No More Stories(glyph.twistedmatrix.com)
glyph.twistedmatrix.com
No More Stories
https://glyph.twistedmatrix.com/2021/12/no-more-stories.html
71 comments
> Another problem, one tech people tend to ignore, is that journalism is as much about values as facts. And so long as we disagree on values, collections of consensus will quickly turn into competing consensuses, each motivated by values that aren't recognized by the others, which is exactly what we have now.
A classic example here would be the widespread believe that "all politicians are corrupt", good journalism would A.) point out that the corruption is not equally distributed and B.) There is no other option than condeming those who get corrupt and electing non-corrupt representatives.
That means instead of seeing journalism as a pure source of information, it needs to be recognized that journalism performs crucial functions within free democratic societies, that go beyond pure distribution of facts.
A classic example here would be the widespread believe that "all politicians are corrupt", good journalism would A.) point out that the corruption is not equally distributed and B.) There is no other option than condeming those who get corrupt and electing non-corrupt representatives.
That means instead of seeing journalism as a pure source of information, it needs to be recognized that journalism performs crucial functions within free democratic societies, that go beyond pure distribution of facts.
Problems that people have with journalism are always misplaced IMO. It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear. Quite to the contrary, most journalists I've met and talked to (largely in print media) have journalistic standards and generally want to do the right thing by their readers. But in a sense, media companies are held captive by their readers.
It seems like many people believe that if somehow big corporate media (let's say Fox, CNN, NBC), swapped into a mode of "more facts, less editorialization" then it would have positive downstream effects on society. (Let's set aside that facts and data are completely meaningless without context, and context is political.) I'm not sure that's actually the case. I think it would have largely no effect. People in our society want the Rachel Maddow's and the Tucker Carlson's, the Joe Rogan's and the Russell Brand's. Until society shifts out of that mode, our media will continue to look this way.
It seems like many people believe that if somehow big corporate media (let's say Fox, CNN, NBC), swapped into a mode of "more facts, less editorialization" then it would have positive downstream effects on society. (Let's set aside that facts and data are completely meaningless without context, and context is political.) I'm not sure that's actually the case. I think it would have largely no effect. People in our society want the Rachel Maddow's and the Tucker Carlson's, the Joe Rogan's and the Russell Brand's. Until society shifts out of that mode, our media will continue to look this way.
> It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear.
Hard to believe that someone could be this naive. Even 50 [ EDIT: more like 40 ] years ago, Paul Weller of the Jam sang, in relation to this precise issue:
Hard to believe that someone could be this naive. Even 50 [ EDIT: more like 40 ] years ago, Paul Weller of the Jam sang, in relation to this precise issue:
Does the public want what the public gets?
Or does the public get what the public wants?
> the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear.
I think it's more likely a feedback loop and they're both downstream from each other. And, in that sense, there's "blame" on both sides, and certain patterns continually reinforce themselves through such loops.
I think it's more likely a feedback loop and they're both downstream from each other. And, in that sense, there's "blame" on both sides, and certain patterns continually reinforce themselves through such loops.
I advocate on grassroots political issues locally. There is a special interest group that has much more sway than the general public is aware over local policy decisions (to the extent that they head two local, theoretically competing political parties). In the last 12 months, I have brought this up at least a dozen times in media interviews, letters to the editor, etc.
It has gotten nearly no media attention. Eventually I just asked one of the interviewers why this aspect of our advocacy was getting no coverage, and she plainly stated that her editors would not publish this information, because they are part of this special interest group.
Take this and scale it nationally. Our news media does not serve its stated purpose. It is simply another mechanism for control.
There has never been a time in history where the news media has been a bastion of unbiased, informed reporting.
It has gotten nearly no media attention. Eventually I just asked one of the interviewers why this aspect of our advocacy was getting no coverage, and she plainly stated that her editors would not publish this information, because they are part of this special interest group.
Take this and scale it nationally. Our news media does not serve its stated purpose. It is simply another mechanism for control.
There has never been a time in history where the news media has been a bastion of unbiased, informed reporting.
I just don't understand why we're all so afraid to make noise about the small grift. I have a neighbor who consistently causes environmental issues and is constantly complaining whenever anyone in the neighborhood actually... Lives. Parties in our backyards get the cops called, and I'm not talking about loud college parties; I'm talking about 50-somethings with wine and cheese. She's the campaign manager for some obnoxious local political entity. Nobody will even talk about it, we're all so cowed. I just don't get why we're afraid to talk about it. Even far away; I guess it's too easy to link back and retaliation is too easy and impactful.
Chomsky explained this very thoroughly in the book Manufacturing Consent.
I have come to believe that people don't want it as much as they are just generally susceptible to it. The "news" has figured out how to become a supernormal stimulus: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus
I think this point is sort of the fundamental contradiction of modernity, and it underlies many of our disagreements and problems. Succinctly, it's the non-unitary nature of preference.
I want to eat the cookie and I want to be thin. The fact that I eat the cookie does not actually mean that I want the cookie "more" than I want to be thin. It just means that preference functions are not consistent over time. My preference over the next 5 minutes is not the same as my preference for what to do with the collection of all of my 5 minutes over the course of my life.
You can prove this with a simple thought experiment. Almost everyone on earth has some vice or bad habit that they'd like to break if they could, or some better behavior they'd like to do if they could. What that means is that for those people, if they could take a side-effect free pill to change their brain to behave in that way, they would. If that's true, it's clear that the consistency of preferences is falsified.
Once you accept this, I think it recasts how we ought to think about technology, and social architecture. The implications of this are that, probably in general, we want to allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones.
Notably this does not mean imposing this environment on them. If people want to read clickbait they should be allowed to. But I think most people, if they had a "filter clickbait bullshit journalism from my life" button, they would press that button. Those same people (myself included), will also happily click on a perfectly tailored to my hot buttons headline. This is not a contradiction, and people shouldn't be shamed for it.
