It's better following individual journalists via twitter or whatever instead of the organization itself for quality content for subjects you like to read about.

Personally, I use the main site just to scan headlines and see if there's anything interesting.

Everyone's biased, but I don't think I'm more of an objective thinker than a trained journalist who's taken classes to study it and write about it specifically. I don't believe many people can spot bias as well as they think they can just from a reporter's writing.

And yeah, they aren't experts at everything they cover. It's not a scientific journal. They should use sources for that stuff and if they don't, you should move on. Remember they also don't write specifically for experts so details get left out.

Maybe journalists should go out on their own via Patreon etc.?

There are journalists that do that, e.g. Tim Pool. I watched a series he did on the so-call "no go zones" in Sweden which is worth watching. You can see he tries hard to push through the competing narratives and get to just the facts.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxQaod7tWvYK_Naia54Gc...

That was a great series for something lots of people say doesn’t exist in the slightest.

Reporting on this reporting: https://www.indy100.com/article/sweden-trip-crowdfunded-righ...

The question is, has he remained independent from his decidedly partial funder?

Do you have any proof that he didn't remain independent, or you just want to stir the pot? All I can see in that link is a newspaper saying "this guy got donations by someone we don't like, so he must be lying".

I see it's all video in that investigation, do the videos look like they've been manipulated?

I've found that for issues that are this extremely politically polarized and where there is this much misinformation floating around, the only way to really know would be to buy a plane ticket and go there. You can't trust any source.

A bit of a tangent but: this is how you keep secrets in the Information Age. You can't actually keep a secret, but you can fog up the air with so much competing nonsense that nobody knows what to believe and the secret is indistinguishable from noise.

Well, he did say, "Chicago has about 750 murders each year." This seems off to me based on the facts.

Murders in Chicago the last 10 years:

2009 - 463

2010 - 456

2011 - 449

2012 - 514

2013 - 455

2014 - 464

2015 - 512

2016 - 808

2017 - 683

2018 - 588

> Maybe journalists should go out on their own via Patreon etc.?

The problem with that is that the person with the byline isn't the only one that matters. Editorial oversight is equally important. You need the guy who's enthusiastically digging into a story and the guy who keeps his enthusiasm in check. I don't think those can be the same person.

We had quite a scandal with something like this over here in Germany some weeks ago.

A young journalist named Relotius who worked for "Der Spiegel" was found to have his stories a little bit too perfect. He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.

So, while the core of a story might still be true, nobody really knows what happened and what was added by him. Nobody believes anything of these stories anymore after all.

It totally blew his career up (he was formerly found to be one of the "rising stars" of German journalism and had already got some awards for his work) and the Spiegel also found himself under heavy criticism, although they already have a concept in place, where another editor always fact-checks the other editors work.

So: Enthusiasm in journalists can go really wrong.

> He acknowledged that some parts of his stories were "beautified" by him to make them more appealing to the readers.

I think you are underselling it. Quoting from Der Spiegel[1], "he included individuals in his stories who he had never met or spoken to, telling their stories or quoting them. (...) He also made up dialogue and quotes."

[1] http://m.spiegel.de/international/the-relotius-case-answers-...

Oh, I'm sorry. I read into the story when it was more about things like "there was no music playing, although I wrote there was music and I didn't meet XY at that exact day". Didn't deeply look into it afterwards anymore. Thanks for pointing me to this, will read into it again.

IMHO what made it worse for "Der Spiegel", is that they have a huge fact checking department [1], but still failed miserably.

[1] https://digiday.com/media/inside-spiegels-70-person-fact-che...

I'm a fan of this idea. I've seen many a brand diluted after key journos leave and are replaced essentially by clickbait artists. The problem then is that it's tacit admission that the idea of branding in journalism is prima facie useless, but that feels somewhat natural. A large corporate publication is a large corporation first and foremost -- if it can't effectively create a product, then maybe I don't want that product from that large corporation.

But, where I get worried is what happens to the public commons when the labor of large scale journalism which is out of the reach of a single journalist (or even a small confederation) resources wise gets lost. Would it be replaced by individuals or small federations that are as effective? I mean, I don't think effective journalism will die anytime soon on the whole. But, I wonder if pockets will go extinct, and I'm nervous about what that means. I still don't think I've really seen it all that much yet.

There has also been at least one attempt at a site that facilitated this: pay the journalist you want to follow. It didn't take.

I'd love to find out which startups attempted this. I guess the network effects of YouTube/Patreon were simply too big for them to overcome.

The website I'm aware of is ne.ws (I knew the guy- a seasoned entrepreneur). I don't know what that website is now- same thing but Asian? Anyway I don't think he's doing it any more.

This is an interesting idea. I'd like to see more of this in the future. Large news orgs only existed before because of the necessity of combining resources. These days I bet you can do the same thing with only a couple of people or even solo given the advent of high technology.

