The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free(currentaffairs.org)
currentaffairs.org
The Truth Is Paywalled but the Lies Are Free
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/08/the-truth-is-paywalled-but-the-lies-are-free/
498 comments
It's a mistake to judge an organization on one, or even a handful of incidents. There should be a pattern of inaccuracy and bias before you "cancel" a news source.
This is one of the unsung problems of the modern world, the growing impossibility of keeping an accurate "reputation" in your brain. Virtually everyone and everything has been accused of being evil, in general, or specifically. It's no longer good enough to just "have good feelings" about a name, because I guarantee you've read something about every name that is negative. Mere accusation is trivial to make, and society has somehow gotten away from swift and harsh punishment against baseless accusation. Without that (very useful) habit, the heuristic of equating reputation with number of accusations is meaningless, and yet we all still do it.
This is one of the unsung problems of the modern world, the growing impossibility of keeping an accurate "reputation" in your brain. Virtually everyone and everything has been accused of being evil, in general, or specifically. It's no longer good enough to just "have good feelings" about a name, because I guarantee you've read something about every name that is negative. Mere accusation is trivial to make, and society has somehow gotten away from swift and harsh punishment against baseless accusation. Without that (very useful) habit, the heuristic of equating reputation with number of accusations is meaningless, and yet we all still do it.
The NYT is wildly inaccurate on foreign affairs regularly. For an exceptionally famous example, recall their reporting on WMDs in Iraq for which they have never squarely apologized.
https://nypost.com/2004/05/27/nyt-whispers-apology-for-wmd-s...
https://nypost.com/2004/05/27/nyt-whispers-apology-for-wmd-s...
Comparatively, are they more inaccurate than other news outlets? If so, which are some that you would say are more accurate in their reporting of foreign affairs?
Every news outlet is owned by a small circle of concentrated power these days from wealthy families to corporate conglomerates that bizarrely fail to be harshly critical of things that would impact their wealth and businesses.
You can try reading e.g. The Intercept, local papers, Democracy Now for a different spin on things, but there's only one thing that actually works is reading several sources, including the papers from "the other side" and trying to figure out which story line makes logical sense. Usually lies are poorly constructed and contain a combination of paradoxes, deference to authority, and appeal to various fears without a firm logical basis. Pay close attention to verifiable information and evidence. Those are the only pieces of information that can be trusted from either the state or journalists.
You can try reading e.g. The Intercept, local papers, Democracy Now for a different spin on things, but there's only one thing that actually works is reading several sources, including the papers from "the other side" and trying to figure out which story line makes logical sense. Usually lies are poorly constructed and contain a combination of paradoxes, deference to authority, and appeal to various fears without a firm logical basis. Pay close attention to verifiable information and evidence. Those are the only pieces of information that can be trusted from either the state or journalists.
> Every news outlet is owned by a small circle of concentrated power these days from wealthy families to corporate conglomerates that bizarrely fail to be harshly critical of things that would impact their wealth and businesses.
I smile a bit as I think about visiting the Hearst Castle in California—I wonder how news ownership has changed over the years.
Regarding the rest, I appreciate how you framed it and love that approach of various sources, plus really dig the process suggestions you put. Thank you.
I smile a bit as I think about visiting the Hearst Castle in California—I wonder how news ownership has changed over the years.
Regarding the rest, I appreciate how you framed it and love that approach of various sources, plus really dig the process suggestions you put. Thank you.
Good point, and no news source is immune. Inaccurate and outright fake news has been around since the invention of the printing press. Benjamin Franklin himself authored plenty of it for political purposes. In fact much of the mistreatment of the Native Americans may have stemmed from his “Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle” article.
at least on the topic of tesla, nyt has been wrong and unfair against tesla for about 10 years. i really don't know about other topics... but...
pg repeatedly questions the integrity of nyt and has personally been the victim of their bias.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152?lang=en
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236979160100343812
pg repeatedly questions the integrity of nyt and has personally been the victim of their bias.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236975851255857152?lang=en
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236979160100343812
In the first link you provided, PG put two photos: one of the NYT article and one of his HN post. The NYT article yes, condensed his lengthy post into one sentence, which will almost always be incomplete, but they also linked that quote to what I assume was the HN post. I guess it seems to me that PG is upset they didn't fully encapsulate his ideas, and I'd probably be frustrated as well. But is that the role of a journalist? And is it even possible to condense all of someone else's material and communicate it to another audience without losing information?
Maybe it's just me, but I use journalists as a stepping stone for learning more about a topic. I see them writing summaries (sometimes inaccurate) of things that happen in the world and then if I'm curious, I try to dig deeper into the primary sources to learn more.
I'd imagine almost every primary source believes journalists get the story wrong now and then, as the journalist doesn't say it the way they would say it. But I marvel in today's world, where I have such quick access to priamry sources to learn more.
Maybe it's just me, but I use journalists as a stepping stone for learning more about a topic. I see them writing summaries (sometimes inaccurate) of things that happen in the world and then if I'm curious, I try to dig deeper into the primary sources to learn more.
I'd imagine almost every primary source believes journalists get the story wrong now and then, as the journalist doesn't say it the way they would say it. But I marvel in today's world, where I have such quick access to priamry sources to learn more.
Well the point of the NYT article totally evaporates if you read the HN post. PG is explicitly saying that no-one knows the effect that this will have, but better to prepare for the worst.
And that's the thing: if you cannot trust that someone makes their point as neutrally as possible, they become worthless for me as a source of condensed information. Rather look up the original source then for myself.
And that's the thing: if you cannot trust that someone makes their point as neutrally as possible, they become worthless for me as a source of condensed information. Rather look up the original source then for myself.
It's even worse than that, their sentence after the quote implies PG said something about FB stock.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236980342667575296?s=20
The NYT writer isn't mistakenly summarizing, they're actively misleading. They had to read through PG's post and selectively pick a line that they could stuff into the position they already had, to say the thing they already wanted to say. It's just motivated reasoning and the primary sources aren't being used as sources beyond something they can vaguely mention to pretend it supports what they wanted to say anyway.
That isn't journalism - or at least it shouldn't be.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1236980342667575296?s=20
The NYT writer isn't mistakenly summarizing, they're actively misleading. They had to read through PG's post and selectively pick a line that they could stuff into the position they already had, to say the thing they already wanted to say. It's just motivated reasoning and the primary sources aren't being used as sources beyond something they can vaguely mention to pretend it supports what they wanted to say anyway.
That isn't journalism - or at least it shouldn't be.
When I first read it, I didn't get the impression that the author was implying PG said FB stock wouldn't go up.
In reading the PG post, it seems that a conversation with prominent investor, who was confident that FB's bad stock performance would hurt the IPO, led PG to write a post exploring how that may happen.
In re-reading the NYT blurb, I still don't see it as the author saying PG said the FB stock would not go up but rather as the author believed that PG said that "start-up investments would dry up."
And I think it's in that last sentence, in particular, the third to last word, "would," where the majority of the problem lies.
PG in his post included a tremendous amount of ifs, mays, and qualifying statements talking about how he wasn't sure in which direction it would go. The NYT author, I think, just changed his uncertainty into certainty, both with putting "would" in that last sentence, and removing the "If you haven't raised money yet," part of the quoted link.
So, I see it as the author attributing more certainty to PG than he had in his post, and yet, at the end of the author's post, saying that there is less certainty about this, "The party can’t go on forever, but the infamous question must be asked: Is this time different?"
By you saying, "they're actively misleading," I'm assuming you're attributing malice to the NYT author. I guess I just see journalists and politicians (and many people in general) speaking with an utmost certainty on behalf of people who speak with qualifications and attribute it more to the desire to condense words and present a confident argument than the former. Qualifying statements often use a lot of words. I like to qualify most things that I say and I think journalists and editors often remove them out of seeing them as extraneous—e.g., removing the "I'm assuming", "I guess", "often", "most", and "I think" out of the previous paragraph.
In reading the PG post, it seems that a conversation with prominent investor, who was confident that FB's bad stock performance would hurt the IPO, led PG to write a post exploring how that may happen.
In re-reading the NYT blurb, I still don't see it as the author saying PG said the FB stock would not go up but rather as the author believed that PG said that "start-up investments would dry up."
And I think it's in that last sentence, in particular, the third to last word, "would," where the majority of the problem lies.
PG in his post included a tremendous amount of ifs, mays, and qualifying statements talking about how he wasn't sure in which direction it would go. The NYT author, I think, just changed his uncertainty into certainty, both with putting "would" in that last sentence, and removing the "If you haven't raised money yet," part of the quoted link.
So, I see it as the author attributing more certainty to PG than he had in his post, and yet, at the end of the author's post, saying that there is less certainty about this, "The party can’t go on forever, but the infamous question must be asked: Is this time different?"
By you saying, "they're actively misleading," I'm assuming you're attributing malice to the NYT author. I guess I just see journalists and politicians (and many people in general) speaking with an utmost certainty on behalf of people who speak with qualifications and attribute it more to the desire to condense words and present a confident argument than the former. Qualifying statements often use a lot of words. I like to qualify most things that I say and I think journalists and editors often remove them out of seeing them as extraneous—e.g., removing the "I'm assuming", "I guess", "often", "most", and "I think" out of the previous paragraph.
The NYT was bullshiting, writing an article with no thesis and no meaningful evidence to push a vague opinion, which is pretty normal for them. PG was mad that they replaced his thoughtful letter with a junk article and pretended there was a connection.
I thought the thesis was that some prominent startup investors have proclaimed the end of startup investing throughout history and often it hasnt happened, so how does one know it will happen this time?
Again, I can understand why PG would be upset they misrepresented his words, but I admittedly am confused you don't seem to think that other investors, including the one PG referenced in his post, have boldly proclaimed that the bubble will burst and then it doesn't. I think if I were PG I'd feel frustrated the author lumped me into the category of bold predictors, especially if I had written such a qualified essay.
Again, I can understand why PG would be upset they misrepresented his words, but I admittedly am confused you don't seem to think that other investors, including the one PG referenced in his post, have boldly proclaimed that the bubble will burst and then it doesn't. I think if I were PG I'd feel frustrated the author lumped me into the category of bold predictors, especially if I had written such a qualified essay.
> "By you saying, "they're actively misleading," I'm assuming you're attributing malice to the NYT author."
Not so much malice, but having what they want to say predetermined and looking to frame support in what they already believe to be true. (Rather than trying to find out what's true and reporting that).
Basically the writer believes X to be true or wants to write a story that X is true and digs through things to find quotes they can narrowly pull to support X.
Not so much malice, but having what they want to say predetermined and looking to frame support in what they already believe to be true. (Rather than trying to find out what's true and reporting that).
Basically the writer believes X to be true or wants to write a story that X is true and digs through things to find quotes they can narrowly pull to support X.
Ahhh, yes, I think that may have been the case. I still think if the author just put "might" instead of "would," then the article would be quite accurate.
However, to your point, I find myself doing that sometimes without even realizing it and I wonder what drives it internally and externally.
However, to your point, I find myself doing that sometimes without even realizing it and I wonder what drives it internally and externally.
Me too, I think to some extent everyone does it and learning to recognize your own motivated reasoning and pushing back against it is an important way to think better. I think motivated reasoning is probably the default behavior (and once you start looking for it, you see it everywhere).
This post dives into it a bit: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom...
Just because an argument comes from motivated reasoning doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but I think it's more likely to be wrong (and it's also likely to be framed in a misleading way or ignoring good contradictory examples). It's also hard to discuss things with the person to learn what's true because they're often not arguing in good faith.
I think this is actually a reason people are often skeptical of debate (since a clever arguer can argue a wrong position and win against someone who is right, but not as good at manipulating rhetorical devices). Also why lawyers can have a bad reputation. People can know something is wrong, but may themselves be bad at articulating why. Other people that are wrong may be good at making themselves seem right. The smarter the person is the more they can effectively rationalize bullshit.
A good example of this is Ben Shapiro and a lot of his arguments (particularly the ones I've seen around religion/abortion) are mostly motivated reasoning nonsense.
That said, while this may be true on an individual level debate should still be true at scale (the best argument from one side should still be pitted against the best argument from another). I think this is what free society and liberal democracy is all about.
This post dives into it a bit: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/34XxbRFe54FycoCDw/the-bottom...
Just because an argument comes from motivated reasoning doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but I think it's more likely to be wrong (and it's also likely to be framed in a misleading way or ignoring good contradictory examples). It's also hard to discuss things with the person to learn what's true because they're often not arguing in good faith.
I think this is actually a reason people are often skeptical of debate (since a clever arguer can argue a wrong position and win against someone who is right, but not as good at manipulating rhetorical devices). Also why lawyers can have a bad reputation. People can know something is wrong, but may themselves be bad at articulating why. Other people that are wrong may be good at making themselves seem right. The smarter the person is the more they can effectively rationalize bullshit.
A good example of this is Ben Shapiro and a lot of his arguments (particularly the ones I've seen around religion/abortion) are mostly motivated reasoning nonsense.
That said, while this may be true on an individual level debate should still be true at scale (the best argument from one side should still be pitted against the best argument from another). I think this is what free society and liberal democracy is all about.
This answer you've written is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to HN. I think I expect most online conversations to devolve into ad hominem attacks, whether towards me or the third party to whom we refer, and yet this didn't. I worried it may become antagonistic, but on the contrary, I feel grateful for what you've said and how you've given me more to think about.
I often prefer dialogue to debate—a conversation of cooperative learning instead of competitive proving.
I often prefer dialogue to debate—a conversation of cooperative learning instead of competitive proving.
Oh, and the LessWrong article confused me lol. I'll take another look when I'm in a more calm, less rushed, state of being :-D
Sadly, NYT does this frequently to push their own ends.
In one story, they tried really hard to push for authoritarian laws to protect children and ended up wading through history to find a retracted and discredited paper. All this to make criminals look more dangerous than they actually are. They even admitted it was an old retracted paper in the article. But downplayed it.
If the evidence was so solid, they could have cited a more recent paper of higher prestige.
In one story, they tried really hard to push for authoritarian laws to protect children and ended up wading through history to find a retracted and discredited paper. All this to make criminals look more dangerous than they actually are. They even admitted it was an old retracted paper in the article. But downplayed it.
If the evidence was so solid, they could have cited a more recent paper of higher prestige.
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The way I read it, the overall point of the NYT article was that many start-up investors have, at various times throughout recent history, said the bubble could/would burst and then the bubble didn't burst.
PG explicitly said no one knew what effect it would have, and yet the prominent investor with whom he spoke "seemed sure the bad performance of the Facebook IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier stage startups."
So I agree that the author attributed the certainty to PG when it wasn't he who stated it so certainly, and was more concerned with how to mitigate the effects of a potential slowdown in funding.
I also don't think that discredits the whole article and the point that many people have stated, and I'm sure much more certainly than PG, that the latest news story is the sign of the startup apocalypse and funding will disappear.
So yes, I feel frustrated they attributed that certainty to PG himself and not the prominent investor with whom he spoke, but I really don't think that's enough to discredit the whole article, or that it was the author's intention to twist PG's words. Maybe it was. I guess I just don't think the author was trying to not be neutral.
PG explicitly said no one knew what effect it would have, and yet the prominent investor with whom he spoke "seemed sure the bad performance of the Facebook IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier stage startups."
So I agree that the author attributed the certainty to PG when it wasn't he who stated it so certainly, and was more concerned with how to mitigate the effects of a potential slowdown in funding.
I also don't think that discredits the whole article and the point that many people have stated, and I'm sure much more certainly than PG, that the latest news story is the sign of the startup apocalypse and funding will disappear.
So yes, I feel frustrated they attributed that certainty to PG himself and not the prominent investor with whom he spoke, but I really don't think that's enough to discredit the whole article, or that it was the author's intention to twist PG's words. Maybe it was. I guess I just don't think the author was trying to not be neutral.
I think the bigger issue is that the summary is a misrepresentation of what he said. At least, I don't see where he "warned that start-up investments would dry up".
I don't think he stated that it would dry up, but I do think he said that it may decrease.
> Jessica and I had dinner recently with a prominent investor. He seemed sure the bad performance of the Facebook IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier stage startups. But no one knows yet how much. Possibly only a little. Possibly a lot, if it becomes a vicious circle.
Lots of qualification and uncertainty.
> What I do worry about is (a) it may be harder to raise money at all, regardless of price and (b) that companies that previously raised money at high valuations will now face "down rounds," which can be damaging.
More qualification and uncertainty.
I think the biggest challenge is in the author taking something so qualified and making it seem much more confident and certain than it actually was.
Would you agree that he was exploring whether start-up investments may decrease?
> Jessica and I had dinner recently with a prominent investor. He seemed sure the bad performance of the Facebook IPO will hurt the funding market for earlier stage startups. But no one knows yet how much. Possibly only a little. Possibly a lot, if it becomes a vicious circle.
Lots of qualification and uncertainty.
> What I do worry about is (a) it may be harder to raise money at all, regardless of price and (b) that companies that previously raised money at high valuations will now face "down rounds," which can be damaging.
More qualification and uncertainty.
I think the biggest challenge is in the author taking something so qualified and making it seem much more confident and certain than it actually was.
Would you agree that he was exploring whether start-up investments may decrease?
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PG: "It must have felt like walking through a minefield of truth to get hold of a quote she could misrepresent."
Well, yeah. Sounds like some serious Gell-mann amnesia.
I'm surprised Paul Graham would act surprised by this.
Well, yeah. Sounds like some serious Gell-mann amnesia.
I'm surprised Paul Graham would act surprised by this.
It doesn’t absolve the times if they did indeed make an error, but I’d like to point out that pg isn’t exactly a bastion of accuracy and rational argument himself: see https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/07/how-to-pretend-that-y... from the same publication as the OP. The criticisms leveled against pg in this article apply to pretty much all of his social commentary and writings, and its really a shame so many people in the is community buy into his crap and have a sort of blind allegiance to him just because of his wealth and status.
PG's essay that article is talking about: http://paulgraham.com/conformism.html (disclosure: I thought it was good).
The current affairs article was extremely tedious, whatever good point they might have made was hurt by its self-assured hostile tone and personal attacks (basically an example of the kind of thing PG's essay was talking about).
There are a few essays that get into the weeds and give more explicit examples of problems (something PG probably avoided because of the issues he talks about, but it seems he was also attacked for avoiding them anyway).
Some that give more direct examples/arguments:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...
https://quillette.com/2020/07/30/think-cancel-culture-doesnt...
Also: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...
Some others recently: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-...
The current affairs article was extremely tedious, whatever good point they might have made was hurt by its self-assured hostile tone and personal attacks (basically an example of the kind of thing PG's essay was talking about).
There are a few essays that get into the weeds and give more explicit examples of problems (something PG probably avoided because of the issues he talks about, but it seems he was also attacked for avoiding them anyway).
Some that give more direct examples/arguments:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/02/22/rip-culture-war-thread...
https://newdiscourses.com/2020/07/woke-wont-debate-you-heres...
https://quillette.com/2020/07/30/think-cancel-culture-doesnt...
Also: https://www.jkrowling.com/opinions/j-k-rowling-writes-about-...
Some others recently: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-...
lol... a shame? wealth and status? you do know he created this site... right?
Sure but PG is an individual pontificating his own musings for his fan club. He doesn't call himself the paper of record for the most powerful nation in the world.
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The more you know about a subject, the more false reporting you will find related to that subject.
Remember that next time you read news about something you are not already well versed in.
Remember that next time you read news about something you are not already well versed in.
The first time the media reported on an event and subject where I knew more than them, I was in my late 20s (I think you have to be at least that old to know a lot about something ... could explain why younger people seem to have such blind faith in popular narratives).
I was absolutely shocked by the basic inaccuracy and skewed writing in literally every single story that was written, every single video that was recorded, everything.
I mean it was all complete and utter nonsense and bullshit. Basic facts, the names of people involved, their roles, the applicable laws, EVERYTHING was wrong EVERYWHERE.
They’ve reported on 3 more events I was deeply familiar with since then, different subjects/industries, same story. Everything is wrong everywhere.
They’re always wrong in the same way and for the same reasons: A more scandalous narrative, with more compelling villains and heroes. If a legal entity with a lot of money is involved, attribute the misinformation to another source so you won’t get sued.
I was absolutely shocked by the basic inaccuracy and skewed writing in literally every single story that was written, every single video that was recorded, everything.
I mean it was all complete and utter nonsense and bullshit. Basic facts, the names of people involved, their roles, the applicable laws, EVERYTHING was wrong EVERYWHERE.
They’ve reported on 3 more events I was deeply familiar with since then, different subjects/industries, same story. Everything is wrong everywhere.
They’re always wrong in the same way and for the same reasons: A more scandalous narrative, with more compelling villains and heroes. If a legal entity with a lot of money is involved, attribute the misinformation to another source so you won’t get sued.
As someone involved in the Bitcoin space, I can relate.
Highly-technical subject + lots of nuance + financial journalism = absolute disaster for the truth.
Highly-technical subject + lots of nuance + financial journalism = absolute disaster for the truth.
They do the same thing for simple he said, she said, non-technical reporting.
Something being a complex topic doesn't help, but the problem often isn't one of not being able to understand, but choosing not to understand before even making an attempt.
Even when that's not the case, any professional needs to know the limits of their capabilities. Reporters that don't understand a subject shouldn't be reporting on it (without help, at least). That they do is a reflection in their professional judgement.
Something being a complex topic doesn't help, but the problem often isn't one of not being able to understand, but choosing not to understand before even making an attempt.
Even when that's not the case, any professional needs to know the limits of their capabilities. Reporters that don't understand a subject shouldn't be reporting on it (without help, at least). That they do is a reflection in their professional judgement.
love ur dashboard bro :)
Yes, sure, but this all unfortunately feeds into the motivations of conspiracy theorists. Maybe it is what it is, but what can we do to stop the wave of noncritical thinking washing over the Internet, where people insist that they are the only wise ones? Are we just doomed? I realize that media has lost its credibility in the eyes of many, I just wish that there was a good amount of high-quality critical thinking to make up for the lack of reliable information, rather than the many low-quality conspiracy theories I'm seeing.
Your conspiracy theory is a conspiracy fact when you think about peoples motivations.
Take the current virus. We realize that the republican version of 'it's a hoax and everything is fine' is a lie. But so is the democrat version of 'you need to never leave your house or you're a murderer'.
The simple fact is that without having solid numbers for:
1). The true infection rate.
2). The true age-adjusted mortality rate.
3). The asymptomatic r0 rate.
Any policy anyone suggests tells you more about the person suggesting it than about how effective it will be. It could be that reality is closer to the republican version, or the democrat one. But without a lot more science that no one is doing we will not know until decades down the line when people start digging up corpses and testing for the virus and finally doing some basic statistics.
And that's before we even look at what the economic impact is of the virus.
Take the current virus. We realize that the republican version of 'it's a hoax and everything is fine' is a lie. But so is the democrat version of 'you need to never leave your house or you're a murderer'.
The simple fact is that without having solid numbers for:
1). The true infection rate.
2). The true age-adjusted mortality rate.
3). The asymptomatic r0 rate.
Any policy anyone suggests tells you more about the person suggesting it than about how effective it will be. It could be that reality is closer to the republican version, or the democrat one. But without a lot more science that no one is doing we will not know until decades down the line when people start digging up corpses and testing for the virus and finally doing some basic statistics.
And that's before we even look at what the economic impact is of the virus.
I don't think it's a democratic perspective to be on the safer than sorry "version of the virus".
But the safer side is a political battle.
Saving lives by preventing viral spread sounds good until the economic and societal damage of the preventative measures lead to more harm than they prevented.
Funny enough many of this and other virus worst symptoms are the bodies natural response to the virus. Inflammation for instance is the bodies response to damage, bit it can in turn cause more damage than the original source of issue.
Saving lives by preventing viral spread sounds good until the economic and societal damage of the preventative measures lead to more harm than they prevented.
Funny enough many of this and other virus worst symptoms are the bodies natural response to the virus. Inflammation for instance is the bodies response to damage, bit it can in turn cause more damage than the original source of issue.
I've always felt that conspiracy theorists provide a certain value to the internet. They are almost the vaccine itself to misinformation. The foreign pathogen that teaches the body to defend itself from a worse foe.
If you can't understand, and also form a series of arguments for yourself, as to why the tin foil hat conspiracy theorist is wrong, why the earth almost certainly isn’t flat, or run by a cabal of shapeshifting alien lizard people, 5G, etc. how are you going to respond to the more insidiously cogent arguments about other more important things that are just as wrong but harder to spot?
I personally credit my upbringing by my religious parents into creationism (the concept that the earth is only 6 thousand years old and evolutionary science is a conspiracy against God.) as what ultimately led to my development of critical thinking and healthy skepticism, as I dug myself out of that belief system and deconverted in my late teens.