The promise of technology in this domain is to engage executive preferences by providing intentional, tailored environments for people. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to click bait, i'll take it. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to sugary snacks, i'll take that too. I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement.
I want to eat the cookie and I want to be thin. The fact that I eat the cookie does not actually mean that I want the cookie "more" than I want to be thin. It just means that preference functions are not consistent over time. My preference over the next 5 minutes is not the same as my preference for what to do with the collection of all of my 5 minutes over the course of my life.
You can prove this with a simple thought experiment. Almost everyone on earth has some vice or bad habit that they'd like to break if they could, or some better behavior they'd like to do if they could. What that means is that for those people, if they could take a side-effect free pill to change their brain to behave in that way, they would. If that's true, it's clear that the consistency of preferences is falsified.
Once you accept this, I think it recasts how we ought to think about technology, and social architecture. The implications of this are that, probably in general, we want to allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones.
Notably this does not mean imposing this environment on them. If people want to read clickbait they should be allowed to. But I think most people, if they had a "filter clickbait bullshit journalism from my life" button, they would press that button. Those same people (myself included), will also happily click on a perfectly tailored to my hot buttons headline. This is not a contradiction, and people shouldn't be shamed for it.
The promise of technology in this domain is to engage executive preferences by providing intentional, tailored environments for people. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to click bait, i'll take it. If you can give me the option not to be exposed to sugary snacks, i'll take that too. I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement.
> I'm hopeful that technology and media will start to move in this direction, because I think it'd be a really significant improvement.
I see technology moving in the opposite direction. Companies consistently choose profit over user quality-of-life. Some people are talking about the problem. When I read their posts talking about the problem, I have hope that things may improve someday.
I see technology moving in the opposite direction. Companies consistently choose profit over user quality-of-life. Some people are talking about the problem. When I read their posts talking about the problem, I have hope that things may improve someday.
You should take this, expand on it if you want, and publish it as a blog.
You make a good point. But isn't the ability to comprehend and work towards long(er)-term goals over more immediate gratification kind of the essence of being human (as distinguished from animal?)
If we "allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones.", isn't that kind of the definition of civilization?
If we "allow people to architect their environment to conform to their longer term executive preferences, rather than imposing an environment tailored to their shorter term instinctual ones.", isn't that kind of the definition of civilization?
> It's easy to scapegoat "the media" as an entity, but insofar as it exists, the media and what it publishes is downstream of what individuals in society want to see and hear.
This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising. Not to mention, everyone in power knows how much the public is influenced by media, and takes care to cultivate their relationship with media through all means possible - donations, access journalism (you publish something bad about me? See if anyone in your whole paper gets one more "leak" from us), friendships with the editors and managers and so on.
Not to mention, you're making an assumption that the media has a responsibility of extracting the maximum possible engagement, which is definitely not a given. Even if Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson get the maximum possible engagement, that doesn't make it ethical to put such partisan and deceptive voices front and center. This is essentially a way of manipulating emotion, just like advertising, it's not a democratic style of "listening to your consumer".
Finally, there is a difference between the style that media chooses to employ, which the public has some influence on; and the content they actually publish, which is much more controlled by management and special interests groups. Just look at stories that don't get published - for example, when Ruth Badger Ginsburg was interviewed, she noted that she didn't agree with athletes kneeling; but, the interviewers decided that this will hurt her image among the left, so they just cut out this part of her interview.
This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising. Not to mention, everyone in power knows how much the public is influenced by media, and takes care to cultivate their relationship with media through all means possible - donations, access journalism (you publish something bad about me? See if anyone in your whole paper gets one more "leak" from us), friendships with the editors and managers and so on.
Not to mention, you're making an assumption that the media has a responsibility of extracting the maximum possible engagement, which is definitely not a given. Even if Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson get the maximum possible engagement, that doesn't make it ethical to put such partisan and deceptive voices front and center. This is essentially a way of manipulating emotion, just like advertising, it's not a democratic style of "listening to your consumer".
Finally, there is a difference between the style that media chooses to employ, which the public has some influence on; and the content they actually publish, which is much more controlled by management and special interests groups. Just look at stories that don't get published - for example, when Ruth Badger Ginsburg was interviewed, she noted that she didn't agree with athletes kneeling; but, the interviewers decided that this will hurt her image among the left, so they just cut out this part of her interview.
> This seems very naive. Media companies are not working for the public, which pays pennies to the dollar compared to advertising.
I agree that the advertising is where the money comes from for most media... But that supports the parent comment, in that it incentivises the media companies to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear (or, more correctly, exactly what will keep them coming back and watching more advertisements).
I agree that the advertising is where the money comes from for most media... But that supports the parent comment, in that it incentivises the media companies to tell their audiences exactly what they want to hear (or, more correctly, exactly what will keep them coming back and watching more advertisements).
I think what you've said here, while well reasoned, is pretty much the kind of magical thinking about the power of the media and its influences that I think is a part of the paralysis around the subject.
Media, in your words, is simultaneously purely driven by capital and Machiavellian self-interest, "not working for the public" and _also_ is an entity that should be concerned about the ethics of putting "such partisan and deceptive voices front and center". In this world, there exists a cabal of people, all moving in concert to suppress the truth (which truths? don't know) and release propaganda, all of which, of course, everyone in society cleanly falls for.
The problem, of course, is that you're taking the actions of a loosely defined group of hundreds or thousands (or more) of publications, and importantly, _individuals_ working at those publications in the U.S. and around the world and pushing them together into a grand narrative.
I don't really think I'm being naive. We've all gotten to see the rise of independent media and the new gigantic wave of disinformation networks that came along with it. The democratization of content creation was a shift of power from "elites" to the common people. And yet, independent media tends to reproduce the same kinds of narratives of traditional media (and often even more nefarious ones), just with a different face. It's precisely because of the relationship between people and the media that there are no easy answers.
