391–400 of 503 posts
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You can only get a plurality in most cases with mainstream media, because like it or not it does tend to be progressive/liberal in most outlets (in the American sense, not European).
That doesn't explain why FOX is twice as watched as MSNBC.
Cable TV is still a niche.
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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…
When I first read it, I didn't get the impression that the author was implying PG said FB stock wouldn't go up. In reading the PG post, it seems that a conversation with prominent investor, who was confident that FB's bad stock performance would hurt the IPO, led PG to write a post exploring how that may happen. In re-reading the NYT blurb, I still don't see it as the author saying PG said the FB stock would not go u…
Not so much malice, but having what they want to say predetermined and looking to frame support in what they already believe to be true. (Rather than trying to find out what's true and reporting that).
Basically the writer believes X to be true or wants to write a story that X is true and digs through things to find quotes they can narrowly pull to support X.
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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…
When I first read it, I didn't get the impression that the author was implying PG said FB stock wouldn't go up. In reading the PG post, it seems that a conversation with prominent investor, who was confident that FB's bad stock performance would hurt the IPO, led PG to write a post exploring how that may happen. In re-reading the NYT blurb, I still don't see it as the author saying PG said the FB stock would not go u…
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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 mu…
In the last decade how many news stories where actually important to you? Personally it was such a tiny fraction that doing a little research on each of them was fine. A recent example of say the toilet paper shortage had weeks of misleading information put out. Prior to the reporter finally actually doing some research and breaking that story I have a HN post explaining what was going on. Why? Because doing more res…
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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…
While this may have been an unfortunate reality in previous eras, today we can get much better information from researchers and practitioners.
I don't think that's actually true. It's probably most true with science reporting, but does anyone think reading the firehose of specialist research output is a practical alternative to journalism for a general reader? Filtering and summarization are important functions when dealing quantities of information larger than an individual can handle alone. IIRC, even specialist research groups have paper reading circles to filter research papers in their own fields.
Then there's everything else. For a lot of stuff, you'd just be wading through PR and rumor without much ability to dig past that. For some news topics, like foreign affairs for instance, I'm not even sure where you'd even find timely, raw information to replace journalism about it.
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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
It doesn’t absolve the times if they did indeed make an error, but I’d like to point out that pg isn’t exactly a bastion of accuracy and rational argument himself: see https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/how-to-pretend-that-y... from the same publication as the OP. The criticisms leveled against pg in this article apply to pretty much all of his social commentary and writings, and its really a shame so many people…
And the Current Affairs site is free so...what is that telling us?
The linked article concludes: "Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal." Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.
As always, who judges whether something is true?
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In the last decade how many news stories where actually important to you? Personally it was such a tiny fraction that doing a little research on each of them was fine. A recent example of say the toilet paper shortage had weeks of misleading information put out. Prior to the reporter finally actually doing some research and breaking that story I have a HN post explaining what was going on. Why? Because doing more res…
You're characterising the entire news media as "entertainment and tight deadlines plus tiny staff equals junk". Of course there's trash out there, but the specific example I gave is The Economist. I don't know much about the NYT, which has been mentioned repeatedly here, but there are a reasonable number of news sources out there which are reputable enough not to be dismissed as casually as that.
Honestly, I have reasonable trust in Reuters at this point, but I don’t know of a trustworthy news source focused on the general public.