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I Am Deleting the Blog

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Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#171

Post by stjohnswarts »

rebuilder wrote: post #47
ericzawo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% agree and talked about this a lot in j school. Would love to see some type of society body emerge with a coalition of Pulitzer Prize winners (the only real framework that possibly stands to live past the inevitable calls about its legitimacy from the News Corp -owned bodies of media, honestly) and ideally backed by the biggest news media companies in the world. I would love to see a further membership based el…

You don't have a self-governing body for journalism?

It's fine to have a standards committee with the power of suggestion. However something like that could just as easily become something for countries with dictators to use to attempt to silence reporters who they don't like so I suspect that's why there's no "governing body" just some organizations who recommend best practices. One man's "standards" is another one's opportunity to cull rebellious journalists.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#173

Post by thinkingemote »

zozbot234 wrote: post #155
jwilber wrote: post #128

I’ve seen a lot of criticism for the NYT as of late, and, sadly, it’s almost all been warranted upon inspection. I’m not sure if it’s a case of the top dog getting all the scrutiny, but it’s crazy to me how a company with so many good journalists can seem to have so many bad. Much criticism is not even new (Manufactured Consent, Judith Miller).

This is why the NYT is going to blink. If they doxx this guy, then this becomes a huge grassroots story about how they are "fake news media" that doesn't uphold journalism ethics standards. (Even more so if the article is a negative hit piece w/ politicized overtones, as some people are - rightly or wrongly - speculating here. People _will_ stand up for him over his views, however controversial in some places.) He ma…

Lets be honest here. This will be a big story here in Hacker News for a few days, then we will get on with our lives. It will not spread out from that.

This is ironically how the News works. It's new - novel, interesting, unique, temporary.

We will stand up for Scott - but it won't really change anything, and it will be temporary. It's naive to think that what we find important for a bit will have any impact on the real world and real lives. Especially as this is literally what the News does and has done for a hundred or so years.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#174

Post by bodono »

Scott is such a clear and important voice today. I really hope the NYT sees their error and corrects it, with apology to Scott, asap and Scott comes back online.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#175

Post by stjohnswarts »

neonate wrote: post #79
chillacy wrote: post #14

This is a tragedy, Scott Alexander is such a thoughtful writer. I wish journalists would come up with some professional standards and make the title licensed, like doctor or lawyer. Right now we all recognize how important journalism is but journalists themselves run the gamut from ethical investigative journalists to clickbait manufacturers. Imagine if journalists also had to adhere to the equivalent of attorney cli…

Licensing seems like a solution to problems like this but the cure would be worse than the disease. Control over the licensing body would guarantee control over information, so it would become a prize to be fought for and the whole thing would be politicized. The best case scenario is we end up with the same mess we have now. Worst case is one side captures control and now their side gets to be the only "legitimate"…

Licensing of reporters would be throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#176

Post by cmroanirgo »

brnt wrote: post #126
Uhrheber wrote: post #75

I stopped trusting reporters about 35 years ago, when I personally witnessed an occurrence, where a reporter was at the scene, and later read what he had written about it in the newspaper. It had practically nothing to do with what really happened, but was written in a way that most of their readers would most likely expect and endorse. I was still very young then, but it opened my eyes, and from then on, I mostly st…

Disengaging based on an N=1 is not the type of individual action that improves our society. Our society is built on individual (and collective) attempts to improve, and you putting your money towards journalists you found to be doing a good job is the way we leave the world better than we found it. I hope you'll consider this, because our society cannot function without quality investigative reporting. I of course ag…

And there's the rub. What is "quality investigative reporting" in an objective sense, when most of the MSM outlets are owned by oligarchs, or simply "toe the line"?

In theory I would gladly support the theory of "quality investigative reporting", but the reality is a propagandist machine where opinion pieces replaces actual unbiased, adjective-free objective news.

Some examples of "oligarch news": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwA4k0E51Oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI

As a former developer who worked closely on Thomson Reuters News feed (in the 00's), I've seen how there is almost zero fact checking for the information that appears on news feeds. Instead, news outlets trust the 'upstream' feeds and then quote the reports verbatim.

To be fair, there are those who are really awesome at doing research and releasing information that are part of the MSM. Unfortunately, there are plenty others who are not affiliated with MSM news outlets and hence aren't regarded as "reporters" per-se. These latter ones are regularly attacked via "fact checking" websites as a way to discredit them.

An article on the latter is here: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-381-who-will-fact-chec...

In short, there's a bunch of information out there and without each and every news report clearly citing original sources, then MSM or not, it must be regarded as suspect.

So for "quality investigative reporting", the actual reports must rigorously cite objective sources.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#177

Post by stjohnswarts »

buboard wrote: post #69
chillacy wrote: post #14

This is a tragedy, Scott Alexander is such a thoughtful writer. I wish journalists would come up with some professional standards and make the title licensed, like doctor or lawyer. Right now we all recognize how important journalism is but journalists themselves run the gamut from ethical investigative journalists to clickbait manufacturers. Imagine if journalists also had to adhere to the equivalent of attorney cli…

Aren’t they already a legally protected profession?

Not in some countries but it's the 1st amendment of the US Constitution that protects freedom of speech and the press. So it's considered pretty important here.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#178

Post by yreg »

stevenjohns wrote: post #138
zoul wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was bad journalism. Would you also stop trusting all doctors after meeting a bad one?

* What if every hospital had an overt political stance and forced doctors to make diagnoses based on those politics? * What if the hospitals had a financial incentive to sensationalise public health? * What if independent doctors only got into medicine in the first place to make decisions based on their own partisan politics? Unfortunately all US media, and most international media, is equally bad and built on bad in…

This is interesting to me. In central Europe, or at least my country, the serious media keep very high standards.

Basically the only people who find the largest publications "bad" here are conspiracy nuts, fascists and politicians involved in uncovered corruption scandals.

I find our independent media to be a key element of our democracy and I am worried when I hear the US media don't work quite the same.

Edit: I thought I might as well reply with our solutions to your bullet points

- Our newspapers don't force their views on their journalists. The bosses require quality and factfulness, but topics are up to the journalist. The newspaper as an organisation is equally hostile to all the politicians.

- The financial incentive is to continue to hold their image, because they live from subscription fees paid by people who view them as essential for our society. (+ ads ofc)

- If one wants power to change things the far superior strategy in my country is to do the actual politics and not to report on it.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#179

Post by thinkingemote »

iagovar wrote: post #42
matt_f wrote: post #36

If you're pissed off by this, as I am, here's how the author politely suggests that you direct your support: > There is no comments section for this post. The appropriate comments section is the feedback page of the New York Times. You may also want to email the New York Times technology editor Pui-Wing Tam at pui-wing.tam@nytimes.com, contact her on Twitter at @puiwingtam, or phone the New York Times at 844-NYTNEWS…

Sorry for the unrelated question, but I'm not from the US and I'm curious, what does this mean? 844-NYTNEWS Do landlines phones have letters in the US? Is it pressing a number several times? And also mentioning that I'm grateful for SSC to exist. I rarely comment but it's a refreshing community.

mobile phones have letters on their dial pads also.
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