Media, in your words, is simultaneously purely driven by capital and Machiavellian self-interest, "not working for the public" and _also_ is an entity that should be concerned about the ethics of putting "such partisan and deceptive voices front and center". In this world, there exists a cabal of people, all moving in concert to suppress the truth (which truths? don't know) and release propaganda, all of which, of course, everyone in society cleanly falls for.
The problem, of course, is that you're taking the actions of a loosely defined group of hundreds or thousands (or more) of publications, and importantly, _individuals_ working at those publications in the U.S. and around the world and pushing them together into a grand narrative.
I don't really think I'm being naive. We've all gotten to see the rise of independent media and the new gigantic wave of disinformation networks that came along with it. The democratization of content creation was a shift of power from "elites" to the common people. And yet, independent media tends to reproduce the same kinds of narratives of traditional media (and often even more nefarious ones), just with a different face. It's precisely because of the relationship between people and the media that there are no easy answers.
I'm working on something similar to the "tracker for every issue of public concern" idea that OP suggests at the end. A news site that doesn't write articles. Instead just organizes links to other peoples articles, and links to original sources, into sagas that unfolded over time.
It's not released yet, and I just talked about it publicly for the first time in another HN comment a few days ago [1]. There I asked people to email me if they were interested in being notified when I had an MVP ready, and I had a great response (33 emails, for context the comment itself only got 46 upvotes), so I guess I'll do the same here. Email is in my profile, sorry for the blatant self promotion.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29552009
It's not released yet, and I just talked about it publicly for the first time in another HN comment a few days ago [1]. There I asked people to email me if they were interested in being notified when I had an MVP ready, and I had a great response (33 emails, for context the comment itself only got 46 upvotes), so I guess I'll do the same here. Email is in my profile, sorry for the blatant self promotion.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=29552009
> What we need from journalism for the 21st century is a curated set of ongoing collections of consensus.
This is a horrifying idea. Tension between various facets on a topic is good. Consensus breeds complacency, avoids change, and the meek-but-correct get crushed.
Let's teach our children how to identify opinion and compare opinions for reasonableness.
This is a horrifying idea. Tension between various facets on a topic is good. Consensus breeds complacency, avoids change, and the meek-but-correct get crushed.
Let's teach our children how to identify opinion and compare opinions for reasonableness.
This is why consensus is a collection. Sometimes dialectical analysis is good; thesis, antithesis, synthesis is a tried and true formula that often works. But not always! Sometimes one side is just horseshit that gets mindlessly repeated in the interest of “balance”. In either case I’m not suggesting that the consensus ruthlessly censor dissenting views, rather that in order to make sense out of dissenting views, the strongest forms of each argument need to be presented together alongside accountability: editorial moderation and fact-checking.
Even in the cases where the truth really is somewhere in the middle between two opposing camps, reading a sequence of side A #1, side B #1, side A #2, side B #2, in disconnected stories gives you a very skewed view subject to recency bias. For example you can’t easily check the history to see if a claim B is making in their second story was already debunked by A in their first one, and it’s a huge waste of time and energy for A to have to spend all their media budget just refuting that claim over and over because B keeps bringing it up every time there’s no fact checker right in front of them to call them on it (and even sometimes if there is).
In other words the current media environment rewards being loud, wrong, simple and repetitive far over and above even the normal human bias for such things. It reinforces our worst cognitive habits.
Even in the cases where the truth really is somewhere in the middle between two opposing camps, reading a sequence of side A #1, side B #1, side A #2, side B #2, in disconnected stories gives you a very skewed view subject to recency bias. For example you can’t easily check the history to see if a claim B is making in their second story was already debunked by A in their first one, and it’s a huge waste of time and energy for A to have to spend all their media budget just refuting that claim over and over because B keeps bringing it up every time there’s no fact checker right in front of them to call them on it (and even sometimes if there is).
In other words the current media environment rewards being loud, wrong, simple and repetitive far over and above even the normal human bias for such things. It reinforces our worst cognitive habits.
Supreme court opinions are collections of consensus despite containing dissenting opinions. The point is to organize all the information, data, analyses and opinions worth listening to instead of it being an ad-hoc stream of unconnected narratives.
And if you say that somehow journalists can't sanity check and vet sources for quality then, for you, the battle is already lost and the solution is to just delete news.
And if you say that somehow journalists can't sanity check and vet sources for quality then, for you, the battle is already lost and the solution is to just delete news.
I agree - this article is a bit scary.
> One of the things that COVID has taught me is that the concept of a “story” in the news media is a relic that needs to be completely re-thought. It is not suited to the challenges of media communication today.
> Specifically, there are challenging and complex public-policy questions which require robust engagement from an informed electorate.
The problem is that the media is not intended to inform the electorate, nor to communicate truth. The sole job of the media is to win eyeballs, so that those eyeballs can be shown ads.
The profit motive is what these entities exist, and the profit motive pushes them toward actions that are harmful to society as a whole. Fear and anger drives engagement, and engagement drives profit. Clam reason and subtle nuance do not drive engagement, and therefore have no place in today's media.
> Specifically, there are challenging and complex public-policy questions which require robust engagement from an informed electorate.
The problem is that the media is not intended to inform the electorate, nor to communicate truth. The sole job of the media is to win eyeballs, so that those eyeballs can be shown ads.
The profit motive is what these entities exist, and the profit motive pushes them toward actions that are harmful to society as a whole. Fear and anger drives engagement, and engagement drives profit. Clam reason and subtle nuance do not drive engagement, and therefore have no place in today's media.
What you're talking about is a real problem, but I don't think it's the same problem that the article is talking about. There's a lot of journalism that isn't trying to stir up strong emotion, that actually does look like it's trying to be calmly informative -- and when I see it, it's usually what the OP calls a story: "[...] a temporal snapshot of one journalist's interpretation of an issue. Just a tidy little pile of motivated reasoning with a few cherry-picked citations, and then we move on to the next story."
