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France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

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Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#81
post #63
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying it necessarily applies to this case, but France, like all countries in the EU, does not have actual freedom of speech.

It's ... complicated. France does have a concept of "liberté d'expression" (literally "freedom of speech"), but it isn't equivalent to the US 1st amendment. That won't help you if you don't read french, but you can see here that while the "Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen" from 1789 has a concept somehow similar to "freedom of speech", a lot of exceptions have been created since then. https://fr.wikipe…

Yes, I agree. I don't like to bring up the boogeyman of the year, but China also has a concept of freedom of speech, and see how it works for them. Just saying you have it doesn't mean anything when there are lots of exceptions. Blasphemy laws are an example.

Absolute freedom of speech is indeed not existent anywhere, and probably impractical. But US-level freedom of speech is fine (which is what we usually talk about when we say "freedom of speech"), and France does not have that.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#82
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ability to recall your vote, i.e. unelect, at any time would make your attitude towards your initial vote less serious How do you know that about me? > elections/unelections would cycle too fast to govern Ok, that may be so, but without trying it we'll never know. You could implement this at the municipal level first, see how it works, iron out the kinks if any are found and then scale it up bit by bit. The who…

> Ok, that may be so, but without trying it we'll never know Of course we can. Take the US dominant two-party system, and look at the approval rating for politicians. Look at how many times it crosses the 50% line. Some would only be in office for a few weeks before being replaced, but then who would replace them? What if the previous candidate has a better job already? Does The Party now get to pick someone? How abo…

You've got that backwards. With the people that voted for them the bulk of the politicians are still happy. A recalled vote would simply deduct one from the result as set and would leave the rest of the results in place until the balance point was reached. That would not be something that would 'go back and forth', you could only do that once and when the withdrawn votes balance out (which typically for both parties would normally happen at roughly the same rate) would you call a new election.

So that would not happen nearly as often as you might think, and would likely require a fairly major turn of opinion before it would have any effect.

The two party system by the way is very much broken, as is the influence of money in American politics but that's a completely different - and local - affair.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#83
post #3

In today's world of race to the finish (/ bottom) journalism, I think it should be mandatory for all publications to have an addendum to each article, which contains: * list of sources of information and original research conducted ( including names of interviewees, only anonymized with a justification, links, etc ) * a sign-off by a journalist (note: not supposed to imply responsibility or liability for accuracy of…

I wonder why journalists don't voluntarily to this? It seems obvious to me that high quality journalism should cite sources and methods, if only to protect themselves from future criticism if their news reporting turns out to be wrong. At least then they can point at the fault publicly, explain how it happened, and what they are changing to make sure it doesn't happen again. In some cases, they might deliberately not…

I suspect citing sources and methods in detail might be considered 'boring' for the average reader if done within the prose of the article.

Perhaps what is needed is a new normal that articles online will have footnotes which are only shown to those who want to see them - that way the body of the article can be short and succinct, with the 'borig' citations in the footnotes.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#85
post #3

In today's world of race to the finish (/ bottom) journalism, I think it should be mandatory for all publications to have an addendum to each article, which contains: * list of sources of information and original research conducted ( including names of interviewees, only anonymized with a justification, links, etc ) * a sign-off by a journalist (note: not supposed to imply responsibility or liability for accuracy of…

I'd be happy just if they were forbidden to change articles after publishing, and not say that. Because currently, they post some bullshit news and create some random outrage. Then someone points at some bullshit claim in their article, and they just quietly change the article (remove the claim, add "allegedly", etc.), and act as nothing was wrong. Or in worst case scenario, they quietly remove the whole article.

I've seen this accusation thrown out there on social media a few times now. When I've asked for examples, no one been able to provide a list showing that this is actually a systemic problem. With resources like the Internet Archive it should be trivial to prove that this really a problem. Can you back up your claims?

Journalists are people and make mistakes. But overall, respected institutions like NYT, WSJ, WaPo, and Bloomberg show good journalistic integrity and print retractions in both print and online.