I remember feeling so deeply and irradeemably stupid, for being so completely convinced without any reason or evidence. And then, as a result, feeling so desperate for a specific formula or system of thought that could let me avoid this kind of personal failing in the future.
Which led me to listening to debates, learning about things like burden of proof, and the preponderance of evidence. And the very simple and straightforward concept of spot checking whether a stated “truth” used by someone in an argument is actually valid, or if they are lying to bolster their points, expecting (correctly, unfortunately) that the vast majority of their audience will never even check to see if they are telling the truth or a lie.
How else are you going to teach someone to think critically without showing them the examples of what a bad argument is, and how to respond to it rationally? Tell them to just trust the “good” sources? That’s arguably worse than telling them nothing at all.
It certainly is largely the fault of our garbage public schooling system, but the existing penchant to call for the banning and censcoring of stupid conspiracies online as if it were some sort of panacea for stupidity itself is certainly not helping the problem.
If you can't understand, and also form a series of arguments for yourself, as to why the tin foil hat conspiracy theorist is wrong, why the earth almost certainly isn’t flat, or run by a cabal of shapeshifting alien lizard people, 5G, etc. how are you going to respond to the more insidiously cogent arguments about other more important things that are just as wrong but harder to spot?
I personally credit my upbringing by my religious parents into creationism (the concept that the earth is only 6 thousand years old and evolutionary science is a conspiracy against God.) as what ultimately led to my development of critical thinking and healthy skepticism, as I dug myself out of that belief system and deconverted in my late teens.
I remember feeling so deeply and irradeemably stupid, for being so completely convinced without any reason or evidence. And then, as a result, feeling so desperate for a specific formula or system of thought that could let me avoid this kind of personal failing in the future.
Which led me to listening to debates, learning about things like burden of proof, and the preponderance of evidence. And the very simple and straightforward concept of spot checking whether a stated “truth” used by someone in an argument is actually valid, or if they are lying to bolster their points, expecting (correctly, unfortunately) that the vast majority of their audience will never even check to see if they are telling the truth or a lie.
How else are you going to teach someone to think critically without showing them the examples of what a bad argument is, and how to respond to it rationally? Tell them to just trust the “good” sources? That’s arguably worse than telling them nothing at all.
It certainly is largely the fault of our garbage public schooling system, but the existing penchant to call for the banning and censcoring of stupid conspiracies online as if it were some sort of panacea for stupidity itself is certainly not helping the problem.
I'm all for conspiracies when they don't cause harm, you think the earth is flat and chemtrails control your mind good for you buddy, now I know not to trust your judgement. But once you've go nevermaskers and antivaxers running around infecting and killing people, or pizzagaters shooting up restaurants the hands off approach becomes a public health issue. Conspiracy theorists have gone from benign to damn dangerous to have around.
It seems to me that conspiracy theories have also evolved from being mostly apolitical to being very based lately. It could be argued that the act of voting when being so blatantly misinformed and misled is itself a danger to the public.
No one can be an expert on everything. That is true for journalists too. Unless a reporter has a very narrow beat, they are going to be forced to report on topics in which they are not fully knowledgeable. This often results in misunderstandings or downright falsities, but on large they generally get it right. We should certainly hold journalistic organizations and reporters to a high standard of accuracy, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water because they make an occasional mistake.
I consider the statement of the parent to be more about not blindly believing everything the media reports, because it’s most likely a simplification and the truth is more nuanced.
I personally don’t consider it the journalists’ fault at all, otherwise we would just end up with an academic journal. It is important, however, to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism when reading the news.
I personally don’t consider it the journalists’ fault at all, otherwise we would just end up with an academic journal. It is important, however, to maintain a healthy dose of skepticism when reading the news.
I agree, but that is not in line with the comment that kicked off this thread with this:
>They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp to it and change. The days of BSing people are over.
There is a clear difference between reserved skepticism you are talking about and the "FAKE NEWS!" type rhetoric that has grown over the last half decade.
>They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp to it and change. The days of BSing people are over.
There is a clear difference between reserved skepticism you are talking about and the "FAKE NEWS!" type rhetoric that has grown over the last half decade.
While this may have been an unfortunate reality in previous eras, today we can get much better information from researchers and practitioners.
> While this may have been an unfortunate reality in previous eras, today we can get much better information from researchers and practitioners.
I don't think that's actually true. It's probably most true with science reporting, but does anyone think reading the firehose of specialist research output is a practical alternative to journalism for a general reader? Filtering and summarization are important functions when dealing quantities of information larger than an individual can handle alone. IIRC, even specialist research groups have paper reading circles to filter research papers in their own fields.
Then there's everything else. For a lot of stuff, you'd just be wading through PR and rumor without much ability to dig past that. For some news topics, like foreign affairs for instance, I'm not even sure where you'd even find timely, raw information to replace journalism about it.
I don't think that's actually true. It's probably most true with science reporting, but does anyone think reading the firehose of specialist research output is a practical alternative to journalism for a general reader? Filtering and summarization are important functions when dealing quantities of information larger than an individual can handle alone. IIRC, even specialist research groups have paper reading circles to filter research papers in their own fields.
Then there's everything else. For a lot of stuff, you'd just be wading through PR and rumor without much ability to dig past that. For some news topics, like foreign affairs for instance, I'm not even sure where you'd even find timely, raw information to replace journalism about it.
If the occassional mistakes were such a rare event, how did the meme of "Gell-Mann Amnesia" had the chance to develop?
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
― Michael Crichton
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
― Michael Crichton
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-ge...
“Briefly stated, the Mell-Gann Memory effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Melley's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them[1].
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper somehow has exactly the same quantity and quality of errors about Palestine as the baloney you just read. You turn the page and vastly overestimate what you think you can critique based on your vast knowledge of show business.”
― Crichael Michton
[1] based on evidence ascertained through the Mell-Gann Memory effect
Edit: clarification
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper somehow has exactly the same quantity and quality of errors about Palestine as the baloney you just read. You turn the page and vastly overestimate what you think you can critique based on your vast knowledge of show business.”
― Crichael Michton
[1] based on evidence ascertained through the Mell-Gann Memory effect
Edit: clarification
>The more you know about a subject, the more false reporting you will find related to that subject.
This sounds like it should be a named law. Like Amdahl's Law or Moore's Law, or Sturgeon's Law!
This sounds like it should be a named law. Like Amdahl's Law or Moore's Law, or Sturgeon's Law!
I've heard it called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect, but not sure if it's caught on.
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
> - Michael Crichton, Why Speculate (26 April 2002)
From Wikiquote Murray Gell-Mann https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
Edit: Remove markdown formatting.
> Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect works as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward-reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story-and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read with renewed interest as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about far-off Palestine than it was about the story you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
> - Michael Crichton, Why Speculate (26 April 2002)
From Wikiquote Murray Gell-Mann https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Murray_Gell-Mann
Edit: Remove markdown formatting.
This exactly.
It seems like they have a history of it.
https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti...
https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti...
What?!
Are you suggesting as long as a news outlet is telling the truth in more occasions than lies, the organization can still be treated as trustworthy? Even if the organization intentionally ignore the need to verify and correct lies?...
Logically and emotionally, this is outrageously offensive to liberal value! You are playing the cards advocated by CCTV backed by CCP. Their integrity certainly "passed your standard"...
Are you suggesting as long as a news outlet is telling the truth in more occasions than lies, the organization can still be treated as trustworthy? Even if the organization intentionally ignore the need to verify and correct lies?...
Logically and emotionally, this is outrageously offensive to liberal value! You are playing the cards advocated by CCTV backed by CCP. Their integrity certainly "passed your standard"...
I don't judge them by one incident.. I suspected they were biased or just wrong about stuff for years. But this was the instance where I realized that even with overwhelming evidence they were wrong they wouldn't admit it. If they had any self awareness, it would be different but they are hopeless. They aren't consciously lying, they are rationalizing and deluding even themselves.
Bill Clinton was allegedly a guest on Epstein's island according to recently unsealed court documents. Try to find any mention of this in recent NYT reporting:
https://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+epstein+maxwell&tbm=...
Is this "The Truth"?
https://www.google.com/search?q=clinton+epstein+maxwell&tbm=...
Is this "The Truth"?
There are plenty of mentions for Bill Clinton:
https://www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&sxsrf=ALeKk01S6XwWBraA...
But, crucially, no mentions of him _staying on the island_. If this was Trump, there'd be wall-to-wall 24x7 saturation coverage.
Why is it a mistake to judge on one incident? If I worked with someone who seemed like a professional, and then one day he spat on me and never apologized and denied he did so, I'd probably judge that guy even though it was just one incident.
There is a difference between making a mistake or being wrong while trying to be right, and intentionally doing something bad or refusing to acknowledge error. Everyone is in the first category sometimes, but you don't really have to be in the latter category.
If the NYT is intentionally doing bad things, even once or a handful of times, then I don't think it makes sense to forgive and forget until they show me they understand and have corrected the issue.
The problem is that for most things I can't tell if they're right or wrong or arguing in good faith or not. If something comes up where I can definitively tell, and they are definitely acting wrong - it destroys lots of credibility because that's really one of my rare chances to evaluate their performance. I can't trust them in domains I don't know about if they aren't very good in domains I do know about.
There is a difference between making a mistake or being wrong while trying to be right, and intentionally doing something bad or refusing to acknowledge error. Everyone is in the first category sometimes, but you don't really have to be in the latter category.
If the NYT is intentionally doing bad things, even once or a handful of times, then I don't think it makes sense to forgive and forget until they show me they understand and have corrected the issue.
The problem is that for most things I can't tell if they're right or wrong or arguing in good faith or not. If something comes up where I can definitively tell, and they are definitely acting wrong - it destroys lots of credibility because that's really one of my rare chances to evaluate their performance. I can't trust them in domains I don't know about if they aren't very good in domains I do know about.
The NYT has 4,320 employees. If one of them spat on you, never apologized, and denied he did so, would you then judge every employee of NYT the same as you judge that one person?
Edit for clarity, since I'm getting downvoted: My point is that the analogy is not great. You can judge one person for their actions directly towards you. It isn't necessarily reasonable to judge a large number of people by the actions of a single person or small subset of the group, especially when the actions of the NYT are not directed at you specifically, which is pretty different to someone spitting on you.
Edit for clarity, since I'm getting downvoted: My point is that the analogy is not great. You can judge one person for their actions directly towards you. It isn't necessarily reasonable to judge a large number of people by the actions of a single person or small subset of the group, especially when the actions of the NYT are not directed at you specifically, which is pretty different to someone spitting on you.
it's really more than one person... there is the journalist but it's the editor that wrote the response and the editor manages several journalists. it's really the nyt's culture and their incentives... it's a system that would promote someone that is incentivized to defend their integrity when they're clearly wrong.
Sure, and you'll notice that I didn't say there's no problem at the NYT, or that the organisation as a whole should be exempt from the actions of some set of it's staff.
I'm just saying that the analogy to an (offensive) action by a specific person, toward a specific person, is a poor analogy for the actions of some subset of a large organisation, which almost certainly isn't directed at a specific person.
And I doubt many people would equate the actions of the NYT with literally being spat on.
I'm just saying that the analogy to an (offensive) action by a specific person, toward a specific person, is a poor analogy for the actions of some subset of a large organisation, which almost certainly isn't directed at a specific person.
And I doubt many people would equate the actions of the NYT with literally being spat on.
He is right to blame the org and “paint them with the same brush” as errant employee if they do not own up to their mistakes; especially if it concerns something that is part of their main product. Can you imagine some tech company having a data breach because an employee was careless and NOT admitting to the breach? People lose their jobs for that kind of mistakes, not get a pat on back.
The Tesla story referenced above is a perfect example. NYT reviewer tells a story about how inadequate the Tesla is and how he ran out of charge and had to be towed. Tesla logs show that he essentially rigged the test drive to get the results he wanted. Tesla calls this out and the NYT basically stands by the story.
You're right that the NYT has a lot of employees. If this were one guy writing a bad review, and the NYT took some disciplinary action against him, wrote a retraction and wrote a new article, then I wouldn't hold it against the NYT and I would probably increase my respect for them. They had a problem, employee did bad work, and they corrected it - that's good.
Instead, they just stood by the bad work and kept on without doing fixing the core issue. "It's just one person" doesn't really make sense because it's actually the whole organization not correcting problems originally caused by one person.
Put another way, if they're willing to lie and district to get a more sensational car review, what else are they willing to lie about? Who knows, perhaps they'll lie about some country having weapons of mass destruction to help trick the country into a pointless war. Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme - obviously they'd have to be extremely far gone to do anything like that.
You're right that the NYT has a lot of employees. If this were one guy writing a bad review, and the NYT took some disciplinary action against him, wrote a retraction and wrote a new article, then I wouldn't hold it against the NYT and I would probably increase my respect for them. They had a problem, employee did bad work, and they corrected it - that's good.
Instead, they just stood by the bad work and kept on without doing fixing the core issue. "It's just one person" doesn't really make sense because it's actually the whole organization not correcting problems originally caused by one person.
Put another way, if they're willing to lie and district to get a more sensational car review, what else are they willing to lie about? Who knows, perhaps they'll lie about some country having weapons of mass destruction to help trick the country into a pointless war. Okay, maybe that's a bit extreme - obviously they'd have to be extremely far gone to do anything like that.
The NYT wants to lend credibility to all its stories, even if I don't know the particular journalist that wrote the story. If I were to judge NYT journalists independently, the brand would suffer in result.
But regardless of that, the decision to not apologize and admit they lied was an editorial one. It was their choice to die on this hill.
But regardless of that, the decision to not apologize and admit they lied was an editorial one. It was their choice to die on this hill.
If you think the New York Times is bad, you should try looking up all of the crazy assertions made by Fox News show hosts.
> The days of BSing people are over.
Really?
Really?
lol... things are different. in the old days, no one would have ever known tesla's side of the story.
Yes, this is how I read the OP's comment about the days of BS being over. In the past, newspapers had exclusivity not just in access but in voice. Their frame was THE frame. Today, anyone with a phone can be a journalist. Anyone (not everyone) can access a large audience and get their story out. Anyone can establish an alternative frame, or point out lies, smears, dubious sources or stealth edits.
Can a newspaper be serious without putting its published articles under source control with complete edit history?
Can a newspaper be serious without putting its published articles under source control with complete edit history?
Now instead of one or two popular crackpots selling snake oil we have hundreds on social media and elsewhere spreading the equivalent of snake oil.
That's 7 years ago? I don't know anything about that entire story so I can't comment specifically, but the NYT publishes about 150 articles a day, so there are bound to be some stinkers over the years. It's not great, but dismissing an entire publication over it doesn't strike me as fair.
The NYT used to have industry-leading editorial standards.
Just a week or two ago in their reporting on the UFO story, they initially reported it in a "ZOMG ALIENS ARE REAL!" way, which is the most clickbaity thing they could have done...and then silently published a correction after they got the bump in views.
The NYT is practically indistinguishable from (modern) BuzzFeed.
Just a week or two ago in their reporting on the UFO story, they initially reported it in a "ZOMG ALIENS ARE REAL!" way, which is the most clickbaity thing they could have done...and then silently published a correction after they got the bump in views.
The NYT is practically indistinguishable from (modern) BuzzFeed.
Seconding this. I actually pay for the Times out of sheer nostalgia for its being my hometown paper, but when they're publishing Very Serious Stories on the press-release UFO crap the government was trying to distract people with, they're doing a just plain bad job of journalism.
Right; but it's one thing to say "they no longer have industry-leading editorial standards" and quite another to dismiss the entire publication for being less-than-perfect. I don't read the NYT front page – just articles linked here and elsewhere – so my view of it is far from complete and biased; I don't see "ZOMG ALIES!"-type articles for example, but there certainly still seems plenty of content of value on the NYT, in spite of also having content that detracts from that.
You also have to appreciate the NYT's position I think; at the end of the day, a newspaper is in the business selling newspapers. It's not quite that simple as many journalists and publications – quite rightfully – believe they have a greater task than "just running a business", but at the end of the day bills need to be paid, and the NYT is a business.
A business that now has to compete against a plethora of free content, not infrequently written by incompetent hacks (possibly with a less-than-savoury agenda) with almost no editorial standards. Competing against "free" is hard, and is not an easy position for a business to be in and quite likely a big reason for the decline in editorial standards. This is pretty much what this article is about.
"ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue. One way to see this is that this revenue-based clickbait content sponsors the more in-depth quality content and, like advertisement, is kind of a necessary evil. But yeah, it's not great.
As an aside, I have plenty of gripes with the state of the press by the way; especially since the Trump presidency things have ... not evolved in the right direction. But we must also be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
You also have to appreciate the NYT's position I think; at the end of the day, a newspaper is in the business selling newspapers. It's not quite that simple as many journalists and publications – quite rightfully – believe they have a greater task than "just running a business", but at the end of the day bills need to be paid, and the NYT is a business.
A business that now has to compete against a plethora of free content, not infrequently written by incompetent hacks (possibly with a less-than-savoury agenda) with almost no editorial standards. Competing against "free" is hard, and is not an easy position for a business to be in and quite likely a big reason for the decline in editorial standards. This is pretty much what this article is about.
"ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue. One way to see this is that this revenue-based clickbait content sponsors the more in-depth quality content and, like advertisement, is kind of a necessary evil. But yeah, it's not great.
As an aside, I have plenty of gripes with the state of the press by the way; especially since the Trump presidency things have ... not evolved in the right direction. But we must also be careful not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
> and quite another to dismiss the entire publication for being less-than-perfect
The newspaper's ombudsman declined to punish the reporter in any way, or admit anything other than "oops, mistakes were made". That's what makes it a failure of the newspaper and not just "less-than-perfect" reporting. It's one example from a pattern of behavior, and the reason people are saying the NYT no longer have industry-leading editorial standards.
Let me remind you that the reporter was caught red-handed driving a car in circles in a parking lot so that he could have a more salacious story about "running out of gas". The original article stated that he coasted off the freeway into the parking lot with no energy remaining. There's no two ways about it: That's a lie.
How low do you need the p-value to be before you reject the null hypothesis? 0.0005? 5e-9?
Nobody is disputing that news is a hard business, but you can't have it both ways: If you're going to run a serious newspaper, then you need to run a serious newspaper. That means upholding editorial standards. Most importantly, that mean having real repercussions for reporters who break the trust of your readership.
> "ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue.
The owners are completely within their rights to pivot and turn the NYT into the next buzzfeed. But you're just reinforcing the point that it is no longer a serious newspaper.
The newspaper's ombudsman declined to punish the reporter in any way, or admit anything other than "oops, mistakes were made". That's what makes it a failure of the newspaper and not just "less-than-perfect" reporting. It's one example from a pattern of behavior, and the reason people are saying the NYT no longer have industry-leading editorial standards.
Let me remind you that the reporter was caught red-handed driving a car in circles in a parking lot so that he could have a more salacious story about "running out of gas". The original article stated that he coasted off the freeway into the parking lot with no energy remaining. There's no two ways about it: That's a lie.
How low do you need the p-value to be before you reject the null hypothesis? 0.0005? 5e-9?
Nobody is disputing that news is a hard business, but you can't have it both ways: If you're going to run a serious newspaper, then you need to run a serious newspaper. That means upholding editorial standards. Most importantly, that mean having real repercussions for reporters who break the trust of your readership.
> "ZOMG ALIENS!" is complete nonsense, but ... it probably also drives traffic, and thus revenue.
The owners are completely within their rights to pivot and turn the NYT into the next buzzfeed. But you're just reinforcing the point that it is no longer a serious newspaper.
They seem even less serious publishing op-eds like this:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/trump-biden-presi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/03/opinion/trump-biden-presi...
There's actually a named psychological effect for when people read a news article that they know to be inaccurate and don't believe that lack of standards carry forward into the rest of the paper's articles...
Unfortunately both my memory and Google are failing me on this one. Maybe someone in the comments will contribute.
Unfortunately both my memory and Google are failing me on this one. Maybe someone in the comments will contribute.
I can't readily find this either, but the New York Times employs 1,700 journalists and publishes about 150 stories every day. I don't think treating it as a big singular monolithic entity is helpful.
And those 1700 journalists and 150 stories per day go through their much smaller editorial board before they get published. There can be costly legal ramifications if they do not have their editors carefully go over stories.
Stop giving them excuses.
Stop giving them excuses.
I'm not excusing anything; I'm just saying that a single bad article from 7 years ago from a single reporter and the newspaper not appropriately rectifying it – which is certainly a very bad thing – is not a good reason to dismiss the entire newspaper out of hand, especially not considering the scale of the NYT. Things are just not that black/white.
The UFO article I mentioned was barely a week ago.
There's loads of these. I'm half-expecting a bat boy article as a followup.
There's loads of these. I'm half-expecting a bat boy article as a followup.
this attitude is part of the problem... no one goes back and holds them accountable for anything. they just move onto the next BS problem and never notice the old stuff was dead wrong.
If you want to change your perspective, invest in the companies... it will stick with you. I foolishly shorted apple around antenna gate. that was the beginning of me starting to hold the media accountable. the media is wrong over and over and people don't seem to notice.
If you want to change your perspective, invest in the companies... it will stick with you. I foolishly shorted apple around antenna gate. that was the beginning of me starting to hold the media accountable. the media is wrong over and over and people don't seem to notice.
I'd love to see historical articles matching what they predicted with what actually happened.
At least in tech writing, I'd expect most of their predictions to be wrong.
At least in tech writing, I'd expect most of their predictions to be wrong.
This was recently: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet...
Also this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...
Also: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
I think there are some great New York Times writers (Li Yuan’s articles I always like), but there’s a lot of seriously bad writing and writers.
It’s not exclusive to NYT either, Vox makes some great stuff - but they also published that “no handshakes” article mocking Silicon Valley for taking COVID seriously.
Vox repeatedly pushed the “COVID isn’t a pandemic” story. Vox doubled down on the “no handshakes” thing with Kara Swisher arguing in support of it. They still haven’t admitted being wrong.
Link: https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha...
If you know anyone who has a NYT piece written about them usually they’re surprised by how many things are wrong.
Of course these are just the publications that even pretend to be honest, I’m not unfairly targeting them - others unnamed are often worse.
I think their ad driven model is a corrupting influence. I also think their anti-tech company bias is related to tech companies destroying their historical business model (I think they're holding a grudge: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...).
I think it’s better to support good writers directly, I hope substack and independent blogs win.
Some suggestions:
Persuasion: https://www.persuasion.community/
Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/
Stay Tuned with Preet: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-podcast/
Andrew Sullivan: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe
Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/
Also this: https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/06/22/nyt-is-threatening-my-...
Also: https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter
I think there are some great New York Times writers (Li Yuan’s articles I always like), but there’s a lot of seriously bad writing and writers.
It’s not exclusive to NYT either, Vox makes some great stuff - but they also published that “no handshakes” article mocking Silicon Valley for taking COVID seriously.
Vox repeatedly pushed the “COVID isn’t a pandemic” story. Vox doubled down on the “no handshakes” thing with Kara Swisher arguing in support of it. They still haven’t admitted being wrong.
Link: https://medium.com/@balajis/citations-for-the-recode-handsha...
If you know anyone who has a NYT piece written about them usually they’re surprised by how many things are wrong.
Of course these are just the publications that even pretend to be honest, I’m not unfairly targeting them - others unnamed are often worse.
I think their ad driven model is a corrupting influence. I also think their anti-tech company bias is related to tech companies destroying their historical business model (I think they're holding a grudge: https://zalberico.com/essay/2020/07/14/the-serfs-of-facebook...).
I think it’s better to support good writers directly, I hope substack and independent blogs win.
Some suggestions:
Persuasion: https://www.persuasion.community/
Stratechery: https://stratechery.com/
Stay Tuned with Preet: https://cafe.com/stay-tuned-podcast/
Andrew Sullivan: https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/subscribe
Sam Harris: https://samharris.org/
who is going to do, and who is going to pay for, the actual reporting on which the smart but frequently bloviating sort of writers that you cite rely?
For a more timely example, please recall the whole 1619 debacle, in which the NYT published and subsequently defended a slander against our own American history. The article claimed that preserving the institution of slavery was "one of the primary reasons" for the American Revolution. Even after this claim (among others) was trashed by prominent academic historians, the NYT editorial board defended the article (in a manner scarcely discernible from lying), and only issued a correction after the historians persisted in their criticism. The correction, it should be noted, merely replaced the blatant lie with a masterfully crafted phrase which was clearly intended to imply the very same lie.
This is not the behavior of an organization with a commitment to the truth.
[0] Original Critique and NYT response: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-th...
[1] Historians' response: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-proje...
