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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

#51

Post by kylebenzle »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #50
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…

Everybody reading that NYT article is going to come away with the conclusion that PIJ fired the rocket. The way it was written makes that conclusion far more persusasive than any article less "fair" to Hamas or the PIJ.

[flagged]

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

#52

Post by PeterisP »

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…

The video evidence of the aftermath, published by HAMAS, is sufficient to dismiss the possibility of air-burst of even smaller weapons such as GBU-39/B, because that would have resulted in much more distant blast-wave damage (e.g. broken nearby windows which were intact in the video of the scene).

The impact crater that was identified (it's clearly visible in the same HAMAS videos of the aftermath) is approx 1 meter wide and 30 cm deep - in the context of glide bombs that's "not a crater", as it's far too small for a GBU-39/B sized bomb.

While we definitely will need to wait to know the whole truth, there is already sufficient information to come to at least some conclusions (e.g. that Gaza health officials definitely lied about the casualties).

And the primary reason for "too much confusion" IMHO is people disseminating hypotheses that are already disproven by the evidence that we do already have, such as the GBU-39/B suggestion.

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

#53

Post by justrealist »

mattmaroon wrote: post #8

I’m still not sure what to believe on that story. It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident. It’s not unlike Hamas to blow up anything (intentionally or otherwise) and Israel and the US would both probably say they did it whether they did or did not. The story would look the same no matter who did it.

> It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident.

Well, the notable part, which the press has not really admitted goofing, is that the hospital didn't blow up.

Something explosive landed on the parking lot outside the hospital and burned a bunch of cars and civilians without leaving a crater!

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

#54

Post by threeseed »

jwond wrote: post #43
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…

They could still report breaking news and unverified claims, but they should at least do so in a slightly more responsible way, e.g. by limiting the headline to only what is actually verified at that time. If they want to include unverified claims in the body of the article, at least there they have more space to make it more explicitly clear what is and is not verified.

That's literally what New York Times did though.

Nate is complaining about the headlines in the Breaking News section not some article.

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

#55

Post by rasz »

mattmaroon wrote: post #8

I’m still not sure what to believe on that story. It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident. It’s not unlike Hamas to blow up anything (intentionally or otherwise) and Israel and the US would both probably say they did it whether they did or did not. The story would look the same no matter who did it.

> blow up a hospital

How about the fact this very hospital is still standing with walls intact? Does that change anything in your view? How do we know its still there and we arent being fed lies? Hamas, the so called "other side" uploaded videos after the fact showing this undamaged hospital building and burned cars in parking lot around small crater consistent with other Hamas rocket strike sites.

Same story with two day old news headlines about "collapsed Church", its also still standing. https://nitter.net/Osinttechnical/status/1715367751135441031

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

#56

Post by throwaway237289 »

threeseed wrote: post #41
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You should expect that. For non-breaking news. But when you are asking a journalist to report on an event minutes to hours after it happened then obviously they will have limited time to validate a claim. Especially in a war-zone where their ability to operate is limited. It's not really possible to be fast and thorough at the same time.

You're creating a strawman that doesn't exist from the article. There's no ask to be fast and perfect.

The ask was that retractions happen, and that journalists own up to being wrong.

There's evidence provided to show that NYT is very reluctant to backtrack.

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

#57

Post by mupuff1234 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
Pxtl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The evidence from reputable OSINT orgs like Bellingcat is pretty-much showing evidence that this was an accident on the part of Palistinian fighters. There are multiple videos showing a volley of rockets were launched from within Gaza (not from Bellingcat, but other OSINT groups -- Bellingcat not ready to make a final conclusion here). One of the rockets appeared to fail while it was rising - it swerved wildly and th…

> evidence from reputable OSINT orgs like Bellingcat Do you have a link to their findings?

Not OSINT, but the BBC and the guardian going over some of the evidence:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/al-ahli-arab-h...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67144061

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

#58

Post by justrealist »

PeterisP wrote: post #52
0x_rs wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The video evidence of the aftermath, published by HAMAS, is sufficient to dismiss the possibility of air-burst of even smaller weapons such as GBU-39/B, because that would have resulted in much more distant blast-wave damage (e.g. broken nearby windows which were intact in the video of the scene). The impact crater that was identified (it's clearly visible in the same HAMAS videos of the aftermath) is approx 1 meter…

> IMHO is people disseminating hypotheses that are already disproven by the evidence that we do already have, such as the GBU-39/B suggestion

Yes, this is the problem, and you see it in many of the comments here. There is plenty of compelling technical evidence, but people come in with a cursory read of the topic and listen to some "expert" who says "oh it whistled like a bomb". And given how incredibly badly some people want to pin it on Israel, incredibly moronic* analyses keep getting shared.

* like the people claiming that Iron Dome intercepted a rocket 6 seconds after launch. It's a terminal intercepter! that literally can't happen!

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

#59

Post by names_are_hard »

mattmaroon wrote: post #8

I’m still not sure what to believe on that story. It’s not like Israel to intentionally blow up a hospital full of civilians. It’s not unlike them to do it on accident. It’s not unlike Hamas to blow up anything (intentionally or otherwise) and Israel and the US would both probably say they did it whether they did or did not. The story would look the same no matter who did it.

As soon as the story broke, it was clear to me that whoever did it, it was an accident. So in that sense, it doesn't really matter. It's an unfortunate casualty of war, in which innocent people suffer even when it's not intended.

One thing that I respect about the initial Israeli response was that they weren't quick to assign blame. In a press conference soon after the event, the military spokesperson said that they are aware something happened and are looking into it and will update when they know.

To me, that's a more honest approach than just assigning blame. There's fog of war, a lot of things happening simultaneously, and it takes time to gather information. I trust people more when they acknowledge that they don't know everything and sometimes make mistakes than when they immediately have all the answers.

> The story would look the same no matter who did it.

Maybe, but I think the US government would distance themselves from the story if it was an Israeli attack. Biden told a reporter that his conclusion that it was not Israeli is based on data from his Defense Department. Is he trustworthy? I guess this is subjective, to me he's more credible than Hamas but I'm biased.

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

#60

Post by cmrdporcupine »

I said it elsewhere, but I'll rephrase: The fundamental problem is not about the misattribution of fault to the wrong "side."

The problem is that this is how a lot of people are thinking about things, and that every single event becomes attached to this framework and used to justify or further entrench events. And there are powerful actors who profit directly from this continued perspective. Hamas, obviously, but Netanyahu as well. Any attempt to produce an objective or neutral narrative is undermined by them, deliberately. It's not surprising that media gets caught up in this game.

My observation was that responsible news organizations in general attempted to report the tragedy first, and attribute cause as probably conjectures after. At least the ones (Guardian, mostly) I was looking at. I'm sure they faulted the IDF, but that wasn't the emphasis. I have screenshots of the initial event, and the IDF as cause is not mentioned. But the tragedy as they first saw it, was.

Reality is always more complex than two battling "teams" or "sides" and this mentality to reduce it this way betrays a barbaric emotional immaturity that is preventing the cessation of hostilities.

It doesn't matter to the dead people whose rocket it was. They're dead, and the conflict persists so more will die.

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