191–200 of 527 posts
Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?
tech people aren't immune to the hyper divisiveness taking place around the world. Once "your team" decides it no longer wants to respect freedom of the press or election results then you must follow suit. Gotta make sure your team wins, right?
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We will look back on the ruination of journalism as a profession as one of the most consequential changes of these last two decades.
I mean, it's a double-edged sword. On one side, the death of traditional journalism really has opened up folks' eyes to bias in reporting. Having one or two main-stream news sources really opens up the possibility for bias becoming truth. On the other side, now that everyone is a reporter, people roll around inside whichever cocoon of bias makes them feel the best. It's very frustrating, and overwhelming.
Absolutely, traditional journalism had some problems with bias, and they were tough to improve.
I can't think of a single thing in journalism (NB, journalism, not information access) that hasn't become notably worse due to the collapse.
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> On one side, the death of traditional journalism really has opened up folks' eyes to bias in reporting. Having one or two main-stream news sources really opens up the possibility for bias becoming truth. This is not what I see happening. Instead what happens is people see news they disagree with and deem it biased. So they find a news outlet that they agree with and decide that’s the real news.
So here's the dilemma I'm faced with. As someone who wishes to consume news that is as factual as reasonably possible, while also being aware that at least some bias is inevitable (no matter how well-intentioned the author may be)... how does one evaluate a news source for its trustworthiness, short of physically observing an event for yourself?
1) Cross-check. If a news source says something, see what others are saying. Especially others with no vested interest in agreeing with source 1.
2) (This is key, and where I think people tend to fail hardest) Reputation. Real news sources make mistakes. Real news sources print retractions. Real news sources have a reputation to curate. Guy sitting in his van ranting into a camera and posting to YouTube has none of those things and is not a news source. Keep track of who sucks and who doesn't and start down-sampling bad-reputation sources.
3) Separate news from analysis and know which you're looking at. A lot of news out there is doing more interpretation of fact than relaying fact. Be aware of interpretation---you don't have to disregard it, but remember the effect it has on you the listener (setting expectations changes how we interpret input) and the effect it has on the reporter (bias leads people to discard facts that don't fit and over-highlight facts that do). I'm personally always leery of stories that tell you what you should think before telling you what happened.
4) Do the one thing the modern world discourages you from doing and slow the hell down. People in the middle of a riot have no idea what's going on. No matter what they're capturing on cameras at the scene, it's one vantage point of one event. What actually happened takes time to piece together from multiple vantage points. Resist the urge to let the scoop be the story for you and if something is important, do the leg-work to follow up on it and see what people learned in 1 week and 1 month. Medical and science reporting, in particular, often falls down here because they'll report on the first article on a topic and you never hear about follow-up studies, attempts to reproduce, or sometimes retractions from the original researchers.
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It's a completely circular definition (as far as I can see).
I think it's more of a "if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck." If you call yourself a journalist and have a record of reporting on things, then by this definition you are one. But you can't decide you are a persecuted journalist because you got arrested.
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What's your bar for being a journalist? Andy Ngo is one of those guys who goes out with his cell phone and records stuff and you seem to think he qualifies. Is it just agreeing with you politically?
Andy Ngo doesn't throw rocks or participate in other "riot-esque" actions.
Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?
There's also a ton of people who are just reflexively hostile to the idea that society is systematically unjust and exceptionally hostile to the idea that they benefit from the ways in which it is unjust, and as mainstream journalism has been largely sympathetic to these ideas, they are in turn reflexively hostile to mainstream journalism.
Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?
No idea but I agree. Part of me thinks it's 'intellectual elites' here that simply can't fathom not working at a FAANG job making 250k+ and don't understand the problems most people have. And if you aren't working at one of those you must be the ultra silicon valley entrepreneur trying to do the next big thing because money. Probably downvoted for this but whatever, I think it's the truth. When I first was on this si…
I think human nature of having opinions and diversity of opinions exist in all groups, no matter how we categorize/stereotype them.
One line from the report jumped out at me as I was skimming it: > About half the journalists here are freelancers, who may lack the institutional support of a newsroom and the financial resources for a potentially expensive legal defense. I hadn't really thought of the value of legal defense from journalism institutions (as opposed to non-institutional platforms like Substack) before.
We will look back on the ruination of journalism as a profession as one of the most consequential changes of these last two decades.
This is really just the prolonged conclusion of 24 hour news cycles that have been with us since cable television.
What's the quote about newspapers bringing all of the horrors of the world to your doorstep? Television brought them into your living room. Now with online media you carry them around with you.
One line from the report jumped out at me as I was skimming it: > About half the journalists here are freelancers, who may lack the institutional support of a newsroom and the financial resources for a potentially expensive legal defense. I hadn't really thought of the value of legal defense from journalism institutions (as opposed to non-institutional platforms like Substack) before.
Isn't it common knowledge that Gawker was a media company that irreverently covered silicon valley until it was bankrupted through litigation? The law courts are the main way that journalism is attacked in non-autocratic countries. Strong freedom of the press laws are celebrated, because they are constantly under siege by powerful people, who once targeted, would rather not have them.
edit: removed reference to violating a court order, even though they did before having it overturned.
Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?
On HNs it is normal to denigrate the "MSM" while cheering on some blogger and his completely unsubstantiated claims. Attacks on the press, because there's a strong Trump contingent here that have an issue with reality and fact having an "anti-Trump bias", are cheered on.
It isn't surprising at all.