[2] NYT Issues Correction: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the...
This is not the behavior of an organization with a commitment to the truth.
[0] Original Critique and NYT response: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/20/magazine/we-respond-to-th...
[1] Historians' response: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/1619-proje...
[2] NYT Issues Correction: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the...
This whole thread feels like I am taking crazy pills. It seems odd that so many people are on the contrarian juice in this thread against one of the best journalism outlets in the world.
I am right there with you. There are bound to be stinkers, but on the whole the reality that the Times operates in is miles ahead and closer to the truth than most reporting out there, if not all.
I am right there with you. There are bound to be stinkers, but on the whole the reality that the Times operates in is miles ahead and closer to the truth than most reporting out there, if not all.
What does the author of this piece want?
The "truth", or even a plausible interpretation of the facts, is expensive to produce. It is even more expensive when you do it every day covering a wide array of topics.
If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN.
* But a lot of what the New York Times reports, that people disagree with, are things that governments and companies say and do. Those governments and companies have reasons to lie, but the enunciation of the lie is a fact. Judgment is left to the reader, if he has it.
* Publications are also reflections of the societies and political systems in which they are embedded. They speak based on the assumptions and contest of forces in that milieu.
* Most publications are firmly rooted in the attention seeking dynamics of their industry. Many of their errors can be categorized as: amplifying the causes of fear or outrage. Again, if you keep that in mind, their stories are easier to parse.
* Finally, a publication is not a monolith. It is a human organization with good reporters and bad reporters, good days and bad days. The Tesla article written by Stross was ludicrous. The reports by Judy Miller that led us into the Iraq War were abhorrent.
The New York Times should be ashamed of those lapses. But it is putting out a large number of factual reports everyday. Much larger than any equivalent number of human beings in America.
The "truth", or even a plausible interpretation of the facts, is expensive to produce. It is even more expensive when you do it every day covering a wide array of topics.
If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN.
* But a lot of what the New York Times reports, that people disagree with, are things that governments and companies say and do. Those governments and companies have reasons to lie, but the enunciation of the lie is a fact. Judgment is left to the reader, if he has it.
* Publications are also reflections of the societies and political systems in which they are embedded. They speak based on the assumptions and contest of forces in that milieu.
* Most publications are firmly rooted in the attention seeking dynamics of their industry. Many of their errors can be categorized as: amplifying the causes of fear or outrage. Again, if you keep that in mind, their stories are easier to parse.
* Finally, a publication is not a monolith. It is a human organization with good reporters and bad reporters, good days and bad days. The Tesla article written by Stross was ludicrous. The reports by Judy Miller that led us into the Iraq War were abhorrent.
The New York Times should be ashamed of those lapses. But it is putting out a large number of factual reports everyday. Much larger than any equivalent number of human beings in America.
>If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them.
If you have a society where people must pay for truths but are given lies freely, then should we be surprised when people believe lies? Given those people have equal say in how things are ran as the people willing to pay for truth, doesn't this cause a social level problem?
If you have a society where people must pay for truths but are given lies freely, then should we be surprised when people believe lies? Given those people have equal say in how things are ran as the people willing to pay for truth, doesn't this cause a social level problem?
It's hard to have a society where lies are expensive that doesn't lead to suppressing speech in general.
So, I think you touch on a real problem - but I don't think making lies expensive will lead to a good outcome either.
The internet creates a huge amount of easily accessible false information, but also a huge amount of easily accessible true information (more than at any other time in history).
People just need the ability to tell the difference.
Arguably access to all the information in the world won't save us because the non-free stuff isn't accurate either, and people still aren't trying to actually understand what's true. They're just trying to find stuff to support what they already believe. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i2z7i5/the_...
So, I think you touch on a real problem - but I don't think making lies expensive will lead to a good outcome either.
The internet creates a huge amount of easily accessible false information, but also a huge amount of easily accessible true information (more than at any other time in history).
People just need the ability to tell the difference.
Arguably access to all the information in the world won't save us because the non-free stuff isn't accurate either, and people still aren't trying to actually understand what's true. They're just trying to find stuff to support what they already believe. https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i2z7i5/the_...
The thesis itself is false and the implications fail because of it. Paying is no guarantee of the truth and it being free is no guarantee of falsity. If free was always false then they could be filtered more or less to subconscious effects in a "Don't trust the tabloids about batboy being the love child of the pope." sort of way.
I will never pay for the nyt... I would much rather give my money to a patreon where someone actually knows something about the topics I am intersted in. Journalists reporting on topics they don't understand doesn't make sense...
https://www.patreon.com/hyperchange
https://www.patreon.com/EverydayAstronaut
furthermore, nyt are mostly shills for their advertisers. That is why nyt trashed tesla because GM and Ford advertise. Here is proof they are shills for advertisers. All the tesla killer articles about their advertisers that were absurd... even the writers buried a disclaimer at the bottom of the article:
https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/tesla-versus-the-chevy-bolt-...
https://www.patreon.com/hyperchange
https://www.patreon.com/EverydayAstronaut
furthermore, nyt are mostly shills for their advertisers. That is why nyt trashed tesla because GM and Ford advertise. Here is proof they are shills for advertisers. All the tesla killer articles about their advertisers that were absurd... even the writers buried a disclaimer at the bottom of the article:
https://medium.com/@andrewt3000/tesla-versus-the-chevy-bolt-...
You can't compare niche edutainment channels to the major news outlets. NYT is in the business of credible news, these small content makers aren't credible sources of news.
I categorically disagree. Most journalists just quote someone they deem to be an expert on a topic. On topics that interest you, you're better served to do some research and find the experts for yourself.
Nobody has time to do that for every topic that is relevant to the life of a citizen. They need trusted sources of general news. The New York Times is a better approximation of that than most publications.
Journalists tend to quote people institutions deem to be an expert on a topic. "Do some research and find the experts for yourself" is also how people get sucked into a lot of charlatanism re: health, fringe economic ideas, climate change denialism, etc. etc. etc.
I find this kind of comment exhausting. What you're seemingly asking people to do - go to the original source for every news story that you think is important - is impossible for anyone with any kind of normal life. That's why people read newspapers, so they can get a reasonable impression of what's going on in the world, and they would ideally pay for that newspaper so there are fewer problematic incentives. It's much more feasible to take a publication, in full cognisance of its leanings, and parse the stories appropriately. For example, I'm not as much of a free-market person as The Economist, but I pay for and read it because they're clear about what they stand for and think that they're factually accurate.
In the last decade how many news stories where actually important to you? Personally it was such a tiny fraction that doing a little research on each of them was fine.
A recent example of say the toilet paper shortage had weeks of misleading information put out. Prior to the reporter finally actually doing some research and breaking that story I have a HN post explaining what was going on. Why? Because doing more research than an average reporter is generally trivial. Their focus is entertainment and tight deadlines plus tiny staff equals junk.
A recent example of say the toilet paper shortage had weeks of misleading information put out. Prior to the reporter finally actually doing some research and breaking that story I have a HN post explaining what was going on. Why? Because doing more research than an average reporter is generally trivial. Their focus is entertainment and tight deadlines plus tiny staff equals junk.
You're characterising the entire news media as "entertainment and tight deadlines plus tiny staff equals junk". Of course there's trash out there, but the specific example I gave is The Economist. I don't know much about the NYT, which has been mentioned repeatedly here, but there are a reasonable number of news sources out there which are reputable enough not to be dismissed as casually as that.
I used to read The Economist, but I stopped after seeing them pull the same crap. Don’t get me wrong their not terrible, but you still can’t trust them to place accuracy over spin.
Honestly, I have reasonable trust in Reuters at this point, but I don’t know of a trustworthy news source focused on the general public.
Honestly, I have reasonable trust in Reuters at this point, but I don’t know of a trustworthy news source focused on the general public.
A basic litmus test is how a news source reports stock movements. It’s at X up/down Y points from yesterday is news. It’s down / up due to (some specific event) is almost always false and only injected to make things seem interesting or feed people’s biases. Another way of saying that is doing so is quite simply a lie.
NYT is no more in the business of credible news than the Wall Street Journal or Fox News. That’s simply not their business model. They all take unbiased Reuters coverage and add spin to appeal to their audience and distort the truth in the process.
Which is not to say they don’t happen to report things that actually happened, but the weather channel is a prime example where keeping people entertained is vastly more important than keeping them informed.
NYT is no more in the business of credible news than the Wall Street Journal or Fox News. That’s simply not their business model. They all take unbiased Reuters coverage and add spin to appeal to their audience and distort the truth in the process.
Which is not to say they don’t happen to report things that actually happened, but the weather channel is a prime example where keeping people entertained is vastly more important than keeping them informed.
> furthermore, nyt are mostly shills for their advertisers.
Your Medium post does not prove your claim. That's not how newspapers work. There is a wall between advertising and news at the big national papers (less so at local ones sometimes).
Newspapers like horse races. That's why they report on politics the way they do. Tesla's consistent lead in EV doesn't get them readers. But that's not the kind of venality you're falsely accusing them of.
Your Medium post does not prove your claim. That's not how newspapers work. There is a wall between advertising and news at the big national papers (less so at local ones sometimes).
Newspapers like horse races. That's why they report on politics the way they do. Tesla's consistent lead in EV doesn't get them readers. But that's not the kind of venality you're falsely accusing them of.
There's a midsized number of experts in any given field.
There's a lot of people interested in a topic at a given point in time.
The experts will run from a tsunami of individual inquiries. Part of the role of a journalist is the act as a proxy for all that interest so that the experts' opinions can get out there without them facing endless messaging from every member of the public.
Now, one can argue about whether they do that job well or not. But that's a totally different argument than "I'd rather interact directly with someone who is actually an expert".
There's a lot of people interested in a topic at a given point in time.
The experts will run from a tsunami of individual inquiries. Part of the role of a journalist is the act as a proxy for all that interest so that the experts' opinions can get out there without them facing endless messaging from every member of the public.
Now, one can argue about whether they do that job well or not. But that's a totally different argument than "I'd rather interact directly with someone who is actually an expert".
Truth is a public good and ought to be treated as such. If lies about the coronavirus are free, but the truth is costly, people will die, and indeed they are dying right now.
Please propose a system whereby facts can be collected, interpreted, verified and distributed for free. If it is not free, who funds it? How do we prevent the organization funding it from perverting the facts to serve its own interest? If we cannot prevent perversion by the financing organs, then we have propaganda.
These blue-sky pronouncements about truth being a public good do not move the discussion forward. "Truth" is socially manufactured (by that I'm not saying that nothing is true or false), and the process of manufacture has enormous costs.
These blue-sky pronouncements about truth being a public good do not move the discussion forward. "Truth" is socially manufactured (by that I'm not saying that nothing is true or false), and the process of manufacture has enormous costs.
In Europe we often have public service media, paid for by the public. Here in the Czech Republic the public service media is not perfect (what is?), but they do a very good job. (Which is also why they are under constant attacks by politicians.)
Of course, this is not “free”, but it’s high-quality journalism that’s not behind a paywall.
Of course, this is not “free”, but it’s high-quality journalism that’s not behind a paywall.
The New York Times is not perfect, but they do a very good job as well, despite what some commenters in this thread may think. And the paper is not run by a political appointee, as are most of the public service media organizations in Europe (Radio France comes to mind).
I have to wonder: how does your public service media cover events that reflect poorly on the Czech Republic's elite and its government? How did it cover the decision to split from your poorer sister state of Slovakia? How does it cover the vulnerability of the Czech elite to blackmail by the Russian intelligence services? How does it cover the historical issues related to the expulsion of Sudetenland Germans from their homes?
Separately, for what it's worth, the US has national public radio, which is a public service radio largely funded by local listener/donors. It is much better than most media here.
I have to wonder: how does your public service media cover events that reflect poorly on the Czech Republic's elite and its government? How did it cover the decision to split from your poorer sister state of Slovakia? How does it cover the vulnerability of the Czech elite to blackmail by the Russian intelligence services? How does it cover the historical issues related to the expulsion of Sudetenland Germans from their homes?
Separately, for what it's worth, the US has national public radio, which is a public service radio largely funded by local listener/donors. It is much better than most media here.
Hungary also as a public service media. In fact, I am not certain there is any independent media still existing in Hungary. Which goes to show that public media is not always the best.
If you value facts and good analysis, pay for them. It's that simple. Sure, the New York Times gets a lot of things wrong. So does everyone else, including many commenters on HN.
Yeah, and "If you value your health, pay for an experience that doesn't spread a highly infectious disease". Oh, but just a few people willing to not spread the disease means you'll catch it any way.
The cost of the people who can't and won't afford the truth and choose lies instead is high for society, even for those who get the truth.
There are wide range of things that have degraded in the US based on the "if you value it, you will pay for it" ethos. This kind of reasoning works for the luxuriousness of an automobile - but even for the safety of an automobile.
Yeah, and "If you value your health, pay for an experience that doesn't spread a highly infectious disease". Oh, but just a few people willing to not spread the disease means you'll catch it any way.
The cost of the people who can't and won't afford the truth and choose lies instead is high for society, even for those who get the truth.
There are wide range of things that have degraded in the US based on the "if you value it, you will pay for it" ethos. This kind of reasoning works for the luxuriousness of an automobile - but even for the safety of an automobile.
I've been looking for an alternative to the NYT that has as good or better writing and reporting. Do you have any suggestions?
WSJ
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NYT leans slightly left, WSJ leans slightly right, and I feel like reading both gives you a fairly balanced view on the issues of the day.
The opinion sections of each publication can get fringey, but that's just the clickbait that pays the bills - it's obvious that the rest of the articles try hard to adhere to journalistic standards.
The opinion sections of each publication can get fringey, but that's just the clickbait that pays the bills - it's obvious that the rest of the articles try hard to adhere to journalistic standards.
WSJ news section is pretty good, but their focus is a little narrow. The opinion pages? Just tear those out and trash them before any of the words can accidentally leak into your brain.
The space between the news side and opinion side of the WSJ is wider than the space between Fox News and Fox and Friends.
The space between the news side and opinion side of the WSJ is wider than the space between Fox News and Fox and Friends.
Just out of completeness you could have added the actual response to Tesla's comments:
To say the least: it's not as clear cut as you make it to be. My personal opinion - for what is worth it - is that between Musk and a journalist of the NYT I would still trust the journalist more. But I am naive that way.> Musk and a journalist of the NYT I would still trust the journalist more
Why do you believe a journalist who contradicts his own story after being called out on the original? Anyone reading your link in isolation might think it a fine rebuttal, but it's inconsistent with the original piece he wrong for the NYT--they can't both be true.
I also like how he defends the "sloppy note-taking" with, "But the manufacturer didn't tell me they had a GPS tracker on the car." That speaks volumes.
Why do you believe a journalist who contradicts his own story after being called out on the original? Anyone reading your link in isolation might think it a fine rebuttal, but it's inconsistent with the original piece he wrong for the NYT--they can't both be true.
I also like how he defends the "sloppy note-taking" with, "But the manufacturer didn't tell me they had a GPS tracker on the car." That speaks volumes.
Meh that was years ago. Things ebb and flow, but what got me recently was their uptake of cancel culture. They're even throwing out editors because their reporters and others there have glommed on to the idea that non-progressive -opinions- are not welcome. I am a progressive but I do not buy into this the shame-shame-shame bell attitude that has taken the internet by storm. Vanguarded by twitter.
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NYT has beat the drums of war for Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the recent Bolivian coup and pretty much every other imperialist, fascist action backed by the US the world over.
Its "liberalism" is a thin sheen over another mass media corporation continually enabling the military-industrial complex at the cost of tens of millions of lives.
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-false...
Its "liberalism" is a thin sheen over another mass media corporation continually enabling the military-industrial complex at the cost of tens of millions of lives.
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/08/the-nyt-admits-key-false...
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"But it’s important to understand the problem with the Times: it is not that the facts it reports tend to be inaccurate—though sometimes they are—but that the facts are presented in a way that misleads."
Shall we make sure that the quote at the top of the thread includes at least one full sentence as context?
Shall we make sure that the quote at the top of the thread includes at least one full sentence as context?
I lost faith when they tried to dox Scott Alexander for no reason other than to generate a few clicks over the controversy.
Tesla is a scientific error, but what about their 1619 Project stuff?
For me it was the wild Op Eds literally calling for a revolution, and a two day focus on Trump on the front page and the side op eds while there were riots within view of my window. I remember specifically seeing 5 helicopters within sight, after a second day of rioting, seeing nothing mentioned in the home town NYT that we had sacked Soho and Midtown in consecutive days, hundreds of businesses attacked, and deciding then and there that it was a dangerous, misleading newspaper. After several years of subscribing, I unsubscribed.
For me it was the wild Op Eds literally calling for a revolution, and a two day focus on Trump on the front page and the side op eds while there were riots within view of my window. I remember specifically seeing 5 helicopters within sight, after a second day of rioting, seeing nothing mentioned in the home town NYT that we had sacked Soho and Midtown in consecutive days, hundreds of businesses attacked, and deciding then and there that it was a dangerous, misleading newspaper. After several years of subscribing, I unsubscribed.
Focusing on a small part of one sentence which is only tangentially related to the OP's main topic seems... unfair to me.
I found the OP to be a well-written, well-reasoned, thought-provoking article and would highly recommend reading it in its entirety before passing judgment on it.
I found the OP to be a well-written, well-reasoned, thought-provoking article and would highly recommend reading it in its entirety before passing judgment on it.
I am extremely naive on the topic, so be easy on me.
1. Does that mean Tesla gets to know every single thing about my car? Where I have driven to, and how I use it, what time I use it?
2. Both Nytimes and Top Gear act on the same thing ( note. I barely read the NYT article ), If Clarkson were not driving in a normal manner, and flying around a test track burning tires, it will quickly run out of battery. And due to the way filming and production, they didn't actually ran out of battery.
I would have thought a normal thing to do would be to disagree with the results, and suggest driving in normal condition and battery conserve manner would results in better milage. Instead Tesla went all out and start suing.
I would call this spinning the truth in some sense. But I wouldn't all this BS.
1. Does that mean Tesla gets to know every single thing about my car? Where I have driven to, and how I use it, what time I use it?
2. Both Nytimes and Top Gear act on the same thing ( note. I barely read the NYT article ), If Clarkson were not driving in a normal manner, and flying around a test track burning tires, it will quickly run out of battery. And due to the way filming and production, they didn't actually ran out of battery.
I would have thought a normal thing to do would be to disagree with the results, and suggest driving in normal condition and battery conserve manner would results in better milage. Instead Tesla went all out and start suing.
I would call this spinning the truth in some sense. But I wouldn't all this BS.
Yeah, That pissed me off too, It stank of petrochemical company bribery or willful ignorance.
That said they still produce some quality journalism and I wouldn't write off an entire news organization for one shitty decision (to back a bad review).
Just like I don't judge all of Tesla for the fact they don't separate their freeway and street driving data so we can properly analyze their self driving crash statistics misleading potential customers.
That said they still produce some quality journalism and I wouldn't write off an entire news organization for one shitty decision (to back a bad review).
Just like I don't judge all of Tesla for the fact they don't separate their freeway and street driving data so we can properly analyze their self driving crash statistics misleading potential customers.
When I first saw google books and google scholar I thought 'Oh my god, this is amazing, this will change everything!'. I imagined that a decade or two in the future, being able to read pretty much any book or paper I wanted for a reasonable monthly fee. The search functionality was an absolute godsend!
Now? Google books has been pretty much sidelined and abandoned. I feel like I've watched the second library of Alexandria burn, and I am heartbroken.
My only consolation, is sites like sci-hub and libgen have made textbooks and papers downloadable, albeit illegally. I still really wish I could search within every book.
Now? Google books has been pretty much sidelined and abandoned. I feel like I've watched the second library of Alexandria burn, and I am heartbroken.
My only consolation, is sites like sci-hub and libgen have made textbooks and papers downloadable, albeit illegally. I still really wish I could search within every book.
Google Books in 2004 [1], Google Scholar in 2004 [2], and Google Patents in 2006 [3] felt like the golden age of Google’s mission to “organize the world’s information and and make it universally accessible and useful” [4]. If you think back to the state of the web at the time, those services were expansive in their scope and ambition when they were launched. I give Google credit for continuing to run and maintain them to this day.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Scholar
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Patents
[4]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Books
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Scholar
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Patents
[4]: https://www.google.com/search/howsearchworks/mission/
I think this is one case where the end of the product is not Google's fault.
Books got enormous push back from legacy publishers. They also had trouble with copyright law around orphaned works, but copyright protection increasing over time from 14yrs to 90yrs after the death of the author (and moving from requiring registration to being default) really made it hard for them to do what they wanted.
It's a shame that something initially intended to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" is now used to inhibit it.
Books got enormous push back from legacy publishers. They also had trouble with copyright law around orphaned works, but copyright protection increasing over time from 14yrs to 90yrs after the death of the author (and moving from requiring registration to being default) really made it hard for them to do what they wanted.
It's a shame that something initially intended to "promote the progress of science and useful arts" is now used to inhibit it.
I still find Google Scholar really useful for searching for papers. It only has access to the full text for some percentage of papers, but you can usually find ones of interest in scihub.
The linked article concludes:
"Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal."
Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.
"Creators must be compensated well. But at the same time we have to try to keep things that are important and profound from getting locked away where few people will see them. The truth needs to be free and universal."
Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive. Free costs more than it's worth.
I am in wholehearted agreement on a tax on lies so long as I get to decide which articles are lies.
Again why is THIS downvoted? Am I taking crazy pills or are downvotes completely meaningless?
Perhaps because OP seems to be suggesting: "there is no truth, facts (and lies) are relative."
I think he's saying there are no reliable ways to decide whats what, not that truth doesn't exist
Poe's law I suspect despite the dripping sarcasm pointing out how stupidly exploitable and violent to the truth said "solution" would be.
As always, who judges whether something is true?
The government, scientists, experts in various fields, people who have proven to tell the truth in the past, etc.
You obviously still have your own ability to determine what fits your model of the universe and what doesn't. These are just groups of people more likely to have access to information that you might not. You don't have to trust anyone, but in a system where someone has to judge what is true, these groups are closer than the alternative, which would be people with no qualifications, no training, and no history of telling the truth.
If you have another alternative I'm all ears.
You obviously still have your own ability to determine what fits your model of the universe and what doesn't. These are just groups of people more likely to have access to information that you might not. You don't have to trust anyone, but in a system where someone has to judge what is true, these groups are closer than the alternative, which would be people with no qualifications, no training, and no history of telling the truth.
If you have another alternative I'm all ears.
>The government, scientists, experts in various fields, people who have proven to tell the truth in the past, etc.
But how has it been implemented in practice?
If you look at the raw numbers, generally we rely on the lowest bidders amongst Facebook/Google/Twitter's third-world-country subcontractors, as well as the Chinese government.
But how has it been implemented in practice?
If you look at the raw numbers, generally we rely on the lowest bidders amongst Facebook/Google/Twitter's third-world-country subcontractors, as well as the Chinese government.
The existing practice is for the community of these sites to upvote good content and downvote bad content.
Separately, moderators purge controversial content as a check/balance to the voting system. If users feel that the moderation is inconsistent with their content desires, they choose a different site to frequent, as is the case in market systems.
Separately, moderators purge controversial content as a check/balance to the voting system. If users feel that the moderation is inconsistent with their content desires, they choose a different site to frequent, as is the case in market systems.
again, if you look at the whole system in aggregate, the existing practice is for GooFaceTwitBaba to farm out their moderation works to subcontractors, while also bending backwards to prevalent political headwinds to preserve their shareholder value. If users feel that the moderation is inconsistent with their content desires, they are free to leave the megaplatforms and become approximately completely irrelevant, thus achieving the exact same effect as being deplatformed.
What is your alternative system?
It's very easy to point out that nothing is perfect. It's very difficult to come up with a better solution.
It's very easy to point out that nothing is perfect. It's very difficult to come up with a better solution.
Often times the truth is not popular, even amongst those who should be protecting it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopes_Trial
Far more often, the truth is "popular" but boring. Not every nay-sayer is Galileo.
Governments, scientists, and experts have also been proven to be wrong and to have lied in the past.
On occasion. What's the average case?
Getting things wrong on occasion is better than having some sort of idiot free for all.
Maybe, but a well told lie told by The One Authority on Truth has more destructive power than a billion chaos monkeys typing on their typewriters for the next hundred generations.
[deleted]
We have more options than blindly trust those who are more likely to be right and "idiot free for all".
[deleted]
And how have we discovered the incorrect and dishonest claims?
Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.
Also, I take issue with the attempt to conflate people who are incorrect with people who are dishonest.
