The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free • Hacker News Board

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#331

Post by frereubu » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:16 PM UTC

andrewtbham wrote: post #274

mateus1 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't compare niche edutainment channels to the major news outlets. NYT is in the business of credible news, these small content makers aren't credible sources of news.

I categorically disagree. Most journalists just quote someone they deem to be an expert on a topic. On topics that interest you, you're better served to do some research and find the experts for yourself.

I find this kind of comment exhausting. What you're seemingly asking people to do - go to the original source for every news story that you think is important - is impossible for anyone with any kind of normal life. That's why people read newspapers, so they can get a reasonable impression of what's going on in the world, and they would ideally pay for that newspaper so there are fewer problematic incentives. It's much more feasible to take a publication, in full cognisance of its leanings, and parse the stories appropriately. For example, I'm not as much of a free-market person as The Economist, but I pay for and read it because they're clear about what they stand for and think that they're factually accurate.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#332

Post by notadonut » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

zasz wrote: post #325

blueyes wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does the author of this piece want? The "truth", or even a plausible interpretation of the facts, is expensive to produce. It is even more expensive when you do it every day covering a wide array of topics. If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN. * But a lot of what the New Y…

Truth is a public good and ought to be treated as such. If lies about the coronavirus are free, but the truth is costly, people will die, and indeed they are dying right now.

Please propose a system whereby facts can be collected, interpreted, verified and distributed for free. If it is not free, who funds it? How do we prevent the organization funding it from perverting the facts to serve its own interest? If we cannot prevent perversion by the financing organs, then we have propaganda.

These blue-sky pronouncements about truth being a public good do not move the discussion forward. "Truth" is socially manufactured (by that I'm not saying that nothing is true or false), and the process of manufacture has enormous costs.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#333

Post by adolph » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:22 PM UTC

GenerocUsername wrote: post #298

javajosh wrote: post #213

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.

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

― Michael Crichton

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#334

Post by stingraycharles » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

slg wrote: post #316

GenerocUsername wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No one can be an expert on everything. That is true for journalists too. Unless a reporter has a very narrow beat, they are going to be forced to report on topics in which they are not fully knowledgeable. This often results in misunderstandings or downright falsities, but on large they generally get it right. We should certainly hold journalistic organizations and reporters to a high standard of accuracy, but let's…

I consider the statement of the parent to be more about not blindly believing everything the media reports, because it’s most likely a simplification and the truth is more nuanced.

I personally don’t consider it the journalists’ fault at all, otherwise we would just end up with an academic journal. It is important, however, to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism when reading the news.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#335

Post by googthrowaway42 » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #321

googthrowaway42 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The same metaphysical view you're describing also enabled utopian totalitarian visions like Nazism and Communism. Leninism and it's descendants are totalitarian, Communism (even Marxism) more generally is not, but, sure, you can certainly make the case that scientific rationality has some connection to Marxism and thus an indirect effect on Leninism. OTOH, scientific rationality and the proven results are also the…

> Nazism was not based on scientific rationality,

How can you say this when Nazis famously "pioneered" and promulgated things like Phrenology and Eugenics? Scientific racism was at the heart of the Nazi program.

> the position you take on the nature of facts is one explicitly rejected and criticized (and attributed as a failing of the left) by most mainstream conservative thinkers,

I do agree with you here. What we're discussing really only has meaning when both sides of the discussion are able and willing to have a deeper discussion about this sort of stuff.

What Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro engage in is completely sufficient for the audience they're trying to engage with and appeal to. To get into this more abstract kind of discussion would be counterproductive in my opinion. Postmodernism is actually really harmful for people to believe in and at that point where you're lost in a world where most major cultural institutions are pushing that, you just need someone articulating an alternative view point. At that level, getting into a discussion about how they're actually similar would be a bad idea.

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#336

Post by artemisbot » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

colllectorof wrote: post #294

awinder wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway. We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced d…

> but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT They have originated with events on the ground widely reported by independent journalists, citizens and local news. https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo What people here are doing is dismissing the overall picture of what's happening on the ground in Portland based on a few misreported facts. No matter that that are h…

I'd be careful trusting anything being piped from Andy Ngo, he has a history of being affiliated with, and giving preferential coverage to some pretty nasty far-right groups [1].

[1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-n...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#337

Post by moreorless » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:28 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #213

andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> 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…

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…

It seems like they have a history of it.

https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#338

Post by tailrecursion » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

andrewtbham wrote: post #185

thatwasunusual wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The days of BSing people are over. Really?

lol... things are different. in the old days, no one would have ever known tesla's side of the story.

Yes, this is how I read the OP's comment about the days of BS being over. In the past, newspapers had exclusivity not just in access but in voice. Their frame was THE frame. Today, anyone with a phone can be a journalist. Anyone (not everyone) can access a large audience and get their story out. Anyone can establish an alternative frame, or point out lies, smears, dubious sources or stealth edits.

Can a newspaper be serious without putting its published articles under source control with complete edit history?

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#339

Post by justicezyx » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #213

andrewtbham wrote: post #173

> 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…

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…

What?!

Are you suggesting as long as a news outlet is telling the truth in more occasions than lies, the organization can still be treated as trustworthy? Even if the organization intentionally ignore the need to verify and correct lies?...

Logically and emotionally, this is outrageously offensive to liberal value! You are playing the cards advocated by CCTV backed by CCP. Their integrity certainly "passed your standard"...

Re: The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free

#340

Post by moreorless » Mon, Aug 03, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

GenerocUsername wrote: post #298

javajosh wrote: post #213

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.

This exactly.