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It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

natesilver.net

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Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#31

Post by losvedir »

numlocked wrote: post #10

I don’t have a dog in the fight and have been a long time NYT subscriber but I concur with Nate on this one. The NYT coverage here has become even worse in the last few hours. It’s truly bizarre. Here is their latest: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/briefing/gaza-hospital.ht... The headline is: Gaza and the Trudeau Problem It begins with an inexplicable few paragraphs about Canada and India before taking a sharp l…

I try to limit my intake of news, and so most of the story I only hear from my Tangle subscription[0] which has had a pretty even take on it. I've been impressed with them, so far, but of course everyone has biases and you have to take everything with a grain of salt, etc, etc.

Anyway, I agree that "Hamas said so" is one side, and it's weak. And on the other side you have the still-standing hospital. You also have Biden's statement, which I'm sure is based on the latest evidence he has access to.

But I do want to point out, that two pieces of the evidence you mention: the misfiring rocket video and the voice recordings, if they're what I think you're referring to, were both released by the Israeli government and have been disputed as well. The video had the wrong timestamps, as pointed out by a NYTimes journalist, and the voice recordings were alleged to be faked, by a mainstream UK-based news agency.

It's quite a mess.

[0] https://www.readtangle.com/the-explosion-at-a-gaza-hospital/

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#32

Post by bobchadwick »

numlocked wrote: post #10

I don’t have a dog in the fight and have been a long time NYT subscriber but I concur with Nate on this one. The NYT coverage here has become even worse in the last few hours. It’s truly bizarre. Here is their latest: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/20/briefing/gaza-hospital.ht... The headline is: Gaza and the Trudeau Problem It begins with an inexplicable few paragraphs about Canada and India before taking a sharp l…

You do realize that the linked article is actually a daily newsletter, right? That's the explanation for the mixing of unrelated news stories.

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#33

Post by threeseed »

mkmk wrote: post #9

A long time ago, I worked for a brand that bought expensive advertisements in the nytimes. The sales team invited me to be a silent attendee of the 'page one meeting', a meeting during which the editors decide which stories will be on the front page of the paper and how they will be presented. By that time, they were also discussing if certain stories warranted a push notification, and how tweets would be presented.…

> At least there, I find it a bit easier to make sense of who is misleading me

Pretty funny that this comment comes hours after New York Times lost their verification badge on X.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/10/19/x-twitt...

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#34

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

threeseed wrote: post #22

I just find this all so pointless. News organisations can't be expected to verify every claim. And so all they can do is report the claims of what should be trusted sources i.e. governments, NGOs etc. And to be fair every country spins the truth so it's not like this incident is without precedent. So you get to choose. Either you have breaking news or you don't. But you can't ask for breaking news and have them verif…

> News organisations can't be expected to verify every claim.

I thought this was the defining characteristic, that set them apart from gossipmongers and fools.

Yes, I not only can expect that, I think I should.

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#35

Post by 0x_rs »

swader999 wrote: post #20
frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #15

I actually think Nate is wrong on this, especially on how he states the wrong-ness of the two parts of the story. It seems very likely to me that initial death counts were overstated. But the probability that it was an Israeli bomb that went off in the parking lot carries a lot more uncertainty and I think there's still a decent chance that it's true. There's still a lot of investigation to be done but, if when all i…

An Israeli munition would have left a crater.

What makes you certain about that enough to dismiss the parent post? Israel does seem to posses low collateral damage weapons that can also be set in air-burst mode, GBU-39/B just to name one. And bellingcat's own cursory investigation (at the time) identified a crater—"Bellingcat was able to identify what appears to be the impact crater, after analysing footage and images of the aftermath". There's simply too much confusion about this event to come to any conclusion, it's best to simply wait to know more, because there are some strong arguments that can't be dismissed and repeating the same usual points doesn't help.

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#36

Post by Pxtl »

People talk about this as if it's a new problem but honestly this has always been a thing:

Journalism always craves information, and interesting information from a well-known source will always succeed. Note that I said "interesting" and "well-known", not "verifiable" and "credible". I've been learning a bit about the Nixon era and it seems like this has always been a problem. Newspapers are trivially easy for dishonest VIPs and organizations to weaponize.

This credulousness is a problem. It helped usher Trump into the white house. By putting the lie first and the analysis second (or not at all) it signal-boosts the lie.

Once somebody is a proven liar, it's malpractice to quote them without necessary caveats first. Yes, headlines need to be short and punchy. Still malpractice.

What we knew was that there was an explosion at a Gaza hospital. Anything more detailed should have been couched with "this is who says what and all of these groups have a substantial motivation for and history of being dishonest about this stuff so don't take any of this as gospel until the facts are in". And yes, this applies to the Israeli sources as well - they, too, have been caught in many lies about actions they've taken against Palestinians. They were telling the truth this time, but they're still in the red on that subject.

Day 1 headline could've been "Explosion at Gaza hospital; Palestinian and Israeli officials accuse other side of causing it". And new article posts as it develops and more hard facts are known.

Edit: Note that this was exactly Politico's angle on this on day 1 of this story:

> Blast kills hundreds at Gaza hospital; Hamas and Israel trade blame

> KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip — A massive blast rocked a Gaza City hospital packed with wounded and other Palestinians seeking shelter Tuesday, killing hundreds of people, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said. Hamas blamed an Israeli airstrike, while the Israeli military said the hospital was hit by a rocket misfired by Palestinian militants.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/17/deadliest-israeli-a...

Anyhow this is not going to get easier. News media has been hollowed out, and the kind of resources it takes to fact-check are no longer there... but still, just approaching these stories with a proper order of operations of

"This is what we know. This is who we're talking to. This is how credible they are. This is what they say" in that order, including in headlines would do a lot for this.

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#37

Post by rasz »

Two months after hiring Aric Toler from Bellingcat to provide real OSINT and prevent blunders like this one, but instead we get reverse situation with @AricToler legitimizing lies. His last tweet 17 hours ago still insist what they printed is true and there is no way of disproving it.

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#38

Post by swader999 »

0x_rs wrote: post #35
swader999 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An Israeli munition would have left a crater.

What makes you certain about that enough to dismiss the parent post? Israel does seem to posses low collateral damage weapons that can also be set in air-burst mode, GBU-39/B just to name one. And bellingcat's own cursory investigation (at the time) identified a crater—"Bellingcat was able to identify what appears to be the impact crater, after analysing footage and images of the aftermath". There's simply too much c…

That's just one data point of many that wasn't already mentioned in this thread. I didn't intend to dismiss parent. I don't have my mind made up on this. I find it weird that they would have targeted the parking lot when they seem capable of hitting specific areas of a building in many of their other strikes.

Re: It's easy to screw up on breaking news but you have to admit when you do

#39

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

bluefishinit wrote: post #18

> The Israeli Defense Forces said that the blast was the result of a misfire from a Hamas rocket, and President Biden, citing Department of Defense evidence, has backed that claim. These same people claimed to have seen pictures of 40 beheaded babies last week and had to immediately walk that back. The IDF also claimed not to have assassinated journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, but months later admitted to it. This is a w…

> This is a well know IDF playbook, they are not a credible source.

Question: It is also a well-known Hamas playbook, they are also not a credible source, so why blindly take _either_ at face value? Why blindly take anything at face value without verifying facts?

"So-and-so says" isn't news, it's gossipmongering.

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