Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 468 posts

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#231

Post by davidhyde »

I think we need to give professional journalists the benefit of the doubt and assume they studied journalism at university and the fact that what they learned is the correct way of doing journalism. Just like computer scientists go to university and learn how to write software properly. What I think happens in reality is that people with no journalism training call the shots by setting the budget and direction in these news agencies. This introduces the bias these journalists have training to actively avoid. Must be very frustrating for them.

Of cource, just like software developers with no formal training, there are plenty of news writers with no formal training either. And just like developers, these journalists can self learn proper journalism themselves or hack it and give a bad name to other journalists.

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#232

Post by heyjudy »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #184
dman wrote: post #131

I do pay for news, however one request I have for news providers is a greater emphasis on presenting news from all sides. Over the last 4-5 years most news providers have picked a political side (to a much greater extent than I recall in the past). This is true in both countries for which I follow news (India and the US). Given an event I can predict the coverage that venues will give it. This is troubling to me, and…

I would appreciate less emphasis on pretending to cover news from several angles. By doing so they imply that both sides are equally valid even when they're not. For instance I've seen them bring on a climate change denier to give the "other side" on a climate change story; anti vaxxers, et cetera. It's particularly bad when one side is willing to lie.

It's possible to see why anti-vaxxers are afraid while disclosing verified facts.

There is no one "correct" side amongst people and events, only impressions and accounts, which can vary tremendously.

It's also important not to take a side in the news, but to lay out facts and people issues involved as fairly as possible, rather than what happens these days: hiding datapoints, falsifying statements, taking sides and rarely understanding anything about or relating to the people involved.

Perhaps on stories of grievance or accusation, journalists musy play devil's advocate by asking for a response to opposition and ask the question most people are too afraid to ask.

Taking sides is for the editorial, not news, lest it become merely a TV church espousing gospel and seed faith, while the polarized others are turned off and away. Neither group communicates to the other, and neither challenges the others ideas... a dichotomous, divided-and-conquered, atomized society falls apart.

PS: I've been around the sun a few times, and I note a liability red flag whenever a person espouses black-and-white thinking. It's usually an unreasonableness better kept at a distance.

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#233

Post by Dylan16807 »

nailer wrote: post #202
8ytecoder wrote: post #77

A few complaints I share with the other people in this thread: - It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently. As someone in tech I can clearly see what they get and what they don't. Extrapolating it - it's not at all clear they understand economics or foreign policy or policy impact or environmental concerns and how to address them ...etc. - Bias: every single on…

> It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently. Example: Washington Post pushed the "Covington boys surround and intimidate native man" narrative that's been completely shattered by about 200 hours of video footage in the last week, and led to Twitter disabling the account that spread it, refutations (oddly enough from the NYT) and various apologies from those who…

Example: The narrative in many news outlets that the Covington students were doing nothing wrong. Quote: "It’s not rape if you enjoy it." for example why that's not right.

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#234

Post by makomk »

untog wrote: post #56
o10449366 wrote: post #27

The NYT has been on a crusade against FB for the past two years now. No other major news publication has published as many articles on FB as they have. I will never support NYT, not because I support FB, but because they disguise their media campaign as one meant to protect the individual's privacy, when in reality NYT has a very strong monetary incentive to go after FB. These ulterior motives further decay the trust…

Are the articles false? I don't really understand the reasoning here. Facebook is one of the richest and most powerful companies in the world now, why should NYT not report on them? One straightforward way for FB to stop this reporting would be to stop doing shady things.

They're at the very least substantially misleading, sometimes to the point where I reckon people would have a more accurate view of the world if they didn't read them. For instance, the one where the New York Times pretended that giving people the ability to use manufacturer-provided smartphone apps to view content their friends shared with them was the same as giving that information to the manufacturer of their smartphone, even when it never left the device: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/03/technology/fa...