I suspect that news sources that are trying to brand themselves as impartial and trustworthy could get more trust without sacrificing many eyeballs if they'd switch from a story format to a regularly-updated "Here's what we think we know, how we think we know it, and how confident we are about it" format.
I suspect that news sources that are trying to brand themselves as impartial and trustworthy could get more trust without sacrificing many eyeballs if they'd switch from a story format to a regularly-updated "Here's what we think we know, how we think we know it, and how confident we are about it" format.
Even taking the view that the media's sole goal is to win eyeballs, it seems like making an investment in the longer term reporting that OP is talking about would do that.
Surely inducing people to read the same story multiple times, get's more eyeballs. Being reliable enough that people check your news every day, wins eyeballs. Being frequently uninformative, makes people less likely to come back (loses eyeballs). Etc.
You say that "subtle nuance doesn't drive engagement", but don't we also see that people like "knowing more" than everyone else, or even just thinking they do (the latter of which seems to be a large driving force behind conspiracy theories)?
So I don't think that this really explains the entirety of the media's behavior. I think a lot of it is based on things like institutional inertia from when news was delivered via physical news papers, and optimizing for just the metrics that are easy to measure.
Surely inducing people to read the same story multiple times, get's more eyeballs. Being reliable enough that people check your news every day, wins eyeballs. Being frequently uninformative, makes people less likely to come back (loses eyeballs). Etc.
You say that "subtle nuance doesn't drive engagement", but don't we also see that people like "knowing more" than everyone else, or even just thinking they do (the latter of which seems to be a large driving force behind conspiracy theories)?
So I don't think that this really explains the entirety of the media's behavior. I think a lot of it is based on things like institutional inertia from when news was delivered via physical news papers, and optimizing for just the metrics that are easy to measure.
Is an informed electorate by definition a group of people who sat through a series of free college level lecture taught by an expert virologist? Even then, I found an error or two because I did exhaustive surface level fact checking.
Or is it about the public being informed of accurate surface level facts and big picture views?
Or is it about the public being informed of accurate surface level facts and big picture views?
This also ignores that there are multiple perspectives to being 'informed'.
For example, as someone who's studied online communication and social computing at the graduate level, my main disagreement with a lot of policy decisions isn't due to my disagreement with scientists, but rather because I think that the policy decisions made are pouring gasoline on our infosphere problems. So am I not informed because I don't have a biology related degree, or are THEY not informed because none of them seem to have a clue how people or the Internet work?
Somebody that only understands virology doesn't understand the PANDEMIC, as a social construct/an impact on human societies. (And vice versa.) And that's without getting into history and geopolitics: Since variants are a global concern, the optimal choices are also impacted by what other countries are doing. And understanding those in context means different legal systems, different ideas of human rights, different patent and pharma laws, blah blah blah.
I sincerely doubt if an informed electorate is possible on some issues (such as COVID) because I think the time investment to be informed is too much to put on the average citizen.
For example, as someone who's studied online communication and social computing at the graduate level, my main disagreement with a lot of policy decisions isn't due to my disagreement with scientists, but rather because I think that the policy decisions made are pouring gasoline on our infosphere problems. So am I not informed because I don't have a biology related degree, or are THEY not informed because none of them seem to have a clue how people or the Internet work?
Somebody that only understands virology doesn't understand the PANDEMIC, as a social construct/an impact on human societies. (And vice versa.) And that's without getting into history and geopolitics: Since variants are a global concern, the optimal choices are also impacted by what other countries are doing. And understanding those in context means different legal systems, different ideas of human rights, different patent and pharma laws, blah blah blah.
I sincerely doubt if an informed electorate is possible on some issues (such as COVID) because I think the time investment to be informed is too much to put on the average citizen.
> I sincerely doubt if an informed electorate is possible on some issues (such as COVID) because I think the time investment to be informed is too much to put on the average citizen.
Entirely reasonable, and also universally accepted in many domains. When it comes to figuring out how we next put someone on the moon, nobody thinks that an informed electorate is an important part of the process. We just generally keep quiet and let "them" get on with it.
The difficulties start when there is an issue (such as a pandemic) about which huge numbers of people are neither informed nor will they shut up.
Entirely reasonable, and also universally accepted in many domains. When it comes to figuring out how we next put someone on the moon, nobody thinks that an informed electorate is an important part of the process. We just generally keep quiet and let "them" get on with it.
The difficulties start when there is an issue (such as a pandemic) about which huge numbers of people are neither informed nor will they shut up.
> The sole job of the media is to win eyeballs, so that those eyeballs can be shown ads.
Don't you miss the good ol' days, when the media was just there to manipulate public opinion in favour of whichever oligarch paid the piper?
Don't you miss the good ol' days, when the media was just there to manipulate public opinion in favour of whichever oligarch paid the piper?
[deleted]
The ideal situation our brains want is a close friend with high social status who entertains us with compelling and digestible narratives about what's really going on. A news outlet that only deals in cold hard facts, consensus, and objective numbers will simply never be able to out-compete a retweetable headline from a famous journalist with a sensationalized and entertaining version of the facts.
For one thing, I am not convinced we have cracked a way in general of translating cold hard data and situations with scant evidence into a decent lay understanding. So in some ways news-as-entertainment media may even succeed in communicating actual reality better than a list of facts ever could, even if everyone's understanding is pretty shit on average. By using clickbait and sensation to turn a profit they can even do it more sustainably while Objective News Corp goes out of business (or more likely starts to slowly become more like everyone else).
Maybe we'll find effective scientific ways to measure how news outlets and specific authors tend to do at predicting future developments through implication or otherwise, but I think the more realistic boring reality is that the broad ecosystem will just trudge ahead on a bumpy road and converge on a few marginally better ways of reporting and interpreting news.
For one thing, I am not convinced we have cracked a way in general of translating cold hard data and situations with scant evidence into a decent lay understanding. So in some ways news-as-entertainment media may even succeed in communicating actual reality better than a list of facts ever could, even if everyone's understanding is pretty shit on average. By using clickbait and sensation to turn a profit they can even do it more sustainably while Objective News Corp goes out of business (or more likely starts to slowly become more like everyone else).