But not Patreon. Patreon probably will shut them down after the first controversial article. If you want journalistic freedom and independence, relying on Patreon is like investing with Bernie Madoff.

I think that would lead to an echo-chambered niche on its own from incentives. Granted larger groups certainly can go astray as well. Greenpeace went essentially batshit a long time ago and the founders said screw it and left after falling to get through that banning Chlorine is an impossible and stupid idea given its role in health.

NYT's feature stories often seamlessly weave in certain choices of words that reflect the author's personal bias/ignorance. It's like enjoying a decent dessert then suddenly chewing on a piece of fingernail in it. Even WSJ doesn't really have this problem.

The WSJ pleasantly keeps its editorial content on the editorial pages. The NYT thinks all pages are editorial pages. Note this is different from choosing what to print. Both papers do that.

A very long time ago, I used to enjoy reading The Times (British newspaper) for exactly that reason. It was a very thin newspaper with 1 page of editorials and virtually no fluff sections (like leisure, travel,etc). Just news.

I haven't seen the print paper in a very long time, but I go to their website and see the following headlines: Sunday Times journalist was murdered by Assad, Bitter split on assisted dying hits Royal College of Physicians, Snow Alert as Britain stuck in deep freeze, Killer driver law a farce - says Olympic star, Labour MPs branded cowards for 'selling votes' to help May's deal, Job interviewer 'was like abusive ex', Giving Statins to older people could save 8000 lives a year, Times Christmas appeal attracts record donations, Improve or face closure - Steiner schools warned, Woman reunited with train driver who stopped her killing herself.

Where is the news? Virtually every headline is either exaggerated or clickbait or both. The article on the killing of the journalist is at least news worthy, but the headline is way over the top -- "US court determines Assad regime liable in journalist killing" would be much more neutral. There is a debate on assisted dying in the Royal College, but when has there not been? What's this about? It might snow in Britain. In February. Wow. "Killer driver law"... obviously a story, but obviously not unbiased... The rest of it is fodder for the tabloids. What the heck happened to the newspaper?

The Times is one of the oldest and most respected newspapers in the world. And while it has always been biased (as they all are), it has an amazing reputation for journalism since the latter half of the 1700s! But people don't want news. They want shock and awe. It drives me crazy.

Exactly the same thing that happened to the WSJ. It became wholly owned by Fox News.

Lots of the media seem to have lost their marbles over Twitter etc. eroding their hegemony.

WSJ used to. It is now a murdoch paper and you can see its editorial pushing through to news. Fox-WSJ. Yep. We don't have to like it...

I think the WSJ used to do that - before Murdoch purchased it. Now the "non-editorial" show he apparently breaks out in a cold sweat whenever sexual harassment comes up judging by the concern trolling and his ocerwhelming blonde anchor bias, openly acts like whistleblowers are big business bullying innocent comoanies, lobbyists are underdog small businesses, and the editorial writers are frothing at the mouth declaring well tested concepts are new and dangerously radical.

I moved from NYT to Economist for all of these reasons.

NYT went berserk after the 2016 elections if you ask me. Now every article feels like an opinion piece.

I agree with you but to be honest, 95% of the traditional medias decided to chose a camp after the 2016 elections.

Since then It is extremely difficult to find a neutral news with clear facts. I distrust the NYT as much as I distrust Fox news.

Are you sure it is bias or justified criticism? From my POV, the "bias" always seems to me to be justifiable criticism of Trump. I mean, the man lies so frequently it's almost impossible to present "his side".

I worry when I see these comments. They seem to make the same mistake that the BBC did when they presented equal time to climate change deniers as they did to climate change scientists.

I think your latter point is one of the defining sociocultural challenges of our time. We have stressed openness and fairness in public discourse to the point of enabling actors who 1) seek to undermine that public discourse 2) hold positions that are really spurious in relation to the discussions we need to be having. E.g., the public should be arguing over how to respond to climate change ---especially the social and economic trade-offs that might be necessary--- rather than about its existence.

> For all these reasons, I have got rid of my NYT & WaPo subscription to FT now and I can't be happier.

I think you have a typo. Are you saying that you switched to FT (Financial Times), or that you got rid of the FT as well?

Anyway, if you are a US-based reader, one way to avoid some of the bias and noise is to subscribe to a non-US paper. You don't have reporters and columnists trying to sway voters, because that's not who the audience is. Plus you might discover that interesting events do take place outside of the US. (And uninteresting events. Brexit seems like it should be interesting, but all the daily political ins and outs are, in my non-UK view, a bit tedious...)

Sadly non-US sources incur the bias of however said source feels about the US. I've seen the BBC home page highlight more random shootings than the actual US mainstream media. And in my experience they'll keep them on the front page longer than CNN when reporting on the same one. It could just be the page I'm being presented via cookie-stored history or whatever, but that seems unlikely as I hardly ever click on said stories.

