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

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

#171

Post by mkmk » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

cma wrote: post #72

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.…

> 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', Is this normal? So when they were reporting on tobacco cancer and deciding if it went on the front page there would be like a silent Philip Morris employee in the room staring them down and sitting with the sales team? Or was there one-way glass or s…

It was normal, a large conference room table where the editors sat and then a ring of chairs around the room for guests and lackeys.

My imperfect recollection is that guests were briefly introduced by their chaperone to the room so that editors could speak up if there was a potential conflict.

For all of their faults, there certainly was nothing resembling outright impropriety. Just structural challenges.

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

#172

Post by colonCapitalDee » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:01 PM UTC

seo-speedwagon wrote: post #115

names_are_hard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. What’s this based on? Vibes? People are upset about this because it, in fact, does matter. Intentionally destroying a hospital is an atrocity; in the context of a war, it’s a war crime. Th…

Yes, bombing Ahli Arab hospital is an atrocity and a war crime. You know it, I know it, Israel knows it, and Hamas knows it. Hamas doesn't have a lot of reasons to intentionally blow up a Palestinian hospital, beyond maybe trying to stage a false flag attack. Israel has more reasons; Israel could have been targeting weapons stored in the hospital or a high value target. But even if Israel did have intelligence that made them think there was something worth striking in Ahli Arab, the political repercussions of striking a hospital would be so severe that I doubt they would pull the trigger.

The commenter you quoted was likely thinking something along the lines of "neither side has a strong motive to intentionally bomb Ahli Arab, so the most likely reason for the bombing is an accidental strike. Assuming that the accident isn't part of a trend of accidents, the unfortunate reality of war is that accidents happen on all sides. Thus, it doesn't really matter if it was an Israeli accident or a Hamas accident."

Should we investigate and determine if the strike really was an accident? Yes, of course. But we can also predict that the result of that investigation will be "it was an accident", and start to make preliminary conclusions predicated on that.

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

#173

Post by jakeinspace » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:02 PM UTC

seo-speedwagon wrote: post #120

baryphonic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The visual evidence is what makes me think Palestinian militants (accidentally) caused the explosion. First, live footage from Al Jazeera at the time showed rockets firing from a location in Gaza toward Israel. One rocket appeared to malfunction in mid-air and within a few seconds, an explosion happened on the ground approximately where the hospital is. The lean-too shape of the hospital roof can even be seen in the…

And here’s an analysis disputing many of those claims https://www.channel4.com/news/who-was-behind-the-gaza-hospit...

I thought this was a decent video. One of the strongest counterarguments I’ve seen to the failed rocket being the cause of the fireball (rather than merely a coincidence), is the timing. 7 seconds between the rocket breaking up (still unclear if due to failure or interception, someone please correct me if I’m wrong) and impact with the hospital. 7 seconds would certainly not be enough to fall to earth from what appears to be roughly 1km altitude, presuming that the motor is destroyed and that it still had significant upward momentum. So, either estimates I’ve seen of its altitude and vertical velocity are way off, or the rocket would have had to continue burning its motor pointing downward after the failure/interception, OR the explosion of the failure/interception would have had to impart enough momentum to launch the warhead and/or solid rocket fuel straight at the hospital. Not sure which of those 3 scenarios is most likely, I’d guess the last one.

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

#174

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:03 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #164

abigail95 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, ignore everything for a week. Unless you want to make money in prediction markets - then help out humanity by reading as much information as possible and moving the price so that people who don't have time to do that can have better information. A week is a long time in a fast moving conflict, and the ambiguity favours the defenders if it slows down any attack. An explosion at a hospital doesn't need a golden r…

Former news junkie here. The GP is correct. Unless you are making concrete decisions based on those conflicts on a day to day basis, there is little to gain following it on a day by day basis. He says wait a week. I actually used to wait a month - at the beginning of the month I would catch up on all the news. Compared to when I would follow things on a daily basis, I got more accuracy, and less haze. When you go thr…

> When you go through your RSS feed all at once for a month, you'll see how crazy often things are inaccurate in the first few days

You may also enjoy browsing old microfiches.

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

#175

Post by tzs » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:04 PM UTC

bluefishinit wrote: post #29

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #25

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…

> Thousands of civilians in Gaza have died and that's just getting started. The focus should be on an immediate ceasefire and humanitarian aide.

