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You did no fact checking, and I must scream

shkspr.mobi

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Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#171

Post by harrall »

rootusrootus wrote: post #41
harrall wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average newspapers have average content. But there are good newspapers just like they are good . Although good newspapers still have bias, but as a reader, you can correct for bias. You can’t correct for sloppy fact checking. Like in archery, if you always land in the same spot, you can “reverse bias” the result back to bullseye. If you land all over the place, there’s nothing you can do. The only problem is that goo…

In this conversation I keep seeing comments about good newspapers. I'd be interested in seeing a more specific discussion that debates which newspapers qualify as good. Everyone has their own opinion, but maybe a consensus would emerge. Is it as easy as NYT? Or Economist? Or is that still slop and ProPublica is the standard? But even then, something like ProPublica is great for investigative journalism but less usefu…

A good newspaper to me is one that regularly does their due diligence (fact checking, possibly considering things from several angles, giving background information) and has a consistent but reasonable bias. NYT and The Economist are very good ones.

It’s extremely hard suggesting newspapers to an online audience. People don’t easily separate bias and accuracy — they think they are correlated.

Bias and accuracy are unrelated to each other.

If I suggest The Economist, people think I’m for liberalism (The Economist has a major liberalism slant), but really, they tend to make factual statements and then turn to liberalism as a solution, which a regular reader can be like “okay the facts and your background introduction to the topic are good. I don’t necessarily agree with your solution but I get your viewpoint.”

When people ask for suggestions, they often want a simple news source that is unbiased. And I have nothing to give them because I don’t read unbiased news sources.

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#172

Post by eh_why_not »

cooperadymas wrote: post #81
BeetleB wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a news junkie for several years (now cured). I was mildly obsessive about fact checking. And oh wow, it is bad. My takeaway was that people who casually read the news (e.g. newspaper, scanning headlines on their favorite news site, etc) are the most misinformed.[1] The one who doesn't follow the news knows he is ignorant and doesn't know the inaccurate information. The one who follows it heavily, and with an ey…

Many wise people would agree with you. “Why you fool, it's the educated reader who CAN be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He…

In a discussion of an article about encouraging fact-checking in writing, I wish you would have made your quotes informative by replacing "many wise people" with the actual names of who said them.

For everyone else: the first paragraph appears to be a quote of C.S. Lewis around 1945 [0], and the second, of Thomas Jefferson in 1807 [1].

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/502048-why-you-fool-it-s-th...

[1] https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_sp...

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#173

Post by jfengel »

BurningFrog wrote: post #90
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For-profit media is definitely a problem, but Jeff Bezos didn't buy the Washington Post and Elon Musk didn't buy Twitter because they thought they were more profitable than any other investments they could have made. I believe they did it because they wanted the power that owning a media outlet can provide in order to help protect their actually profitable businesses. It certainly helps that they have their own reven…

Elon was quite clear the he bought Twitter to make it a free speech forum where you could openly discuss things, even from non establishment standpoints. And that's what it's become.

"Non-establishment" is a funny way to spell "Nazi".

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#174

Post by wredcoll »

socalgal2 wrote: post #151
travisgriggs wrote: post #32

> The media have comprehensively failed us. Good. The author didn’t make the mistake of calling it the “news”. I have for a long time felt that there is nuance about our “press” that doesn’t have good words in the public dialog. I struggle to articulate it myself. Our modern “free press” is only free in that government is mostly not censoring it. But the press of today is a for profit endeavour. So it is not free to…

> But the press of today is a for profit endeavour. For me, the press today is a for influence endeavour. Most journalists have a POV the majority of topics they write about they express that POV with how they discuss the topic. For example, which people they quote, generally only ones that agree with their POV. If they present an a opposing view they always couch it and phrase things to push the reader to discount t…

> To put it more simply, most journalists are trying to change the world to see things their way.

This is a good thing.

Aside from the bit where it's always been like this anyways, we, as modern humans, don't have the time to evaluate everything from first sources.

You can't read every scientic study or the 500 pages of tax documents that were studied to produce a report on someone committing tax fraud.

I don't need more "facts", I need useful information I can take action on.