Maybe we'll find effective scientific ways to measure how news outlets and specific authors tend to do at predicting future developments through implication or otherwise, but I think the more realistic boring reality is that the broad ecosystem will just trudge ahead on a bumpy road and converge on a few marginally better ways of reporting and interpreting news.
The news sources Glyph wants already exist but the mass market is uninterested, unwilling to pay for them. There are niche markets, people who are interested and willing and able to pay, and they do get serviced by tiny obscure outfits.
(e.g. SemiAccurate:
> Professional membership allows instant access to the entire site and all content. It includes immediate access to all news, analysis, and summaries of the news. It also includes access to all regularly published analysis, all news, white papers, and related materials. Pricing is $1,000 for a year’s worth of access. We do not offer refunds for cancellation or termination.
https://semiaccurate.com/subscribe/ )
So the problem is not that we can't do this, it's that nobody wants it at scale, there's no mass market for this sort of in-depth information.
FWIW I agree that a system of timelines (what Glyph calls "trackers") would likely be a very useful motif for interacting with news.
Bucky Fuller thought that we would just program all the data into (effectively) giant spreadsheets, do analysis and scenario planning, and the computer could work out the logistics for us. Automatic utopia.
Which brings me to my point: In order to get more people to ingest and make decisions based on all this data, we need to foster more free time. Automation should free people up to spend more time learning and communicating to improve governance (among other things.)
(e.g. SemiAccurate:
> Professional membership allows instant access to the entire site and all content. It includes immediate access to all news, analysis, and summaries of the news. It also includes access to all regularly published analysis, all news, white papers, and related materials. Pricing is $1,000 for a year’s worth of access. We do not offer refunds for cancellation or termination.
https://semiaccurate.com/subscribe/ )
So the problem is not that we can't do this, it's that nobody wants it at scale, there's no mass market for this sort of in-depth information.
FWIW I agree that a system of timelines (what Glyph calls "trackers") would likely be a very useful motif for interacting with news.
Bucky Fuller thought that we would just program all the data into (effectively) giant spreadsheets, do analysis and scenario planning, and the computer could work out the logistics for us. Automatic utopia.
Which brings me to my point: In order to get more people to ingest and make decisions based on all this data, we need to foster more free time. Automation should free people up to spend more time learning and communicating to improve governance (among other things.)
Nothing new here. I spent a few years working in war zones. I made friends with journalists. They were all (even the "good" ones that I became friends with) full of crap. Even if they wanted to tell the truth they couldn't, because they didn't understand the subject matter well enough.
Edit to refine my point due to presumed misunderstanding: At the end of the day it's about dollars. News is there to sell, not to explain truths.
Edit to refine my point due to presumed misunderstanding: At the end of the day it's about dollars. News is there to sell, not to explain truths.
Nothing new here. I spent a few years working in enterprise. I made friends with software developers. They were all (even the "good" ones that I became friends with) full of crap. Even if they wanted to create good software they couldn't, because they didn't understand the problems to be solved well enough.
(This is how unhelpful and condescending it sounds when one paints everyone in a profession with the same broad brush.)
(This is how unhelpful and condescending it sounds when one paints everyone in a profession with the same broad brush.)
What you say reinforces the GP's point. In my experience, most devs don't understand the problems well enough. They think they do, they may even earnestly try to understand, but because they lack first hand experience they do not.
How many devs actually spend a year or more working in the role of the person who will be using their software? Then they might have an understanding.
How many devs actually spend a year or more working in the role of the person who will be using their software? Then they might have an understanding.
These criticisms probably ring true for any field, profession, or institution. At the end of the day all of these are inevitably made up of flawed human beings with a vested interest in appearing more high-minded and impressive than they really are.
I think you've unintentionally made an argument in favour of GP.
Explains the Gell-Mann amnesia effect.
https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
Actually, no. The article misses one important step, namely experts or interpretation of data. Meaning, there's data, data reporting, aggregation and selection, and finally, interpretation. Journalism is then another step, namely a transmission system from the realm of data and specific domain to common understanding. The form of this is the story, which integrates the findings with public matters (by this constructing meaning) and allows the public to form an opinion. Accepted opinion eventually becomes the narration that leads our accorded actions. – What "data journalism" means here, is omitting expert opinion and directly applying common understanding to unstructured data, by this neglecting any need for expert domain or domain experts, in other words, skipping informed opinion, since the expertise is already "in the stack" – and even more so, requiring the members of the public to come up with the story on their own (and fight it out). I'm not convinced.
At this point literally everything has been wrong. Facts are confidently stated and they turn out to be opposite, then reverse again. Followed by more totally confident assertions. Maybe there is a story here, and it is our hubris. This is beyond us.
We need automatic compilation, to fight that trend.
When all you get from the news is the current political spin of the latest scandal to make your party look good, you need to record who is saying what to start to see trends in what may be the truth, piecing together the bits of verifiable information they offer.
Now this is too much to do manually. A fact-counterfact format on "public discourse" sites like Kialo[1] is useful to collect the evolution of known facts over news, but it's too slow to do by hand. A news aggregator that collected partisan claims from both sides in breaking news would allow journalists to analyse the big picture, being able to report the story based on published facts and not just hearsay.
An additional advantage is that it would allow readers to contrast the bias of individual journalists, seeing which facts they emphasise and which they ignore. It would also serve as an ever-growing database of public discourse like we used to have in the days of printing press and newspaper libraries, when what was published remained unchanged and could be checked out.
[1] https://www.kialo.com/
When all you get from the news is the current political spin of the latest scandal to make your party look good, you need to record who is saying what to start to see trends in what may be the truth, piecing together the bits of verifiable information they offer.