Then what?

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

#176

Post by DoughnutHole » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:05 PM UTC

perihelions wrote: post #155

jameshart wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When journalists hear hoof beats, you want them to think ‘horses’ not ‘zebras’, though, right? When party A is causing a lot of explosions in general in land controlled by party B, and party B is broadly not trying to cause explosions in its own land, when an explosion happens in land controlled by party B you should have a strong prior that the most likely culprit is party A. Journalists should be allowed to assume…

Professional journalists have the responsibility to be epistemologically correct—to accurately say "X told us Y", "our reporter observed Z", etc. You can't jump the gun and launder speculation into truth. That's what Silver's complaining about in the OP: not that the NYT got it wrong, but how in particular they got it wrong, making claims of confidence and certainty that weren't supported by what they had.

It's a more subtle mistake than that - they did say "X told us Y":

> Israeli Strike Kills Hundreds in Hospital, Palestinian Officials Say

The problem isn't that they presented an unverified claim as fact - they told us that this was a claim by an official.

The problem is one of framing and headline crafting. All people took away from the headline was the "fact", because the headline did not adequately stress the providence of the information or the fact that the claim was unverified.

If you want people to come away with "X claims Y" rather than "X happened", you need to in some way stress the fact that it's an unverified claim.

I'd honestly chalk this up less to malice or journalistic malpractice in the hunt for clicks, but to simple bad writing. I'm amazed it got past the editors.

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

#177

Post by JumpCrisscross » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:06 PM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #169

tenacious_tuna wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but note both suggestions omit doing anything to ultra-wealthy and continue to drive the wedge between the lower and middle classes, each being told the other is why they can't have nice things.

The working poor don't have any money for the government to take. The middle and upper-middle classes have plenty of money for the government to take, but not enough to afford expensive accountants and business formations to shield their assets, or at least not enough assets to make that cheaper than just paying taxes. The wealthy have tons of money for the government to take, but can spend tens of thousands up to mi…

> wealthy have tons of money for the government to take, but can spend tens of thousands up to millions to shield it so they can't

I used to advocate for doubling all tax brackets. A friend ran the numbers: the result is volatility. The middle class has stable earnings in a way the wealthy do not. That doesn’t mean we can’t tax them more. But there is a trade off.

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

#178

Post by woodruffw » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:11 PM UTC

vxNsr wrote: post #80

woodruffw wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> What is your actual counterposition here? That yelling fire in a theater is dangerous and that is quite literally what the NYT and NPR did. The falsehoods they repeated caused immediate panic and rioting in many Muslim communities and countries, they’ve burned down synagogues and Israeli embassies over a false story.

“Burns down Synagogues” and “reads NPR” are probably largely disjoint sets of people.

I’m Jewish, and I’m exceedingly sensitive to the volatility of the situation. My relatives’ lives depend on it. I do not find NPR’s language particularly objectionable.

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

#179

Post by cmrdporcupine » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:12 PM UTC

zaphar wrote: post #168

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's complete nonsense. They do it all the time, and they lie or distort at will. Just like every other government, military, or secret service. Example: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/canadian-killed-a... https://legionmagazine.com/one-martyr-down-the-untold-story-... https://www.cjpme.org/fs_033 IDF fired on a UN post and killed neutral UN observers, including a Canadian citizen. They've never admitte…

Israel did not pretend they hadn't fired the missile in that case. You may disagree with whether it was deliberate or not but you have no evidence that it was. Which fine, that's a mental framework you are choosing for yourself. Hamas, meanwhile, has been caught lying multiple times over the years with actual evidence of those lies. Objectively one of these is far more reliable than the others in their relationship t…

Tell me you didn't bother reading the substance of my comment without telling me....

JFC, you're in a mental prison. Hate.

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

#180

Post by jakeinspace » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

baking wrote: post #14

It might not have been a rocket either: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/20/2200511/-CAR-BOM...

Would this damage not also be consistent with a rocket warhead and/or solid rocket fuel tube landing in, on, or next to these vehicles? I don’t see why the blown out door of that vehicle couldn’t be explained by a driver’s-side explosion, blowing out the passenger doors and spinning the vehicle around.