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

NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

cjr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 130 posts

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#81

Post by bluecalm »

scotchio wrote: post #27
darawk wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but they published something that confirmed their priors, and didn't due their due diligence on it because it confirmed their priors and was the kind of story they wanted to write. They have to be held to account for that.

Agree. Just don't see it as malicious

The old question is if it makes any difference if you're dumb on purpose or just inherintly ignorant. It makes little difference at the end of the day, it's still your fault to not take steps to correct your ignorance and it doesn't matter for the effects of your actions.

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#82

Post by stochastic_monk »

bluecalm wrote: post #80
briandear wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But yet, we give them credibility on political stories? That’s what makes no sense to me, we call them out on stories in which we have close experience, but we accept their stories on politics as if they were “objective,” because they happen to support our own bias. A story biased against the president: totally true, it’s “respectable” journalism. A story pushing an anti-Google agenda, “what were they thinking, this…

Well, I don't think there are many people left who give them any credibility on political stories outside of those looking for an echo chamber. They are Fox News for people who identify as "progressive intellectuals".

That’s MSNBC, not NYT. In fact, their coverage goes out of their way to support centrist positions. (Unless you’re discussing their opinion columns, which include everyone from Gorbachev to Sean Spicer to Chelsea Manning.)

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#83

Post by txcwpalpha »

pm90 wrote: post #54
verteu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the acronym implies, a "social justice warrior" is someone who fights for social justice. Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way to produce neutral, fact-based reporting.

> Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way to produce neutral, fact-based reporting. Have you considered the possibility that these SJW's are actually representative of today's youth? If they are, shouldn't NYT be hiring even more of them? I really don't care about what the backgrounds of Journalists are, as long as they adhere to the principles of journalism (honesty, a desire to qu…

I disagree strongly that there should be any link whatsoever between representation of a populace and journalism. If there was a community that is full of uneducated folks with a strong anti-science sentiment, I would still hope that any community journalism outlets would still report factually about scientific discoveries and strive to remain untainted by any specific bias, 'representation' be damned. Journalism should not be about being representative of a populace's ideals or agendas, but rather should be about reporting facts, unbiased as much as possible.

The NYT (and others) should in fact be striving to hire less employees with any kind of agenda (whether they be 'SJWs' or anyone else).

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#84

Post by sametmax »

rayiner wrote: post #59

> Several observers noted the story was timed in such a way as to provide maximum publicity for a bill that the New Media Alliance has been promoting to Congress, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The proposed legislation would exempt newspaper companies from competition laws, which prevent industry-leading entities from collaborating to set prices. The NMA argues this would allow publishers to…

Except netflix will probably die and you'll get the choice between 2 bullies : amazon and disney.

Also I have a hard time feeling sorry for the traditional press. They spend decades killing their own reputation and now paying the price. They could have had web sites so reputable, so popular, that they would have been the news hub. Instead they turned internet into the bad guy, kept publishing political agendas and sensasionalist headlines and hoped we would suck it up as we did when they were king of the hill.

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#85

Post by bryan_w »

_cs2017_ wrote: post #79

Why is not only the conservative, but even the liberal media so strongly anti-tech? Google, Facebook, and the majority of other tech firms are extraordinarily liberal, far beyond the normal California bias. And not only are their executives and employees overwhelmingly liberal, the companies often act on those beliefs (by supporting various political causes, creating a certain liberal emphasis in their educational to…

Someone made the believe that big tech was responsible for getting trump elected

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#86

Post by maceurt »

p1necone wrote: post #18
umvi wrote: post #6

"Straightforward" extrapolation is the worst! Reminds me of the RIAA damages numbers often quoted in courts "Well, it was a $2 mp3, and ~100M copies were downloaded, that's $2 * 100M = $200M in lost revenue/damages!!" As if 1 download = 1 guaranteed lost sale. On the contrary sometimes 1 download = 1 future sale where there was none before! By that logic the easiest way to make a million is just to download (or copy)…

Or police talking about seizing X million dollars worth of drugs where they're getting their valuation from street value but seizing the drugs in wholesale quantities from the manufacturer - and ignoring the fact that a large portion of the labor/risk that contributes to that price hasn't actually happened yet.

Well, they usually say that it is its "street value", and is pretty accurate of how much money is being taken away from the drug economy.

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#87

Post by in3d »

Why don’t these news publishers come together and make a competitor to Google News? Google News is a poor product. It cannot do basic NLP things right, like properly grouping related news. The titles that are chosen as the first ones to display often don’t convey the story. Irrelevant or extremely partisan stories are prominently listed. “More stories like this” or “fewer stories like this” does nothing. The publishers could ban Google News from displaying their headlines and include snippets on their service, so they wouldn’t even need to compete fairly. To me it seems that they are scared to losing short term traffic and lack a long-term vision.

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#88

Post by kortilla »

gundmc wrote: post #62
ralph84 wrote: post #56

Any time I see an article in a "mainstream" news outlet on a topic I'm familiar with, the inaccuracies make me cringe. The more familiar I am with the topic, the more inaccuracies I spot. The charitable interpretation is that news outlets have been so decimated by changes in their business model that they can't afford good editors. There are plenty of less charitable interpretations.

Sounds like the Gell-Mann amnesia effect[1]. We notice the innacuracies in the fields we are familiar with and then readily believe stories outside of our expertise. Disclaimer - reporting is critically important and by and large journalists are doing their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and esoteric subjects. It's always good to remember there is a lot more nuance behind just about every story th…

>reporting is critically important and by and large journalists are doing their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and esoteric subjects.

No, by and large they absolutely aren’t doing their best. If they were the Gell-Mann amnesia effect wouldn’t be so prominent because it’s trivial to run stories by experts on topics. Most reporters are crunched for time and just churn out crap as fast as possible.

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#89

Post by mr_t »

sametmax wrote: post #84
rayiner wrote: post #59

> Several observers noted the story was timed in such a way as to provide maximum publicity for a bill that the New Media Alliance has been promoting to Congress, called the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act. The proposed legislation would exempt newspaper companies from competition laws, which prevent industry-leading entities from collaborating to set prices. The NMA argues this would allow publishers to…

Except netflix will probably die and you'll get the choice between 2 bullies : amazon and disney. Also I have a hard time feeling sorry for the traditional press. They spend decades killing their own reputation and now paying the price. They could have had web sites so reputable, so popular, that they would have been the news hub. Instead they turned internet into the bad guy, kept publishing political agendas and se…

Naive question: What makes you think that Netflix will probably die?

Re: NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media

#90

Post by SiempreViernes »

kortilla wrote: post #88
gundmc wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like the Gell-Mann amnesia effect[1]. We notice the innacuracies in the fields we are familiar with and then readily believe stories outside of our expertise. Disclaimer - reporting is critically important and by and large journalists are doing their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and esoteric subjects. It's always good to remember there is a lot more nuance behind just about every story th…

>reporting is critically important and by and large journalists are doing their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and esoteric subjects. No, by and large they absolutely aren’t doing their best. If they were the Gell-Mann amnesia effect wouldn’t be so prominent because it’s trivial to run stories by experts on topics. Most reporters are crunched for time and just churn out crap as fast as possible.

Which expert on journalism production processes did you query to verify that statement?
Post reply on HN