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How can you know what news is real?

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Re: How can you know what news is real?

#61

Post by richtr »

jajag wrote: post #25

I find the idea that there can be an unbiased news source deeply problematic. All reporting of an event has to be from a perspective, and has to make decisions about what to report, what to leave out; what to emphasise, what to play down. An honest news source should be one that is one that is honest about its own biases.

I agree and there will always be bias in news, intentional or not.

There is the argument that if people were equipped with the skills to identify bias in reporting themselves then these news sources would not be able to operate as effectively and with as much influence as they do today.

For example, in Swedish schools children are actively taught to identify and evaluate biases in news sources as a way to filter false reporting [1].

It we start giving children the toolbox required to live in our (real) world of imperfect reporting then the impact of biased news sources might be neutralized in a generation.

[1] http://nyhetsvarderaren.se/in-english/

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#62

Post by tasogare »

tekmate wrote: post #36
joaodlf wrote: post #26

I have, sadly, given up. I can't stand watching/reading the news and feeling that I am quite possibly being manipulated, so I have completely given up. Anything I do read, I mistrust. I don't want to be ignorant towards what is happening around me, but I feel like I have no choice, I don't want to become bitter and "pick a side", I prefer to remain ignorant. Even when friends say "Oh, but try this source, they are so…

identify potential biases in a source and then filter the information of that source through a bias lense, then use another source and do the same thing to triangulate "the truth" giving up on consuming news because everything might be biased is simply lazy

That works if there are enough different sources with different biais. That might not be the case i lot of countries.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#63

Post by golemotron »

> How can you know what news is real

It's actually easier to tell today whether something is fake because there are more outlets to determine an intersection within.

Here's how you do it:

Read both CNN and Fox. If something is reported on both, it's real. For stories that exist on both, notice the slant of each story. Pay attention to emotive conjugation [1] and ask yourself these three questions:

1. Why did the editors pick this story?

2. What is their opinion of it and the actors in it?

3. What stories are not being reported because the editors are not interested in them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#64

Post by darren0 »

It's somewhat ironic that you can't even trust this article. There's an obvious bias towards a "power struggle" view of the world's problems. The issue with the current state of affairs is essentially assumed to be because of billionaires and corporate consolidation. The solution presented is then to give more power to the people. Neither point is substantiated by fact.

One could just as easily argue that the state of the media is due to a failure to adapt to the internet in which blogs, Twitter, and social media become peoples primary source of information. So the "power of the people" could have in fact caused this issue. This also being a conjecture.

The only point in this article that is well substantiated is that trust in media is low and I feel this article is perfectly on trend.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#65

Post by pjc50 »

ra120271 wrote: post #7

I've always felt news organisations should be legally required to be non-for-profit and wages capped at some sensible multiple of the national average wage (e.g 6x)

News organisations are generally pretty badly paid at the moment.

I'd be up for prominent disclosure of ultimate ownership, though.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#66

Post by pjc50 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #4

Is this really that surprising? Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news when they’re football teams, why is it when they’re corporate news organizations? Also, if there was ever a time to be concerned about the owners of media organizations controlling the narrative this is not it. The media, and the ruling class more generally, being pissed off that the peasants are daring to speak back and have their own non…

Perhaps "surprising" is the wrong word, but this absolutely is the problem; billionaire-owned "news" organisations able to propagandise with very little opposition. Although the question of who the staff class is also important; people have started to notice that the (publicly owned!) BBC's political presenter Andrew Neil works for all sorts of Conservative party-aligned institutions like the Spectator.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#67

Post by iagovar »

joaodlf wrote: post #26

I have, sadly, given up. I can't stand watching/reading the news and feeling that I am quite possibly being manipulated, so I have completely given up. Anything I do read, I mistrust. I don't want to be ignorant towards what is happening around me, but I feel like I have no choice, I don't want to become bitter and "pick a side", I prefer to remain ignorant. Even when friends say "Oh, but try this source, they are so…

Being informed is hard. Now, I'd be talking about the spanish speaking-sphere, but I guess some of this may apply to the US too.

Every time I want to dig in a subject it always comes down to this:

1. If the topic has scientific coverage, try to find meta-analysis. If there isn't any the field has a high chance of lacking ground truth. Sadly you need at least statistics knowledge to know where are you getting into, and some times this isn't enough because domain knowledge is a must. Some words may be used in a different meaning than you're used to.

2. If there isn't any scientific coverage, try to find specialized sources. Most of them are not open access though.

3. If your only resource is main stream media or internet outlets, then try to balance out different approaches. This is a very hard task because the amount of noise is staggering. It's not only agendas but journalist really doing a poor/cheap/lazy work or a combination of them all.

If you happen to know a domain, then try to avoid anything other than specialized media upwards, because you'll get angry or at least you won't believe how weird some realities are depicted to the general public.

It's also a good exercise to read info that doesn't reinforce your beliefs, try to break the famous "eco chamber", it's probably the only way to not become an idiot, even if you know the truth from first hand, because it's useful to know what people are being told to think and how some other people can reach other conclusions.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#68

Post by lm28469 »

frankbreetz wrote: post #50
lm28469 wrote: post #41

The real question is why are people following the news anyway? It's pure entertainment at that point. "Hey Karen have you seen that a girl was raped and murdered 1000 miles away from you ? Have you heard what _unknown politician of a third world country you couldn't even place on a map_ said ! that's outrageous. A cop killed an innocent man today #thoughtsAndPrayers". The world would be a much better place if everybo…

News also includes what laws are passed, what court decisions were made, it's a citizen's responsibility to be an informed citizen.

> it's a citizen's responsibility to be an informed citizen.

There are new/updated laws every single day, in my country I can read them online, 99.99% of them aren't presented in mainstream news.

Don't read mainstream newspapers or watch CNN/Fox news to be an informed citizen, that's not how it works.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#69

Post by pjc50 »

joaodlf wrote: post #26

I have, sadly, given up. I can't stand watching/reading the news and feeling that I am quite possibly being manipulated, so I have completely given up. Anything I do read, I mistrust. I don't want to be ignorant towards what is happening around me, but I feel like I have no choice, I don't want to become bitter and "pick a side", I prefer to remain ignorant. Even when friends say "Oh, but try this source, they are so…

This is exactly the effect that the news-spammers want to achieve. If you don't pick a side, you're not voting, or you're not an informed voter. So you've opted out of democracy. Which is nice, you've relieved yourself of a whole bunch of stress, and nothing changes in the short term.

Until something goes wrong. It's not that there won't be elections, they'll just be won by the same party for years on end. You personally will be fine, but there's an uptick in the number of journalists and activists killed in car bombs or more mysterious circumstances. The quality of the roads deteriorates and the number of homeless you have to step over increases.

Still, best not to have an agenda.

Re: How can you know what news is real?

#70

Post by jankotek »

zouhair wrote: post #60
lm28469 wrote: post #41

The real question is why are people following the news anyway? It's pure entertainment at that point. "Hey Karen have you seen that a girl was raped and murdered 1000 miles away from you ? Have you heard what _unknown politician of a third world country you couldn't even place on a map_ said ! that's outrageous. A cop killed an innocent man today #thoughtsAndPrayers". The world would be a much better place if everybo…

Well that's short sighted. It's because of this flawed logic that a lot of Americans think they have the best education/healthcare in the World. Just now that they started to look at what is happening elsewhere that they are starting to understand what they are lacking. Here is the thing, and it works for everything in life: Knowing a thing is almost always better than not knowing it, even if it is not clear what use…

Eating junk food is not healthy...
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