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

natesilver.net

121–130 of 258 posts

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

#121

The reason everyone believed it was Israel is because they do it all the time. Today they bombed a church. I find it funny (as long as you ignore that these events involve dead people) that Silver here is up in arms for an alleged misattribution when it happens otherwise every day and nobody is bothered. A novel thought: maybe stop bombing civilians and the chance of you unjustly being accused of bombing civilians go…

Yes, but still the media has a responsibility to note the credibility, or lack thereof, of their sources.

When Israeli military officials say "this was certainly a Palistinian attack", the news media should be noting cases where they lied about that in the past (eg the death of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh).

Likewise when Gaza officials say the reverse, the same should happen.

I get that journalism will have bias, both personally and based on past actions because they're human and because of basic pattern recognition. But when discussing the facts of an event, it's important to separate what we know (an explosion happened at a hospital in Gaza) and what we're getting from dubious sources (that it was an Israeli airstrike or an Islamic Jihad rocket failure).

In the end, it looks very likely that it was, in fact, the Islamic Jihad rocket. But on day one? No journalistic source should be repeating assertions of blame from untrustworthy and extremely interested parties without the appropriate caveats.

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

#122
post #119

Everybody here seems to forget that propaganda exists.

Surely this isn’t something you genuinely believe (that all of Hacker News readers have forgotten that propaganda exists). So why post this? Perhaps there is a deeper point you’re trying to make?

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

#123
post #90
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, maybe it was the same. And maybe it wasn't. I'm don't know how doctors at a hospital would be able to determine that. I'm pretty sure it's not one of the things they're taught in medical school.

And if you're in a zone where munitions are landing all around you, and almost all of them are from a certain source, you're going to assume the next one is from the same source.

Yeah, that seems like a reasonable assumption, but I still wouldn't cite them on it as if they had any special insight into the source of the rocket.

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

#124

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…

> 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 verify each claim. It's just not possible.

This is a false dichotomy. You can have breaking news that covers the verifiable facts (an explosion happened in Gaza near a hospital) without uncritically reporting salacious claims by extremely biased parties.

Imagine if on 9/11 the press had within minutes come out and said, "Twin tower attacks ordered by Saddam Hussein kill 20,000, intelligence sources say." That didn't happen because the press at the time exercised some caution, yet they still covered the event.

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

#125

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 don’t have a dog in the fight and have been a long time NYT subscriber but I concur with Nate on this one.

This is so, so untrue, and it makes me sad to read this. Your dog is the one dying of self-inflicted wounds, and everyone would be better off if it would stop. Everyone benefits when reliable information sources exist, they report on a wide portfolio of events under that reliable letterhead, and we know where to find them. The decay of institutions that do these things is the decay of modern society itself.

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

#126
> The headline reads: “Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say.” Almost every word of that first clause is now disputed.

The death toll is definitely estimated in the hundreds. Below is a Guardian link citing US officials vs Nate's link citing a... Twitter thread.

In any case, I think the answer here is, until there is conclusive evidence from an reputable, independent third party (not a "forensic expert" on Twitter, not Israel or the US which fully supports it, not Hamas)... wait and see... but focus on the broader conflict and patterns.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/20/al-ahli-arab-h...

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

#127

The reason everyone believed it was Israel is because they do it all the time. Today they bombed a church. I find it funny (as long as you ignore that these events involve dead people) that Silver here is up in arms for an alleged misattribution when it happens otherwise every day and nobody is bothered. A novel thought: maybe stop bombing civilians and the chance of you unjustly being accused of bombing civilians go…

“yes, but you also shot the human shields, because you wanted to”

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

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing I'm finding frustrating. I don't care what "team" people think they're on. The reality on the ground is for regular people there are no teams and it's just tragedy. But I'm seeing a lot of vociferous blow-back on the Gaza hospital thing -- maybe rightfully so -- but so much less on the other "side." When concerns were brought up about the beheading things, and other claims of veracity it was treated…

I agree. The bombing didn't stop after the hospital. Shortly after a major bakery was bombed by Israel, another yesterday along with the third oldest church in the world that was harboring people who lost their houses. The bombing continues now, 6000 bombs were dropped before the hospital bomb. Thousands of civilians in Gaza have died and that's just getting started. The focus should be on an immediate ceasefire and…

If those hostages are still alive, those bombs at least serve the purpose of letting them know their government is not sitting idly by.

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

#129
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.…

What I really appreciate about X is that stories too crazy to be true (like that one about protestors occupying that House office building) is that when someone posts a sensationalized but FAKE version of the headline (“Congress Invaded Again! Just like Jan 6!”) it often comes with a Community Note attached (“This was the Cannon Office Building, not the Capitol”). The Community Notes feature set allows users to attac…

It's an excellent feature. Are there any prominent examples yet of astroturfed fictitious community notes that overpower real information?

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

#130
post #114

The media coverage in general has been atrocious of this issue. In this case, however, the original headline seemed pretty reasonable. Why? 1. Israel had struck the hospital 3 days earlier [1]; 2. Israel ordered an evacuation of these hospitals becamse of impending military action [2]; 3. The only direct video evidence showed a large explosion that was inconsistent with a misfire or any explosive capability by any gr…

And if the article had been presented like your post, I think we'd all think that's great!

State the known facts, then describe the information provided by extremely biased and known-dishonest interested parties, with the context of their personal biases.

But front-loading it with reverse-passive voice gives credulence to parties who did not deserve it. IDF officials are extremely dishonest, but Palestinian government ones are not better.

The NYT headline was "Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say." which puts the dubious source after the claims. That could've been phrased "Explosion Kills Hundreds in Gaza Hospital, Palestinian Officials blame Israeli Strike". Slightly longer but would put the facts separate from the claims.

Meanwhile, the Politico headline (which came out slightly later after the Israeli statement had been released):

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

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