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

reuters.com

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

#141

Post by pathseeker »

jacquesm wrote: post #72
dmos62 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sympathize, but the ability to recall your vote, i.e. unelect, at any time would make your attitude towards your initial vote less serious and elections/unelections would cycle too fast to govern. Sometimes a bad government can be better than no government. Burden of citizenship.

> 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…

>How do you know that about me?

Presumably you are human, no? The ability to undo a decision at any time significantly reduces the impact of the decision. How much effort do you spend deciding what to eat for lunch? How much effort would you spend if it's what you're going to eat for lunch every day for the next 4 years?

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

#142

Post by damq »

humanrebar wrote: post #98

The headline probably needs qualification that the fine was in Europe, not the U.S. I was shocked that any U.S. regulator would attempt to push against the First Amendment in this way. It's a different story with more context.

+1. In order for this to be punishable in the US, they would have had to have known this press release was fake before publishing it which would be a much different story.

The headline should be updated to say they were fined by France.

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

#143

Post by freeflight »

conistonwater wrote: post #33
VBprogrammer wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No individual journalist wants to be known for getting a story wrong, so incentives are pretty strong to begin with. I think in a lot of places this isn't nearly as true as maybe it once was. The top selling newspapers in the UK pretty much habitually print anything that drives sales / their agenda and when they get a slap on the wrist they just print a minimal viable retraction. When that occasionally lands them i…

The top selling newspapers in the UK are tabloids though, rather than well-respected publications. I don't think that contradicts smt88's point.

> I don't think that contradicts smt88's point.

Imho it perfectly contradicts the point, because the UK isn't alone with that issue, BILD is also a tabloid, the most circulated one in Germany.

Of course, a lot of that hinges with the definition of "tabloid" [0] and how different Overton windows for these societies. For example, both UK and German tabloids heavily relied on "Page X" girls for their popularity.

While the same in the US was it's very own niche with the Playboy, as selling sexuality that openly in the mainstream was always more controversial in the US compared to Europe.

But US outlets also ain't above sensationalized headlines and leaving out a bit of context to justify them, some would argue that's something the US actually championeered with the marketing industry.

It's the same with the public shaming and privacy of people; In Europe, that's considered a very tabloid thing to do, meanwhile, in the US it's often standard to show uncensored pictures of people with their full names.

Does that really help to surface the truth? Or is it merely just another manifestation of the flaws of the "free market" at work? If the market only wants what sells best, and not what's actually true, what's the most likely outcome?

[0] https://www.agilitypr.com/resources/top-media-outlets/top-15...

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

#144

Post by EpicEng »

stoicShell wrote: post #106
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #54

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 think it's the same when we ship beta software to users and then expect the first batch to essentially debug it — then comes the proverbial ".1" patch which fixes most glaring issues. (as if they weren't obvious in the first place) Now why do we do that in software? because "agile", cost, "let's ship and risk breaking some things and see what happens? We'll fix things later in some update, on a need-to basis" Well…

>Can't really blame the business entities themselves.

Why not? Why is it acceptable that the profit motive trump everything else? These people play a critical role in our society. Obviously they have to stay in business, but I'm not going to give them a pass on foregoing their duty just because they want to make more money.

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

#145

Post by ryanmercer »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #54
the_duke wrote: 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.

Or better, make them leave the original text and include the correction. Publications that were repeat offenders would quickly build a bad reputation.

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

#146

Post by wheelzr »

Classic case of the carrot and the stick. Freedom of the press radically changed public access to news for the good. Was it too powerful? Back when you had to own a printing press for mass consumption -- No it wasn't.

But it is now.

The demand for updates and net-new information creates markets for information. There are too many pretenders and pranksters now because there are no barriers to posting on the internet.

Until we start breaking down the anonymity of users posting data to indiviuals there will be no one to answer for bad reporting.

Punishment should be doled out via the platform posted, similar to FCC going after radio station DJ's and ultimately the broadcast network itself. This will create an underworld for news. The news underworld will need to have a few well known paragons and pranksters to bring a sense of balance and uncertainty to non-regulated news.

First step would be to introduce small fines for sites that claim their information is accurate. Classifying and identifying the obvious from NYT/WSJ from Reddit and 4chan. Once the extremes are identified, lessons learned can be applied slowly to the middle of the pack.

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

#148

Post by purple-again »

derision wrote: post #129
nstj wrote: post #127

@dang - arguably misleading title, please consider renaming to “Bloomberg LP fined €5m for publishing fake press release”. Current title can be read that Michael Bloomberg was personally fined.

i'm not sure most people see "Bloomberg" and think of the person rather than the company

I assumed it was the presidential candidate. Would support a title change to clear up the confusion.

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

#149

Post by chki »

swebs wrote: post #52
chki wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true. At least not for the common definitions of "freedom of speech".

I'm not familiar with French law. Can you point to us where it explicitly grants freedom of speech?

I'm also not familiar with French law but this https://www.loc.gov/law/help/freedom-expression/france.php seems to be a good resource.

One thing I am familiar with is the European Convention on Human Rights which grants Freedom of speech in Article 10 and which is binding in France.

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

#150

Post by panarky »

the_duke wrote: 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…

Would your rules only apply to traditional news orgs like Reuters and Bloomberg, or would it also apply to Infowars and influential YouTube channels, Twitter feeds and Facebook groups? Would it apply to comedians who report the news?
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