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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

#41

Post by rootusrootus »

harrall wrote: post #29
smallpipe wrote: post #6

The average journalist has to churn enough stories that they don't have time to be looking up anything. There must be a corollary somewhere about how much you should read the average newspaper.

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 useful as a general source of information.

I'm happy to pay for a good source of news. But finding something that doesn't just look good, but is in fact actually good, that's my problem.

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

#42

Post by BugsJustFindMe »

intended wrote: post #20

The BBC pulled that article/episode - which is the main difference between different media spheres today. We are habituated to think of information as the fundament of the internet. When in reality the foundation is simply content. High quality information is content which is verified, or has a chain of sources. This is expensive to produce. The information consumer primarily consumes emotionally salient content. May…

> The BBC pulled that article/episode

Pulling after publishing isn't much better. The damage has already been done. The story has already been absorbed by viewers. The viewers are already spreading the thing they saw to each other. The information narrative has already been influenced.

It is blatant dereliction of responsibility to publish something in the first place without checking and relying on later outcry to go "oopsie daisies".

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

#43

Post by topaz0 »

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…

> to grab and keep eyeballs

yes, but also to manufacture consent for the priorities of the rich and powerful

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

#44

Post by mirabilis »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #9

It is exceptionally rare for a human to care about the epistemological roots of any claim I would go so far as to say that the median human with a 100IQ doesn’t even understand the concept of what constitutes a “fact” or how you would dicriminate fact from opinion or has even heard the word “epistemology” Expecting anything close to that in the context of celebrity gossip… well at that point the author needs to manag…

If I might be more optimistic, I think people may actually care about a statement being rooted in reality, but people may not be likely to slow down and engage in suspicion of something they would not expect to be false. (Though the size of that window may be its own problem!) If I see someone claiming they have the cure for cancer, then I consider it a bit fantastical and want to investigate further. If a supposed quote from an older actress talks about her time doing Shakespeare, then it doesn’t really proc any doubt in me; I’m offering a baseline of trust to the publisher that forwarded that information along to me that this information is factual and not someone’s strange fanfiction about her life. I can appreciate that the author doubted it because a quick scroll of the blog shows that he’s got an interest in stagecraft and so it bumped up against his expertise, but I don’t think that I would have seen the quote myself and done the same… maybe I am one of those sub-median ignoramuses you mention. I agree that people uncritically eating up sensational news is a problem, but this is like, pretty straightforward in-memoriam news that I’d hope to not have to doubt.

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

#45

Post by vintermann »

MountDoom wrote: post #35

> I hope I've demonstrated that it takes almost no effort to perform a basic fact check. It isn't a professional skill. First, it takes effort when you're paid a pittance per every article you crank out. The reality is that a lot of newspapers now operate more as content farms (publish a lot of stuff as quickly as possible) than as outlets for investigative journalism. In fact, for a lot of these clikbaity stories, y…

Especially the actor one, understanding why someone would take the trouble to check that is almost as hard as understanding why someone would take the trouble to lie about it. Should we expect it of media? Probably.

The "payload" in this article, the thing he wants to spread debunking of, is the indeed false claim that Euan Blair's son Multiverse's company got a government ID card contract.

But looking into it, that company seems very odd. Can you really get a billion pound valuation and investments from tons of powerful people from placing school leavers into apprenticeships?

Sometimes I wonder if PR companies spread false stories about companies to pre-emptively discredit the true stories that have yet to be told.

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

#46

Post by hexbin010 »

topaz0 wrote: post #43
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…

> to grab and keep eyeballs yes, but also to manufacture consent for the priorities of the rich and powerful

Its first and foremost purpose

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

#47

Post by lubujackson »

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…

Worth noting this is far from a modern problem. Google "yellow journalism".

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

#48

Post by simonw »

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."

It is worth paying attention to the significant rise in prominence of non-profit newsrooms, particularly in the USA.

Some notable examples:

The Baltimore Banner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baltimore_Banner Founded: 2022

ProPublica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProPublica Founded: 2007

The Texas Tribune https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Texas_Tribune Founded: 2009

The Marshall Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Marshall_Project Founded: 2014

I'm particularly excited about the Baltimore Banner, who are only a few years old but are earning sizable subscription revenue now (it's healthy for them not to be too dependent on donors).

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