Unfortunately it seems the only way to effectively reduce bias is to go straight to the primary source and judge for yourself, which is time-consuming.

And what makes you so sure that the BBC's handling of those stories isn't the correct one?

Your personal bias, of course.

We see in this thread many people who condemn newspapers because they report differently than they themselves would, and then have the gall to call that "bias".

The problem is not that they report differently, but that they fixate on a particular part of the whole picture, and emphasize it beyond all proportion, while neglecting other parts of the picture. It's like if you asked somebody to describe an elephant for you and they'd spend 99% of the time on its tail, describing it in a minute detail up to each hair on its end, and then spending only a couple of words on the rest of the animal - would you be able to adequately imagine what an elephant look like? You probably would think it's like some hairy snake or something :) That's the kind of coverage some biased news outlets provide.

You think the other parts are important because you don't like the tail.

But say, do you look forward to daily reports in your newspaper how on XY street there was no traffic accident yesterday? Or that no criminal escaped from YZ prison last month?

It's perfectly legitimate to focus on the interesting parts. You want to learn about an elephant's anatomy? Read a biology textbook, not journalism.

> You think the other parts are important because you don't like the tail.

Thanks for a case study. That's exactly what the press does - describe only the tail and call everyone who objects tail-phobes. No, I'm not going to pay for such baloney. If they find advertisers gullible enough to pay for it - good for them. Otherwise, good riddance.

> It's perfectly legitimate to focus on the interesting parts.

Of course. It's also perfectly legitimate for me not to pay for it if I'm interested in whole picture, not tail hairs. Let the tail hair enthusiasts finance it.

"I don't care about it" is a fundamentally different thing than "they are biased".

Sure, don't pay for it. I don't pay for Magic: The Gathering cards. But I also don't troll message boards how WotC deserve to die because they neglect XBox games, thus showing their bias towards Collectible Card Games.

> "I don't care about it" is a fundamentally different thing than "they are biased".

If they describe only what they care for, and only in a way they care for, it's the definition of biased. I challenge you to provide a definition of this word that would not be equivalent to this.

> But I also don't troll message boards how WotC deserve to die because they neglect XBox games

I don't care if they survive on their own - but they are whining that unless people start en masse paying for them, they'd die. I say - in that case good riddance, just as you would say if somebody asked you to pay for local MtG tournament because otherwise they can't survive. If they want my money - they have to provide quality content and do decent work. If they want to prostitute themselves to partisan politics and clickbait - ok, that's a way to make a living too, but I won't pay for it.

Oh, and another thing: I don't think any MtG club ever driven anybody to suicide or ruined somebody's life or career. Media does it all the time (Gawker, finally and deservedly resting in peace, pretty much was built for it). For example: https://quillette.com/2019/01/30/the-death-of-a-dreamer/ And then they want my sympathy. How about "no"?

P.S. you don't have to like my arguments or agree with it, but calling me "troll" just because you disagree with me is rude. Just so you know.

Sounds like they are pointing out the normalization and you are doubling down after being told that no, having a heart attack at 30 isn't normal.

No it isn't normal. It also isn't common. Gun homicides don't even crack the top 10 causes of death in America, yet the BBC chooses to devote a disproportionate amount of their US front page to it. They certainly front-page shootings more than heart disease, that's the definition of bias.

Right or wrong, noble intentions or not, it's not an accurate portrayal of America as a whole on the part of the BBC. If CNN ran a front page column every time someone in the UK died of alcohol poisoning, would you consider that unbiased coverage of the UK?

There's no "normalization" - nobody treats murders as "normal". However, there's a difference between treating it as normal and treating is as bad, but rare abnormal, and putting it in the context of overall big picture. You can say "66 people are attacked by sharks recently" and it would look like a bloody carnage which warrants very grave concern. Or you can put it in the context that it's over all wide world, and there was one single shark attack fatality in the US over whole past year, and about 10x more people are killed each year by vending machines.

It's the definition of selection bias. Gun homicides don't even crack the top 10 causes of death in the United States. But the BBC sure seems to front-page it more than heart disease.

Of course we all have our personal biases that can never be fully eliminated. But if you wanted to summarize the "current state of America" in one web page, statistically speaking some bastard shooting 3 bystanders in a botched robbery in a high crime area of East St. Louis (made up, but similar to stuff I've seen on the front page before) shouldn't even approach making the list.

Do you have any sources for what you’re saying? Specifically for your third paragraph.

Yes.

Here is a report from OFCOM itself about a talk given by Ms White on the subject of diversity and how OFCOM can support a “positive change” agenda. [1]

Here are details of Project Diamond a programme to enforce and monitor Ms White’s diversity agenda across the industry [2]

Also [3] where Ms White speaks about punishing the BBC for not meeting her requested standards.