There is nothing wrong with being wrong. Being wrong is the first step to being right. You can't be corrected if you're never willing to be wrong. And we can't learn if everyone has to wait to be completely correct before making a claim. Often, we don't even know we should be looking into something until someone makes a claim that turns out to be incorrect on further study.
Knowledge isn't furthered in "eureka" moments where we have all the answers at once, it's in observing something and thinking, "Huh, that's weird", then seeking the answers.
Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.
Also, I take issue with the attempt to conflate people who are incorrect with people who are dishonest.
There is nothing wrong with being wrong. Being wrong is the first step to being right. You can't be corrected if you're never willing to be wrong. And we can't learn if everyone has to wait to be completely correct before making a claim. Often, we don't even know we should be looking into something until someone makes a claim that turns out to be incorrect on further study.
Knowledge isn't furthered in "eureka" moments where we have all the answers at once, it's in observing something and thinking, "Huh, that's weird", then seeking the answers.
>Through the process. You never have to trust the data if you have a good process. Process will verify data. Process will verify sources. Process is impartial. Trust the process, not the results.
The GP's post didn't say trust science or trust data. It said trust scientists. I'm taking issue with the desire to put faith in individuals.
The GP's post didn't say trust science or trust data. It said trust scientists. I'm taking issue with the desire to put faith in individuals.
Who is a scientist in this case but someone publicizing the process? Their job, in the media anyway, is to explain data and results and why that data makes sense. You don't have to blindly trust the scientist if what they're saying is backed by scientific process, and you can hopefully trust-but-verify by looking at whatever scientific literature exists on the topic.
I guess I don't understand the alternative: is everyone expected to go look up the write-up and replicate the experiment for themselves because we can't trust the scientists who performed the experiment? I agree we need more replication studies, but I think we're reaching the absurd ends of the "do your own research!" movement here.
I guess I don't understand the alternative: is everyone expected to go look up the write-up and replicate the experiment for themselves because we can't trust the scientists who performed the experiment? I agree we need more replication studies, but I think we're reaching the absurd ends of the "do your own research!" movement here.
The problem here is not Science. It's the perverse incentives in Academia and Journalism.
In Science as it should be practised, yes, a scientist talking to a journalist should "explain the the data and results and why that data makes sense". The journalist should then paraphrase that clearly for their audience, without altering the essential conclusions of the study/paper/experiment.
But this is so naive it's laughable now. Nobody, ever, does this. The scientist wants maximum impact, so will maximise the sensational aspects of their results. In turn the journalist wants maximum clicks, so will sensationalise more. What ends up being read by the public can be a very long way away from any conclusion that the data actually supports.
In Science as it should be practised, yes, a scientist talking to a journalist should "explain the the data and results and why that data makes sense". The journalist should then paraphrase that clearly for their audience, without altering the essential conclusions of the study/paper/experiment.
But this is so naive it's laughable now. Nobody, ever, does this. The scientist wants maximum impact, so will maximise the sensational aspects of their results. In turn the journalist wants maximum clicks, so will sensationalise more. What ends up being read by the public can be a very long way away from any conclusion that the data actually supports.
He's essentially reiterating Mac's argument from It's Always Sunny, casting doubt on people who deliver information by informing us that "Science is a liar... sometimes".
It was also people who found out those people were wrong or lying.
Yes, Piltdown man was a fraud, but it was the same "scientific community" that discovered it was a fraud. Because there were things that didn't make sense even within the confines of the field of study.
That's the great thing about the process, it's ultimately self-correcting.
It was also people who found out those people were wrong or lying.
Yes, Piltdown man was a fraud, but it was the same "scientific community" that discovered it was a fraud. Because there were things that didn't make sense even within the confines of the field of study.
That's the great thing about the process, it's ultimately self-correcting.
A scientist being wrong is GOOD! The scientific process relies on assimilation of negative results.
If a scientist is emotionally attached to a result and ignores a result that they don't like, they are no longer engaged in science.
Peer review and replication is the correcting factor for the unfortunate reality that science must be, for the moment carried out by humans.
At the very least, when operating properly science becomes less wrong. That cannot be said for politicians who are interested in nothing but confirmation of their preconceptions.
There is a special place in hell for those who cynically use the fact that scientists are sometimes wrong as an attack against the very existence of knowledge and consensus reality itself.
If a scientist is emotionally attached to a result and ignores a result that they don't like, they are no longer engaged in science.
Peer review and replication is the correcting factor for the unfortunate reality that science must be, for the moment carried out by humans.
At the very least, when operating properly science becomes less wrong. That cannot be said for politicians who are interested in nothing but confirmation of their preconceptions.
There is a special place in hell for those who cynically use the fact that scientists are sometimes wrong as an attack against the very existence of knowledge and consensus reality itself.
I don't disagree with you. The only thing I'm arguing against is the GP's comment that we should blindly put our trust in the groups mentioned.
Some of the best parts about science, as you've pointed out, are peer review and replication. There should never be a need to put your faith in an individual scientist and take them at their word.
>There is a special place in hell for those who cynically use the fact that scientists are sometimes wrong as an attack against the very existence of knowledge and consensus reality itself.
I hope it's clear that I was in no way doing that.
Some of the best parts about science, as you've pointed out, are peer review and replication. There should never be a need to put your faith in an individual scientist and take them at their word.
>There is a special place in hell for those who cynically use the fact that scientists are sometimes wrong as an attack against the very existence of knowledge and consensus reality itself.
I hope it's clear that I was in no way doing that.
Reading charitably, I don't believe that it's what you meant. But with disturbing frequency, I do see similar words uttered and written with fairly clear cynical intent.
I completely agree; it's an alarming trend that's used to sew ignorance. Blindly following experts clearly isn't an antidote to that, which is all I was trying to express originally.
Science relies on this, yes.
Academia, not so much
Academia, not so much
Another fun one I ask when someone brings up Snopes: Who snopes the snopes? In other words how do we know they are not being biased or thorough enough?
I am not saying everything there is wrong but I have ran into weird biased articles before.
I am not saying everything there is wrong but I have ran into weird biased articles before.
They are biased, but if the facts are accurate, that's irrelevant.
A trustworthy organization doing fact checking on one side of the aisle while ignoring inaccuracies from the other side is preferable to no fact-checking at all. Question is: where is Republican Snopes? It's a free information market; why is nobody doing it?
A trustworthy organization doing fact checking on one side of the aisle while ignoring inaccuracies from the other side is preferable to no fact-checking at all. Question is: where is Republican Snopes? It's a free information market; why is nobody doing it?
There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus). At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself, you are ultimately dependent on some network of trust to inform you of the truth or falsity of something. And even then "true" and "false" outside of logical and mathematical domains is entirely dependent on ones values. That's not to say there's no objective universal set of values.
Most people are Liberal (in the American sense) because that's what all the organs of culture promote and reinforce. It's like the "default" position that people adopt. I grew up liberal in a liberal household where we watched Hollywood movies and mainstream news like ABC, NBC, PBS and I listened to NPR and I went to school which was run by generally liberal teachers and administrators and that's pretty much why I was liberal.
This is the Cathedral vs the Bazaar approach to sense-making.
Most people are Liberal (in the American sense) because that's what all the organs of culture promote and reinforce. It's like the "default" position that people adopt. I grew up liberal in a liberal household where we watched Hollywood movies and mainstream news like ABC, NBC, PBS and I listened to NPR and I went to school which was run by generally liberal teachers and administrators and that's pretty much why I was liberal.
This is the Cathedral vs the Bazaar approach to sense-making.
You're in for a surprise when you discover Fox News.
If you're talking about people like Chris Wallace, then I agree with your point. People like him are very much an example of The Cathedral but on the conservative side. Even stuff like The Five is pretty middle brow and establishmentarian but they aren't the vanguards of mainstream conservatism like Maddow and Joy Reid and others are for mainstream liberalism.
Steve Bannon and his movement are more representative of mainstream conservatism. Even someone Tucker Carlson used to be very much like Chris Wallace. The reason why his program is so popular now is because he's shifted radically away from his establishmentarian position towards Steve Bannon's position.
Personally I don't watch Fox News because of how low to middle brow and Cathedral-like it is.
Steve Bannon and his movement are more representative of mainstream conservatism. Even someone Tucker Carlson used to be very much like Chris Wallace. The reason why his program is so popular now is because he's shifted radically away from his establishmentarian position towards Steve Bannon's position.
Personally I don't watch Fox News because of how low to middle brow and Cathedral-like it is.
If Maddow is the vanguard of mainstream liberalism, why are her ratings so terrible?
Probably because the Cathedral of mainstream liberalism has been mortally wounded over the past decade. That has rapidly accelerated as of late and you're seeing the last dying breaths with the rise of populism on the left and right. Maddow used to have much higher ratings. AOC for example is not part of mainstream liberalism. She is at the vanguard of mainstream popular leftism.
You can only get a plurality in most cases with mainstream media, because like it or not it does tend to be progressive/liberal in most outlets (in the American sense, not European).
That doesn't explain why FOX is twice as watched as MSNBC.
NPR's drivetime radio shows have bigger audiences than Fox, for almost all of its shows (and sometimes, for all of its shows).
Cable TV is still a niche.
Cable TV is still a niche.
I always laugh when I see someone bring up Fox News in this context. You realize your just proving his point, right? I can name dozens or hundreds of major media outlets that that lean left (MSNBC, CNN, NYT, WaPo, HuffPo, BuzzFeed, etc.), but you can only name one or two that lean right.
Most of the "left-leaning" organizations you cite above are not considered particularly left-leaning by the left. A better description of them would be "pro status quo", or if you're feeling punchy "relentlessly pro status quo" with a side of "pro-corporatist" thrown in for seasoning.
Now, Fox News and OAN and Sinclair are not, publically, actually the John Birch Society, so sure, you could say "right wingers don't think they lean right either".
Plot out a chart of US political opinion, and I more or less guarantee you that in most things, you'll find your list of media outlights absolutely "centrist", and the 3 I just named distinctly "to the right" of mainstream US political opinion.
Now, Fox News and OAN and Sinclair are not, publically, actually the John Birch Society, so sure, you could say "right wingers don't think they lean right either".
Plot out a chart of US political opinion, and I more or less guarantee you that in most things, you'll find your list of media outlights absolutely "centrist", and the 3 I just named distinctly "to the right" of mainstream US political opinion.
Fox is the most familiar example, but there are many more:
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings
what is the reason to down-vote this comment?
Lumping into an "us vs them" or "republican vs liberal" via
> here is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making
Which is both mixing the some undefined set of concepts of the Enlightenment with some undefined characteristics of "All Republicans", in an awkward ad-hominem against "non-republicans"? It's nonsensical.
> At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself,
All truth is subjective, so there is no truth tautology.
Etc etc. There isn't a point being made or a topic to discuss. It's a "too many ideas" post mixed with too many wild tangents that are intentionally designed to incite.
ie Vapid flamebait.
> here is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making
Which is both mixing the some undefined set of concepts of the Enlightenment with some undefined characteristics of "All Republicans", in an awkward ad-hominem against "non-republicans"? It's nonsensical.
> At the end of the day unless you were personally there to witness something or can prove something mathematically or do the science yourself,
All truth is subjective, so there is no truth tautology.
Etc etc. There isn't a point being made or a topic to discuss. It's a "too many ideas" post mixed with too many wild tangents that are intentionally designed to incite.
ie Vapid flamebait.
Whether or not there is truth is dependent on if you believe in an objective set of values. Conservatives believe there is (the Bible, natural law, God, etc) and people like Postermodernists believe there isn't.
And yes all discussions of this type require some generalization and lumping. "Republican" doesn't even mean one thing since the party consists of libertarians and evangelical Christians and neo-conservatives among many others.
And yes all discussions of this type require some generalization and lumping. "Republican" doesn't even mean one thing since the party consists of libertarians and evangelical Christians and neo-conservatives among many others.
> There is no Republican Snopes because conservatives, since the Enlightenment, don't do sense making that way (i.e. via institutional consensus).
Conservatives have always done sense making via institutional consensus, even moreso than post-enlightenment liberals, though the institutions that they tend to appeal to are those explicitly devoted to their ideological world view (whether it's the organs of a particular Church, or economists of the Austrian School) and not so much those even superficially devoted to objective exploration of facts, even when approaching questions that are, at least on the surface, about objectives facts (what is) rather than ideology (what should be).
> Most people are Liberal (in the American sense)
No, they aren't, unless you are conflating multiple different and incompatible American senses of “Liberal” and thus covering the entire range from the moderate right to the far left.
Conservatives have always done sense making via institutional consensus, even moreso than post-enlightenment liberals, though the institutions that they tend to appeal to are those explicitly devoted to their ideological world view (whether it's the organs of a particular Church, or economists of the Austrian School) and not so much those even superficially devoted to objective exploration of facts, even when approaching questions that are, at least on the surface, about objectives facts (what is) rather than ideology (what should be).
> Most people are Liberal (in the American sense)
No, they aren't, unless you are conflating multiple different and incompatible American senses of “Liberal” and thus covering the entire range from the moderate right to the far left.
> objectives facts (what is) rather than ideology (what should be)
What is a "fact" or what is "true" is dependent on your values (aka your ideology). This is one of Nietzsche's main contributions to philosophy.
There are things like mathematical and logical truth and really basic physical assertions (e.g. the sky is blue) but those are qualitatively different than what we're talking about.
Both normative and positive statements about the world of human affairs are ultimately dependent on ideology and that might explain to you why you perceive conservatives as focusing on arguments over ideology. That is what people should be arguing over since from that all else flows. When people don't share substantially similar values even language itself becomes useless as a means of communication because the words themselves mean different things.
What is a "fact" or what is "true" is dependent on your values (aka your ideology). This is one of Nietzsche's main contributions to philosophy.
There are things like mathematical and logical truth and really basic physical assertions (e.g. the sky is blue) but those are qualitatively different than what we're talking about.
Both normative and positive statements about the world of human affairs are ultimately dependent on ideology and that might explain to you why you perceive conservatives as focusing on arguments over ideology. That is what people should be arguing over since from that all else flows. When people don't share substantially similar values even language itself becomes useless as a means of communication because the words themselves mean different things.
> What is a "fact" or what is "true" in dependent on your values (aka your ideology). This is one of Nietzsche's main contributions to philosophy.
No, it's not. That's one of the Enlightenment’s many contributions to philosophy and the foundation on which the advances in knowledge of the universe enabling the explosion of post-Enlightenment technical progress is built.
Obviously, one might have ideological, aesthetic, or other preferences for what facts ought to be, and one might have beliefs about questions of fact that ultimately result from those preferences, but—Roadrunner cartoons not withstanding—beliefs about the material universe don't trump material facts.
(However, it's kind of funny that you are making, as a positive argument in favor of conservatism, exactly the argument that conservatives usually not only reject, but also attribute—not entirely inaccurately though certainly overgenerally—to the “postmodern” left and cite as a key reason for rejecting the left.)
No, it's not. That's one of the Enlightenment’s many contributions to philosophy and the foundation on which the advances in knowledge of the universe enabling the explosion of post-Enlightenment technical progress is built.
Obviously, one might have ideological, aesthetic, or other preferences for what facts ought to be, and one might have beliefs about questions of fact that ultimately result from those preferences, but—Roadrunner cartoons not withstanding—beliefs about the material universe don't trump material facts.
(However, it's kind of funny that you are making, as a positive argument in favor of conservatism, exactly the argument that conservatives usually not only reject, but also attribute—not entirely inaccurately though certainly overgenerally—to the “postmodern” left and cite as a key reason for rejecting the left.)
Snopes for Mormons: https://www.fairmormon.org/answers/Mormonism_and_apologetics
This looks like its for questions about Mormonism or theological questions, not current events or other pop-culture things (forwards from Grandma) like Snopes.
Yes, its scope is very narrowly about the Mormon faith. Conversely, Snopes doesn't tend to weigh in on things like the stories surrounding Joseph Smith.
>They are biased, but if the facts are accurate, that's irrelevant.
Not really:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2009/aug/20/bernie-san...
>The OECD's numbers tell a similar story. In 2007, the OECD said that the United States spent $7,290 per capita on health care, ranking it first among the 30 countries studied. Five other nations spent more than $3,645 per capita, the point at which the United States no longer doubles their spending. The highest is the Netherlands at $4,417. The other four were Austria, Canada, Norway and Switzerland.
So he was rated as wrong for saying 'double' because it was actually 1.65 times for one country out of thirty. Oh and they used the dollar exchange rate for their numbers, not the PPP which is what actually matters.
Not really:
https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2009/aug/20/bernie-san...
>The OECD's numbers tell a similar story. In 2007, the OECD said that the United States spent $7,290 per capita on health care, ranking it first among the 30 countries studied. Five other nations spent more than $3,645 per capita, the point at which the United States no longer doubles their spending. The highest is the Netherlands at $4,417. The other four were Austria, Canada, Norway and Switzerland.
So he was rated as wrong for saying 'double' because it was actually 1.65 times for one country out of thirty. Oh and they used the dollar exchange rate for their numbers, not the PPP which is what actually matters.
If the facts are not accurate, that's relevant.
On average, are the facts accurate?
Also, 1.65 isn't double. I'm not quite sure what you're saying here.
On average, are the facts accurate?
Also, 1.65 isn't double. I'm not quite sure what you're saying here.
1.65 is not the average ratio, it's the smallest ratio among the group of countries under consideration. So, it's intentionally misleading.
Regardless, even if the average WERE 1.65, that's still a damning enough number that the meter shouldn't be all the way to the "False" side.
Regardless, even if the average WERE 1.65, that's still a damning enough number that the meter shouldn't be all the way to the "False" side.
Since the statement they're fact checking is "twice as much... than any other nation," averages don't apply; the smallest ratio is the strongest counterexample. Politicians can avoid being fact checked like this by using less absolute statements in their rhetoric.
They are also using exchange rate $ equivalent instead of PPP, the ratio then is 1.93 for the Netherlands to the US.
This is a lie by the fact checkers. One that pushes an agenda that's obvious to see for everyone who cares to look.
This is a lie by the fact checkers. One that pushes an agenda that's obvious to see for everyone who cares to look.
What agenda is that?
(Additionally, PPP is a model someone can use, but it's hardly agreed upon universally as the correct model for equivalent spend value. It's a "basket of goods" model, influenced by the goods chosen. At worst, Politifact is guilty of making a judgement call based on a choice of metric that reasonable people can disagree on, which is hardly "a lie" that "pushes an agenda").
(Additionally, PPP is a model someone can use, but it's hardly agreed upon universally as the correct model for equivalent spend value. It's a "basket of goods" model, influenced by the goods chosen. At worst, Politifact is guilty of making a judgement call based on a choice of metric that reasonable people can disagree on, which is hardly "a lie" that "pushes an agenda").
The Netherlands PPP conversion factor is less than 1, and was in 2009 as well. This means that each Euro spent by the Netherlands goes further than the exchange rate equivalent number of dollars would go in the US.
Wouldn't adjusting for PPP bring their healthcare spending up, not down, making Sanders less correct, not more?
Wouldn't adjusting for PPP bring their healthcare spending up, not down, making Sanders less correct, not more?
The bad thing about snopes is they don't have a spectrum, it's a binary 'fact or not fact' system. This means even a slight bit of bias can be the difference between fact or not.
But the more important question is why a random website is being used as the basis for truth. They don't even try to hide the bias in their language, it's just filled with words you would never see in an academic document.
But the more important question is why a random website is being used as the basis for truth. They don't even try to hide the bias in their language, it's just filled with words you would never see in an academic document.
I was thinking more along the lines of a true spectrum, like a percentage system. What you have here is a bunch of qualitative truthiness symbols decided arbitrarily, it's not much different from just saying true or false.
For example, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/marijuana-electron-microsc... this article would lead a passerby to believe that there is equal parts truth and lie in this picture + caption. In reality I would judge this as 'mostly true' because the caption is more true than it is false.
For example, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/marijuana-electron-microsc... this article would lead a passerby to believe that there is equal parts truth and lie in this picture + caption. In reality I would judge this as 'mostly true' because the caption is more true than it is false.
You said "binary."
I saw one on PolitiFact about Biden a while back. The claim was that he's been fighting to cut social security benefits for the last 40 years. The verdict was "mostly false" but if you read the contents [1], it's "mostly true." You see shit like this all the time.
1. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/12/bernie-san...
1. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/mar/12/bernie-san...
It's more in the middle. He clearly was going with the flow of politics at the time on budget hawking. It hardly seems like he wanted to eliminate/privatize SS like most conservatives who aren't retired want to do. So there a levels to "cutting social security" like most complicated topics from freezing it to reducing it to eliminating it. I agree though their mostly false doesn't seem reasonable to me from a statistical analysis of what they presented in the article
This is starting to strain credulity. It says "mixed", not "evenly mixed" or anything to imply even-ness of true/false.
The NEXT 2 PARAGRAPHS say, in simple language, what part is true and which is not.
The NEXT 2 PARAGRAPHS say, in simple language, what part is true and which is not.
[deleted]
Which ones?
I'm curious if the bias is perceived or blatant.
I'm curious if the bias is perceived or blatant.
You can, follow their sources. Even if they're only 90-95 correct that is orders of magnitude better than what's on facebook and twitter where people go just because someone put up a picture with words on it.
ah but there are usually other sources, just as valid, that say the opposite thing
The bigger issues with Snopes are:
1) Complete lack of transparency. No versioning or history of how answers have changed. They even opt-out of archive.org history tracking. They usually only disclose one author, when oftentimes there are many.
2) They editorialize many questions, changing them in such a way that they can give the answer they want to. This is done often by inserting modifiers like "always" or "never" or something similar.
1) Complete lack of transparency. No versioning or history of how answers have changed. They even opt-out of archive.org history tracking. They usually only disclose one author, when oftentimes there are many.
2) They editorialize many questions, changing them in such a way that they can give the answer they want to. This is done often by inserting modifiers like "always" or "never" or something similar.
This is an excuse to be lazy and not try to establish truth at all, which is way worse than getting the 'truth' wrong sometimes.
I think this is the core political question of our age, myself.
I tend to agree with you there.
I am starting to think that ultimately, though, the answer is one that no one particularly wants to admit because it boils down to two unpalatable options, one distributed and unregulated; the other centralized and regulated.
1) Unregulated: No one is the arbiter of truth, in which case a haphazard group of marketers, propagandists and psyops peddlers reign supreme. This eventually/inevitably consolidates into an organized propaganda outlet.
2) Regulated: A group is selected based on some credential or merit and you end up with essentially a Technocracy. More or less what the "Elites" boogeyman is. If the Technocracy is staffed by scientists and engineers, then it might be the best possibility available. But this also eventually consolidates and leads to an erosion of the eligibility credentials and then non-expert people will gain positions within it for ulterior motives.
If the technocratic group is limited in scope of what "truths" it can decide on, then that is potentially a reasonable compromise.
I am starting to think that ultimately, though, the answer is one that no one particularly wants to admit because it boils down to two unpalatable options, one distributed and unregulated; the other centralized and regulated.
1) Unregulated: No one is the arbiter of truth, in which case a haphazard group of marketers, propagandists and psyops peddlers reign supreme. This eventually/inevitably consolidates into an organized propaganda outlet.
2) Regulated: A group is selected based on some credential or merit and you end up with essentially a Technocracy. More or less what the "Elites" boogeyman is. If the Technocracy is staffed by scientists and engineers, then it might be the best possibility available. But this also eventually consolidates and leads to an erosion of the eligibility credentials and then non-expert people will gain positions within it for ulterior motives.
If the technocratic group is limited in scope of what "truths" it can decide on, then that is potentially a reasonable compromise.
3) A group with weapons has the power, and if what you say make them stronger you are speaking the truth.
How some of the largest countries already work
How some of the largest countries already work
The world is multi-faceted. Situations and individuals are complex. Externalities and exceptions abound.
Multiple perspectives can accurately describe the same event - e.g. the fable about the blind me all describing an elephant.
Each of their individual descriptions is true. There is also a larger truth that none of them are aware of. That doesn’t make them liars either individually or a group.
Additionally, it can be highly politically advantageous to frame, spin, or otherwise mischaracterize, on the thinnest evidence, both out of bad faith and naïveté.
So, about Truth with a capital ‘T’, I’d like to paraphrase PK Dick’s statement, “truth is what exists when you stop believing.”
Multiple perspectives can accurately describe the same event - e.g. the fable about the blind me all describing an elephant.
Each of their individual descriptions is true. There is also a larger truth that none of them are aware of. That doesn’t make them liars either individually or a group.
Additionally, it can be highly politically advantageous to frame, spin, or otherwise mischaracterize, on the thinnest evidence, both out of bad faith and naïveté.
So, about Truth with a capital ‘T’, I’d like to paraphrase PK Dick’s statement, “truth is what exists when you stop believing.”
