch their eyes glaze over the moment you introduce a little cognitive dissonance.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#164

Post by vortico » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

volt4ire wrote: post #127

Sadly this "platform to open source factchecking" is not itself open source, as the site's source code is not available and the user content license restricts commercial use (see point 3 https://sourcedfact.com/terms_of_service and https://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/24/why-share-alike-licenses-ar... )

That's fine with me. The two concepts of "open-source" at hand are drastically different. The lack of ability to verify the website's source code doesn't prevent me in any way from seeing its content which helps me verify journalist claims.

I hope the author is able to grow their service through marketing, licensing, and contracts with media agencies. Open-sourcing the service's software would be a distraction from that goal and would create fragmentation of its database when clones of the service are created. What's important for a service like this is open data, not necessarily an open-source stack.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#165

Post by ajvs » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:45 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #154

ajvs wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been debunked thoroughly. That guy went up to the kids and started beating his drum right in their faces to intimidate them and somehow the media painted the kids as the harasser.

Was his intent to intimidate? Why do you say that? How is that a "fact"? Where did you even hear that story? Geez, y'all don't understand fact checking at all .

Does it matter what he says his intent was? He can paint whatever story he likes in interviews, but nobody would appreciate a random person going right in their face and beating a drum, especially a young kid. You can even see him flinching because of the proximity.

Not sure what you're talking about "hearing that story", the video evidence is clear as day.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#166

Post by notahacker » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:47 PM UTC

novok wrote: post #159

notahacker wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a very good example of press failure. But also possibly one which shows how difficult it would actually be for "open source" fact checking based on consensus voting to pick up blatant lies. Relotius got away with his spiel for a long time and won awards because none of the people he claimed to have interviewed read his articles (especially not the people who didn't actually exist!). It's also reasona…

How I see it playing out: 1. Individual journalists do not sign up for this, publications would, as an integration for every article. 2. A casual reader from Fergus falls would notice a few weird things, and start raising questions. 3. That would start the snowball into all the other things the 'fake journalist' would be doing, at least for the article. Once you get popular enough, the internet haters will follow thr…

A site would have to get quite big to have many casual readers from Fergus Falls (population ~13000) preapproving its German articles though, even taking into account some people remember meeting him and eventually got round to blogging about it.

Actually, it's interesting how little attention internet haters paid to Relotius, considering he was writing on polarising subjects, winning awards and he was arrogant enough to throw in details that were trivially proven wrong like election results as well as random deniable lies about the individuals he interviewed or said he interviewed. Perhaps writing in German and on things happening overseas helped shield him. But yeah, agree that internet haters are the way forward for crowdsourced factchecking (at least on subjects a bit less partisan than politics or sport where the haters can generally be relied on to reach some sort of consensus)

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#167

Post by devinplatt » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:51 PM UTC

smenis wrote: post #150

devinplatt wrote: post #121

Hey everybody, I just want to point out that I'm working on a similar project to document evidence for and against claims: https://www.wikiclaim.org The tech is dumb (MediaWiki on Heroku), but it's been sufficient to allow me to spend several hundred hours creating probably about 200 hundred wiki pages so far.

Thanks for posting this, I really enjoyed browsing Wikiclaim and it feels to me like I've never seen anywhere on the Internet that centralises this kind of content (commonly heard claims with info for/against)... Having said that, the usual strategy when I hear a new claim I'm not sure about is to google it; so is the Google search engine itself the competition for this site? It does try to give an "answer" at the to…

Thanks Smenis!

In time I hope that Google will surface Wikiclaim higher in its search results (whether URL or even answer box), so in my mind the competitor is also the ally :)

I don't think the strong suit of Quora (information based personal experiences) overlaps with what I'm trying to do with Wikiclaim (information from numerous reliable sources, editable by anyone), so no issues there either.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#168

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

beat wrote: post #136

jessaustin wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congratulations on this; it looks great. Currently this is only designed to open up the fact checking which involves public primary sources. Limiting the scope to this is wise. It's a tractable problem and it's better journalism. The types of journalists who write "this unnamed source implied that this other unnamed source had implied to another unnamed source..." articles won't like this sort of tool, but those jour…

What's the problem with that sentence? People speak to the press off the record all the time; it's part of the process. Unless the NYT doesn't actually have these sources, there's nothing wrong with it. Of course, all we have for proof is their reputation as a newspaper for integrity, and the word of any reporters involved, but reporters have often gone to jail rather than reveal anonymous sources.