If you really are seeing this problem regularly, i suggest you find better sources for your news. Above all avoid getting it from social media. The actual fake news that is rampant there is a much, much bigger threat to our society than the few bad apples or mistakes behind the problem you are describing.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#86
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially the online versions of those "well respected publications" publish unverified things all the time. Often they get taken down or completely rewritten within half an hour, and of course are worded in a very speculative way from the start. There are also countless of "articles" in those (like the NYT, WaPo, WSJ) that are nothing more than a press release with some shallow context sprinkled in, without any ind…

Since NYT, WaPo, and WSJ publish unverified info "all the time", perhaps you could prove your point by pulling examples of false info they've published in the last month without a correction? Since it happens so frequently, it should be easy to find one or two, maybe even for each publication.

The deafening silence regarding the fudged OPCW reports is an indictment on most outlets (WP is mentioned explicitly): https://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/07/syria-many-media-lie-a... https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/12/15/deluge-of-new-leaks-...

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#87
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy just if they were forbidden to change articles after publishing, and not say that. Because currently, they post some bullshit news and create some random outrage. Then someone points at some bullshit claim in their article, and they just quietly change the article (remove the claim, add "allegedly", etc.), and act as nothing was wrong. Or in worst case scenario, they quietly remove the whole article.

I've seen this accusation thrown out there on social media a few times now. When I've asked for examples, no one been able to provide a list showing that this is actually a systemic problem. With resources like the Internet Archive it should be trivial to prove that this really a problem. Can you back up your claims? Journalists are people and make mistakes. But overall, respected institutions like NYT, WSJ, WaPo, an…

Check out this twitter account for some examples.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nyt_diff?lang=en

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#88
post #3

In today's world of race to the finish (/ bottom) journalism, I think it should be mandatory for all publications to have an addendum to each article, which contains: * list of sources of information and original research conducted ( including names of interviewees, only anonymized with a justification, links, etc ) * a sign-off by a journalist (note: not supposed to imply responsibility or liability for accuracy of…

It would be really nice if there was a commit history on all news articles that are published. So many stories these days get silently updated or even rewritten with no acknowledgement.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why journalists don't voluntarily to this? It seems obvious to me that high quality journalism should cite sources and methods, if only to protect themselves from future criticism if their news reporting turns out to be wrong. At least then they can point at the fault publicly, explain how it happened, and what they are changing to make sure it doesn't happen again. In some cases, they might deliberately not…

I suspect citing sources and methods in detail might be considered 'boring' for the average reader if done within the prose of the article. Perhaps what is needed is a new normal that articles online will have footnotes which are only shown to those who want to see them - that way the body of the article can be short and succinct, with the 'borig' citations in the footnotes.

If they're footnotes, they're already at the bottom of the article. No need to hide them further.

Re: France's AMF watchdog fines Bloomberg €5M over Vinci hoax

#90
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be happy just if they were forbidden to change articles after publishing, and not say that. Because currently, they post some bullshit news and create some random outrage. Then someone points at some bullshit claim in their article, and they just quietly change the article (remove the claim, add "allegedly", etc.), and act as nothing was wrong. Or in worst case scenario, they quietly remove the whole article.

I've seen this accusation thrown out there on social media a few times now. When I've asked for examples, no one been able to provide a list showing that this is actually a systemic problem. With resources like the Internet Archive it should be trivial to prove that this really a problem. Can you back up your claims? Journalists are people and make mistakes. But overall, respected institutions like NYT, WSJ, WaPo, an…

Those institutions are not the ones they were 10-20 years ago. And with less and less revenue streams they have resorted to clickbait like the rest.

I suggest you wake up to the reality of modern 'journalism'.

WaPo just recently messed up completely with the death of Baghdadi (the isis leader). Titling the article about his assassination as "Austere religious scholar dies at 48"

They had to change it 3 more times till they actually mentioned that he was assassinated. And that was just a mistake.

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