I totally agree, but it's not much use when trying to counter an anti-vaxxer spreading misinformation via Facebook
You can. And there's an easy way to smell test a source:
What's their response to verification? People who are lying are going to say either you can't or don't want to check up on them. At some point, they're going to say "trust me".
Never trust someone who asks for your trust. Someone trustworthy isn't concerned whether or not you trust them. They will just say, "Fine, here's what I used. Show me what I missed."
What's their response to verification? People who are lying are going to say either you can't or don't want to check up on them. At some point, they're going to say "trust me".
Never trust someone who asks for your trust. Someone trustworthy isn't concerned whether or not you trust them. They will just say, "Fine, here's what I used. Show me what I missed."
So (effectively) if they don't share their data, they're lying?
To paraphrase: Not everyone who hides data is a liar, but all liars hide data.
The rule isn't to positively identify liars. The rule isn't to positively identify non-liars either.
The rule is to dismiss as many liars as possible as fast as possible. By immediately dismissing anyone who doesn't want you to check their work or doesn't give you all the information necessary to recreate their work, you will dismiss a lot of liars with little effort.
You will also dismiss some people who aren't lying, but that's actually ok. It's better to dismiss an honest study that doesn't meet scrutiny rather than accept a dishonest study. Eventually, either the data will come out and you can vet the information, or someone else will reach the same conclusion and they will share their data. Liars can never reach that point.
The rule isn't to positively identify liars. The rule isn't to positively identify non-liars either.
The rule is to dismiss as many liars as possible as fast as possible. By immediately dismissing anyone who doesn't want you to check their work or doesn't give you all the information necessary to recreate their work, you will dismiss a lot of liars with little effort.
You will also dismiss some people who aren't lying, but that's actually ok. It's better to dismiss an honest study that doesn't meet scrutiny rather than accept a dishonest study. Eventually, either the data will come out and you can vet the information, or someone else will reach the same conclusion and they will share their data. Liars can never reach that point.
Probably, yes.
Oh nobody’s even bothered to think about epistemology before.
I mean, I know you're joking, but people agree on the easy stuff (mostly, I guess), so all that's left to figure out is the hard stuff. It's true that people have spent thousands of years thinking about epistemology, but my impression is that it's not a solved problem at all.
I know right? Wittgenstein solved the whole thing in 1922 and yet here we are 100 years later, still acting like "knowing the truth" is a hard problem.
(Here's hoping I can avoid the wrath of Poe's law)
(Here's hoping I can avoid the wrath of Poe's law)
Wittgenstein demonstrated that knowing the truth is not hard? Does this refer to a particular publication or idea?
By that logic, who merits being judge of who other merits being judge? The act of asking your question, is itself a judgement, and a vote to silence others - which is, in whole, a politically violent act.
> The act of asking your question, is itself a judgement
It certainly wasn't intended that way. Maybe you're judging my question incorrectly?
It certainly wasn't intended that way. Maybe you're judging my question incorrectly?
We'll just let Google write another algorithm to handle it and take the human aspect out of the equation /s
That's an interesting thought.
Coal plants offer cheap power, mostly because they ignore the externalities of pollution.
If you could identify the externalities of lies and tax or fine them in some way, maybe they would be minimized.
(tax what you want less of)
Coal plants offer cheap power, mostly because they ignore the externalities of pollution.
If you could identify the externalities of lies and tax or fine them in some way, maybe they would be minimized.
(tax what you want less of)
Let's also consider whether lies should be made more expensive.
Whether lies should be more expensive or not, lies cannot be made expensive. Even in a totalitarian state, false rumors spread easily. The cost of production of lies is close to zero, the cost of distribution of lies also close to zero.
It's like all of HN is eager to apply an argument that makes sense for cheap, knock-off auto parts ("Cheap is too expensive", etc) to decent public journalism. It doesn't work.
Whether lies should be more expensive or not, lies cannot be made expensive. Even in a totalitarian state, false rumors spread easily. The cost of production of lies is close to zero, the cost of distribution of lies also close to zero.
It's like all of HN is eager to apply an argument that makes sense for cheap, knock-off auto parts ("Cheap is too expensive", etc) to decent public journalism. It doesn't work.
>Whether lies should be more expensive or not, lies cannot be made expensive.
But they can. Defamation laws make false claims expensive. Accounts can be revoked. Costs can be imposed if society has the will to do so.
But they can. Defamation laws make false claims expensive. Accounts can be revoked. Costs can be imposed if society has the will to do so.
In Germany, part of the problem is that old media lobbying has successfully prevented a reasonable (text based) internet presence of public broadcasting...
Some Google-translated coverage: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Some Google-translated coverage: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Public broadcasting in Germany is no better than private media. In fact most topics are reported the same and even the opinion is the same. But even ignoring this, it is a big problem that publicly funded media is in direct economic competition with privately funded media. This is exacerbated by the official entertainment mission (Unterhaltungsauftrag[1]) and the usage of advertisement.
[1]: https://www.die-medienanstalten.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Rec... in §11
[1]: https://www.die-medienanstalten.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Rec... in §11
Why is the public funded media in direct economic competition with private media? Because the public funded media IS directly funded by the taxpayers.
I can imagine they have a "popularity" competition in terms of viewership and so on but why economic? Can you elaborate please?
I can imagine they have a "popularity" competition in terms of viewership and so on but why economic? Can you elaborate please?
Say you read ten articles every morning. With no public option, you read ten private articles. With a public option, you would still read the same number of articles each morning, but every time you read a public article, some private organization loses a tiny bit of revenue.
Worse still, imagine you are a paying subscriber to some private newspaper. If the public option has very high quality coverage, you may find that you no longer need your private subscription.
Worse still, imagine you are a paying subscriber to some private newspaper. If the public option has very high quality coverage, you may find that you no longer need your private subscription.
> If the public option has very high quality coverage, you may find that you no longer need your private subscription.
Or regardless of the quality of the public option, you may find that you can no longer afford your private subscription. The public option isn't free, after all—just pre-paid with no ability to opt out—and you may not be able to afford two such services. Other cases where public services "compete" with private providers (e.g. toll roads) suffer from the same problem: You don't get to choose between paying for the public option and paying for the private option. You're either paying for just the public option, or for both, even if the private option is all you want or need.
Or regardless of the quality of the public option, you may find that you can no longer afford your private subscription. The public option isn't free, after all—just pre-paid with no ability to opt out—and you may not be able to afford two such services. Other cases where public services "compete" with private providers (e.g. toll roads) suffer from the same problem: You don't get to choose between paying for the public option and paying for the private option. You're either paying for just the public option, or for both, even if the private option is all you want or need.
I'm German. Public broadcasting, including ARD/ZDF but also countless of local radio station is without a doubt significantly better in quality than BILD/RTL or other private tabloid media, and it's one of the reasons the country still has by and large a shared reality when it comes to political discussion.
I don't think that they also provide entertainment is in any way problematic, because entertainment is part of a cultural offering that should be accessible by everyone. I don't really see the competition issue here, just like the BBC they produce content, which is fine.
Has to be said though in quality it doesn't really measure up to the BBC, but you can try to claw Tatort from my dead hands
I don't think that they also provide entertainment is in any way problematic, because entertainment is part of a cultural offering that should be accessible by everyone. I don't really see the competition issue here, just like the BBC they produce content, which is fine.
Has to be said though in quality it doesn't really measure up to the BBC, but you can try to claw Tatort from my dead hands
Agree wholeheartedly. And I'd like to add that there is by no means a uniform opinion propagated. For example, the ARD (one of the major public broadcasting networks) hosts both the rather left-leaning "Monitor", and the more conservative "Report aus München". However, as you highlighted, they share a common understanding of the world, and therefore Germany doesn't suffer extreme polarisation.
(I'd argue that the fringes, as seen with the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Berlin recently, are actually sustained by newfangled social media.)
Links (German only, sorry):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_(Fernsehmagazin)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_München
(I'd argue that the fringes, as seen with the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Berlin recently, are actually sustained by newfangled social media.)
Links (German only, sorry):
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monitor_(Fernsehmagazin)
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Report_München
>I'd argue that the fringes, as seen with the anti-lockdown demonstrations in Berlin recently, are actually sustained by newfangled social media.
My impression was that they were mostly older people (50+), and from their style of clothing I could tell that they were mostly poor people, maybe people who got wrecked by Hartz4 reforms in the 90s and early 2000s, and grew a deep hate on German politics and the mainstream. Fringe social media groups and conspiracy nuts just take advantage of pre-existing hate.
My impression was that they were mostly older people (50+), and from their style of clothing I could tell that they were mostly poor people, maybe people who got wrecked by Hartz4 reforms in the 90s and early 2000s, and grew a deep hate on German politics and the mainstream. Fringe social media groups and conspiracy nuts just take advantage of pre-existing hate.
"[...] and it's one of the reasons the country still has by and large a shared reality when it comes to political discussion."
Shared reality is quite a cynical word and is a reminder just how bad it really is.
"I don't think that they also provide entertainment is in any way problematic, because entertainment is part of a cultural offering that should be accessible by everyone. I don't really see the competition issue here, just like the BBC they produce content, which is fine." How is it not unfair if you compete in the exact same market with a publicly funded corporation[1]?
"Has to be said though in quality it doesn't really measure up to the BBC, but you can try to claw Tatort from my dead hands " It is basically on par with ntv, Welt and doesn't really measure up to ServusTV. They all share one thing with ARD/ZDF tho and that is advertisement.
[1]: Open any site of public funded TV and look for "Unternehmen" (Corporation) also they have a lot of for-profit corporations spun off, so there is no point calling it a public institution when in fact it is not.
"I don't think that they also provide entertainment is in any way problematic, because entertainment is part of a cultural offering that should be accessible by everyone. I don't really see the competition issue here, just like the BBC they produce content, which is fine." How is it not unfair if you compete in the exact same market with a publicly funded corporation[1]?
"Has to be said though in quality it doesn't really measure up to the BBC, but you can try to claw Tatort from my dead hands " It is basically on par with ntv, Welt and doesn't really measure up to ServusTV. They all share one thing with ARD/ZDF tho and that is advertisement.
[1]: Open any site of public funded TV and look for "Unternehmen" (Corporation) also they have a lot of for-profit corporations spun off, so there is no point calling it a public institution when in fact it is not.
> I'm German. Public broadcasting, including ARD/ZDF but also countless of local radio station is without a doubt significantly better in quality than BILD/RTL or other private tabloid media
Better than FAZ, ZEIT, Spiegel? That's the private media you should compare the news sections to, and I have some doubts that anybody thinks Public Broadcaster by and large have a similar level of journalistic integrity & quality.
Better than FAZ, ZEIT, Spiegel? That's the private media you should compare the news sections to, and I have some doubts that anybody thinks Public Broadcaster by and large have a similar level of journalistic integrity & quality.
Public broadcasting does not replace FAZ/Zeit/Spiegel though. There's a difference between reporting short pieces of news and the articles in the mentioned news papers.
They're not completely the same, but they are competitors, since they also have vast text websites, they're not limited to broadcasting, which makes sense given their desire to expand the tax base and the population's pivot from TV to web.
I find the argument "look at quality of the private sector, we need the public broadcasters" to be generally disingenuous. Private companies will invest where there's a chance to make a profit, having to compete with tax-funded free services makes that much less likely, ergo you won't see a lot of investment. To consider that proof for the necessity of a tax-funded system is like a monopolist claiming that nobody would provide the services if they didn't, knowing full well that it's their abuse of the monopoly that keeps competitors out.
I find the argument "look at quality of the private sector, we need the public broadcasters" to be generally disingenuous. Private companies will invest where there's a chance to make a profit, having to compete with tax-funded free services makes that much less likely, ergo you won't see a lot of investment. To consider that proof for the necessity of a tax-funded system is like a monopolist claiming that nobody would provide the services if they didn't, knowing full well that it's their abuse of the monopoly that keeps competitors out.
1) The public media web outlets I know do not publish in-depth articles like Spiegel/Zeit/Sueddeutsche. Yes, it makes sense that the public media change their focus as the to follow the focus of the population they serve.
2) Since the topic at hand is limited to Germany, I guess a look at other nations is an argument?
2) Since the topic at hand is limited to Germany, I guess a look at other nations is an argument?
> Yes, it makes sense that the public media change their focus as the to follow the focus of the population they serve.
But that area was already more than well-covered by plenty of private companies. Why does the state need to compete? I can absolutely see an argument for the initial creation of public broadcasters: it's an enormous investment in a new technology and we want some control over it. But to enter a well-established market "because that's what most people prefer now and we're losing relevance" is a of private company perspective. "Oh hey, I noticed that there's a successful market providing what the customers want. Let me throw money at disrupting it" isn't usually a government position.
Sure, you can look at other countries. The US is a pretty good example in my opinion. They're getting better products in any direction: better if you want trash TV, higher quality news (with highly specialized channels such as Bloomberg TV but also general news-channels like CNN), better if you want entertainment (HBO vs Tatort? I don't think there's even a question), better if you want sports coverage (ESPN etc), better if you want music.
And they still have public broadcasting to serve special requirements, only at a much, much, much lower price because they don't try to make them cover everything anyone could ever want.
But that area was already more than well-covered by plenty of private companies. Why does the state need to compete? I can absolutely see an argument for the initial creation of public broadcasters: it's an enormous investment in a new technology and we want some control over it. But to enter a well-established market "because that's what most people prefer now and we're losing relevance" is a of private company perspective. "Oh hey, I noticed that there's a successful market providing what the customers want. Let me throw money at disrupting it" isn't usually a government position.
Sure, you can look at other countries. The US is a pretty good example in my opinion. They're getting better products in any direction: better if you want trash TV, higher quality news (with highly specialized channels such as Bloomberg TV but also general news-channels like CNN), better if you want entertainment (HBO vs Tatort? I don't think there's even a question), better if you want sports coverage (ESPN etc), better if you want music.
And they still have public broadcasting to serve special requirements, only at a much, much, much lower price because they don't try to make them cover everything anyone could ever want.
I agree that publich broadcasting in Germany is very much biased. Saying that they are better than tabloids (which other commenters here are) is hardly a high bar.
Besides wasting money on useless entertainment, German public broadcasters also prey on the vulnerable by promoting gambling. They even just prime time just before the evening news for this.
But worse than the content is the funding method. Instead of being funded from taxes the public broadcasters collect a separate non-means-tested fee that is still somehow mandatory. That might have made some sense when you could opt out of that fee by not owning a TV but that option is no longer available.
Besides wasting money on useless entertainment, German public broadcasters also prey on the vulnerable by promoting gambling. They even just prime time just before the evening news for this.
But worse than the content is the funding method. Instead of being funded from taxes the public broadcasters collect a separate non-means-tested fee that is still somehow mandatory. That might have made some sense when you could opt out of that fee by not owning a TV but that option is no longer available.
I don't see the direct economic competition as a problem. Informing the population is fundamental to living in a democratic society. Providing a non-profit oriented basis makes as much sense as funding libraries (which compete with publishers) and schools (compete with private schools).
I know it's not perfect, but it definitely is not a "big problem".
I know it's not perfect, but it definitely is not a "big problem".
Please get a library card if you wish to read quality (often paywalled) news sources for free. Your tax dollars (going to your city/county) are already paying for access. Best of all, it's digital. Your library card number will grant you huge access to all of this digitally and in near real time (e.g., the databases are updated daily).
Few of the sources I find most useful (technical books, academic journals, historical magazine and newspaper articles) are available even with a library affiliation.
LibGen and SciHub are vastly more convenient and comprehensive.
LibGen and SciHub are vastly more convenient and comprehensive.
Are you referring to digital scans or what? My library card doesn’t allow me to access nytimes.com.
The databases are separate web applications. Your username (and password) is your library ID card number, generally. When inside this site, you can search for publications (e.g., NY Times), and then filter by publication date (e.g., today), and view all of today's articles. It isn't access to NYTimes.com, but it's the same article contents accessed in a different way.
You may have used these databases in school to write research papers. Public libraries grant more or less the same access to similar/same databases, if you no longer are a member of an academic institution.
You may have used these databases in school to write research papers. Public libraries grant more or less the same access to similar/same databases, if you no longer are a member of an academic institution.
It might (depending on your library)
https://www.lapl.org/new-york-times-digital
If your library offers access it will be through a portal, you won't use your library credentials to authenticate with NYT.
It's a lot easier now that there are websites, and even mobile apps, tied to library systems. My local library system offers some impressive stuff like current and past newspapers, magazines, Associated Press videos, etc.
The first link in the article is not a "lie".
"Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing.
How is that a lie?
"Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets" has a RT video that shows exactly that, and links to several other confirmed Twitter accounts all stating the same thing.
How is that a lie?
Not saying it's a lie, but having problems corroborating the original footage. No major news agencies are carrying it, I can't even find an AP or Reuters on it and they generally would report on this kind of thing. For instance, AP has a report of flag burning on Aug 1st, but nothing about bibles.
I'm skeptical because there have been times footage from other events have been reused out of context to push an agenda. Just a few days ago Trump ran a campaign ad that used Ukrainian protest imagery to demonstrate chaos in the US, for instance.
I'm skeptical because there have been times footage from other events have been reused out of context to push an agenda. Just a few days ago Trump ran a campaign ad that used Ukrainian protest imagery to demonstrate chaos in the US, for instance.
Where does OP's article say that the bible-burning incident was a 'lie'?
New York Post says 'a bible', and your video a single book being burned, can't see whether that's a bible. The original video has been deleted (link is dead here: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 ) but quickly picked up by the usual far-right BS twitterati.
>The fire was later put out by members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, who doused the flames with bottles of water and stomped on the embers,
so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source.
New York Post says 'a bible', and your video a single book being burned, can't see whether that's a bible. The original video has been deleted (link is dead here: https://twitter.com/stillgray/status/1289512762733785088 ) but quickly picked up by the usual far-right BS twitterati.
>The fire was later put out by members of Moms United for Black Lives Matter, who doused the flames with bottles of water and stomped on the embers,
so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source.
> so that article OP cites is outrage bait, it's not an informed source.
How does this follow? One faction burns a bible and another faction puts it out. How do you choose which narrative to privilege?
How does this follow? One faction burns a bible and another faction puts it out. How do you choose which narrative to privilege?
The book being burned doesn't look like a bible to me - the breitbart article tries to spin that one book being burned into a NSDAP-like mass book burning event, with bibles being burned - we don't know which faction burned that single book, but breitbart wants the reader very hard to believe that it was BLM people/leftwing people.
> How do you choose which narrative to privilege?
Do you REALLY find it that hard to figure out? I can't tell if you're being sincere, or just being a troll who is trying to shrug and say nihilistic-sounding things to advance the alt-right agenda, which is to "flood the channels with shit" as Bannon said.
If some right-wing rando at a protest start burning a bible, and then two large established groups of protestors try to stop him because it is not what they are protesting and is sending a misleading optics, it really isn't that hard to see what is going on.
Like the white supremacist biker that was recently arrested for smashing windows during a BLM protest in an attempt to create deceptive optics for the right wing media machine.
Do you REALLY find it that hard to figure out? I can't tell if you're being sincere, or just being a troll who is trying to shrug and say nihilistic-sounding things to advance the alt-right agenda, which is to "flood the channels with shit" as Bannon said.
If some right-wing rando at a protest start burning a bible, and then two large established groups of protestors try to stop him because it is not what they are protesting and is sending a misleading optics, it really isn't that hard to see what is going on.
Like the white supremacist biker that was recently arrested for smashing windows during a BLM protest in an attempt to create deceptive optics for the right wing media machine.
There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland, but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway.
We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced discussion of "is something technically a lie" that end with a good feeling in my gut. So that's kinda a clue that despite the technicalities of language something uncool is happening.
We can get into a nuanced discussion of "is it really lying" since there's a video, but I have not been a party to any conversations in my lifetime that start with a nuanced discussion of "is something technically a lie" that end with a good feeling in my gut. So that's kinda a clue that despite the technicalities of language something uncool is happening.
1) There are protestors 2) They are doing things 3) "Protestors are doing things" is a lie because they might not "actually" be part of the protestors but instead be false-flag undercover agents?
That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming to damage the Republican Party. Of course, it doesn't look that way on the surface, but you never know. Saying he's a Republican is "a lie" by those standards.
That's wild. You can't have a functioning press under those assumptions, because you don't know for absolute certain that everything is the way it looks. Donald Trump might be a long-term agent of the Democratic Party aiming to damage the Republican Party. Of course, it doesn't look that way on the surface, but you never know. Saying he's a Republican is "a lie" by those standards.
There is a long, long history of false-flag operations undertaken during protests. Some caution is advised when deciding whether any one action is taken by genuine protesters, especially when it's as comically "unpatriotic" as burning the bible and flag.
Then a Factual facts based reporting would be something like
"Today there were protests, and during those protests these things occurred, we do not yet know if the people committing these terrible acts where part of the protest or not"
Instead we get
"During mostly peaceful protests everyone sat in a circle chanting defund the police" while in the background we see buildings on fire
"Today there were protests, and during those protests these things occurred, we do not yet know if the people committing these terrible acts where part of the protest or not"
Instead we get
"During mostly peaceful protests everyone sat in a circle chanting defund the police" while in the background we see buildings on fire
Obviously, just as it's important to be cautious in general when reporting on hot issues. But to claim that it's a lie because they might be false flag seems ridiculous. Your reporting might always turn out to not be accurate in hindsight, but I wouldn't consider it a lie unless you knew it to be inaccurate at the time of publishing.
If it makes our side look bad then it's fake news
Agreed. I don't know the article author's opinion on this, but my personal problem with the article is not its veracity, but that it is obviously engineered to cause outrage in a certain group. It is nearly impossible to put forward facts that do not tend towards a bias, but efforts can be made to present it in a less emotionally charged way. Many comments on HN that are factually true get downvoted because of accusatory phrasing, this is the same in my opinion.
For example (maybe - nobody will ever know):
> The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre, Haymarket riot, or Haymarket Square riot) was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after police killed one and injured several workers. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
> The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket massacre, Haymarket riot, or Haymarket Square riot) was the aftermath of a bombing that took place at a labor demonstration on May 4, 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago. It began as a peaceful rally in support of workers striking for an eight-hour work day, the day after police killed one and injured several workers. An unknown person threw a dynamite bomb at the police as they acted to disperse the meeting, and the bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and at least four civilians; dozens of others were wounded.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haymarket_affair
Ok, but then you could call almost everything in the news a lie because there is always a chance that it's a set up by some nefarious, false-flag operation.
Not exactly helpful.
Not exactly helpful.
There's a lot of precedent for right wing false flag provocation during these protests, and lots of evidence, while there's no credible evidence of Trump being a double agent for the Democrats. There are people vandalizing their own property to blame it on antifa, "boogaloo" proponents smashing windows and lighting things on fire and posing as BLM supporters while calling for violence. It is wild, yes.
It's more than just whether or not the events are true; I'll assume they are, but the commentary of "protests and riots are [..] an attempt to dismantle all of Western Civilization and upend centuries of tradition and freedom of religion" and "flag burning at the antifa/BLM gathering" most certainly is not. The problem with that last one, to be clear, is that it's trying to associate some alleged terror organisation with a civil right protest.
This entire thing fits in a pattern of poisoning the well and conflation of unrelated things on this topic. Is it strictly speaking a "lie"? Probably not, but it's also most certainly not an article intended to promote a deeper understanding of events – quite the opposite.
This entire thing fits in a pattern of poisoning the well and conflation of unrelated things on this topic. Is it strictly speaking a "lie"? Probably not, but it's also most certainly not an article intended to promote a deeper understanding of events – quite the opposite.
This, to me, is the biggest reason it's presented as a lie. You can present factual events in such a way to convince people to draw incorrect conclusions, and that seems to be what the Breitbart article is doing. I actually like this example of a lie, because it's not an unintentional lapse of editorial oversight but an intentional distortion of fact. The unstated conclusion of the article, that Portland is an anarchist playground in need of correcting, is just as important to the context of the article as the "factual" events it describes. I swear, the HN commentariat can be so literal.
This is exactly what a coordinated Russian disinformation campaign looks like.
https://www.npr.org/2018/11/15/668209008/inside-the-russian-...
I agree, but I don't consider that remarkable in news media: pretty much all events are spun and presented in some way while intentionally removing context that suggests a different interpretation. It's "technically correct" but it's not in the spirit of truth and neutral reporting.
I wish journalists had higher standards, but they don't. I wish the same for consultants, but they typically recommend whatever they're selling, not what the customer needs, so I don't know why journalists would be more ethically, they're human like all of us.
I wish journalists had higher standards, but they don't. I wish the same for consultants, but they typically recommend whatever they're selling, not what the customer needs, so I don't know why journalists would be more ethically, they're human like all of us.