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/speeches/2...

[2] http://creativediversitynetwork.com/diamond/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/sep/27/tv-industry-di...

The BBC striving for diversity in hiring != Th BBC pushing a “social justice agenda” in its content.

If you can’t see the distinction, I doubt you will find any journalism stooping to your level.

Actually it's more than just hiring practices and directly covers content.

One example would that the BBC now has to have a 50-50 gender split for experts brought onto its flagship Radio 4 Today programme. That was decided to presumably to broaden opinions given to be more inclusive.

Another example would be this speach by Ms White where she clearly states:

"So today we have announced that the BBC will have to agree with Ofcom a new Diversity Code of Practice. This will set out how the BBC will commission programmes that authentically portray the whole UK population." [1]

As to "stooping to my level", I've so far not said anything about whether this process is good or bad or if the ends justify the means. Just that it is going on and you can read about the details if you wish.

[1] https://www.ofcom.org.uk/about-ofcom/latest/media/speeches/2...

You haven't at all backed up the assertion that the BBC are "under _specific_ instructions...to drop impartiality and implement a social justice agenda" (emphasis mine). You provided evidence that the regulator has demanded that they hire and air a more representative mix of gender, ethnic background etc.

Nowhere above has OFCOM directed the BBC to air different opinions. Regarding the Today programme example: Deliberately featuring a female (rather than male) climate science expert after featuring a male vaccination expert is entirely orthogonal to impartiality.

[EDIT:] I'm not specifically arguing that the BBC has no bias. I'm saying you haven't demonstrated that OFCOM have demanded a bias.

>And what makes you so sure that the BBC's handling of those stories isn't the correct one? Your personal bias, of course.

Well, actual verified accounts and statistics for one. BBC loves nothing more than highlighting USA shootings - despite near historic record lows of gun violence and definitely lows of gun ownership to crime ratios.

BBC does this because they want to “prove” how much better they are not being allowed the choice of how to defend yourself. It’s British smugness 101.

Btw... Did you see the school shooting last week where the aggresor was wearing a smash the patriarchy shirt - no you probably did not, and definitely didn’t see it on BBC.

Narrative and Bias. BBC can be trusted at all on firearms anywhere.

In my country all school and mass shootings that have occurred have been top news for days, if not weeks.

Now look at this list of only school shootings in America and tell me again that the BBC is unfairly reporting on too many of them: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_...

What percentage have they reported on, anyway? Low single digit?

Your "near historic record lows" are how many orders of magnitude more than in other countries?

That list of school shootings includes someone firing a gun near a school, and someone shooting a cat a 3am, as well as an officer discharging his gun negligently. Nice list, not hyperbolic at all.

You’ll be happy to know there are less school shootings today than the 90s. [0]

As opposed to other countries, where guns are available they are used... shocker! The fact is that where guns are in the USA, our rural areas have violence rates as near European rural rates. We have a lot of metropolitan areas with populations of 250k+ where our crime is, those are areas with illegal guns, that go with the drug, gang, poverty, inequality of social mobility, and gang problems. We have issues in the cities - but it’s not because of guns. That violence committed with guns is falling, despite record gun availability. The CDC found that where we have 10k homicides including all the drug and gang violence per year, we have 500,000 to 3,000,000 successful and legal defensive gun uses. And... to wrap up the “but other countries” argument, I don’t care what other countries to, in the USA we have a fundemental freedom to defend ourselves with the lost effective means of personal protection ever invented, it’s a natural right enumerated as a civil right.

[0] https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-o...

> That list of school shootings includes someone firing a gun near a school, and someone shooting a cat a 3am, as well as an officer discharging his gun negligently. Nice list, not hyperbolic at all.

All of those things would make national news if they occurred in the UK.

Cool story! When we're talking about UK that will be worth bringing up.

In the UK you go to jail for defending yourself [0,1,2]. The UK police themselves tell you the only legal tool for self-defense is a rape alarm [3].

If you think it's good the UK government has made the choice for people on how best to defend themselves, that's cool. I understand how if you've grown up with that culture, it's probably difficult to understand the freedom of choice we have in the USA.

[0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1461346/Five-years-i...

[1] https://metro.co.uk/2017/12/11/pensioner-jailed-shooting-bur...

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-43639183

[3] https://www.askthe.police.uk/content/Q589.htm

You're making it out to be irrelevant, but the context here is why it might be given 'disproportionate' (through an American lens) coverage on the website of the British Broadcasting Company.

You make a quick slight-of-hand in this comment. You start off talking about how gun violence, as a whole, is at low historic levels. Then, you go on to talk specifically about school shootings. As far as I can tell, school shootings are at historically high levels.

It seems legitimate to report on that considering schools are places that parents send their kids every day and have historically viewed them as safe. Add that most schools are publicly-run institutions and you have an interesting story of children shooting children at government run locations. If that doesn’t seem newsworthy to you, the bias may be in your own interpretation.