1) I've never heard of Nicholas Fandos, Michael S. Schmidt, or Mark Mazzetti. I don't suspect them of anything horrible, but neither do they have "reputations" on which I can rely. Taibbi in his recent essay observed that reporters without established reputations get lower-quality anonymous tips (i.e., "lies") from insiders than better-known reporters get. In this case multiple no-name authors are actually less reputable than one no-name author would be, because we don't know which of the authors received the anonymous tip at the heart of this article.

2) The basic proposition addressed by that sentence is that "investigators are uncomfortable with Barr's summary", but the implication is that there is a problem with that summary. The rest of the article addresses the potential meaning of this "big, if true" implication but gets no closer to the question of whether that implication is true. The alleged feelings of randoms are not interesting to the average reader. If investigators or anyone else has specific knowledge of wrongdoing that should be made known to the public, they should contact reporters directly.

3) Even if the basic proposition were firmer, we're approaching it through too many layers of indirection. The reporter didn't talk to the investigators. He didn't talk to associates of the investigators. He talked rather to "government officials and others familiar", and not about what those officials and others had heard from the investigators but rather about what associates of the investigators had heard from the investigators. How the government officials and others heard about it is not specified. We're at least four layers deep here, and nothing believable is four layers deep. These reporters are under no threat of "going to jail", because even if the basic question were important no judge could decide that the reporters are close enough to the truth to justify contempt.

4) The basic question is not important. Eventually politicians of both parties will read the entire un-redacted report. The public will not, because grand jury testimony will be redacted to protect the reputations of Republican operatives whose transgressions were not judged to merit indictments while "sources and methods" will be redacted to protect Democratic FBI (and possibly NSA?) agents whose transgressions were under color of law. It's not surprising that Barr's report had a political slant. Everything in DC has a political slant. Maybe if they found the Lindbergh baby, this tottering tower of misdirection could be justified. Nobody here found the Lindbergh baby.

5) That this happens "all the time" is actually a serious problem. Every day, well-placed people insert self-interested opinions into the public discourse not as self-interested opinions but rather as journalistic fact. This has terrible effects on our society and on our military victims around the world. Soi-disant journalists should stop aiding this terrible process, and this tool could help them do that.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#169

Post by notahacker » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #149

notahacker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thrust of PG's claim was that journalists use the term as a synonym for "guilty" and in response, a journalist has argued that they actually use it in line with the dictionary definition of "characterised by conflict or controversy". A bit rich to accuse other people of "not engaging with actual criticism" when your reading comprehension falls that far short... In my experience, journalists use it mostly for peop…

I actually would find embattled a bit of an unusual word choice for someone on trial for a crime outside of a broader context. If someone's arrested for murder, we'd call them a suspected murderer or alleged murderer, not someone embattled. As you say, I associate embattled more with, say, an executive caught up in a scandal or who is likely to be dismissed for poor performance.

"alleged" or "suspected" is actually perhaps a better example of the sort of not-always-correctly-interpreted-by-the-readership journalistic phrase PG intended to highlight, since "alleged" can both mean "this person is [probably going to be] on trial for this offence, so because it's so serious we're respecting the legal process by not asserting they did it even though there's substantial or even blindingly obvious proof" or "we're just reporting something someone once claimed and because it's so open to dispute we have no desire to get sued by making the claim our own"

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#170

Post by bwest87 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 7:54 PM UTC

carrier_lost wrote: post #123

paulsutter wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English. Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and presumably also libel-proof) press code word." https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497

Paul Graham is entitled to his opinion. I am a professional journalist and I disagree. Journalists use the word "embattled" the way Merriam-Webster defines it: "characterized by conflict or controversy." Typically it applies to a person who has been heavily criticized, or accused of wrongdoing at length or by many people. Accurately describing a person as such is not at all the same as the journalist declaring a pers…

I think PG is getting at a larger point, which I heavily agree with, that journalists very often use words that imply a lot of "story" that is not supported by "facts". For example, I just went on to the NYTimes Economy section right now, and the second article says "Short of Workers, US Farmers Crave More Immigrants". Crave? Really? Cable news is horrendous about this. They do stuff all the time that's like, "Senator XYZ blasts Trump". Blasts? And that's just headlines. But you see it all the time in subtle lines throughout an article, such as, "Facebook's employees have been raising a stir". Or like, "The new law is leaving homeowners in a lurch". These words have no quantifiable meaning, and typically it seems journalists pick words that have more average "emotional valence" than other words, even if the facts don't quite support that level of emotional valence. And that honestly is the part that annoys me the most about normal journalism.