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#235

Post by beaconstudios »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #184
dman wrote: post #131

I do pay for news, however one request I have for news providers is a greater emphasis on presenting news from all sides. Over the last 4-5 years most news providers have picked a political side (to a much greater extent than I recall in the past). This is true in both countries for which I follow news (India and the US). Given an event I can predict the coverage that venues will give it. This is troubling to me, and…

I would appreciate less emphasis on pretending to cover news from several angles. By doing so they imply that both sides are equally valid even when they're not. For instance I've seen them bring on a climate change denier to give the "other side" on a climate change story; anti vaxxers, et cetera. It's particularly bad when one side is willing to lie.

that arguably is another form of political bias - if I want to push position A, I will choose the most ridiculous and deranged proponent of position B to imply that "all rational people choose position A". Like on the issue of climate change - there's clearly some fraction of people who choose to deny it completely, but the more meaningful debate at this point is around how much we can do to prevent it, and what approaches might work (iron seeding, carbon sequestration, artificial photosynthesis, planting/algae cultivation, etc). Presenting a climate scientist who advocates a move to solar panels against a conspiracy theorist who thinks climate change is an invention of the new world order to seize control of the manufacturing industry is not a balanced presentation of the available angles.

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#236

Post by beaconstudios »

SrslyJosh wrote: post #185
dman wrote: post #131

I do pay for news, however one request I have for news providers is a greater emphasis on presenting news from all sides. Over the last 4-5 years most news providers have picked a political side (to a much greater extent than I recall in the past). This is true in both countries for which I follow news (India and the US). Given an event I can predict the coverage that venues will give it. This is troubling to me, and…

Yes, we must present news from all sides: 1. The side that thinks that everyone should have human rights. 2. The side that thinks that only people who look, talk, pray, and fuck like they do should have human rights. 3. The side that wrings its hands and moans about civility/balance/decorum/etc. as though one side hasn't enthusiastically been building (and filling) concentration camps for immigrant children. 4. Billi…

it appears that you're suggesting that the only sides to politics are the perfect good people (presumably the progressive left), and their evil opposition comprised entirely of fascists, fascist apologists and cynical hypercapitalists. I presume most readers are already aware of this, but that is a highly inaccurate presentation of the range of political positions people hold.

To present politics as a battle of good versus evil is extremely harmful to discourse because it dehumanises the opposition. In my experience, most conservatives and liberals alike are moderate and policy-focused, believing that one approach or another will solve any given issue. Of course you do get extremists, but they are a fringe minority on both sides.

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#237

Post by nindalf »

Only one publication passes the Gell-Mann test for me, and I pay for it. Nothing else comes close. Definitely not NYT. Just yesterday I came across an article in NYT that was hilariously wrong. I've spent all my working hours in the past year and a half on it, whereas the journalist spent maybe a couple of hours on it. They drew the most outlandish conclusions from the snippet of data they looked at. Very disappointing because it erodes the trust I have in that publication. If they could be so wrong about something I know about, what's the guarantee they're right about anything else?

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#238

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

I don’t see how paying for news would have any effect on fake news, unless people start to believe that only paid-for news can be accurate or trustworty.

That is a chilling and terrifying idea. Even if I pay for news, a lot of other news and non-fiction content is still freely published.

As long as people believe some free news is trustworthy, there will be an incentive to create fake news.

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#239

Post by nailer »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #233
nailer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently. Example: Washington Post pushed the "Covington boys surround and intimidate native man" narrative that's been completely shattered by about 200 hours of video footage in the last week, and led to Twitter disabling the account that spread it, refutations (oddly enough from the NYT) and various apologies from those who…

Example: The narrative in many news outlets that the Covington students were doing nothing wrong. Quote: "It’s not rape if you enjoy it." for example why that's not right.

Do you know what whataboutism is?

Re: Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing

#240

Post by Dylan16807 »

jammygit wrote: post #135
phreack wrote: post #129

Didn't the NYT have the dark pattern of being one-click subscribe, yet made you fill forms and emails and physically call them to unsubscribe? (At least up until a few months ago, last I heard) Stuff like that is an absolute deal breaker and turns lots of users away from subscriptions entirely, before even talking about article/content quality.

Cancelling an Amazon account takes about an hour of redirects and customer retention chats and emails. I decided not to subscribe to some papers for that reason yesterday

What do you mean by "cancelling an account"? The last time my prime subscription expired they just let it happen, has that changed? Or do you mean deleting an account, which is completely different from cancelling a subscription?
Post reply on HN