>As far as I can tell, school shootings are at historically high levels.

And you are also wrong about that. [0] My comment wasn’t about number of school shooting - but narrative. You don’t hear about them unless they fall into a given narrative. You don’t question what you are seeing at all, just happily accept it because it fits your bias.

[0] https://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/26/schools-are-still-o...

Ah yes, more slight of hand. In this instance, you have moved the goalposts to "mass" school shootings, only counting instances where 4 or more people were killed/injured. This list also doesn't seem to include shootings that took place at colleges, which are also schools (Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois and Umpqua come to mind). It almost like you don't question your source at all and just happily accepted it because it fits your bias.

Even if we just focus on K-12, you could download this [1] data from US Naval Postgraduate School and run a trend line all the way back to 1970.

[1] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/number-killed-by-year/

Yes, perhaps the study I linked to that from Northwestern using FBI Unified crime report sources, and a published data set you can examine - is biased and wrong.

While your source that has no data at all - that does seem more trust worthy. Not to mention rate vs incidents.

Your source was a news article from Northeastern, not Northwestern, about a study. That said, the study's data source is cited in the article as: "Fridel and Fox used data collected by USA Today, the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Report, Congressional Research Service, Gun Violence Archive, Stanford Geospatial Center and Stanford Libraries, Mother Jones, Everytown for Gun Safety, and a NYPD report on active shooters."

The source I provided is literally only data, with no editorializing. It comes from this source: "The School Shooting Database Project is conducted as part of the Advanced Thinking in Homeland Security (HSx) program at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Center for Homeland Defense and Security (CHDS)."[1] It also has a publicized data set you can examine.[2]

You are not biased at all, but anyone who dares disagree with you must be.

[1] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/about/

[2] https://www.chds.us/ssdb/dataset/

Another view on their methodology:

"The (K12SSD) table at right shows that the majority of “school shootings” over the last 48 years occur outside while on school campus. When tied in with non-shooting “school shooting” definitions, such as brandishing, we get a very different picture. By this project’s definitions, if someone on the sidewalk outside the school brandished a gun, that was a “school shooting”. Three percent of “school shootings” in the database involve no shots being fired at all. And if we include single shots (regardless of from where they came, or if they were suicides, or if they were late at night, etc.) those add up to 63% of all incidents."

http://www.gunfacts.info/blog/school-shooting-database-and-p...

I hardly think K12SSD's releases come "with no editorializing".

==I hardly think K12SSD's releases come "with no editorializing". ==

We could have a long discussion about what should and shouldn't be included in the data set. Should a bullet that hits a school building be counted? Should brandishing count? Should we only count incidents where people die? Does there need to be 4 or more injured? etc.,

The comment about editorializing was in reference to how one source was a news article interpreting a data set (the definition of a narrative) and the other was simply a data set.

You got rekt. Just let it go.

I think we Brits are finding Brexit extremely tedious right about now, with no sign of an end to it. Our government tried for unicorns and rainbows to achieve a better deal in leaving than we had as a member. The EU, obviously, have to ensure it's a worse deal than being a member.

I used to subscribe to the FT. It's pretty balanced in its reporting, with good news coverage. Surprisingly perhaps, without the bias you might expect of a financial paper. For a while I'd be surprised to see well argued pieces making a case for less inequality, higher taxes, or a universal basic income. Then you stop being surprised they're not just a vehicle of the Tory party, like the Telegraph and Times mostly now are.

What non-US paper though? In my experience as an Australian all of our papers are totally fucked. We don't have anything anywhere near as good as NYT or WaPo.

Crinkling News [1] was a surprisingly good Australian newspaper. It ceased publication in January 2018, but I gather they would reopen if they could find the money (Costs $200k/year to run?).

It was written for children, essentially the print equivalent of ABC's Behind The News bulletin [2]. The writing level wasn't too far removed from the "adult" papers (I gather broadsheets are written to a 12 year old reading level and tabloids lower than that). Articles were a mix of mainstream news and kid specific stuff. There were fewer articles than an adult paper, but was basically all there with the extraneous stuff removed. It was completely independent.

[1] https://www.crinklingnews.com.au/

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/btn/

The Saturday Paper is quite good. It's only a weekly, but really, there's usually only enough truly important stories around to fill a paper a week, which is why there's so much ephemera and filler in the daily news.

Typo. I switched to the FT for the exact reason you mentioned - at least somewhat neutral third-party perspective.

> Bias: every single one of them have bias. The burden is on me to spot bias and think objectively. Why do I have to pay do that? At least present news as it is?

This has always been and will always be the case. There is no possibility for objectivity; unless they compile every fact about the universe and present them all to you (quite a dull read), there’s inherently an editing process and selection of facts the writer thinks is important. You will, and should, always have to think for yourself. Even if news were presented in as dry a fashion as possible, you’d still have to think (or what’s the point?). And the facts will always be incomplete.