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#175

Post by wredcoll »

BurningFrog wrote: post #131
blipvert wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aww, that’s sweet. Only time I’ve been kicked off Twitter (permanently, no comebacks) was under Elon’s rule.

Do you want to share for what?

Are you going to judge whether or not he was using the right kind of speech?

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#176

Post by lynx97 »

lurk2 wrote: post #165
lynx97 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe self-reported stats are worth anything in this context. Many conservatives have learnt to keep a low profile, since in many circles, right wing association has become a synonym for evil. Besides, I am not a U.S citizen, so your quoted stats are not relevant to my statement above them.

> I don't believe self-reported stats are worth anything in this context. Many conservatives have learnt to keep a low profile, since in many circles, right wing association has become a synonym for evil. This is a baseless conspiracy theory. > Besides, I am not a U.S citizen, so your quoted stats are not relevant to my statement above them. These patterns hold for every country in the Anglosphere. Canadian leftists…

> This is a baseless conspiracy theory.

Well, I beg to differ. Just reading HN, accusing people of fascism has become a lot more common-place then, say, 10 years ago. Offline, I have had a lot of chats with people that share my sentiment, which I would consider rather centrist. The left has gotten so very aggressive when it comes to disagreements that they started to push anyone away to the right who isn't willing to agree with everything they currently have on their agenda.

> what specific statements were these journalists making that struck you as evil?

I deliberately wrote "vibe" because accidentally overhearing that work meeting is actually a few years ago. It would be extremely dishonest of me to conjure up an exact quote. I simply can't without making up stuff. Sure, that opens all doors to attack me for even mentioning it. And maybe thats right. However, personal experiences are always ancedotal. Still, it is all we, as individuals, have.

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#177

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

lynx97 wrote: post #169
chaps wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend, I think your cynicism's clouding how you're interpreting my words. What you're interpreting as blind trust is me just saying that people are people and people gonna people, yanno? And lol, nah. The amount of bullshit I've seen from my peer group is laughable and I've had a tendency to be very aggressive in pushing back on bad reporting. Like the Chicago Tribune -- they weren't including all of the facts in th…

Thanks for your last paragraph. You apparently have a lot more inside infos then I ever will, and still, you confirm my observation. There is no unbiased reporting. However, I am not willing to compromise on this. If there is no way I can get unbiased infos, I dont want any "journalism" anymore. If it is a lost cause, so be it. And, that is not cynicism, it is plain despair. I just dont want to be lied to, no matter…

> There is no unbiased reporting.

There are few things that are unbiased, least of all language. Even when communicating a straight fact, the words and tone chosen to communicate it have an inherent bias. One can report with glee or hope or skepticism or anger or just about any other emotion, with positive or negative or neutral words, all of which have an inherent bias. To a person who's happy about something, a reporter's skepticism of that same thing is an unmistakable bias. The point is, that doesn't make it bad. Accuracy of reported facts seems to be a stronger indicator of the "lack of bias" that people prefer.

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#178

Post by BurningFrog »

wredcoll wrote: post #175
BurningFrog wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to share for what?

Are you going to judge whether or not he was using the right kind of speech?

Just curious. I'm even open to change my mind a bit about 2025 Twitter.

Re: You did no fact checking, and I must scream

#179

Post by KittenInABox »

lynx97 wrote: post #169
chaps wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Friend, I think your cynicism's clouding how you're interpreting my words. What you're interpreting as blind trust is me just saying that people are people and people gonna people, yanno? And lol, nah. The amount of bullshit I've seen from my peer group is laughable and I've had a tendency to be very aggressive in pushing back on bad reporting. Like the Chicago Tribune -- they weren't including all of the facts in th…

Thanks for your last paragraph. You apparently have a lot more inside infos then I ever will, and still, you confirm my observation. There is no unbiased reporting. However, I am not willing to compromise on this. If there is no way I can get unbiased infos, I dont want any "journalism" anymore. If it is a lost cause, so be it. And, that is not cynicism, it is plain despair. I just dont want to be lied to, no matter…

I would argue you just reported, in a biased way, about your personal experience overhearing some journalists who were having a casual conversation among themselves, and what this says about all journalism as a result.

There is no biased reporting because there are no unbiased event descriptors. Not video, not photos, not physics papers, not even describing some stuff that happened to you firsthand.

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