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

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

#291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think agreeing to appear in a video with a white supremacist and joking about his "kek" statue doesn't paint at least part of a picture "Paint part of a picture," Is just another way of saying "Narrative." To me, it's more telling that your best, leading example of a place where the media got its facts wrong is Shiva Ayyadurai is also telling So it doesn't matter that they got the facts wrong, because the peop…

I am simply going to point out again that your best example of the media getting its facts wrong is a video in which "Dr. SHIVA Ayyadurai,PhD(M.I.T.) Inventor of Email" --- a repeat InfoWars guest! --- complains about a BuzzFeed listicle-grade story that is itself at pains to point out that the (very few) attendees of an anti-left demonstration in Boston were not all white supremacists. As you've no doubt surmised: n…

your best example of the media getting its facts wrong

You say "best." It's just one example. You are implicitly admitting that it is an example of where the mainstream media got the facts wrong:

a BuzzFeed listicle-grade story that is itself at pains to point out that the (very few) attendees of an anti-left demonstration in Boston were not all white supremacists.

Furthermore you are also admitting that the mainstream media narrative ran 180 degrees counter to the truth.

"Dr. SHIVA Ayyadurai,PhD(M.I.T.) Inventor of Email"

Then you cover it up by spinning a narrative. None of that is relevant. Also, thanks for demonstrating the mechanism of pushing narrative once again.

As I said, the picture you're painting of yourself is not the same picture Shiva Ayyadurai has painted of himself.

The point is not to convince you. The purpose for me is for 3rd party readers to see. So long as someone speaks out against the narratives, other dissidents will see that someone, somewhere understands.

But in the interest of hope, please pay attention to exactly what it is that you are saying. You have admitted that 1) the mainstream media got the facts wrong, 2) the media narrative was pushing in a deceptive direction in the opposite direction from the facts, and 3) nothing of the factual accuracy of the media, or the fidelity of its pushed narrative matters to you because the targeted people are reprehensibles.

Isn't this the attitude of every arrogant, out of touch elite, unknowingly doing injustice in history, ever? In what moral universe, is it alright that the news sources are so wildly wrong, and the narrative is so contrary to the truth, but it's alright because the subjects are so disliked? I know of extra-legal organizations from just a few decades back who didn't care too much about who exactly was guilty of what, or the facts, just that the people they were acting against were thought of as "reprehensibles" in their world view and also had the "correct" external attributes to be their appropriate targets -- in short, to fit their narratives. I've had such actions taken against me, personally, by such people. Such actions are particularly unjust, at root precisely because of the epistemological disconnect. When I engage in such discussions here, it's this very disconnect which most strongly motivates me.

Please pay attention that you are taking, in principle, such a stance. If your attitude is at all representative of SV CEOs in general, then that doesn't bode well for society at all.

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

#292
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. The point is to link assertions to publicly available primary sources like court documents or suchlike and articulate the linkage clearly.It's well designed for that.

Because anon users won't link to "primary sources", which are really nothing of the sort? Because "primary sources" are always correct and trustworthy and never disagree?

I have no trouble maintaining such distinctions.

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claas Relotius, the Der Spiegel journalist who won CNN's journalist of the year award who was revelead to be completely inventing stories about people to make enticing click bait. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/top-der-spiege...

He either invented sources or made up quotes from real people he never met. How do you expect this platform to remedy that?

Yeah I don't know how well this tool could remedy that, or whatever else it hopes to solve. I don't see how this is hardly different than just sourcing your own facts with Google.

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am simply going to point out again that your best example of the media getting its facts wrong is a video in which "Dr. SHIVA Ayyadurai,PhD(M.I.T.) Inventor of Email" --- a repeat InfoWars guest! --- complains about a BuzzFeed listicle-grade story that is itself at pains to point out that the (very few) attendees of an anti-left demonstration in Boston were not all white supremacists. As you've no doubt surmised: n…

By the way: it is my understanding, a personal, subjective understanding based on reportage and accounts from other people that I have read, presented here as a statement of my own opinion and not a relation of specific facts, that the claim that Shiva Ayyadurai invented email is laughable.

By the way: it is my understanding, a personal, subjective understanding based on reportage and accounts from other people that I have read, presented here as a statement of my own opinion and not a relation of specific facts, that the claim that Shiva Ayyadurai invented email is laughable.

I wouldn't disagree with that. None of that is really relevant, however.

