That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills.

29% of LA Republicans blame Obama for the federal government's response to Katrina. http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/08/polls_show_lo...

It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".

The problem is the average adult has a miniscule attention span. Giving a bunch of data and a path to a conclusion, or even contrasting viewpoints, isn't going to solve the problem.

One of two things will happen: 1) They want a summary, and denied that, will lose interest. 2) They will look for the summary that reaffirms their viewpoint and discard the rest (echo chamber/bias).

> That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills.

I mean, sounds to me like you're both saying roughly the same thing. The question is what is the solution to the problem of an electorate which is unable or unwilling to think critically?

> The question is what is the solution to the problem of an electorate which is unable or unwilling to think critically?

I'm of the opinion that fact checks from reputable sources are beneficial when tackling moderate/undecided voters. No, hard-core "Sandy Hook was a false flag" folks are never going to be convinced, but they're not the audience for sane coverage anyways.

> That's a lovely idea, but said requirement isn't in our election laws, and it's quite clear that plenty of voters lack even basic critical thinking skills.

The problem is beyond repair then.

> It's fundamentally responsible for news media to take a subject like vaccines or "was Obama president during Hurricane Katrina?" and give a solid, well-sourced answer instead of "well one side says X and the other says Y".

The first amendment has no such exceptions.

EDIT: (hn throttling limits kicked in)

> I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".

If your policy doesn't exist in law, it doesn't exist; it's an unfunded mandate with no teeth. We might as well wish for unicorns that bring us gold.

> The first amendment has no such exceptions.

That's silly. I said "it's fundamentally responsible", not "they should be legally compelled by the government".

Observationally, our society seems to have forgotten that liberties come with responsibilities. It seems that we are unaware that freedom comes with a price, and that price is not a one-time payment, but an ever-present obligation.

We have the right to a free press. Our responsibilities include vetting our information sources, responding to bad press, and providing better press should the existing press fail in its duties.

We have the right of free speech. Our responsibilities include countering dishonest speech, being mindful of our own speech, and defending the right to free speech.

We have the right to bear arms. Our responsibilities include keeping our arms reasonably repaired and secured, being educated in their safe use, and encouraging safe use from others.

The list goes on. To paraphrase a certain superhero, with great rights come great responsibilities. The system appears to fail when people ignore their responsibilities. It seems to fail when we rely on others to fulfill our duties. Every member of that society is obligated to those responsibilities, though shirking their duty has become the norm.

I don't have a solution and I am not a skilled writer, but hopefully this gibberish makes sense.

This doesn't scale. There's too much information out there for even the most critical of voters to verify.

The critical difference is that even if this statement is (mostly) true that doesn't mean we have adequate solutions available to solve it...

"Think of the children", etc.

A centrally controlled whitelist has as many (or more) risk than a pagerank algorithm. Moral panics about the gatekeeper's blacklist not being all-encompassing is also of questionable value... especially in regards to an event in the very early hours of a high-traffic news story which are generally full of incomplete information.

Then we've already lost. Is there any way forward, or do we just give up?