> At least present news as it is?

This is exceptionally difficult. My favorite example is choosing which photo to run for a story. Let's say a photographer take photos of Trump at an event. He has a photo of Trump smiling, a photo of Trump frowning, a photo of Trump scowling and a photo of Trump laughing. Which one is correct? They are all technically correct because they happened, but they all convey different tones, some of which will be completely inappropriate in the context of the story it runs with.

Exactly.

There was a very famous image of the UK miner's strike, at the battle of Orgreave, 1984. Another photographer captured the same scene that day. They give a very different impression.

Both images compared: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/06/photogr...

I don’t get why people fall over themselves to point out the differences in these images. They both seems fairly neural to me.

It’s just that one doesn’t give much context, it’s just a miner.

Another problem with that example, at least for me, is that it is not apparent who is looking at who. It's a two dimensional photo and the depth of field is enough that you can't really tell which cop the miner is looking at.

One shows a miner and cop each grinning slightly. In the other, the same pair appear to be eyeballing each other. The second seems much more confrontational, to me anyway.

Use a montage of all four. That conveys the range of emotions of the event.

The journalistic emphasis in selecting just one ( viewpoint, photo,lede ) is partly why the news is so broken.

Then only run a photo if it helps explain the facts, otherwise who needs it?

If the photo supports the central truth of the piece then run it, otherwise you’re undermining yourself.

I think this is a common objection, but is it really so reasonable? Why show any image of ephemeral emotion at all? If you must include not strictly necessary multimedia, something that would be obvious would be a long range wide-angle picture of the entire venue.

It's similar to when people try to claim that journalism without bias in writing is not possible. No, it's very possible. See articles of the New York Times from decades ago. This [1] is the first article on what would become "Watergate" from the NYTimes. The article does nothing but provide a detailed and objective recounting of all information available. There is no speculation, and I certainly can't tell anything about the author's biases, political leanings, etc. And keep in mind that this is a huge event - that is what would eventually lead to the impeachment of Richard Nixon. That tempered and impartial reporting, over decades, is what gave the New York Times the reputation that it's rapidly destroying today. Imagine if that article was written by the New New York Times of today.

The problem of course is that that article is 'boring'. It's not going to drive a million clicks and be shared on social media sites getting those upvotes to get to the top which leads to even more clicks and even more money. Hacker News is definitely higher brow than most social media sites. Regardless, this [2] is a list of all submissions to this site from the New York Times. Go and see what gets upvoted and eventually makes its way to the front page (following are all 30+ point submissions from first page):

- Want to Stop Fake News? Pay for the Real Thing (nytimes.com)

- Opinion: A.I. Could Worsen Health Disparities (nytimes.com)

- Locast, a Free App Streaming Network TV, Would Love to Get Sued (nytimes.com)

- This is Your Brain Off Facebook - study offers glimpse of unplugging (nytimes.com)

- Another Side of MeToo: Male Managers Fearful of Mentoring Women (nytimes.com)

- Foxconn Is Reconsidering Plan for Manufacturing in Wisconsin (nytimes.com)

And so on. It's frequently sensationalized and hyperbolic reporting that often even starts the ball rolling with a fake title. No, AI isn't going to worsen health disparities. No, no company wants to get sued. And no, male managers are not fearful of mentoring women. And it's only downhill from there. Even the articles that seem real, often quickly expose they're just click grabbers. For instance the "Foxconn is reconsidering plan" states. The lead paragraph states,

"It was heralded a year and a half ago as the start of a Midwestern manufacturing renaissance: Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics behemoth, would build a $10 billion Wisconsin plant to make flat-screen televisions, creating 13,000 jobs. President Trump later called the project “the eighth wonder of the world.” Now that prospect looks less certain."

Several paragraphs later you get, "Foxconn said that it remained committed to creating 13,000 jobs in Wisconsin and that it was “moving forward with plans to build an advanced manufacturing facility.”" In other words they are doing what they said they would do. This is not meaningful or good reporting. But it gets those clicks, and that's all that matters now a days.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/22/archives/4-being-hunted-i...

[2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=nytimes.com

> It's similar to when people try to claim that journalism without bias in writing is not possible. No, it's very possible.

I couldn't put it better. I'm longing for the day someone creates a website that scans all news, detects and removes anything but the facts, and presents it to me as terse prose with a picture or two if strictly necessary. No ads. No cookies. No commentary. No opinion. Just the facts - all of them.

It's more likely the algorithm behind this will encode one person or organization's bias as objective truth based on a biased view of what a fact is.

- I am an 11 year old who is 9 feet tall and have won a Nobel Prize for my work in physics.

- Elephants are big.

