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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

#91

Post by awesome_dude »

jack_h wrote: post #85
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…

You’re using multiple definitions of “free” here. One is freedom in the Lockean sense, the other is freedom from the properties and consequences of an emergent system. It’s a bit like saying you are free to choose your own mate and have kids without government involvement but you’re still a slave to natural selection. The concept of the free press does not guarantee that the truth will proliferate, it merely attempts…

People do forget that there are only three known models for funding new/press and they are all susceptible to bias and error.

1. State

2. Profit driven

3. Charity (includes volunteers, billionaire patrons, crowdfunding)

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

#93

Post by anonymousiam »

BurningFrog wrote: post #86
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…

The free press has always been for profit! What's changed is that the profit used to come from advertising. Since everyone read the news, they could charge a lot for ads. Those days are over, and news now bubble up from social media. That kinda works, but it's far from ideal. To me the 2019 "Covington kids" incident showed how broken the media had become. All the prestigious media, from NY Times down, reprinted a vir…

Speaking of Twitter, I couldn't help but notice the lack of a Twitter/X icon on the author's blog page. Lots of other social media links are present.

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

#94

Post by cactusplant7374 »

ecshafer wrote: post #33
rafterydj wrote: post #2

Just yesterday, there was a post that made me angry in the same vein: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45609942 Not only was the article slop, but the author kept responding to comments/criticisms with MORE slop. I must scream.

I am not one to jump on the "This is AI" train. But the "author" responding is absolutely AI, I would bet vast sums of money on it. It reads exactly like chatgpt.

There will be teenagers adopting the writing style of ChatGPT. In the future this will work as a camouflage.

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

#95

Post by awesome_dude »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #71
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…

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 bought Twitter because his mouth got ahead of him.

Recall His brazen offer

Their initial refusal

Him suing to buy

Them relenting

Him trying to back out

Them suing to force the purchase

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

#96

Post by chaps »

simonw wrote: post #89
rootusrootus wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see more information like this, thanks for sharing. Though at least one of those examples has a red flag for me - The Baltimore Banner gets a non-trivial amount revenue from advertising. For me personally, I feel like advertising is directly at odds with quality journalism. I would also be interested to hear about how older small and alternate news sources compare to these newer ones. To use an exampl…

"For me personally, I feel like advertising is directly at odds with quality journalism." Advertising is how journalism has worked since journalism first started. Running a newspaper used to be a fantastic business, because you effectively had a local monopoly on advertising to a geographic area. If someone wanted to promote things in your city, you would be top of their list. Facebook, Google, Craigslist etc complet…

Getting grants is an alternative way and it's how freelancers are able to do reporting for cash-strapped newsrooms. Grants definitely have their own can of worms, though. Things like restrictive reporting requirements, do-not-do requirements, and the dynamics that just come from people giving other people relatively large sums of money.

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

#97

Post by beej71 »

Good reading for the ever-dwindling group of people who like facts.

I remember there was a friend of mine who was of the opposite political persuasion, generally, than myself. He posted something that was demonstrably wrong to Facebook. And I was embarrassed for him just as much as I be embarrassed for myself having posted something so inaccurate. So I offered a friendly correction, but he replied in an unexpected way. He said that the sentiment of the post was accurate, even if the post itself was not. And he left it up!

The facts of the case were absolutely irrelevant.

That was a decade ago. Since then, that attitude has clearly become more prevalent not just with your average Facebook poster, but also within the government and media themselves. For none of these groups does does "truth" support their goals; fact checking is a complete waste of time, and might even be detrimental.

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

#98

Post by JohnMakin »

beej71 wrote: post #97

Good reading for the ever-dwindling group of people who like facts. I remember there was a friend of mine who was of the opposite political persuasion, generally, than myself. He posted something that was demonstrably wrong to Facebook. And I was embarrassed for him just as much as I be embarrassed for myself having posted something so inaccurate. So I offered a friendly correction, but he replied in an unexpected wa…

Yea, the issue is fewer and fewer people care about objective fact anymore. Reality is whatever you feel it is, or whatever you feel you want it to be, and the internet (the current iteration of it) is perfectly content to feed you that reality, and fake/real is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish.

I've also been in similar discussions and have since given up - even if you show incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the response is often "well, this is what I believe." I'm not even talking about topics where there is some existing debate - like, things that cannot possibly be disputed, like that the earth is round (not hyperbole).

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

#99

Post by ffsm8 »

chaps wrote: post #28

I've done a fair amount of data-intensive fact checking for journalism articles and have had fact checking done on my own data-intensive reporting. Couple things: 1. Fact checkers are not paid enough to do what they do. They're usually freelancers and they're usually financially struggling. The dynamics of that are difficult to say the least. 2. Editors change things last minute without informing the journalist whose…

> It sucks being a journalist. Donate to your local investigative newsroom.

That sounds like absolutely atrocious living conditions for the journalists employed by such a news room.

Honestly, at that point - look for a different job!

I'm not saying this to be mean, I am just picturing myself in such a working relationship of being employed by an organization working in an industry which is hemorrhaging valuation because of various developments like AI (but even before that it was going downhill).

You will be happier doing something else! At that point, learn a trade or similar. You'll be better paid, have a more stable lifestyle and will feel happier long term, even if you love being a journalist now.

Sorry to be such a downer, but hearing messages like that gives me flashbacks to people getting exploited - and I bet ya that the owner of that newsroom will not be suffering like the journalists. You're sacrificing your own happiness in life for another person's wealth gain - just because you thought it was "worth doing" in your 20s. Because yes, money maybe doesn't buy happiness, but it sure as hell gets you an incredible amount of stress if it's absent.

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

#100

Post by lynx97 »

chaps wrote: post #28

I've done a fair amount of data-intensive fact checking for journalism articles and have had fact checking done on my own data-intensive reporting. Couple things: 1. Fact checkers are not paid enough to do what they do. They're usually freelancers and they're usually financially struggling. The dynamics of that are difficult to say the least. 2. Editors change things last minute without informing the journalist whose…

So you're saying the pay is poor, and your coworkers deliberately fuck you over for their own gains. That pretty much sounds like a job you should stay away from by any cost. Do something else, something productive that doesnt lead to a bunch of lies being sold as truths.
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