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

#295
post #285

I appreciate the recognition that there is a problem in journalism. But I'm afraid that the fundamental problems are problems in the nature of humans and aren't ameniable to this sort of solution. Those problems include: 1) Many people choose to believe what feels right to them, rather than dispassionately seeing things for what they are. Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and they…

The answer to 1 most likely lies in education and (more broadly) reduction of economic segregation. You will not save everbody with this, but the majority. I would divide media roughly into three classes: 1. The worst: those who make up things with no base in reality at all 2. The standard: those who don’t make up things willfully, but manipulate through selective focus (leaving out certain topics while pushing other…

What kinda works is having a national press council that has the power to sue media plattforms to print corrections when they get things wrong. Even the most uneducated would think about changing the newspaper when ever other issue starts with a correction notice.

Actually, people have been calling out media organizations and getting them to print retractions and even suing them. When they do retract, they do it in a way where it doesn't get much space and much attention. (The mainstream media is particularly bad about covering this sort of thing.) Some (even mainstream) organizations in 2018/2019 would simply ignore the claims. Some (even mainstream) even quietly edited articles without retraction.

In any case, I don't think most media organizations care, because most of the time, the retraction isn't nearly as viral as the initial clickbait story, and even if there was outrage, that would still ultimately benefit them by ultimately generating more attention.

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

#296
post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making a mistake is not lying, but it is a moral failing to promulgate fiction as fact because it accords with your preferred narrative, especially when it's done by the media, who are trusted because they are supposed to practice restraint and good judgment.

And when has "mainstream media" ever "promulgated fiction as fact"? This thread started with an acklowledgement that intentional errors, exceptions, or mischaracterizations are exceedingly rare in well-reputed news outlets.

Frequently "the news" puts telling a good story ahead of Truth. That is, they don't tell the most informative version of the story but the most compelling version or up/downplaying a story based on bias.

This doesn't involve outright untruths or even significant manipulation of facts.

It does involve things like cherry-picking facts, quotes, and statistics that paint the desired picture without drawing conclusions while the reader's intended conclusion is obvious.

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What they shouldn't run the story at all? Well, I think as you get more and more degrees removed from a primary source, the closer the article gets to being gossip and/or somebody's opinion and not factual news. Which is fine, there's a market for stuff like that. But I don't think that's very sustainable if you want to maintain a reputation as a purveyor of fact-based reporting. There's a reason hearsay isn't gener…

> There's a reason hearsay isn't generally admissable in a court of law. The main reasons are that courts have compulsory process to attain testimony of primary witnesses which makes it generally unnecessary, and that courts are by design intended to work via adversarial process including cross examination, and a indirect witness can't be cross examined. Needless to say, there are lots of exceptions to hearsay exclus…

It's not hard to see parallels between the two situations. Both the court and the average consumer of news are trying to figure out what's true and what isn't. A real human being who is quoted in the paper will certainly be "cross-examined" when subsequent events show him to have been completely mistaken. DC-insider ventriloquists with no names will not be cross-examined so.

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am simply going to point out again that your best example of the media getting its facts wrong is a video in which "Dr. SHIVA Ayyadurai,PhD(M.I.T.) Inventor of Email" --- a repeat InfoWars guest! --- complains about a BuzzFeed listicle-grade story that is itself at pains to point out that the (very few) attendees of an anti-left demonstration in Boston were not all white supremacists. As you've no doubt surmised: n…

your best example of the media getting its facts wrong You say "best." It's just one example. You are implicitly admitting that it is an example of where the mainstream media got the facts wrong: a BuzzFeed listicle-grade story that is itself at pains to point out that the (very few) attendees of an anti-left demonstration in Boston were not all white supremacists. Furthermore you are also admitting that the mainstre…

I'm neither in silicon valley nor a CEO. Are you sure you're alright?

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

#299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way: it is my understanding, a personal, subjective understanding based on reportage and accounts from other people that I have read, presented here as a statement of my own opinion and not a relation of specific facts, that the claim that Shiva Ayyadurai invented email is laughable.

By the way: it is my understanding, a personal, subjective understanding based on reportage and accounts from other people that I have read, presented here as a statement of my own opinion and not a relation of specific facts, that the claim that Shiva Ayyadurai invented email is laughable. I wouldn't disagree with that. None of that is really relevant, however.

It's not relevant whether the source you presented for your claim that the media got the Boston right-wing rally wrong is himself (a conclusion I've drawn from sources and reporting and, to be clear, a statement of pure opinion and not of fact, and I will remind you: opinion about a very public figure) habitually dishonest?

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

#300
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> desperately sick How so?

The common sentiment that marriage takes hard work on the daily or else it turns sour, ideas like that point to a fundamental difficulty with the human heart, no?

Well, this seems very subjective. Personally, I believe there are many ways to soothe one's heart.

Though without any care, you're probably right.

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