Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I Am Deleting the Blog

slatestarcodex.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

691–700 of 1001 posts

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#691

Post by catacombs »

aj3 wrote: post #355
npstr wrote: post #111

Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next article completely forgetting how bad the reporting actually is - there is no reason to assume they do a better job on topics that one is not an expert in! I think this bias had a name but I can't remember it.

Would it be worthwhile to create an index where people that are experts in something could vouch for the journalists that seem to know what they're talking about? E.g. I can verify that on the information security topic Joseph Cox from Motherboard is constantly on topic, but that information is useless to me personally, because by the time Vice publishes something it's already old news for people in the industry (or…

This is open to abuse for people, particularly companies, who have an axe to grind and will flood the "index."

This is a bad idea.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#692

Post by catacombs »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #456
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…

Many, many years ago, I was the foreman on a murder trial in our little town. In the jury selection process, the public defender -- a good, respected, local attorney -- asked the first candidate pool if they had read about the murder in the local paper. Almost everyone had. Then he asked if any of them had ever had a story written about them, or, say, their business, in this local paper. Three or four people raised t…

> Then he simply asked, "Did they get it right?" Everyone shook their head. Everyone laughed, and he moved on.

A good follow up would be "How?"

The coverage might have been factually correct, but just because they didn't like it doesn't mean the information was wrong.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#693

Post by catacombs »

stared wrote: post #353
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…

First and foremost, I hope that the journalist gets revealed and fired. NYT is a reputable journal and shouldn't tolerate such unprofessional and potentially dangerous behavior. The person breached a few lines of ethical journalism, and for no justified reason: First, purposefully using an incorrect name (and Scott Alexander's online identity is Scott Alexander). In many other cases, even if the name is known publicl…

> I hope that the journalist gets revealed and fired.

Not going to happen. The reporter was doing his job. No one will lose their job just because your favorite blogger agreed to go on the record for an interview and is not upset that his identity will be revealed.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#694

Post by zepto »

catacombs wrote: post #673
gwbas1c wrote: post #659

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's best to hear from NYT about why they strictly only use real names.

Factual accuracy is the cornerstone of the profession. In reporting out a story, it is the journalist's responsibility to obtain factual and verifiable information. People are the center of the story, and using their real names adds credibility to the story. Now, there are circumstances where reporters use pseudonyms for sources -- mainly to protect victims of sex crimes -- or anonymous sources entirely. The latter i…

Does this mean they don’t care if there is a reasonable risk of retribution as long as they get the person on record?

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#695

Post by hackissimo123 »

Fellshard wrote: post #682
hackissimo123 wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the last few weeks"? The NYT has been going in this direction for years.

Correct, but the Tom Cotton op-ed in context of all other events lit a spark that caused a lot of internal tension to snap. One of the most interesting pieces of insight we got at the time was from Matthew Yglesias of Vox Media, who tweeted[1] about discomfort with what was going on in a private media Slack group the day the NYT was reportedly going through turmoil. The tweets were shortly deleted, for clear reasons.…

I saw those tweets from Yglesias when he posted them; I didn't realise he'd deleted him.

To clarify: you say that Yglesias deleted his tweets "for clear reasons" - are the reasons really clear (e.g. Yglesias confirmed his reasons) or is that just your surmise? Also, you mention a private media Slack group but the tweet thread you linked doesn't say anything about a Slack group - is there another link where I can learn more about this?

I remember there was some other woke controversy at the NYT a couple of years ago where a private NYT Slack thread was leaked; I can only imagine the inner turmoil at the NYT given recent controversies (and an extra two years' worth of new, woke graduates entering the org.)

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#696

Post by aiscapehumanity »

Can we now stop linking to NYTimes? I have complained about the encroachment of having bulk paywalled stuff on here before, but now with this, it's like anyone linking to these journos are promoting them (Especially now, seeing how badly the ethics is). The best we can do is try to avoid them.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#697

Post by ericzawo »

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?

I don't, but the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian Journalism Foundation both exist.

CAJ particularly has done some good explanations in the past (though I haven't read it since I was forced to, in university!) https://caj.ca/Ethics

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#698

Post by derefr »

mrweasel wrote: post #261
npstr wrote: post #111

Similar effect when reading the news on a topic that one is an expert in - they usually get it incredibly wrong. And then you turn the page and read the next article completely forgetting how bad the reporting actually is - there is no reason to assume they do a better job on topics that one is not an expert in! I think this bias had a name but I can't remember it.

I first heard this explained by John C. Dvorak and it has terrified me ever since. Originally I just believe that journalist just had a terrible understanding of IT, but when you think about it, there's no reason why it's just IT. Why would journalist have a better understanding of medicine, politics, climate, finance or any other topic covered. Basically you're left it a situation where you can only trust highly spe…

> Basically you're left it a situation where you can only trust highly specialized publication, who hire subject matter experts and let them act as the journalist.

There’s also “embedded journalism”, where the journalist needs to maintain an ongoing relationship with non-affiliated subject-matter experts. This can end up with some propaganda-like bias in favour of the embedded-in group’s beliefs; but if you can read past that, you’ll find that at least the journalist is being actively fact-checked by the people they’re embedded with. Those people are effectively working together to serve as an editor.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#699

Post by nlpprof »

dcolkitt wrote: post #686
nlpprof wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the field - though not as prominent as Yann (who has been very nice and helpful in my few interactions with him) - and your interpretation is off. People are disagreeing with his stance that researchers should not bother exploring bias implications of their research. (He says this is because bias is a problem of data - and therefore we should focus on building cool models and let production engineers worry abo…

> He works for Facebook. He's paid with Facebook money. So why draw this imaginary line between research and production? He is paid to do research that will go into production. This is a silly standard to uphold. The sizable bulk of American academic researchers are at least partially funded by grants made from the US federal budget. If you were to enforce your standards consistently, then all of those researchers wo…

Did you read what I wrote?

I don't think his argument is true. (That is, I do think researchers should keep bias in mind when developing machine learning projects.) (Regardless of their funding sources.)

Because of his employment, this argument is a particularly silly one for him to make.

Re: I Am Deleting the Blog

#700

Post by cutemonster »

catacombs wrote: post #679
ErikAugust wrote: post #657

Feel free to use Trim to remove all paywalls and JavaScript from places like the New York Times: https://beta.trimread.com .

How about buying a subscription to not just NYT or other national outlets, but local news organizations so the people reporting on these issues can keep the lights on.

I've gotten the impression it'd cost like $100 / month to subscribe to the different newspapers whose articles I read maybe once a month?

But if there was a way to subscribe to all of them and pay $1 per article

(But I'd like to use Trim for 2 years, for Nyt.)

Post reply on HN