Which one of these is a fact? English is unusually elegant in this regard. A fact does not mean true, it means something that can be shown to be indisputably true or false -- something that is falsifiable. The first statement is the fact. Because the second statement has no defined or falsifiable meaning it is an opinion. An elephant may be big compared to a mouse, but they're infinitesimally small compared to a planet. What does big mean?

In the New York Times' Watergate article [1] you'll find every statement made is a fact. Compare this to their writing on contemporary issues, particularly ones that are politically charged, and you'll find it's a night and day difference. The articles generally severely lack for facts and what facts are provided are often in the form of quotations which, in turn, are often non-factual.

Of course facts alone are not the end of the story. Facts can be misleading: 'Uber drivers were engaged in 47,341 more accidents including 27 more fatal accidents than all the licensed taxi drivers in New York.' That implies one thing, yet it omits a rather critical piece of information - how many miles did both drive? And there is also a bias in the stories that are covered. A news organization that chooses to only cover stories that reflect positively upon one side of an issue, or those that reflect negatively upon the other side, would be actively misleading their readers even if each story was independently factual and in no way misleading.

So aiming for factual reporting is certainly just a benchmark rather than the finish line. But it's really pretty easy to do, and it's something that'd leave us with magnitudes greater reporting quality than what we have today.

[1] - https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/22/archives/4-being-hunted-i...

That first point sounds a lot like you've conquered the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect

>"It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently."

Doesn't the Washington post charge for articles with named sources?

Almost every time I follow a link to them the source has been "someone familiar with the matter". However, one time I was surprised see there were actual names attached to the quotes, but they obscured most of the page and wanted me to pay a dollar to read it.

> It's not clear that even reputed newspapers like NYTimes/WaPo produce quality content consistently.

Example: Washington Post pushed the "Covington boys surround and intimidate native man" narrative that's been completely shattered by about 200 hours of video footage in the last week, and led to Twitter disabling the account that spread it, refutations (oddly enough from the NYT) and various apologies from those who came after the child on question.

That story is a perfect example of perception of a situation and how people view it in many ways. While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right.

No. Not at all.

Either the children surrounded the man and one boy stood threateningly close (as the Washington Post reorted at https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/20/it-was-gett...), or this did not happen.

As it turns out (Bari Weiss at the NYT viewed over 200 hours of footage) this did not happen. The man moved into the middle of the boys and stood very close to one of them. You can watch this from multiple angles and multiple cameras on YouTube and confirm this for yourself. David Brooks in the NYT also has an excellent summary: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/covington-march-f...

Reality is not a matter of perception.

I am not disputing the moments before and during. There is no doubt the events going on were a powder keg of problems waiting to tip off.

However my comment was about how that actual scene can be viewed differently by people, and is exactly what is happening. This is not a matter of scientific facts being disputed, it's an interpretation of a real life event that took place. Too many people, the scene of 30-40 boys yelling and acting how they did invoked a sense of fear and intimidation to them. Too many others, it was just 'boys being boys'.

The other reason people are so miffed over this is because of the actual people in it and the narrative. For one, a boys family had the means to hire a PR firm to help with the ordeal (again, a place of privilege). And two, there is so much hand wringing over this boy and this event, but for some reason when many young men have been shot or hurt by cops it's often met with negative depictions of the person hurt. You can call this whataboutism all you want, but that's the reality of it. Why in this instance where a boy and his group of friends, that are clearing acting up and provoking others (not even touching the negative nature of their hats), are given a free ride as 'boys being boys' but yet we chastise people who get in trouble with cops? Aren't those same people "just being boys"?

> I am not disputing the moments before and during.

You mentioned a fact was a matter of people interpreting a narrative. "While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right." That is not how facts work.

> There is no doubt the events going on were a powder keg of problems waiting to tip off.

Nobody is discussing whether there were "many problems".

We are debating whether children surrounded and intimidated an old man as reported by the Washington Post. We are doing so because WaPo was cited as an example of 'real news'.

That did not happen. WaPo was wrong.

> This is not a matter of scientific facts being disputed

Do you think the boys surrounded and intimated the old man?

You keep discussing unrelated issues without specifically answering whether you believe this happened or did not happen.

> You mentioned a fact was a matter of people interpreting a narrative. "While you say the narrative is wrong, many feel the narrative was right." That is not how facts work

I'm speaking to how some watched videos and felt they agreed with WaPo on the matter. There is no 'fact' to this story beyond an interpretation of events. This isn't a situation of clear cut and dry (like the recent released footage of the Chicago officer). It's people reacting to a situation and how it's making them feel.

> We are debating whether children surrounded and intimidated an old man as reported by the Washington Post. We are doing so because WaPo was cited as an example of 'real news'. > That did not happen. WaPo was wrong.