Now this is too much to do manually. A fact-counterfact format on "public discourse" sites like Kialo[1] is useful to collect the evolution of known facts over news, but it's too slow to do by hand. A news aggregator that collected partisan claims from both sides in breaking news would allow journalists to analyse the big picture, being able to report the story based on published facts and not just hearsay.
An additional advantage is that it would allow readers to contrast the bias of individual journalists, seeing which facts they emphasise and which they ignore. It would also serve as an ever-growing database of public discourse like we used to have in the days of printing press and newspaper libraries, when what was published remained unchanged and could be checked out.
[1] https://www.kialo.com/
I've been appreciating some people's practice of giving subjective probability estimates for various things depending on the strength of the evidence; see e.g. the "Probability Updates" section of this article:
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/12/16/omicron-post-7/#prob...
Probably a well-functioning prediction market would do it better, though I'm not sure our prediction markets today are there yet.
https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/12/16/omicron-post-7/#prob...
Probably a well-functioning prediction market would do it better, though I'm not sure our prediction markets today are there yet.
Prediction markets, or at least the decent and regulated ones, won't touch the plague. It's gambling, and taking bets on human misery is generally frowned upon as a business practice.
You need insurance provider's license for that.
You need insurance provider's license for that.
I'd love some data journalism on the facts that are being reversed this way and that :-)
I'm a fan of data journalism too, but not everything can be done that way, and social sciences have lots of problems.
In particular, surveys are a cursed instrument. You aren't allowed to know what people were thinking when they filled out the survey a certain way.
I think there might be interesting ways to combine these. As part of doing a survey, maybe pick a few people at random and interview them to find out where they're coming from and why they answered the survey a certain way?
In particular, surveys are a cursed instrument. You aren't allowed to know what people were thinking when they filled out the survey a certain way.
I think there might be interesting ways to combine these. As part of doing a survey, maybe pick a few people at random and interview them to find out where they're coming from and why they answered the survey a certain way?
Reminder that The New York Times eliminated their public editor, a role meant to enforce journalistic standards. An ombudsman of sorts. https://www.vox.com/2017/5/31/15719278/public-editor-liz-spa...
The best example of what modern journalism can (should?) be is Ros Atkins's work on BBC Outside Source. https://twitter.com/BBCRosAtkins/status/1471755622651682816
Brutally factual and to the point.
Brutally factual and to the point.
I think this is a good idea. Trackers that have things in green, yellow, orange, red - kind of like how we track covid rates in areas. The story IS the current data. There's no reason to go to CNN for the latest covid numbers I can get it in many places that share this data now.
This idea can be applied to home pricing, homelessness, food and gas prices, crime stats. We can set up breaking points and literally watch the numbers break through something.
I mean what if we applied names to the red color like: Crime is now red in this part of SF which means this area is basically Venezuela right now.
Live stats (trackers) coupled with zones of terribleness so we can literally watch the world fall apart in the form of a tracker.
This idea can be applied to home pricing, homelessness, food and gas prices, crime stats. We can set up breaking points and literally watch the numbers break through something.
I mean what if we applied names to the red color like: Crime is now red in this part of SF which means this area is basically Venezuela right now.
Live stats (trackers) coupled with zones of terribleness so we can literally watch the world fall apart in the form of a tracker.
Until the crime stats show inconvenient facts and they take them down.
I would really appreciate a "news" site that just cited verifiable facts and maybe showed data trends but didn't try to make any conclusions for me
I work in political communications, so I'll throw a few US resources here. Unfortunately, because the media IS unreliable, doing this requires going to primary sources and a lot of time as well as a very defined idea of what you care about. There's nowhere that will bundle up the 'most important' things for you, but if you're willing to drink from the firehose:
- https://www.govtrack.us/
- Your local and state websites (if they don't suck, this is highly variable). Some allow for things like RSS feeds of bill updates if you'd like to track certain things
- https://ballotpedia.org/ is an encyclopedia that, while slow on the news side, had a lot of structural supporting information so you can look up things like how ballot measures work. So good for fact checking basic government facts.
- https://www.congress.gov/ - The LoC also collects and archives data on Congressional actions
- https://www.senate.gov/legislative/HowTo/how_to_votes.htm and the Congressional Register
- Wire services and things like AP + Reuters are good triggers/trip wires to go check on your own. So they tell you about a story, and you don't read their version, you just go look up whatever it is on one of the sources above.
That's what I end up doing, and it's time-consuming and janky. I hate it, but I've also been a professional fact-checker and do so occasionally on news articles and I am not pleased with what I find, so.
- https://www.govtrack.us/
- Your local and state websites (if they don't suck, this is highly variable). Some allow for things like RSS feeds of bill updates if you'd like to track certain things
- https://ballotpedia.org/ is an encyclopedia that, while slow on the news side, had a lot of structural supporting information so you can look up things like how ballot measures work. So good for fact checking basic government facts.
- https://www.congress.gov/ - The LoC also collects and archives data on Congressional actions
- https://www.senate.gov/legislative/HowTo/how_to_votes.htm and the Congressional Register
- Wire services and things like AP + Reuters are good triggers/trip wires to go check on your own. So they tell you about a story, and you don't read their version, you just go look up whatever it is on one of the sources above.
That's what I end up doing, and it's time-consuming and janky. I hate it, but I've also been a professional fact-checker and do so occasionally on news articles and I am not pleased with what I find, so.
That seems like a nice idea, but still very exploitable - it’s easy to control people’s conclusions by limiting which verifiable facts you publish.
Here’s a good media bias chart:
https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?utm_source=HomePage_St...
Try choosing sources near the top middle, eg the Associated Press, Reuters, etc.
https://adfontesmedia.com/static-mbc/?utm_source=HomePage_St...
Try choosing sources near the top middle, eg the Associated Press, Reuters, etc.
Honestly that chart looks great to me, but there's just no way to tell or to prove to others whether that's because we're both objective truth-seekers or because our awful obvious heinous biases happen to match up.
this chart is helpful and glad it's been made to keep the conversation going in a better direction.
