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

natesilver.net

91–100 of 258 posts

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

#91

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…

>Either you have breaking news or you don't.

There's a big difference between: "A hospital was detsroyed in an explosion, many dead" and "Israeli forces blew up a hospital, many dead".

You can have breaking news, you just need to convey the uncertainty.

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

#92

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.

Sort of, I agree that the blame game doesn't really matter, like to what end?

Its like “we didn't target the public utility full of civilians this time” okay. Apply this to any party in this conflict.

There is still no appeals process even during times of peace. Countries we respect have that feature because we don't actually trust them. But here we are supposed to take sides and everything at face value based on…… the most profound meme we saw on our timeline? most of us just don’t want to catch the ire of our employer in finance/entertainment/tech/education and I’m extremely relieved that its less suffocating to voice nuanced perceptions now than over the last two decades.

its validating that everyone was watching the whole time and just keeping mum so they could stay employable but were never comfortable with the consensus reality. people are trying to get others to have simplistic conclusions and its failing, I love that for the us. People are trying to say that any crack in agreement is advocacy for rounding up their entire ethnic group, what a leap of logic and nobody’s buying it!

but would any resolution of that massacre resolve anything? are people just going to retreat from the unrest at US embassies like “oh okay, actually you guys are alright”

noooope. this disaster just has people expressing what they already felt and doing what they already wanted to do. and there will be more massacres in this conflict.

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

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bi…

> The video had the wrong timestamps There was live stream from Al-Jazeera showing the failed rocket at the correct timestamp. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/al-ahli-arab-h... > and the voice recordings were alleged to be faked By who? The article just leads to a tweet with no citations from any experts.

Channel 4 and plenty of other people. Y'all are inside a propaganda bubble.

https://twitter.com/jacksonhinklle/status/171499970410093403...

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Bi…

> The video had the wrong timestamps There was live stream from Al-Jazeera showing the failed rocket at the correct timestamp. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/18/al-ahli-arab-h... > and the voice recordings were alleged to be faked By who? The article just leads to a tweet with no citations from any experts.

> By who?

"Hamas said so", that's who.

I'm gonna start using this phrase as an idiom, whenever a citation is missing.

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

#95

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.

I am with you on that one. You don't have to have an opinion so close to an event unfolding. Ideally, we should be able to wait, let the authorities investigate, and then finally get the findings to be able to make an opinion. But today's news cycles are not that long.

In this case though, it's not about what to believe about the story. But, it's about how much caution or verification NYT should have done before publishing anything. They used the wrong image for the hospital, they changed the headline multiple times without telling anyone, they still haven't admitted they got the first draft wrong. You see an opinion piece from them talking about both sides as if anyone could have made those mistakes.

I personally think they should have exercised caution or atleast acknowledged how things change with flux. If you read something on twitter, you are likely to gravitate towards posts which share your opinion, you would rarely change your mind. With NYT and the credibility/influence they have, they have the power to change and shape opinions. That should carry somewhat extra caution. Probably better if they are late but can verify whatever they are publishing.

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

#96
post #78

Comparing a fake image of some volcano and lava in the middle of the ocean (?!?) with the real deaths of people now dying in Gaza is peek Western journalism. It's why the West has ideologically lost its grip on the Global South, and deservedly so. Later edit: It might have helped if the author or the article had included his ethnicity at the start of the article, that way the stupid Gaza comparison and the futile att…

By the title, I knew that the article would be about creating a narrative to protect Israeli narrative in lying about their bombing of a hospital. Now how they could go so far to get back to it really got me impressed. Volcanos and lava.

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

#97

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

If a literal terrorist organization tells you something happened, and you run with it with zero independent confirmation, you are not a news organization. You are a glorified mouth piece of, again, a literal terrorist organization that murdered over a thousand civilians in cold blood including children the week before. Just shrugging off this insane breakdown of the most basic tenants of journalism from The New York times is insane to me.

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

#100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I. e., "We are a gossip rag and not to be trusted for credible journalism." It is no better a disclaimer than the "Palestinian officials say" clause

What is your actual counterposition here? That news outfits shouldn’t publish anything until it’s incontrovertible? This is not a practical position to hold; the NPR’s qualification seems reasonable to me in light of the situation.

They shouldn't post anything until they have some sort of third party confirmation, even a simple photo would have shown that the hospital was not even touched. It would have been obvious that there were no 500 civilian casualties etc...
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