Your statements are perfectly proving my point. To people that scene and moment gave them a sense of intimidation. You cannot tell them their feelings and interpretation of the situation is wrong. If I walk up to you and stand in your face, and you tell me that it made you feel intimidated I don't have the right to go "Stop, you're wrong".

> You keep discussing unrelated issues without specifically answering whether you believe this happened or did not happen

Im trying to explain to you why that particular situation is not something you can clearly point to as fake news. I'm trying to paint a larger picture to the whole matter and why many took issue with it.

Since you're so hung up on the matter, yes to me I viewed the way those kids acted as intimidating and inappropriate. If I saw that many kids in a group, wearing those hats, and chanting the way they did I would not want to be near it.

> There is no 'fact' to this story beyond an interpretation of events.

Yes there is. Either the boys surrounded and approached the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported, or they did not.

>> Do you think the boys surrounded and intimated the old man?

> that particular situation is not something you can clearly point to as fake news.

Yes it is. Things are real, or they are not.

You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality.

Let's not continue communicating.

> Either the boys surrounded and approached the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported, or they did not

The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him. That is right in the video, clear as day. That is very much a clear fact. What you seem intent on breaking down is whether or not this was seen as some form of intimidation tactic and I'm trying to explain to you that people can, and do, interpret personal encounters like that in varying ways.

You seem to be one who can't understand the way in which people are able to react and interpret actions of people different. You asked me my opinion of the situation and then proceeded to tell me that my perception of reality is wrong. I watch that video and I personally feel that they are being intimidating, how am I in a 'confused nature of reality'. I am watching people confront each other and reacting to the situation.

Your whole argument on this video boils down to "your personal feelings don't match mine, so you're wrong".

> > Either the boys surrounded and approached the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported, or they did not

> The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him.

Did the boys surround and approach the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported?

Answer Y or N.

> > You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality.

> how am I in a 'confused nature of reality'.

That is not the what I wrote. I've included the real quote above.

I say that you're confused about the nature of reality because you repeatedly say a documented fact is a matter of perception, and cannot say whether you believe it is true of false.

We are on Hacker News right now. If someone reported we were having this conversation on Ars Technica, that would be false. That is not a matter of perception or feeling. This is how facts work.

Do you the footage of the old man approaching the group of boys and standing very close to one of them is fake?

Note this:

> > The video clearly shows boys standing around a man, with one of them face to face with him.

I suspect they've only seen the short context-less clip, not the actual video, and that's why they can't answer yes or no.

I suspect this too. Also

> If I walk up to you and stand in your face, and you tell me that it made you feel intimidated I don't have the right to go "Stop, you're wrong".

Makes me think they never watched the many videos of the old man doing this, not the boys.

But they said they watched the videos and it wouldn't be civil to say they're not telling the truth.

I honestly don't even know what you're arguing over anymore. You asked me questions, I answered them and offered context on my responses but yet you continue to tell me how I'm wrong.

>> Do you think the boys surrounded and intimated the old man?

>> Did the boys surround and approach the old man to stand intimidatingly close as WaPo reported? Answer Y or N.

>>Do you the footage of the old man approaching the group of boys and standing very close to one of them is fake?

You have not answered any of these questions. Instead, you've either changed topic or made up your own questions and answered those.

The issue is not that I think your answers are wrong, it's that your answers don't exist.

Please don't do tedious tit-for-tit flamewars on HN. You also crossed into incivility. That's not cool, and we've had to warn you about it before.

Hi Dan. Acknowledged re: tit for tat, I did try and end it earlier as you can see but got lulled back when the other poster misquoted me.

I was being very cafeful to be civil though - even though this is difficult with someone who won't give a firm opinion on something. I succeeded in that.

You haven't said I was uncivil before either - we've had a few discussions about articles I've written that have been on HN and you once disliked me criticising the Bay Area.

Email is in my profile if you'd like to discuss further.

Mike

I think the bit that struck me as uncivil was "You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality."

Keep in mind this is someone watching multiple videos that everyone, regardless of politics, agrees depicts something, and the person is saying they depict something else. "You seem genuinely confused about the nature of reality" is the most civil way I could have possibly said that.

Please don't do tedious tit-for-tit flamewars on HN. They're not interesting except to the two people who are tangling with each other, and even then not intellectually interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Example: The narrative in many news outlets that the Covington students were doing nothing wrong. Quote: "It’s not rape if you enjoy it." for example why that's not right.

Do you know what whataboutism is?

In many cases it's the same news organizations getting the story wrong both ways. It's a very interesting case study in bias. (and the power of PR firms)

Also I don't see how it's whataboutism when I'm agreeing with the general thesis.

Cool. I thought you were saying that it's OK to lie about bad people but you're not. Totally support reporting on anything that happened (and yes a kid said this)

Edit: it's not me modding you down, I think your second post was quite reasonable. I wish HN didn't downvote civil discussion like this.