I couldn't disagree more. "A little bit wrong" is not the same as "profoundly wrong".
A technically true statement in a falsified context is actually still an utter lie.
For an example close to my heart, I can't count how many videos I've seen purporting to show little innocent children dying in Gaza (killed by the IDF) or in Syria (killed by Insert Party Here) that were actually from Syria (ie: not the IDF) or Iraq (ie: not your least-favorite party to the Syrian Civil War).
Is it a lie if I post a video of my dog playing fetch and say it's someone else's dog doing a trick? Hell yes it is.
For an example close to my heart, I can't count how many videos I've seen purporting to show little innocent children dying in Gaza (killed by the IDF) or in Syria (killed by Insert Party Here) that were actually from Syria (ie: not the IDF) or Iraq (ie: not your least-favorite party to the Syrian Civil War).
Is it a lie if I post a video of my dog playing fetch and say it's someone else's dog doing a trick? Hell yes it is.
> but the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT
They have originated with events on the ground widely reported by independent journalists, citizens and local news.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo
What people here are doing is dismissing the overall picture of what's happening on the ground in Portland based on a few misreported facts. No matter that that are hundreds of videos from different sources showing all kinds of crazy shit. "Breitbart lied about bible burning, so the protests must be peaceful!"
They have originated with events on the ground widely reported by independent journalists, citizens and local news.
https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo
What people here are doing is dismissing the overall picture of what's happening on the ground in Portland based on a few misreported facts. No matter that that are hundreds of videos from different sources showing all kinds of crazy shit. "Breitbart lied about bible burning, so the protests must be peaceful!"
I'd be careful trusting anything being piped from Andy Ngo, he has a history of being affiliated with, and giving preferential coverage to some pretty nasty far-right groups [1].
[1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-n...
[1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/andy-n...
>I'd be careful trusting anything being piped from Andy Ngo
This is supposed to prove that hundreds of videos posted there (many of which are sourced and attributed) are all fake? This sort of ad-hominem nonsense is getting beyond ridiculous.
This is supposed to prove that hundreds of videos posted there (many of which are sourced and attributed) are all fake? This sort of ad-hominem nonsense is getting beyond ridiculous.
The old Snopes effect
Claim: Protestors burned then stomped on the US Flag
Snopes: Mostly False, Protestors actually stomped then burned the flag
Claim: Protestors burned then stomped on the US Flag
Snopes: Mostly False, Protestors actually stomped then burned the flag
> the fact that this thing is being pumped through the lie pipelines that originate with places like RT (Russian state-controlled media) is kinda a dead giveaway.
What makes corporate-owned media more trustworthy than state-owned media?
What makes corporate-owned media more trustworthy than state-owned media?
>There's been a lot of coverage around false-flag sorts of behavior in Portland
And has any of it found to be true?
I see a worrying amount of blame on invisible spies for actions that happen all the time in the real world without the need to sound like we are living in Red Scare 2.0.
To literally quote 1984:
>The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over.
And has any of it found to be true?
I see a worrying amount of blame on invisible spies for actions that happen all the time in the real world without the need to sound like we are living in Red Scare 2.0.
To literally quote 1984:
>The most savage yells of all came from the schoolchildren. The speech had been proceeding for perhaps twenty minutes when a messenger hurried on to the platform and a scrap of paper was slipped into the speaker's hand. He unrolled and read it without pausing in his speech. Nothing altered in his voice or manner, or in the content of what he was saying, but suddenly the names were different. Without words said, a wave of understanding rippled through the crowd. Oceania was at war with Eastasia! The next moment there was a tremendous commotion. The banners and posters with which the square was decorated were all wrong! Quite half of them had the wrong faces on them. It was sabotage! The agents of Goldstein had been at work! There was a riotous interlude while posters were ripped from the walls, banners torn to shreds and trampled underfoot. The Spies performed prodigies of activity in clambering over the rooftops and cutting the streamers that fluttered from the chimneys. But within two or three minutes it was all over.
That may perhaps not be the best example – although the linked Breibart article is hardly a stellar journalism and some of the commentary is wildly off-base – but the general pattern described in the article seems to be mostly right to me.
IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form.
IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form.
> IMHO dismissing/criticising a rather lengthy article just on one less-than-ideal example is not really good form.
I actually up-voted the article, and started reading, then removed my up-vote when I realized the very first article linked contradicts the entire headline. If the headline is true, the author could have picked dozens of other links of obvious lies, but clearly didn't attempt to validate their own work
I actually up-voted the article, and started reading, then removed my up-vote when I realized the very first article linked contradicts the entire headline. If the headline is true, the author could have picked dozens of other links of obvious lies, but clearly didn't attempt to validate their own work
Through selective omission, by presenting the non-central as central. Did the events in that article happen? Yes, probably. Would someone who gets their information from Breitbart have a roughly accurate idea of what happened at the Portland protests? No.
Lies are not free, they are paid by ads and a complete industry is built on keeping this going. The price of the ads are built into the price of the product/service you buy, so we are basically paying for the lies too, it’s just not as obvious as paying to get through the paywall.
Conspiracies are a never ending source for new ownable keywords and terminology, which combined with the "research it yourself mantra" only drives people deeper into the ecosystem of alternative book stores and prepper online shops etc. If people would know how the web works they'd be more sceptic about the media they encounter and their calls to action.
I think the meaning is pretty clear. Dishonest/misleading sources of information are intentionally designed to have a vary low barrier to entry, while trustworthy sources are forced to use off-putting paywalls due to the inherent higher cost of what they do. Hence the asymmetry.
They are free for consumers
They're free for the consumers of lies. They're paid for by the consumers of whatever product is buying the adverts.
No, you are getting paid for the lies and advertisements you see. You get paid with free apps.
Great point. You could say that the "lies" are propaganda, as much as the advertisement that they are the vehicle for. Inundated with this much propaganda, which points to the impotence of the individual, no wonder we're seeing so much mass unrest.
I just want Netflix for journalism. I don't want a super expensive sub to a dozen papers. I want one subscription, they all should be included (maybe offer different tiers if you are an arse) and it shouldn't be more than $20/month.
Go.
Go.
Why do you assume that $20 is enough to support multiple newspapers?
That's nearly how much the New York Times ($17/month) alone costs and they lost money every year in recent history until 2018 and are only now turning the corner as a business.
On the surface I'd assume that actual journalism -- not just clickbait opinion pieces -- is going to cost you way more than $20 a month if you want access to multiple sources.
That's nearly how much the New York Times ($17/month) alone costs and they lost money every year in recent history until 2018 and are only now turning the corner as a business.
On the surface I'd assume that actual journalism -- not just clickbait opinion pieces -- is going to cost you way more than $20 a month if you want access to multiple sources.
This is the fallacy that led to the current broken model.
Suppose that instead of paying $17 a month to get the NYT, I pay $20 a month to get that and five other similarly high quality news sources. Does this make it harder to fund journalism? Not at all. The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all paying slightly more than six times as much. So do the five other organizations. And, since the consumer has a much better proposition, people who previously weren't paying will sign up and the total pot will be even bigger. Since all the costs are fixed costs, it doesn't matter if everyone reads six times as many articles. But they won't. They will read slightly more, but benefit much more by having a bigger choice.
This is what we saw with Spotify. You pay about the price of buying one album a month. But you get to listen to much, much, more. Even if you only listen to a few songs a day, the utility of being able to choose from anything is huge. Of course, some people used to spend a lot more each month on physical music. But lots of other people used to spend nothing, since if you only had $15 a month, you could't get much for it.
One problem is that the NYT, the the FT, the New Yorker, etc, each assume that they are uniquely trusted and loved by their audience. But that's only true because of selection bias. No one who values their output to the tune of $3 a month is part of their readership.
In the music industry, the huge monopolists could force adoption of the new model. But they're also the reason musicians don't make much money, since they are now supporting two sets of middlemen - the tech companies and the 'record labels'.
Suppose that instead of paying $17 a month to get the NYT, I pay $20 a month to get that and five other similarly high quality news sources. Does this make it harder to fund journalism? Not at all. The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all paying slightly more than six times as much. So do the five other organizations. And, since the consumer has a much better proposition, people who previously weren't paying will sign up and the total pot will be even bigger. Since all the costs are fixed costs, it doesn't matter if everyone reads six times as many articles. But they won't. They will read slightly more, but benefit much more by having a bigger choice.
This is what we saw with Spotify. You pay about the price of buying one album a month. But you get to listen to much, much, more. Even if you only listen to a few songs a day, the utility of being able to choose from anything is huge. Of course, some people used to spend a lot more each month on physical music. But lots of other people used to spend nothing, since if you only had $15 a month, you could't get much for it.
One problem is that the NYT, the the FT, the New Yorker, etc, each assume that they are uniquely trusted and loved by their audience. But that's only true because of selection bias. No one who values their output to the tune of $3 a month is part of their readership.
In the music industry, the huge monopolists could force adoption of the new model. But they're also the reason musicians don't make much money, since they are now supporting two sets of middlemen - the tech companies and the 'record labels'.
> The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all paying slightly more than six times as much.
There have been many many efforts to have sites that provide access to multiple news sources for a single price. Apple News, PressReader, Magzster, and more.
Newspapers and their corporate owners have ample data on your claim that low single prices massively increase the audience. I'm guessing your claim is not supported by the real world data and that's why they haven't adopted the model.
After all, only 16% of people have said they are willing to pay any amount of money to read the news. That's a total market of 40 million people. The NY Times has 6 million subscribers, so they've already captured 15% of the market. Your claim that they could capture 6x means this mythical service would capture 90% of the total available market.
Which just seems...implausible on the surface. Netflix doesn't even have remotely that penetration -- only 51% -- and they've been around forever, have massive brand recognition, have tons of money, have unique properties to draw viewers, etc, etc.
There have been many many efforts to have sites that provide access to multiple news sources for a single price. Apple News, PressReader, Magzster, and more.
Newspapers and their corporate owners have ample data on your claim that low single prices massively increase the audience. I'm guessing your claim is not supported by the real world data and that's why they haven't adopted the model.
After all, only 16% of people have said they are willing to pay any amount of money to read the news. That's a total market of 40 million people. The NY Times has 6 million subscribers, so they've already captured 15% of the market. Your claim that they could capture 6x means this mythical service would capture 90% of the total available market.
Which just seems...implausible on the surface. Netflix doesn't even have remotely that penetration -- only 51% -- and they've been around forever, have massive brand recognition, have tons of money, have unique properties to draw viewers, etc, etc.
Let's not forget that these music services are possible because the authors are paid peanuts, i.e, almost nothing for their work (other than a handful of the most popular chart topping acts).
The thing with journalism is that you can't rely that much on back catalogs and artistic enthusiasm. An indie band might share all their music on Spotify for $1.37 a month revenue for the love of music, but that $1.37 will not buy you much of quality reporting...
The thing with journalism is that you can't rely that much on back catalogs and artistic enthusiasm. An indie band might share all their music on Spotify for $1.37 a month revenue for the love of music, but that $1.37 will not buy you much of quality reporting...
> The NYT now has (for argument's sake) six times as many subscribers, all paying slightly more than six times as much.
Not really, there must be an intersection between them and we don't know how large it is. And I don't believe there's many other magazine/news sites as successful as NYT so the revenue number is more likely 3x~4x even assuming no intersection and 100% conversion rate.
The real issue is that traditional media's competitive edge was its infrastructure for content distribution, not the content itself. Sadly, people willing to pay money for high quality journalism seems minority so its budget is. Otherwise, ads-powered yellow journalism cannot be thriving as is. In this landscape, there's simply not much incentive to pursue such aggregated subscription model for media itself. Maybe there can be suitable business models for aggregators like FB or Google, but I don't think this is what you really want.
Not really, there must be an intersection between them and we don't know how large it is. And I don't believe there's many other magazine/news sites as successful as NYT so the revenue number is more likely 3x~4x even assuming no intersection and 100% conversion rate.
The real issue is that traditional media's competitive edge was its infrastructure for content distribution, not the content itself. Sadly, people willing to pay money for high quality journalism seems minority so its budget is. Otherwise, ads-powered yellow journalism cannot be thriving as is. In this landscape, there's simply not much incentive to pursue such aggregated subscription model for media itself. Maybe there can be suitable business models for aggregators like FB or Google, but I don't think this is what you really want.
I think the point is that a cheaper subscription model would bring in a lot of new subscribers that were previously paying nothing.
There's a quote that goes along the lines of "those who don't read the news are uninformed; those who read the news are misinformed".
For me, I see NYT as one of the more credible new sources, but it has a history of bias against reforms to wealth inequality, which is an important issue for me. Accordingly, I can't justify using it as my sole source of news, and I can't afford to pay more than $20/mo total for this sort of expense.
So, an option to pay $20/mo for access to 5-6 different news sources would be really appealing to me. Until then, I'll keep using my 3 free articles / month from the random news outlets that get posted to HN/reddit.
There's a quote that goes along the lines of "those who don't read the news are uninformed; those who read the news are misinformed".
For me, I see NYT as one of the more credible new sources, but it has a history of bias against reforms to wealth inequality, which is an important issue for me. Accordingly, I can't justify using it as my sole source of news, and I can't afford to pay more than $20/mo total for this sort of expense.
So, an option to pay $20/mo for access to 5-6 different news sources would be really appealing to me. Until then, I'll keep using my 3 free articles / month from the random news outlets that get posted to HN/reddit.
Don't many services that cost far more than journalism to produce charge $20 a month now? Netflix is $13, Disney+ is $7 a month, Xbox Game Pass is $10 a month...
And those movies, TV shows and games cost many millions of dollars to produce. Why is journalism so much more expensive when journalists likely aren't earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and spending millions on investigations?
And those movies, TV shows and games cost many millions of dollars to produce. Why is journalism so much more expensive when journalists likely aren't earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and spending millions on investigations?
On comparison: Take the movie "die hard". Since its creation 1988 (i feeld old) it has been rewatched time and time again and been paid for by nearly every channel and streaming service.
Now look at an newspaper edition from christmas day 1988. Yes, it still costs less, but you would agree that it was already "old news" a couple of days after and rereading it is not really worth something to you, is it?
One invisible cost in journalism is research and failure. I had a boss who humorously said "just research things that we will print", but in my area of experise in journalism - data and investigative reporting - more or less half of the research is a dead end, isn't interesting enough or has issues that make reporting unadvisable. Yes, sports has a better qouta, but has also taken over by bots writing the articles.
Also: Can we agreee, that independence can only be achived with decent pay? It is an issue in other areas of work as well, but this is not about those. Journalists need to be paid well and (mostly) independent of their output or you already weaken/poison the base for independent news. And this scales more than you think.
Now multiply this to have competition in journalism (like, gasp!, multiple newspapers/mags on the newsstand for one city) and it gets really, really expensive. All that cost was hidden when the only way to locally advertise was in paper (before the internet).
"That's nearly how much the New York Times ($17/month) "
With no unit-cost, volume is a big deal for such content.
So if Times got 3x subs, they could cut their prices by 1/2 no problem. Car companies can't do that.
So creating a good marketplace with demand and volume can do this.
With no unit-cost, volume is a big deal for such content.
So if Times got 3x subs, they could cut their prices by 1/2 no problem. Car companies can't do that.
So creating a good marketplace with demand and volume can do this.
They've got somewhere north of 3 million online subscribers paying $17/month. It's not Netflix numbers, but it's still more than $600M/year - about a third of their claimed revenue. Their writers are salaried at $110K/year on average and probably around 1300 writers (given data from 2016), so that's about half their digital income for salaries.
There's also the economies of price here that's often neglected - if they charged less, more people could and would pay for it. At $17/month they can forget it, I'll get my news elsewhere. At $9.99/month, it becomes a consideration for me. At <$5/month, I'm almost definitely in; I give $4/month to Nintendo so I can play Animal Crossing with a few friends a couple times a month. I'd normally happily spend $5-10/month at a Starbucks on a mocha as an occasional treat (you know, if it weren't for the whole pandemic thing).
What I'm sure is really burning their income are holdovers from a bygone era - printing presses and their maintenance, prestigious billion dollar buildings in downtown New York City, and so on. There's no way the print side of the business is paying for itself anymore at the volume they're printing at... it's just time to let it go. And writers can work from literally anywhere... A curiously common refrain often heard here from tech workers.
There's also the economies of price here that's often neglected - if they charged less, more people could and would pay for it. At $17/month they can forget it, I'll get my news elsewhere. At $9.99/month, it becomes a consideration for me. At <$5/month, I'm almost definitely in; I give $4/month to Nintendo so I can play Animal Crossing with a few friends a couple times a month. I'd normally happily spend $5-10/month at a Starbucks on a mocha as an occasional treat (you know, if it weren't for the whole pandemic thing).
What I'm sure is really burning their income are holdovers from a bygone era - printing presses and their maintenance, prestigious billion dollar buildings in downtown New York City, and so on. There's no way the print side of the business is paying for itself anymore at the volume they're printing at... it's just time to let it go. And writers can work from literally anywhere... A curiously common refrain often heard here from tech workers.
That actually is a great way to bring up how miserably the Netflix model treats content creators.
The $4 billion rich Netflix CEO says that artists should try harder if they don't want to starve (source, this same article we are discussing)
The $4 billion rich Netflix CEO says that artists should try harder if they don't want to starve (source, this same article we are discussing)
The Netflix CEO is (mostly) rich due to equity holdings, a market value of future cash flow.
Netflix’s actual cash on the other hand has actually gone nearly 100% of revenue to content creators — they actually have taken out quite a lot of debt in order to create their content, because they think they can ultimately earn money on it over time.
But truly you should thank Netflix for ~$50 billion in content creation so far.
Netflix’s actual cash on the other hand has actually gone nearly 100% of revenue to content creators — they actually have taken out quite a lot of debt in order to create their content, because they think they can ultimately earn money on it over time.
But truly you should thank Netflix for ~$50 billion in content creation so far.
Article quotes the Spotify CEO, not the Netflix CEO.
The absolute worst posts on HN start with "I just want..." and then selfishly lowball the cost of whatever it is they want.
Anyway, you've described a cable bundle model, not Netflix's model.
Anyway, you've described a cable bundle model, not Netflix's model.
> selfishly lowball the cost of whatever it is they want.
if you asked a recording industry person in the CD age if 10$/month flatrate for music (as offered by Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple) was a fair deal, they'd have said the same or worse.
The point is, there's enough people willing to pay something but now paying exactly 0$ and not willing to pay north of 200$/year. And we're still stuck at the "newspaper bundle" stage where publications that used to bundle articles into a mass-produced paper copy and distributing them want to use that same one-size-fits-all bundle for how they charge users, even if those same users would only ever read articles by one author on one topic.
if you asked a recording industry person in the CD age if 10$/month flatrate for music (as offered by Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple) was a fair deal, they'd have said the same or worse.
The point is, there's enough people willing to pay something but now paying exactly 0$ and not willing to pay north of 200$/year. And we're still stuck at the "newspaper bundle" stage where publications that used to bundle articles into a mass-produced paper copy and distributing them want to use that same one-size-fits-all bundle for how they charge users, even if those same users would only ever read articles by one author on one topic.
A customer saying, "My reservation price for the following good is $X." is not selfish. Information is easier to access and so, whether you agree with it, people are willing to pay less for information (including newspapers). We've seen many other "information services" get much cheaper due to this demand. The news media have simply been slow to change.
"Just". If I could get rid of that word, I would. "Just" is the tip of the iceberg. It often means the speaker has no idea how to implement or what it would take to implement.
Good point. There are a fair number of words and language forms that are often "tells" of how the person saying them conceptualized and overly simplifies complex scenarios.
The worst questions to ask an engineer start with, "why can't we just..."You likely want Apple News+ [1] at just under $10 USD /mo - a single cost for a la carte access to a large pool of publications, basically the only premium subscription model that's going to be able to gain mainstream adoption.
[1] https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
[1] https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
The difference is that it doesn't just work in my browser. I easily pay $20 USD per month to not have to be shown a paywall when I click a link from HN, but that isn't what is being offered. I don't want to have to use their app. I like my browser.
No, what I want is Google Reader back. And I know I'm far, far, far away from being alone on this. Just give me the text, not the videos and the horrible formatting and poor font choices and all of that bullshit - I'd gladly pay for it, if it still existed.
May it rest in peace.
May it rest in peace.
Google Reader was just an RSS reader, and there are plenty of those available, both free and paid. RSS doesn't get you past pay walls, though.
That's like saying "Google is just a search engine" and ignoring the fact that "to google" is now an English verb and the rest of the impact it has had on information availability in the world.
Reader was a synthesis of open web culture - it offered a hub of reading multiple streams of content in one formatted location, and it did so with the support of one of the largest companies on the earth with the ability to use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted. Google could have been the 800 pound gorilla of news publications a decade before Apple News even tried.
But they just, threw it away. That's what I want back - I don't care if it's RSS or some new fancy JSON-backed article exchange protocol - the transport layer and reader app itself is largely meaningless to me; the simple elegance of being able to read the news in one location without some designers notion of layout and overzealous marketers' idea of ad coverage, and having it be quick is much more powerful. No more 2-10MB garbage landfills to serve 20kb of textual information. No more fighting to make the content work on mobile - RSS was inherently responsive and accessibility-friendly.
The technological idea of federated content have largely died because Google decided it didn't want to support them, and nobody else - not Microsoft, not Apple, nobody - stepped up to take the mantle. It had a technological problem for Google - the fact that you could pick another reader meant that there was no instinctive centralization on Googles' service, unlike situations like AMP where they're literally the man in the middle.
And while Instant Articles and AMP are trying to fill that market gap, more often than not what I find replacing it is Twitter, which is comically filled with horrible misinformation and terrible sourcing practices that make it a haven of misinformation instead of... news. And that's a real damn shame.
Reader was a synthesis of open web culture - it offered a hub of reading multiple streams of content in one formatted location, and it did so with the support of one of the largest companies on the earth with the ability to use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted. Google could have been the 800 pound gorilla of news publications a decade before Apple News even tried.
But they just, threw it away. That's what I want back - I don't care if it's RSS or some new fancy JSON-backed article exchange protocol - the transport layer and reader app itself is largely meaningless to me; the simple elegance of being able to read the news in one location without some designers notion of layout and overzealous marketers' idea of ad coverage, and having it be quick is much more powerful. No more 2-10MB garbage landfills to serve 20kb of textual information. No more fighting to make the content work on mobile - RSS was inherently responsive and accessibility-friendly.
The technological idea of federated content have largely died because Google decided it didn't want to support them, and nobody else - not Microsoft, not Apple, nobody - stepped up to take the mantle. It had a technological problem for Google - the fact that you could pick another reader meant that there was no instinctive centralization on Googles' service, unlike situations like AMP where they're literally the man in the middle.
And while Instant Articles and AMP are trying to fill that market gap, more often than not what I find replacing it is Twitter, which is comically filled with horrible misinformation and terrible sourcing practices that make it a haven of misinformation instead of... news. And that's a real damn shame.
The point still stands that what Google Reader was and what you want is an RSS reader.
Unless I'm missing something, they never did anything unique to "use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted"—it was just an RSS reader, and what you've described is exactly how I use my reader of choice (Feedbin). Many modern offerings even offer a feature to pull the full text for articles where it's not included by default.
Unless I'm missing something, they never did anything unique to "use its clout to affect change on other organizations and make that data available to them in the form they wanted"—it was just an RSS reader, and what you've described is exactly how I use my reader of choice (Feedbin). Many modern offerings even offer a feature to pull the full text for articles where it's not included by default.
In raw dollar terms this would undoubtedly >2x-3x the capital available to journalism as an industry. People who say (truthfully): "journalism needs more money" need to confront the reality that the current biz model doesn't work. Either we coerce Google news to tithe like Australia just did, or something like this sounds like a better solution than just letting journalism die.
Hard pass on algorithmic recommenders.
I have always wanted human curation, filters, opinion.
I have always wanted human curation, filters, opinion.
More importantly, news is the last place I want to be fed more of what I like.
The problem with a model like Netflix for journalism is that it will take the same path Netflix did.
you mean get into the fictional entertainment business?
Apple News+?
Not sure how available this is elsewhere but I get press reader access for free through the state library in my browser. It has a lot of papers and magazines (though the interface isn't the best)
This is Apple News+ I think?
[deleted]
and how much you think journalists should earn? 10k/yr?
Newsrooms probably pay for too many things.
You could probably get most opinion for free, lifestyle content for next to nothing, etc. The weekly jobless claims articles could be handled by cheap content mills. A lot of columns like personal finance and restaurants could easily be purchased freelance on the market.
The Huffington Post demonstrated that non-investigative content can be had for free.
So there should probably be far fewer middle skill journalists.
