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The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

currentaffairs.org

301–310 of 503 posts

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#301
post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents? That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming…

It's more than just whether or not the events are true; I'll assume they are, but the commentary of "protests and riots are [..] an attempt to dismantle all of Western Civilization and upend centuries of tradition and freedom of religion" and "flag burning at the antifa/BLM gathering" most certainly is not. The problem with that last one, to be clear, is that it's trying to associate some alleged terror organisation…

I agree, but I don't consider that remarkable in news media: pretty much all events are spun and presented in some way while intentionally removing context that suggests a different interpretation. It's "technically correct" but it's not in the spirit of truth and neutral reporting.

I wish journalists had higher standards, but they don't. I wish the same for consultants, but they typically recommend whatever they're selling, not what the customer needs, so I don't know why journalists would be more ethically, they're human like all of us.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#302
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Snopes for Mormons: https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_apologetics

This looks like its for questions about Mormonism or theological questions, not current events or other pop-culture things (forwards from Grandma) like Snopes.

Yes, its scope is very narrowly about the Mormon faith. Conversely, Snopes doesn't tend to weigh in on things like the stories surrounding Joseph Smith.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#303
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Abstaining should however be seen as allowing others to act with impunity.

Not really. No one has enough time in their life to be informed and opinionated about every single topic of at least minor importance. No one is superior because they’re perpetually high strung from constant political news cycles.

I didn't say that though.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#304

> it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate yes it is. I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test" They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp t…

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#305
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks like its for questions about Mormonism or theological questions, not current events or other pop-culture things (forwards from Grandma) like Snopes.

Yes, its scope is very narrowly about the Mormon faith. Conversely, Snopes doesn't tend to weigh in on things like the stories surrounding Joseph Smith.

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#306
post #50

In Germany, part of the problem is that old media lobbying has successfully prevented a reasonable (text based) internet presence of public broadcasting... Some Google-translated coverage: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

Public broadcasting in Germany is no better than private media. In fact most topics are reported the same and even the opinion is the same. But even ignoring this, it is a big problem that publicly funded media is in direct economic competition with privately funded media. This is exacerbated by the official entertainment mission (Unterhaltungsauftrag[1]) and the usage of advertisement. [1]: https://www.die-medienans…

I don't see the direct economic competition as a problem. Informing the population is fundamental to living in a democratic society. Providing a non-profit oriented basis makes as much sense as funding libraries (which compete with publishers) and schools (compete with private schools).

I know it's not perfect, but it definitely is not a "big problem".

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at least on the topic of tesla, nyt has been wrong and unfair against tesla for about 10 years. i really don't know about other topics... but... pg repeatedly questions the integrity of nyt and has personally been the victim of their bias. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152?lang=en https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236979160100343812

In the first link you provided, PG put two photos: one of the NYT article and one of his HN post. The NYT article yes, condensed his lengthy post into one sentence, which will almost always be incomplete, but they also linked that quote to what I assume was the HN post. I guess it seems to me that PG is upset they didn't fully encapsulate his ideas, and I'd probably be frustrated as well. But is that the role of a jo…

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Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm German. Public broadcasting, including ARD/ZDF but also countless of local radio station is without a doubt significantly better in quality than BILD/RTL or other private tabloid media, and it's one of the reasons the country still has by and large a shared reality when it comes to political discussion. I don't think that they also provide entertainment is in any way problematic, because entertainment is part of…

> I'm German. Public broadcasting, including ARD/ZDF but also countless of local radio station is without a doubt significantly better in quality than BILD/RTL or other private tabloid media Better than FAZ, ZEIT, Spiegel? That's the private media you should compare the news sections to, and I have some doubts that anybody thinks Public Broadcaster by and large have a similar level of journalistic integrity & quality…

Public broadcasting does not replace FAZ/Zeit/Spiegel though. There's a difference between reporting short pieces of news and the articles in the mentioned news papers.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a mistake to judge an organization on one, or even a handful of incidents. There should be a pattern of inaccuracy and bias before you "cancel" a news source. This is one of the unsung problems of the modern world, the growing impossibility of keeping an accurate "reputation" in your brain. Virtually everyone and everything has been accused of being evil, in general, or specifically. It's no longer good enough t…

The more you know about a subject, the more false reporting you will find related to that subject. Remember that next time you read news about something you are not already well versed in.

Yes, sure, but this all unfortunately feeds into the motivations of conspiracy theorists. Maybe it is what it is, but what can we do to stop the wave of noncritical thinking washing over the Internet, where people insist that they are the only wise ones? Are we just doomed? I realize that media has lost its credibility in the eyes of many, I just wish that there was a good amount of high-quality critical thinking to make up for the lack of reliable information, rather than the many low-quality conspiracy theories I'm seeing.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the point of the NYT article totally evaporates if you read the HN post. PG is explicitly saying that no-one knows the effect that this will have, but better to prepare for the worst. And that's the thing: if you cannot trust that someone makes their point as neutrally as possible, they become worthless for me as a source of condensed information. Rather look up the original source then for myself.

It's even worse than that, their sentence after the quote implies PG said something about FB stock. https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236980342667575296?s=20 The NYT writer isn't mistakenly summarizing, they're actively misleading. They had to read through PG's post and selectively pick a line that they could stuff into the position they already had, to say the thing they already wanted to say. It's just motivated re…

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