Sadly due to what I consider terrible editorial controls, I feel we need to move to a chart that shows more details, and even goes to actual reporter/writer level and editor level.
Also in the age of Trump and Bernie - we likely need to chart 'those for / those against' these two specifically - as there are plenty on the 'right' and 'left' side of the news that are against them.
I'd like a browser extension that can highlight a crowd sourced plusses and minusses of each individual writer.
In some ways I have found the trust placed in the middle, like chart shows abc/cbs/bbc/npr near middle.. this is when the most damage is done..
like when I watched a nora odonel about 2 years ago - a fair and balanced reporting for about 55 minutes - lots of facts, not much fluff.. then the last 5 minutes one fact and a hard slant to be anti-trump story.. what makes this so bad is that she/they really try to say they are proper reporting, so it makes the propaganda pieces they add in 100x worse imho..
at least if you watch enough of the reidOut or newsmax (going by the chart) - you get a sense that they are totally skewering the stories with no balance at all attempted - and I think it becomes obvious that are working more like the enquirer - it's more tribal circle jerking entertainment than real facts..
When a place stands as an arbiter of truth and fairness and balance and they sprinkle just little bits of slant it's worse I believe.
Sadly due to what I consider terrible editorial controls, I feel we need to move to a chart that shows more details, and even goes to actual reporter/writer level and editor level.
Also in the age of Trump and Bernie - we likely need to chart 'those for / those against' these two specifically - as there are plenty on the 'right' and 'left' side of the news that are against them.
I'd like a browser extension that can highlight a crowd sourced plusses and minusses of each individual writer.
In some ways I have found the trust placed in the middle, like chart shows abc/cbs/bbc/npr near middle.. this is when the most damage is done..
like when I watched a nora odonel about 2 years ago - a fair and balanced reporting for about 55 minutes - lots of facts, not much fluff.. then the last 5 minutes one fact and a hard slant to be anti-trump story.. what makes this so bad is that she/they really try to say they are proper reporting, so it makes the propaganda pieces they add in 100x worse imho..
at least if you watch enough of the reidOut or newsmax (going by the chart) - you get a sense that they are totally skewering the stories with no balance at all attempted - and I think it becomes obvious that are working more like the enquirer - it's more tribal circle jerking entertainment than real facts..
When a place stands as an arbiter of truth and fairness and balance and they sprinkle just little bits of slant it's worse I believe.
The ones in the middle are the most nefarious in my experience. Precisely because they purport to be “the objective standard” and quite simply are entertainment just like everyone else.
Even the reliability of AP has completely evaporated for me. Not just influence from money, but also from intelligence agencies that make journalists feel important.
Even the reliability of AP has completely evaporated for me. Not just influence from money, but also from intelligence agencies that make journalists feel important.
>Even the reliability of AP has completely evaporated for me. Not just influence from money, but also from intelligence agencies that make journalists feel important.
+1, it's grotesque how certain outlets have become CIA mouthpieces since 2016.
+1, it's grotesque how certain outlets have become CIA mouthpieces since 2016.
This version of "least bias" appears to translate into a wierd combination of:
* pro status quo
* more fact-based reporting
I went looking for that, and I found that Wall Street Journal does that better than any other US source I found, though of course nothing is perfect.
Their regular quoted subscription rate is big, but with some effort you can find much better deals.
Their regular quoted subscription rate is big, but with some effort you can find much better deals.
[deleted]
With respect to COVID-19, this makes sense.
More broadly, though, for journalism in general, not so much. For instance: Carryrou's Theranos work much more strongly fits the "story" notion of journalism than it does "data journalism".
More broadly, though, for journalism in general, not so much. For instance: Carryrou's Theranos work much more strongly fits the "story" notion of journalism than it does "data journalism".
There are no facts in journalism, only observations. The media is not a courtroom, it’s not science, it’s just humans observing each other.
A couple of days ago there were very strong winds in my area that caused a lot of falling tree limbs and property damage. The next day the newspaper reported, correctly, the fact that the weather had indeed been like that. I'm not sure how this fits with your claim unless you're using the words "fact" and "observation" in an epistemically radical way.
All facts begin as observations. Not all observations are facts.
All I'm saying is that the media operates on the level of "observations." That doesn't mean that some of those observations are not facts, just that the verification process that makes an observation a fact is outside the domain of media.
All I'm saying is that the media operates on the level of "observations." That doesn't mean that some of those observations are not facts, just that the verification process that makes an observation a fact is outside the domain of media.
I disagree that journalism that uses stories, quotes, human interest is bad or causing our misinformation problems. There is a LOT of great, factual, reporting that use real stories.
A great example is this recent Wayfair child trafficking article from WaPo (worth a read if you haven't). [1]
Adding in the real life experience of the supposed victims, those who spread the information, and then the final story of a believer. How this was the start of her radicalization, directly leads to QAnon, and finally she went to Jan 6 and died. Powerful story from start to finish which is 100% based in fact. This brings what a lot of us view as fringe & quirky online craziness into the real world with real consequences.
IMHO the big problem is opinion masked as news.
I constantly report on Apple News examples of this. Fox News does it all the time. They put out pieces on there that are opinion and not reporting that are not labeled. They put headlines and push notifications that are opinion but not labeled. A lot of people only see these and don't actually read. They are not reporting facts, or the piece uses just a few facts to support their opinion.
When WaPo, NyTimes, even more 'conservative' outlets like WSJ publish they put 'opinion: ' in the headline or minimally the byline and a graph at the bottom about the writer.
I'm picking on Fox but they aren't the only bad actors this happens on the left too lots of online outlets like Vox, Mother Jones. But Fox is the modern pioneer of opinion 'news' and probably have the widest audience of a mainstream outlet and IMHO take it farther than what are more like obviously political blogs.
Their top shows are all opinion but parade as news. A lot of these personalities have segments that are not based in reality and especially not factual (Tucker Carlson's jan 6 show is probably the most egregious recent example).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/way...