You could probably get most opinion for free, lifestyle content for next to nothing, etc. The weekly jobless claims articles could be handled by cheap content mills. A lot of columns like personal finance and restaurants could easily be purchased freelance on the market.
The Huffington Post demonstrated that non-investigative content can be had for free.
So there should probably be far fewer middle skill journalists.
But this is the same "race to the bottom" rhetoric that justified the entire "disruption" to the music and publishing industries that gave us Netflix and Amazon, respectively.
I'm less and less convinced that we are doing the world any service by demonetizing all content and cutting the heads of all tall talent, hence the authors presumption of a sort of public UBI or other non-private-sector basis as a condition to liberating the content.
The IP systems certainly are byzantine and punitive towards actual free information flow, as outlined in the article. However, if one approaches this as a typical Free Market Libertarian American (tm), as the author expressly does NOT, one arrives at different economic conclusions, and basically, journalism will not survive the complete demonetization of all content for ONE reason:
content will become even more corruptly tied to out-of-band payment than is currently the case.
why bother writing articles against the big bad polluter, when you can get paid to write apologism for them?
I'm less and less convinced that we are doing the world any service by demonetizing all content and cutting the heads of all tall talent, hence the authors presumption of a sort of public UBI or other non-private-sector basis as a condition to liberating the content.
The IP systems certainly are byzantine and punitive towards actual free information flow, as outlined in the article. However, if one approaches this as a typical Free Market Libertarian American (tm), as the author expressly does NOT, one arrives at different economic conclusions, and basically, journalism will not survive the complete demonetization of all content for ONE reason:
content will become even more corruptly tied to out-of-band payment than is currently the case.
why bother writing articles against the big bad polluter, when you can get paid to write apologism for them?
Having run a newsroom, there is some very small truth in this. But the old motto of "you get what you pay for" is still true. The free stuff is uncontrollable - and is usually cloaked (or not so cloaked) advertising.
There's lot of "free" stories on the wire, but if your paper just runs wire stories then it ruins its reputation. And the reputation is what attracts advertisers.
In the end, you have to pay people to write good stuff. And that costs money.
However, Journalists do have to get over themselves. The days of journalists being the only people with a voice are long gone and never coming back.
There's lot of "free" stories on the wire, but if your paper just runs wire stories then it ruins its reputation. And the reputation is what attracts advertisers.
In the end, you have to pay people to write good stuff. And that costs money.
However, Journalists do have to get over themselves. The days of journalists being the only people with a voice are long gone and never coming back.
I wonder sometimes if all of those people who sat around dreaming about what the Web would do for the world ever get together and ask what the hell happened.
What's worst is that a lot of these conversations happened when memory of Eternal September were still relatively fresh. For my own part, I was maybe 22, new to the industry, and had not yet begun to appreciate Carlin's, "Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist." Boy howdy.
The infrastructure that grants us the Enlightenment or Democracy also, when taken ad absurbum, brings us to Idiocracy.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Turns out Reason extracts the same bargain.
What's worst is that a lot of these conversations happened when memory of Eternal September were still relatively fresh. For my own part, I was maybe 22, new to the industry, and had not yet begun to appreciate Carlin's, "Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist." Boy howdy.
The infrastructure that grants us the Enlightenment or Democracy also, when taken ad absurbum, brings us to Idiocracy.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Turns out Reason extracts the same bargain.
The fact that I can read your comment suggests that the Web has done something pretty incredible - it has made it possible for anyone with internet access to share information with billions of people.
I think that this article is written from an idealist perspective. It's asking: How can we take this accessible Web of journalistic information, and make access to it free, while still providing professional journalists with an income?
The author's answer to that question is: have the government pay journalists rather than citizens. One way to make that happen could be to centralize journalism in a non-profit, Spotify-esque app, and have donors and government sponsor the app.
Another similar, less ideal option is to create this centralized, Spotify-esque app for journalism, and then paywall the app. Since paying a monthly fee for dozens of individually paywalled newspapers/websites seems unreasonable to me, I don't pay for any of them. Yet, I do pay for Spotify. And if I could pay a monthly fee to read all journalism on the web, I probably would.
I think that this article is written from an idealist perspective. It's asking: How can we take this accessible Web of journalistic information, and make access to it free, while still providing professional journalists with an income?
The author's answer to that question is: have the government pay journalists rather than citizens. One way to make that happen could be to centralize journalism in a non-profit, Spotify-esque app, and have donors and government sponsor the app.
Another similar, less ideal option is to create this centralized, Spotify-esque app for journalism, and then paywall the app. Since paying a monthly fee for dozens of individually paywalled newspapers/websites seems unreasonable to me, I don't pay for any of them. Yet, I do pay for Spotify. And if I could pay a monthly fee to read all journalism on the web, I probably would.
Essentially we are talking on Usenet with better responsiveness and a bit more moderation. I think it remains to be seen if responsiveness actually increases the quality of dialog (personally I suspect it's mixed; better in some ways, worse in others).
That's not a lot of real improvement for 30 years.
That's not a lot of real improvement for 30 years.
I would be willing to pay an amount for better quality news than what can be found for free, however news outlets always seem to lean one way. I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction.
What is unbiased? If you were a late 18th century french reporter writing a report about the death of king Louis XVI, would you write "King Louis was murdered", "King Louis was executed", "former king Louis executed by means of guillotine for high treason", "citizen Louis Capet beheaded on the order of the National Convention" or something else? All of those descriptions can be considered true and yet none are unbiased.
Not only that, but either reporting it or not reporting it could also be considered bias.
Could a legitimate news organisation (considering it'd be the biggest news of the day) justify not covering it, or moving their coverage to Page 56?
That's one of the biggest criticisms I see of bias in the media, is the flexing of prominence based on stories of a similar (wider) importance.
Could a legitimate news organisation (considering it'd be the biggest news of the day) justify not covering it, or moving their coverage to Page 56?
That's one of the biggest criticisms I see of bias in the media, is the flexing of prominence based on stories of a similar (wider) importance.
What's the bias you see in the statements "King Louis was executed" or "former king Louis executed by means of guillotine for high treason"? Both the terms "execution" and "high treason" are objective descriptions takens from the proceedings.
Sure, but that assumes legitimacy of the proceedings, which "was murdered" does not.
No? Treason is in the eye of the revolutionary judge. The trial was never a fair one, the outcome was clear from the start. And from an unfair trial and an unjust judgement you can't lawfully execute someone, you can only murder him execution-style.
To me, "executed for high treason" has the meaning that the person or organisation that killed him considered him to be guilty of high treason, and that they considered themselves to have the authority to decide to execute them, not that the paper with that headline necessarily agrees with either of those things. Similarly, a modern newspaper saying that someone "was executed by a gang for theft of their drugs" doesn't necessarily mean that they actually did take the drugs, that taking the drugs did constitute theft, or that the killing wasn't murder. So I think does count as objectively true.
Depends on the newspaper. Things that the newspaper doesn't want to judge the truth of usually get put in quotes or have attributes like "alledged" or "supposed" added. Without such limiting additions, the newspaper is assumed to embrace the written statement as true and will e.g. be liable for slander. The yellow press will care more about the catchy headline than the slander charges, so they usually avoid being precise and accept the punishment as cost of running their rag...
You are conflating reporting and editorializing. Whether the trial was fair and the execution just is an opinion, and yes, that has a bias. But whether you agree with the sentence has no bearing on whether it took place.
So no, you can't have it both ways. You can't point to objective reporting and claim it has a bias, when in reality you mean that the reporting isn't showing your preferred bias.
So no, you can't have it both ways. You can't point to objective reporting and claim it has a bias, when in reality you mean that the reporting isn't showing your preferred bias.
There are freedom fighters and terrorists. There are fair trials and star chambers. There is information and propaganda. There are governments and regimes.
Both are true, and which term you use just depends on your point of view. Both are true, but not unbiased.
There is no proper objectivity outside of the sciences. Everything in culture, society and politics depends on an everchanging inconsistent and observer-dependent frame of reference. You can be kind-of objective if all of you and your local neighbourhood agree on a common frame of reference. But you always have to be aware of the lack of global objectivity.
Both are true, and which term you use just depends on your point of view. Both are true, but not unbiased.
There is no proper objectivity outside of the sciences. Everything in culture, society and politics depends on an everchanging inconsistent and observer-dependent frame of reference. You can be kind-of objective if all of you and your local neighbourhood agree on a common frame of reference. But you always have to be aware of the lack of global objectivity.
The bias is in the use of the word "King".
How about this one:
Critics agree that Mr Obama's middle name is Hussein and he is likely an islamic terrorist.
The first part is obviously true. For the second part, I am fairly certain I can find two people on 4chan who agrees with this, and they will certainly be critics of Obama.
Statements of objective truths can still be biased.
Critics agree that Mr Obama's middle name is Hussein and he is likely an islamic terrorist.
The first part is obviously true. For the second part, I am fairly certain I can find two people on 4chan who agrees with this, and they will certainly be critics of Obama.
Statements of objective truths can still be biased.
[deleted]
Deposed King Luis Executed by Revolutionary Government.
It's not hard to be objective when you put your mind to it. It's just that it doesn't pay since everyone has a spin they prefer.
It's not hard to be objective when you put your mind to it. It's just that it doesn't pay since everyone has a spin they prefer.
Would you say that "Illegitimate Tyrant Lincoln Executed by Sympathizer of Revolutionary Government" is a fair description?
Surely you understand the political connotations of the words deposed, king, executed, revolutionary, and government. Pretty much the only thing "objective" in your description is the guy's name.
Surely you understand the political connotations of the words deposed, king, executed, revolutionary, and government. Pretty much the only thing "objective" in your description is the guy's name.
"Unbiased" means "excluding analysis". It means only parroting the verifiable statements and not adding on anything else.
One compromise is to find a news source that is at least open about its bias. The Economist is a famous example of this: it will openly declare support (and opposition) for particular political candidates and policies.
The Economist at least seems to be good at giving its opponents space within its pages (for those of us who still subscribe to the print edition).
So while they have a bias they acknowledge, it isn't a "beat them into submission" type of bias.
So while they have a bias they acknowledge, it isn't a "beat them into submission" type of bias.
"Transparency is the new objectivity."
> I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction.
No one on this planet is 100% unbiased. It doesn't matter if it's free or $100 per article, it's still written by a human being with personal opinions, experiences, prejudices, &c.
The easiest way to get close to the "truth", which is subjective in many cases anyways, is to read from many sources and cross check the facts between them.
No one on this planet is 100% unbiased. It doesn't matter if it's free or $100 per article, it's still written by a human being with personal opinions, experiences, prejudices, &c.
The easiest way to get close to the "truth", which is subjective in many cases anyways, is to read from many sources and cross check the facts between them.
Even if that kind of neutrality is not achievable it has been practiced by journalists for the longest time and they tried their best.
Should we forego every trial because no judge can be impartial? The argument is lacking.
That impartiality doesn't lead to economic success and sustainability for outlets is another story of course.
Cross checking is required even if journalists wouldn't be as active in framing stories of course.
Should we forego every trial because no judge can be impartial? The argument is lacking.
That impartiality doesn't lead to economic success and sustainability for outlets is another story of course.
Cross checking is required even if journalists wouldn't be as active in framing stories of course.
The real problem is that for-profit news reporting will always start copying the biases of its readers, because that's how you'll sell more papers to them.
Only state-funded news sources are imune to that, of course they have perverse incentives of their own.
Only state-funded news sources are imune to that, of course they have perverse incentives of their own.
Present day, for local news, you can still get quite close to this compared to your perceived past standard. You can get as close as you can to this ideal on world news as your perceived past standard if you limit yourself to Reuters, AFP, AP.
But many find these sources unengaging since they report events as they occur and do not contextualize them in media narratives to the extent that more commonly popular news outlets do.
But many find these sources unengaging since they report events as they occur and do not contextualize them in media narratives to the extent that more commonly popular news outlets do.
Neutrality in reporting is a relatively new concept and was brought about by the wire services so that they could have their content bought by the broadest reach of newspapers. You will still find unbiased reporting in the wire services themselves: Reuters, AP, etc.
Individual news sources have almost always been biased. This is why most cities had at least 2 major newspapers until relatively recently. You could get the liberal one or the conservative one (or in some places dozens of wildly politicized papers, anarchist papers from the early 1900s are great).
Consolidation has lead to a removal of voices from most local newspapers and the market has spoken when it comes to television: people prefer partisan news sources. The internet has gotten us closer to that 1900 view but then Facebook/Google became the arbiters of news for most people.
Individual news sources have almost always been biased. This is why most cities had at least 2 major newspapers until relatively recently. You could get the liberal one or the conservative one (or in some places dozens of wildly politicized papers, anarchist papers from the early 1900s are great).
Consolidation has lead to a removal of voices from most local newspapers and the market has spoken when it comes to television: people prefer partisan news sources. The internet has gotten us closer to that 1900 view but then Facebook/Google became the arbiters of news for most people.
Numbers are objective, and all too often I see them manipulated in rather creative ways to paint a picture. It is certainly possible to present the hard numbers of a scientific paper as an easily digestible article without picking out only the more convenient ones.
> No one is 100% unbiased
No, and every journalist should know that and keep their own bias in mind when writing. One can have an opinion and still present a plausible alternative.
> No one is 100% unbiased
No, and every journalist should know that and keep their own bias in mind when writing. One can have an opinion and still present a plausible alternative.
Although that is true, it would be very easy to be much better at it than most major media sources. There are theoretical limits then there is the limit that those clods actually achieve. It is a rare, rare day when an article manages to quote an entire paragraph of what a politician said, context and all.
I think it is incredibly hard to not tilt one way. After all, organisations are run by humans and we all have our own leanings. It is very much possible when we hire people those leanings bias us towards a certain ideology and we may hire like minded individuals. Also, people who don't fit the ideological tilt might feel left out and may leave on their own. So, over time a media organisation will come to represent one side more.
This all in addition to the biases that can come from the owners/company bankrolling the media house.
This all in addition to the biases that can come from the owners/company bankrolling the media house.
Agreed. Even if you get past the first layer, which is to create something that sells. You’re still left with organisational biases. Then after that personal reporter biases.
It would take a large conscious effort to get past all of these.
It would take a large conscious effort to get past all of these.
"Objectivity" in journalism does not mean unbiased, or The Truth.
Simple recipe to follow:
- Show your work.
- Cite your sources.
- Corroborate.
- Sign your name.
- Admit your mistakes.
Voila, you're a journalist.
Simple recipe to follow:
- Show your work.
- Cite your sources.
- Corroborate.
- Sign your name.
- Admit your mistakes.
Voila, you're a journalist.
> I want somebody to just report and not tilt it in one direction.
This is unfortunately not possible. Even if an outlet only providing objective, verifiable facts there is some angle or bias in what facts you chose to report and what issues you chose to investigate.
This is unfortunately not possible. Even if an outlet only providing objective, verifiable facts there is some angle or bias in what facts you chose to report and what issues you chose to investigate.
You want something you can trust absolutely and not have to engage with critically at all. It's a reasonable desire, but one much more likely to be fulfilled in the realm of religious faith than that of news or any other human activity.
One reasonable way to deal with that would be to subscribe to several sources which lean in different directions and then explore the situation from various angles.
Pay for quality, but understand the tilt. If you really want to, pay for two services with opposing tilts, but equal (high) quality.
In the UK I subscribe to "The Week", which covers stories by reporting what different newspapers report.
You don't get much in depth, but you do get a good cross-section of how stories are reported, and you get to remove headlines which is the source of 96% of the world's troubles.
You don't get much in depth, but you do get a good cross-section of how stories are reported, and you get to remove headlines which is the source of 96% of the world's troubles.
Wow, that sounds wonderful. I hardly read Australian news, but I would subscribe to something like that for Australian News!
Austrailian version shut down in 2012, when it was attracting 28k issues a week.
UK version does fairly well, 3rd after Private Eye and Economist. They do a junior version for I guess 8-13 year olds too which is doing well too, so that's good.
Friend of mine runs a magazine aimed at people who like horses (typically well-to-do female over 35s) with c. 25,000 copies a week pre-covid. It was about 70:30 subscription. Subscription is up a little since covid, but newsstand sales are way down.
UK version does fairly well, 3rd after Private Eye and Economist. They do a junior version for I guess 8-13 year olds too which is doing well too, so that's good.
Friend of mine runs a magazine aimed at people who like horses (typically well-to-do female over 35s) with c. 25,000 copies a week pre-covid. It was about 70:30 subscription. Subscription is up a little since covid, but newsstand sales are way down.
I use twitter for that. Don't follow journos/news orgs. Just follow topics and saved search terms.
On top of that, multiple sources from social media and news organisations paints the real picture of what's really going on and exposes a particular narrative and who is omitting information.
The real danger is getting your news from a single social media or news org source.
The real danger is getting your news from a single social media or news org source.
The FT should serve you well.
It is sad that the WSJ sold out to the Murdochs and lost their way. It used to be the case that financial papers would have an agenda on their opinion pages, but when it came to making money people needed/wanted the truth or something as close as possible to this -- the market did not care about spin and believing spin that differed from reality would cost you money.
I was a decades-long subscriber to the WSJ print edition and as long as I ignored the last few pages of the first section I was a happy camper. I cannot imagine what possessed Murdoch to engage in such value-destruction, but the FT and Economist are now my go-to sources for getting news that is as low-spin as possible.
I was a decades-long subscriber to the WSJ print edition and as long as I ignored the last few pages of the first section I was a happy camper. I cannot imagine what possessed Murdoch to engage in such value-destruction, but the FT and Economist are now my go-to sources for getting news that is as low-spin as possible.
This is what i have concluded too. I was in similar position where i found that what ever i read it always seemed biased. FT has been very good.
Indeed. The FT is probably the only pay-walled source I would be happy to pay for at this point.
Reuters is pretty good (at least for US and world news; I don't know how they are for UK).
AP seems to me to be fairly reasonable (not dramatically slanted one way or the other).
AP seems to me to be fairly reasonable (not dramatically slanted one way or the other).
This could be possible some 20 years ago, maybe. But these day even if you choose to just describe bare fact, you will still be criticized for the choice of words, such as "riot". Moreover, if you describe facts in full, including some background details, you will be crticized by people shouting "How is this relevant?!"
The FT is good, as is stratfor.com
You can aggregate across news sources, eg factr.com
bitwize(2)
Reminds me a lot of google's effort to create high-quality scans of every book ever written. They got pretty far before the publishers stopped them. They now sit on a sizeable percentage of all books published, locked away in their servers where nobody can access it.
It's not all for naught. Eventually the books will end up in the public domain, and if Google exists then, can choose to make scans public.
Could they still use this to train an AI model, legally speaking?
I think all they are allowed to do is sit on the data. Huge waste to human knowledge. Many of the books are out of print.
This is a long-ish article, as per usual for N Robinson, and I think people ITT are focusing only on the start. Yes free vs. subscription news media is an interesting and important issue, but this article goes on to make a more wide-reaching and incisive criticism of how Capitalism structures the production and distribution of information or knowledge (Current Affairs is a socialist magazine).
Information production is dominated by the super-rich and the state, and access to knowledge (not merely information) is carefully controlled for the benefit of and use by the highly educated, wealthy elite.
An aspect that I often think about is how the vast majority of truly top-tier multimedia (books, articles, movies) has been created decades ago. A person could, for example, spend multiple lifetimes reading the amazing academic and artistic literature in the public domain. But such an existence is terribly unprofitable, so it's heavily discouraged in favour of a content-diet full of pop-culture ephemera. Alan Kay said about Pop Culture, that it "is all about identity and feeling like you're participating, It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future—it's living in the present." Such over-stimulating, disorienting, and fashionable multimedia, perhaps perfected by Buzzfeed, is making us energetic consumers, and idiots. Amused to death drinking from a firehose of 'free'.
Information production is dominated by the super-rich and the state, and access to knowledge (not merely information) is carefully controlled for the benefit of and use by the highly educated, wealthy elite.
An aspect that I often think about is how the vast majority of truly top-tier multimedia (books, articles, movies) has been created decades ago. A person could, for example, spend multiple lifetimes reading the amazing academic and artistic literature in the public domain. But such an existence is terribly unprofitable, so it's heavily discouraged in favour of a content-diet full of pop-culture ephemera. Alan Kay said about Pop Culture, that it "is all about identity and feeling like you're participating, It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future—it's living in the present." Such over-stimulating, disorienting, and fashionable multimedia, perhaps perfected by Buzzfeed, is making us energetic consumers, and idiots. Amused to death drinking from a firehose of 'free'.
No, they're focusing only on the title. People on HN are no better than the people who get their news from Facebook memes. They just _think_ they're better.
/r/LOLHackerNews
/r/LOLHackerNews
> Lyta and Brianna point out that in the real world, this justification [for copyrights] is often bullshit, because copyrights last well beyond the death of the person who actually made the thing.
I oppose long copyrights, but they do increase the value of an author's work by making it potentially pay out for longer to the buyer. At least some of that value often gets to the author in the sale price. And if they don't sell the rights there is more potential value to their heirs, which has definite value to most of us.
I oppose long copyrights, but they do increase the value of an author's work by making it potentially pay out for longer to the buyer. At least some of that value often gets to the author in the sale price. And if they don't sell the rights there is more potential value to their heirs, which has definite value to most of us.
I think a more accurate description is that the elite narrative is paywalled but the one for the proles is free - and the elite are absolutely convinced their narrative is the truth. The contents of, say, New York Times or Washington Post reporting on the state of US Covid-19 testing and contact tracing and how it compares to the rest of the world, the evidence on mask wearing, or anything to do with Trump or protests in no way resembles the truth.
Reading them leaves people absolutely convinced that - for example - the US is behind South Korea in per-capita coronavirus testing, despite this not having been true for a long time. Seriously, the number of people I've seen on here and in the Times comment section pointing to this one specific, untrue thing as clear proof Trump must've sabotaged Covid testing because there was no way that the US could have remained behind South Korea for so long otherwise was astounding - and even more astounding was the cleverness of the articles worded to trick people into believing this, or the boldness of the Times in literally printing a news headline accusing Trump of being the liar for pointing out the exact opposite was true.
Reading them leaves people absolutely convinced that - for example - the US is behind South Korea in per-capita coronavirus testing, despite this not having been true for a long time. Seriously, the number of people I've seen on here and in the Times comment section pointing to this one specific, untrue thing as clear proof Trump must've sabotaged Covid testing because there was no way that the US could have remained behind South Korea for so long otherwise was astounding - and even more astounding was the cleverness of the articles worded to trick people into believing this, or the boldness of the Times in literally printing a news headline accusing Trump of being the liar for pointing out the exact opposite was true.
I highly disagree. Rupert Murdoch is surely one of the most elite of the elites and his vast media empire has managed to brainwash certain folks into calling his vision "populism" due strictly to his outreach efforts.
It would also appear that you didn't read the article, as your point is not the topic of the article.
The article is about copyright law running counter to information accessibility, running counter to an interpretation of "freedom of speech".
The article is about economic rather than technological barriers to information sharing.
That's the problem with knee-jerk first-paragraph-read comments.
It would also appear that you didn't read the article, as your point is not the topic of the article.
The article is about copyright law running counter to information accessibility, running counter to an interpretation of "freedom of speech".
The article is about economic rather than technological barriers to information sharing.
That's the problem with knee-jerk first-paragraph-read comments.
There's a reason I described the other narrative as "for the proles" and not "by the proles", you know... and the "truth" side having a business model that puts economic and convenience barriers in the way of access, so that only the people who really want to use it as their source of information and are willing to put up time and money to do so read it is a great way of turning that side into an elite thing.
Also, thinking about this some more, that particular bogus fact is probably an interesting counter-example to the rest of the article too. All the information required to debunk that claim about South Korean vs US coronavirus testing was and still is publicly available for free in English, and there were and still are really convenient sites aggregating it unobstructed by barriers like copyright. Everyone in the know believed the bogus elite-narrative claim anyway.
Also, thinking about this some more, that particular bogus fact is probably an interesting counter-example to the rest of the article too. All the information required to debunk that claim about South Korean vs US coronavirus testing was and still is publicly available for free in English, and there were and still are really convenient sites aggregating it unobstructed by barriers like copyright. Everyone in the know believed the bogus elite-narrative claim anyway.
> Rupert Murdoch is surely one of the most elite of the elites and his vast media empire has managed to brainwash certain folks into calling his vision "populism" due strictly to his outreach efforts.
It's also possible you have the arrow of causality reversed. Murdoch's media could just be printing what that "the proles" want to hear.
It's also possible you have the arrow of causality reversed. Murdoch's media could just be printing what that "the proles" want to hear.
I wouldn't necessarily assume that the truth as presented by Murdoch's media empire is the same as the truth as understood by Rupert Murdoch.
How does it matter at all whether we're testing more than South Korea now? They did test far more at the onset of the crisis and have effectively contained the spread. We have dramatically more cases and a greater need for testing now than they do. Why would you get hung up on current testing rates when comparing the US to S. Korea? It is beside the point of who responded better. (Which they almost certainly did.)
> Now, I am sure there will be those who argue that any universal knowledge access system of this kind will inhibit the creation of new work by reducing the rewards people get. But let us note a few facts: first, dead people cannot be incentivized to be creative, thus at least everything ever created by a person who is now dead should be made freely available to all. The gatekeepers to intellectual products made by the dead are parasites the equivalent of a private individual who sets up a gate and a tollbooth in the middle of a road somebody else has already built and starts charging people if they want to pass.
This seems wrong. Longer-lasting copyright does incentivize authors more, because it can be sold for more.
This seems wrong. Longer-lasting copyright does incentivize authors more, because it can be sold for more.
But we are positively drowning in music, video and written words. We don't need more incentives for people to create copyrighted work. We need more effective markets for consumers to judge it.
We are drowning in repetitive shit and crap, I'd say. It is hard to find good new stuff although it is more abundant than ever because people who create it do not have resources to reach the audience through all the noise.
The typical copyright term in the US is life of the creator + 70 years. Are potential revenues a hundred years from now really figuring all that much into the price of copyrighted work sold today?
Also, an author could write books that are given to some type of trust or foundation with explicit orders not to publish them until certain favorable copyright or distribution laws are available.
So it could be possible to “be incentivized” to publish new works even after you’re dead. For the estate of an author that has developed a reputation, say like JD Salinger, this would be a very smart thing to do if you wanted to influence policy beyond your death.
So it could be possible to “be incentivized” to publish new works even after you’re dead. For the estate of an author that has developed a reputation, say like JD Salinger, this would be a very smart thing to do if you wanted to influence policy beyond your death.
There are drawbacks to such a universal search system as described. The search is often crucial to the development of ideas. Like going to a library looking for a book, and finding a bunch of books on the same shelf or two shelfs over. You lose that with a universal search. The time and energy involved in finding things is crucial to the development and ideation process.
for me as a self-declared european conservative (in the history of the social(isty)-centrist-catholic parties) this page gives hope that the USA, even if currently split in between wars of oil, race and money might still have the potential to become, what it once was: a beacon of light for any honest, community-oriented and republican (in the most basic sense) democrat.
I'd like more microtransactions and would gladly pay a few cents or even a dollar to read a good article.
The business model is to bundle everything together, for a long subscription - most want at least a month, perhaps a year, full subscription.
The business model is to bundle everything together, for a long subscription - most want at least a month, perhaps a year, full subscription.
All that would do is massively incentivize clickbait headlines, if they could actually get paid $1 for each person who clicked on it.
Do you really want a world with even more clickbait headlines and articles artificially spread over 20 pages? Because that's what microtransactions would lead to.
Do you really want a world with even more clickbait headlines and articles artificially spread over 20 pages? Because that's what microtransactions would lead to.
It doesn't work.
Because what if you pay 0.5$ for an article, and then you find out it's not what you expected/badly written/...
You basically are not happy and less likely to do it again. If you put payment to the end, then people are less willing to pay, because they already consumed the article. You can't take the information out of the head again if he's not willing to pay.
It's a tricky thing
Because what if you pay 0.5$ for an article, and then you find out it's not what you expected/badly written/...
You basically are not happy and less likely to do it again. If you put payment to the end, then people are less willing to pay, because they already consumed the article. You can't take the information out of the head again if he's not willing to pay.
It's a tricky thing
A possibility would be a (global, publication independent) subscription service like this: you pay a fixed amount in each month (say, ten dollars). Then every time you read an article from a website that subscribes to the service, if you liked the article you click on a widget. At the end of the month, the ten dollars are redistributed to the publishers in proportion to your clicks. So payment is voluntary but the total amount per month is already allocated- it's not a matter of deciding whether to pay or not but just how to distribute the money.
I fully support this. But publishing houses don't. They don't see the benefit.
Also with the a volunteer voting system you could use that to signal to people without a subscription what articles were "good", "controversial", ... to increase chances of a "buy-per-page" for like 10 cents per article.
Or something, I feel like the possibilities are vast, but publishing houses need to collaborate. Which they don't like to.
Also with the a volunteer voting system you could use that to signal to people without a subscription what articles were "good", "controversial", ... to increase chances of a "buy-per-page" for like 10 cents per article.
Or something, I feel like the possibilities are vast, but publishing houses need to collaborate. Which they don't like to.
Not sure what the publishing houses would think about this, but how's the collaboration needed? You can create the service and distribute the widget; and if at first it will be used only by independent bloggers I don't see the issue. More commercial players might use it too if they think it can increase their revenues- maybe test it for a subset of articles at first.
I understand that the idea has tons of limitations but it might solve the issue of micropayments with their tiny amounts and the constant need to decide whether to pay or not to pay.
I understand that the idea has tons of limitations but it might solve the issue of micropayments with their tiny amounts and the constant need to decide whether to pay or not to pay.
How do you know it's a good article before you read it, though? Articles aren't (and shouldn't) be produced like movies, video games or books, with marketing budgets and hype.
Lies are not just free to consume, they are also free to generate.
It is "expensive" to generate true high information content, because, from an information theoretic point of view, "high information" means "surprising" which means "improbable". The improbability of high information events/messages throttles the rate of their occurrence.
Lies on the other hand can be made to sound surprising and high information, with no natural probabilistic throttle. They can be generated at will, at arbitrary frequency.
It is "expensive" to generate true high information content, because, from an information theoretic point of view, "high information" means "surprising" which means "improbable". The improbability of high information events/messages throttles the rate of their occurrence.
Lies on the other hand can be made to sound surprising and high information, with no natural probabilistic throttle. They can be generated at will, at arbitrary frequency.
This is why I sponsor the Guardian, they stay open and give good news.
The Guardian as with other newspapers has to selectively report the news which it does using a vocabulary which implicitly or explicitly reflects their opinions about the news. Naturally the overall output confirms the prejudices of their readership. It's 'good news', they say.
Ah yes, pesky words, revealing bias and confirming prejudices. I only subscribe to newspapers that print their headlines as formal logical statements.
Even access to good journalism is now related to income inequality. Very few who live paycheck-to-paycheck will pay for access to news when they can get some version of it for free.
Yup. This must be why all the anti-maskers and COVID skeptics get all their news from Facebook. Truth is, Facebook isn't free either, you're just sacrificing your privacy for garbage.
Current Affairs should know a thing or two about lies being free...
If you were to only subscribe to one online news source, what would it be? I’m willing to lay for a single source Ethan would cover most necessary news within The United Stages.
This is specifically why I choose to support sources that don't have paywalls, but are still trustworthy news sources like Vox, The Guardian, etc. In these particular cases they do have an editorial stance that I happen to agree with but others may not, but the facts are still there and they're largely trustworthy. They're also open about their editorial stance and biases, so if you don't agree you can still get the facts and be skeptical about the editorial stance. But either way, personally I like both these examples so I try to support them instead of organizations that put up a paywall. I'm sure if your worldview is different you can find organizations that are legit but also have different funding models to support, or just learn to separate facts from editorializing or op-eds.
I don’t read the Guardian, but Vox has a significant bias. I wouldn’t call them trustworthy.
Like I said, the facts are there. They're great journalists, and they're up front with their editorial stance. You don't have to agree with it, but you can still get the facts and good reporting.
I mean we do have PBS, we just underfund it relative to something like the BBC. We probably also don't have as strong of political norms around not politicizing it so it's inevitable that someone like Trump does.
The ironic part of this is that people tend to click on things that are sensational and fake over things that are true.
The best part about newspapers is that they are primary source material when it comes time to write the history books...
Trim gets around many of the paywalls on popular news sites, and uses no JavaScript or cookies in the browser:
https://beta.trimread.com/
For example, the article in question is reduced from 895 kB down to 35 kB: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/30765
https://beta.trimread.com/
For example, the article in question is reduced from 895 kB down to 35 kB: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/30765
Are there some sort of bundle subscriptions available?
Buy all of that stuff separately won’t be cheap
Buy all of that stuff separately won’t be cheap
even if there were a bundle of that, people'll still find a way to complain about it and they'd still not want to pay for news.
People always complain. A significant amount of people happily pays for Netflix and its likes, though.
Speak for yourself, I pay for Netflix grumpily!
But jokes aside I stopped paying for my last newspaper subscriptions some time ago because I just didn't find the time to read and thought they were developing in a wrong direction.
I think Netflix TV shows have some kind of normalized content that I would fear would be mirrored if the service existed for news.
But jokes aside I stopped paying for my last newspaper subscriptions some time ago because I just didn't find the time to read and thought they were developing in a wrong direction.
I think Netflix TV shows have some kind of normalized content that I would fear would be mirrored if the service existed for news.
Yep and there are people who still complain that
1. netflix is not having enough 2. i don't watch entire netflix and the most genuine concern 3. way too many streaming services. every damn movie is on a different service.
1. netflix is not having enough 2. i don't watch entire netflix and the most genuine concern 3. way too many streaming services. every damn movie is on a different service.
Although the overall idea of this article makes sense but there are certain fallacies that stand out.
For example, the Times article on "neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions" might not be "free" but the same article on New York Times was free. Does this imply that Times article must be closer to truth than the one in the New York Times? This assumption seems flawed.
For example, the Times article on "neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions" might not be "free" but the same article on New York Times was free. Does this imply that Times article must be closer to truth than the one in the New York Times? This assumption seems flawed.
The author would've been better served by pointing out the paywalls of research done in universities, funded by people's taxes.
That'd be somewhat close to 'the truth is paywalled'.
Newspapers and truth are a contradiction - truth is boring, newspapers cannot afford to be boring because they compete on entertainment value or illusion of 'being informed', not truth value, therefore every newspaper panders and skews 'the truth' in exchange for entertainment or 'being informed' value, that's their job.
Paywalled or not, newspapers are drug dealers for the junkies addicted to a 'need to be informed'. Twitter is beating them to the punch. On twitter you can be infinitely 'informed' and be an active participant in 'informing' others, which is why journalists and 'intellectuals' can't get enough of it.
That'd be somewhat close to 'the truth is paywalled'.
Newspapers and truth are a contradiction - truth is boring, newspapers cannot afford to be boring because they compete on entertainment value or illusion of 'being informed', not truth value, therefore every newspaper panders and skews 'the truth' in exchange for entertainment or 'being informed' value, that's their job.
Paywalled or not, newspapers are drug dealers for the junkies addicted to a 'need to be informed'. Twitter is beating them to the punch. On twitter you can be infinitely 'informed' and be an active participant in 'informing' others, which is why journalists and 'intellectuals' can't get enough of it.
He does, starting at the section that begins:
> Possibly even worse is the fact that so much academic writing is kept behind vastly more costly paywalls.
> Possibly even worse is the fact that so much academic writing is kept behind vastly more costly paywalls.
The central thesis, that the truth must be paid for is fundamentally wrong. Even if many experts may require payment it is no guarantee that what is paid for is true.
Furthermore payment isn't always needed to publish the truth. There are agendas which aren't neccessarily a bad thing or untrue. An honest victim of a crime or travesty would have an agenda!
Anyone claiming to be a victim may or may not be telling the truth but they would not need any payment to want to have their story told!
That isn't to say that unpaid could be a complete replacement but every issue cited for free could also occur in paywalled ones including nobody wanting to pay for an expert.
Furthermore payment isn't always needed to publish the truth. There are agendas which aren't neccessarily a bad thing or untrue. An honest victim of a crime or travesty would have an agenda!
Anyone claiming to be a victim may or may not be telling the truth but they would not need any payment to want to have their story told!
That isn't to say that unpaid could be a complete replacement but every issue cited for free could also occur in paywalled ones including nobody wanting to pay for an expert.
I have no problem with a paywall in principle. I do have a problem with 20 paywalls for 20 sites, most of which I would only read an article every other month. News publishers need to get their act together.
> Creators must be compensated well.
How? By who?
How? By who?
I think this headline is backwards.
So after reading some top comments (see Tesla review discussion) it looks like the bullshit is on both sides of the paywall.
Upd: grammar.
I think there's pretty interesting discussion about this here too that addresses some of the article's points more directly: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/i2z7i5/the_...
Quite a few of media that are paywalled with supposed "truth" are usually ones that are first to support wars and military interventions. They also love to skew the truth in corporate direction. This is not to say they don't have talented and good writers who produce insightful journalism, they do, quite a lot.
Excuse me for not wanting to pay or support other people's misery.
Excuse me for not wanting to pay or support other people's misery.
more like "The Left Charges for it's Fantastic Narrative"
After reading this I feel like humanity might be better off if we have a full libertarian approach to information online, the Ross Ulbricht school of thought. Access everything that is digital at your desire. The internet seems to be driving humanity the wrong way in its current form, seeing what happens to democracies worldwide.
The OP is a well-written, well-reasoned, thought-provoking article which I would recommend reading in full before passing judgment on it. Quoting from the first few paragraphs, which I found compelling:
> But let us also notice something: The New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free!
> You want “Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets,” “The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions,” or an article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours.[a] You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall.[b]
> This doesn’t mean the paywall shouldn’t be there. But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free.
--
[a] Free links: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/01/portland-prote... | https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/the-moral-case-against-... | https://www.infowars.com/nih-admits-5g-can-actually-create-c...
[b] Paywalled links: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/world/europe/germany-nazi... | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/health/covid-contact-trac... | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/politics/trump-usps-ma...
> But let us also notice something: The New York Times, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New Republic, New York, Harper’s, the New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and the London Times all have paywalls. Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free!
> You want “Portland Protesters Burn Bibles, American Flags In The Streets,” “The Moral Case Against Mask Mandates And Other COVID Restrictions,” or an article suggesting the National Institutes of Health has admitted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours.[a] You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall.[b]
> This doesn’t mean the paywall shouldn’t be there. But it does mean that it costs time and money to access a lot of true and important information, while a lot of bullshit is completely free.
--
[a] Free links: https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/08/01/portland-prote... | https://thefederalist.com/2020/07/31/the-moral-case-against-... | https://www.infowars.com/nih-admits-5g-can-actually-create-c...
[b] Paywalled links: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/01/world/europe/germany-nazi... | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/health/covid-contact-trac... | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/31/us/politics/trump-usps-ma...
>The Truth Is Paywalled But The Lies Are Free
Claims the article not behind a paywall.
Claims the article not behind a paywall.
rezeroed(1)
Of course they left the Wall Street Journal (paywalled and quite expensive) out of their list because it doesn't fit their narrative.
As in... the WSJ publishes lies but is paywalled? That's generally not my experience; WSJ is nowhere near where it used to be, but isn't among the trash tier of journalism, yet.
The "media bias" chart from Ad Fontes media puts them at a slight right slant, with reporting accuracy more-or-less on par with publications like Newsweek, The Economist, and WaPo.[0][1]
[0] Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/gallery/ [1] Methodology: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sourc...
The "media bias" chart from Ad Fontes media puts them at a slight right slant, with reporting accuracy more-or-less on par with publications like Newsweek, The Economist, and WaPo.[0][1]
[0] Chart: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/gallery/ [1] Methodology: https://www.adfontesmedia.com/how-ad-fontes-ranks-news-sourc...
I was implying that the WSJ is generally conservative, and the only examples they give of free sites are (uber / crazy) conservative. I've subscribed to the WSJ for 15 years and read it daily. Their iPad app is beautiful.
hah, if only it were that easy.
The paywalled stuff is bullshit too. Plus, they know they have a micro-targettable audience of suckers who are willing to pay.
The paywalled stuff is bullshit too. Plus, they know they have a micro-targettable audience of suckers who are willing to pay.
> You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infiltrating German institutions, the reasons contact tracing is failing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s undercutting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the website a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall.
Excuse me but why would I want to pay for that ? I don't earn by reading articles online and the news websites are already littered with advertisements and autoplay videos. I get tracked around the web by these ads and I'm supposed to even fund that ?
Thank you but I will pass.
> The New York Times is, in fact, extremely valuable, if you read it critically and look past the headlines. Usually the truth is in there somewhere, as there is a great deal of excellent reporting, and one could almost construct a serious newspaper purely from material culled from the New York Times.
... and can't you do the same with Infowars ? Critically read it and look past the headlines ? Perhaps the truth will be there somewhere too. (albeit as a total negation of the Infowars article)
Excuse me but why would I want to pay for that ? I don't earn by reading articles online and the news websites are already littered with advertisements and autoplay videos. I get tracked around the web by these ads and I'm supposed to even fund that ?
Thank you but I will pass.
> The New York Times is, in fact, extremely valuable, if you read it critically and look past the headlines. Usually the truth is in there somewhere, as there is a great deal of excellent reporting, and one could almost construct a serious newspaper purely from material culled from the New York Times.
... and can't you do the same with Infowars ? Critically read it and look past the headlines ? Perhaps the truth will be there somewhere too. (albeit as a total negation of the Infowars article)
Don't even use Infowars and NYT in the same sentence. The NYT has some notable shortcomings, but Infowars is straight-up propaganda used by its host to shill for questionable food supplements and fake corona-virus cures.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/04/09/infowa...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/leahrosenbaum/2020/04/09/infowa...
> Don't even use Infowars and NYT in the same sentence.
I did not use them in the same sentence. I did not intend to support Infowars.
I did not use them in the same sentence. I did not intend to support Infowars.
I'm pretty conservative, and I hate the antisemitism at the NY Times. Yet, I pay for a subscription because there are some basic standards to their reporting that are worth it, even though their editorial slant doesn't always match up with mine.
I love it, the first example of fake news from Breitbart is true. There's video of it happening.
> Breitbart, Fox News, the Daily Wire, the Federalist, the Washington Examiner, InfoWars: free!
As is salon.com, theatlantic.com, theroot.com, vox.com, huffingtonpost.com, slate.com, and also somehow missing from that list, CNN!
I appreciate the point the author is trying to make, and realize this is tangential, but I would be grateful if he didn't try to deceive me with the choice of examples.
As is salon.com, theatlantic.com, theroot.com, vox.com, huffingtonpost.com, slate.com, and also somehow missing from that list, CNN!
I appreciate the point the author is trying to make, and realize this is tangential, but I would be grateful if he didn't try to deceive me with the choice of examples.
is CNN really putting up anything except news - of which reuters/AP/UPI already give a pretty good overview for free? And while all the left/neoliberal (and clickbaity) things you noted are free, they are less concerned with news, but more opinion – to my knowledge they don't try to make the impression of a news outlet as much as the listed ones (which carry typical news-speak even in their name!)
All those sites look like news sites to me, except the Atlantic, which is indeed limited to opinion/commentary.
Salon's About page: "Salon covers breaking news, politics, entertainment, culture, and technology through investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays." A few titles from their site:
Salon's About page: "Salon covers breaking news, politics, entertainment, culture, and technology through investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays." A few titles from their site:
-As pandemic spreads, feds go MIA
-Did Steve Daines get pharma kickback?
-The second pandemic: Pollution
-Many Black, Latinx and poor Americans who needed relief the most never got a stimulus check: study
-Dr. Fauci says it's not "dreaming" that a coronavirus vaccine could arrive by 2021
-The COVID-19 downturn triggers jump in Medicaid enrollment
-Jamaica's Supreme Court Rules That School Can Ban Child With Dreadlocks (No, We're Not Kidding)
-Protests Planned in St. Louis, Mo. After New Prosecutor Says He Won't Make Criminal Charges in Police Killing of Michael Brown
-Brooklyn Man Sentenced to 10 Years for Hate Crime Against Black Woman
-After a Summer of Social Media Trolling By Gen Z, Trump Says He's Going to Ban TikTok From America
-Rumored VP Candidate Rep. Karen Bass Explains Video of Her Praising Church of Scientology, Denounces Fidel Castro
-Michigan Appeals Court Grants Release of Black Girl Who Was Detained After Not Doing Online Homework
-The slow-motion 2020 election disaster states are scrambling to prevent, explained
-The US ambassador to Brazil reportedly asked Brazilian officials to help Trump’s reelection
-Scientists have backed away from the worst-case climate scenario — and the best one too
-“The end of arms control as we know it”
-Polls: Biden and Trump are nearly tied in North Carolina and Georgia
-As coronavirus cases increase worldwide, an Australian state is imposing tough new restrictions
-Lawmakers still “not close” to a coronavirus stimulus deal, a day after $600 federal relief expired
-Coronavirus Live Updates: Read The Latest About The COVID-19 Outbreak
-Top Health Official: Time To ‘Move On’ From Hydroxychloroquine Efficacy Claims
-College Athletes Threaten To Skip Season Over COVID-19, Racial Justice Demands
-Watchdog Calls For Probe Amid Fears Of ‘Voter Suppression Tactics’ Through Postal Service
-Thousands Ordered To Evacuate As Wildfires Scorch Southern California
-Navy SEALS Investigate Video Of Dogs Attacking Colin Kaepernick Stand-In
-The US Takes On TikTok
-The Republican National Convention in Charlotte Will Be Closed to the Press
-Arizona Congressman Tests Positive for COVID-19, Blasts Republicans Who Don’t Wear Masks
-Hundreds of Coronavirus Infections at Georgia Camp Raise Tough Questions About Schools Reopening
-EU Extends Ban on Dangerous Foreign Travelers (Americans)
nothing in "investigative reporting, commentary, criticism, and provocative personal essays" is, what I consider news. q.e.d.
vox.com: "Vox explains the news.". No shroud of being objective here either. q.e.d.
slate.com: "we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, business, technology, and culture" general interest is vague, but no non-commented news here either, q.e.d.
the root has a category "news", but if you visit their main page you see, it's just a sort of "community news-ticker" (like any political page has) and I don't see them making claims to universality.
Compare that to Breitbart mingling everything there is into their political agend and explicitly stating: "truthful reporting", ... , "Breitbart News is one of America’s leading news organizations."
leaves the huffpost which is laughable by design.
vox.com: "Vox explains the news.". No shroud of being objective here either. q.e.d.
slate.com: "we are a general-interest publication offering analysis and commentary about politics, news, business, technology, and culture" general interest is vague, but no non-commented news here either, q.e.d.
the root has a category "news", but if you visit their main page you see, it's just a sort of "community news-ticker" (like any political page has) and I don't see them making claims to universality.
Compare that to Breitbart mingling everything there is into their political agend and explicitly stating: "truthful reporting", ... , "Breitbart News is one of America’s leading news organizations."
leaves the huffpost which is laughable by design.
> nothing in "investigative reporting, [..]" is, what I consider news. q.e.d.
At this point I don't think there's anything I can say that will convince you.
But yes, if you invent some contrived definition of "news site" that disqualifies every left-wing site, only right-wing ones remain.
And I don't understand how that is even relevant to the article - as long as you can "get your news" from some source, that's enough. It doesn't have to pass some made-up purity test of what qualifies as a news site, because readers won't be applying that test. To pretend only right-wing sites share news and opinion for free is just willful blindness.
At this point I don't think there's anything I can say that will convince you.
But yes, if you invent some contrived definition of "news site" that disqualifies every left-wing site, only right-wing ones remain.
And I don't understand how that is even relevant to the article - as long as you can "get your news" from some source, that's enough. It doesn't have to pass some made-up purity test of what qualifies as a news site, because readers won't be applying that test. To pretend only right-wing sites share news and opinion for free is just willful blindness.
“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books—books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, 'What is history, but a fable agreed upon? '”
This isn't history, it's current affairs.
Parts of the article are relevant to historical research. There is a discussion about the cost of access to academic papers, which is a serious issue and one that I can relate to. I remember trying to access a paper in an academic journal about a decade ago, and was almost immediately turned by the $20 or $30 price tag. I say almost immediately because I did some additional research into what the paper was. It turns out that it was a one page editorial! So not only would costs mount for legitimate resources for a serious research project, but researchers have to put in extra effort to ensure the resources are legitimate in order to control those expenses.
Current affairs eventually become history, my point being that the truth isnt always the truth, its only the narrative of the winning, or more dominant party at the time.
I struggle to see how this is relevant.
Napoleon got a citation, but who is the original quote from?
yes it is.
I really lost faith in nyt when they ran article about running out of running out of charge in a Tesla. When they were caught red handed lying they still wouldn't admit to it. Their response was: "Problems With Precision and Judgment, but Not Integrity, in Tesla Test"
They just don't get it. People are sick of their BS and they need to just comp to it and change. The days of BSing people are over.
https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/automobiles/stalled-on-th...
https://www.tesla.com/blog/most-peculiar-test-drive
https://publiceditor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/18/problems-w...