A great example is this recent Wayfair child trafficking article from WaPo (worth a read if you haven't). [1]
Adding in the real life experience of the supposed victims, those who spread the information, and then the final story of a believer. How this was the start of her radicalization, directly leads to QAnon, and finally she went to Jan 6 and died. Powerful story from start to finish which is 100% based in fact. This brings what a lot of us view as fringe & quirky online craziness into the real world with real consequences.
IMHO the big problem is opinion masked as news.
I constantly report on Apple News examples of this. Fox News does it all the time. They put out pieces on there that are opinion and not reporting that are not labeled. They put headlines and push notifications that are opinion but not labeled. A lot of people only see these and don't actually read. They are not reporting facts, or the piece uses just a few facts to support their opinion.
When WaPo, NyTimes, even more 'conservative' outlets like WSJ publish they put 'opinion: ' in the headline or minimally the byline and a graph at the bottom about the writer.
I'm picking on Fox but they aren't the only bad actors this happens on the left too lots of online outlets like Vox, Mother Jones. But Fox is the modern pioneer of opinion 'news' and probably have the widest audience of a mainstream outlet and IMHO take it farther than what are more like obviously political blogs.
Their top shows are all opinion but parade as news. A lot of these personalities have segments that are not based in reality and especially not factual (Tucker Carlson's jan 6 show is probably the most egregious recent example).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2021/way...
Objective truth does not exist, in my opinion, so I see this article as misguided.
Consider reading Manufacturing Consent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
Consider reading Manufacturing Consent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
I've been having very similar thoughts recently, but I've come to a very different conclusion.
I agree with the author that the news article is an archaic way of transmitting history in real time. The solution, in my mind, is a new medium--something between a news article and a history book. This requires two changes.
1) We need a free, user-friendly platform for organizing and navigating news stories. Basically, we need a Google News that is actually interested in the original mission statement--“to organize the world's information [in this case, data about current events] and make it universally accessible and useful.” Looking at the Google News of today, you'd think their mission statement was to be the Drudge Report. It should be trivially easy to put together specific sets of news articles, but it's not. Say you want to see a list of every NYT, WaPo, and WSJ article that mentioned Trump in 2016. Should be trivial, right? Or maybe you want to see a list of every article referencing Jeff Sessions in the lead-up to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia collusion probe? Good luck! I've been searching for a neatly organized, searchable and free news database for awhile, and I've had zero luck. But there are only a few thousand articles coming out of reputable publications every day. It strikes me as utterly bizarre that past news articles are really not all that much easier to parse through than there were in the era of microfilm. I think there are millions of would-be fact-checkers and meta-journalists out there who would love to organize the daily deluge of news data and battle fake news in forums across the internet. They just don't have the tools.
2) We need to end the tyranny of the news article. Let's say you want to learn about Watergate. Would you pick up the NYT archives and start reading every Watergate article you could find? Of course not. It wouldn't make any sense to re-live the slow, confused trickle of facts in real time. You wouldn't know which articles were biased, confused, or outright misleading. You would be piecing together your own narrative while using shoddy data. Instead, you go straight for a book. Leave it to someone else to collect the relevant facts and tamp down the spin and the confusion! They'll even sprinkle in a healthy dose of background data for context, and weave it all into a neat narrative. It might even be entertaining! When it comes to the news, we need something that's closer to books than a news article. We need folks who follow events in real time (facilitated by tools like I mentioned in point 1), collating facts, and maintaining clear, coherent narratives, instead of dumping facts into the real-time, disposable media that is news articles. Of course, reading a history book while it's being written sounds awful. But I'm confident that there is a happy medium.
I agree with the author that the news article is an archaic way of transmitting history in real time. The solution, in my mind, is a new medium--something between a news article and a history book. This requires two changes.
1) We need a free, user-friendly platform for organizing and navigating news stories. Basically, we need a Google News that is actually interested in the original mission statement--“to organize the world's information [in this case, data about current events] and make it universally accessible and useful.” Looking at the Google News of today, you'd think their mission statement was to be the Drudge Report. It should be trivially easy to put together specific sets of news articles, but it's not. Say you want to see a list of every NYT, WaPo, and WSJ article that mentioned Trump in 2016. Should be trivial, right? Or maybe you want to see a list of every article referencing Jeff Sessions in the lead-up to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia collusion probe? Good luck! I've been searching for a neatly organized, searchable and free news database for awhile, and I've had zero luck. But there are only a few thousand articles coming out of reputable publications every day. It strikes me as utterly bizarre that past news articles are really not all that much easier to parse through than there were in the era of microfilm. I think there are millions of would-be fact-checkers and meta-journalists out there who would love to organize the daily deluge of news data and battle fake news in forums across the internet. They just don't have the tools.
2) We need to end the tyranny of the news article. Let's say you want to learn about Watergate. Would you pick up the NYT archives and start reading every Watergate article you could find? Of course not. It wouldn't make any sense to re-live the slow, confused trickle of facts in real time. You wouldn't know which articles were biased, confused, or outright misleading. You would be piecing together your own narrative while using shoddy data. Instead, you go straight for a book. Leave it to someone else to collect the relevant facts and tamp down the spin and the confusion! They'll even sprinkle in a healthy dose of background data for context, and weave it all into a neat narrative. It might even be entertaining! When it comes to the news, we need something that's closer to books than a news article. We need folks who follow events in real time (facilitated by tools like I mentioned in point 1), collating facts, and maintaining clear, coherent narratives, instead of dumping facts into the real-time, disposable media that is news articles. Of course, reading a history book while it's being written sounds awful. But I'm confident that there is a happy medium.
[deleted]
Another problem, one tech people tend to ignore, is that journalism is as much about values as facts. And so long as we disagree on values, collections of consensus will quickly turn into competing consensuses, each motivated by values that aren't recognized by the others, which is exactly what we have now.