Journalism is not our fact gathering apparatus. It is our sense making and relevance deciding apparatus based on those facts.
If we don't have good journalists providing those functions, we are left with the ersatz, AI based versions to decide what to pay attention to; twitter's, youtube's recommendation algorithms, google's ranking algorithms etc. None of which is good at saying "this is the most important thing we should pay attention right now as a society", "this is how you should approach this complex topic". Algorithms only serve one god and that is the god of engagement. But the amount of engagement they drive doesn't match their performance in affording us an ability to make sense of our world.
This is precisely what Weiss criticizes, that crucial human wisdom function is now subjugated by what those algorithms promote to be relevant; twitter being the worst offender. This makes us collectively foolish, and we see the results in our society with our inability to cohere and dialog as adults. Our collective intelligence approximates that of a tantrum throwing child, because our most used discourse engine that is twitter can only sustain that level of sophistication.
Well then what is? I used to live next door to a journalist - by which I mean someone who went out into the world (haiti, israel/west bank, US immigration policy) and asked questions and collected facts. They didn't always get everything right, and their work seemed to encourage a deliberate sort of fence-sitting with respect to the issues and places that they covered, but they did work that nobody else is/was doing.
Those people on social media who appear to be the "fact gathering apparatus" ? they are just echoing the work of people like my old neighbor.
Without journalists, the ones we sometimes call reporters, we've got nothing to work with.
Now certainly, their job also extends into "sense making" and "relevance deciding". But the important ones - the reporters - are the ones gathering the material that the the rest of us - including the non-reporting journalists - are working with when we try to do the same thing.
Sure, there's a frame problem in journalism just as much as there is in AI, and sure, journalists play a (possibly outsized) role in finding contemporary suboptimal solutions for it. But even with that being the case, somebody has to go out and get information for us to talk about, argue about, rage about, call for more information about etc. etc.
That's what (good) journalists (reporters) do.
"Facts all come with points of view" (Talking Heads, early 1980s)
Allow me to reword; facts are necessary but not at all sufficient to constitute journalism, nor journalism can claim monopoly on fact gathering. E.g. we have other, more formal, fact gathering processes such as science or court of law, which cannot be substituted with journalism, damages of which we see to the extent it tries to.
The firehose of twitter, youtube etc feeds already give us facts to talk about, argue about, rage about, call for more information about. And we are not in better shape for it. We cannot sufficiently convert those facts into sense. Nor those facts are always the ones we should be interested in.
That's why it's critical not to reduce journalism to fact gathering.
But the best journalists thrive to separate their opinion from facts and make it clear to readers when it's one or the other.
Do you have a reference for this?
Reuters [0], for one, which boasts "2500 journalists and 600 photojournalists."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reuters
A key thing to understand about the editorial / news hybrids like the NYT, CNN, or Fox News is that they're selling multiple products under the same umbrella: the "reporting" product is side-by-side with the "editorial" product. The editorial content is almost always useless garbage, and it exists solely to generate clicks/views/etc. A lot of the whining about cancel culture is from people who tend to write editorial content, and I don't shed any tears for them, but the failure mode of these orgs is that the editorial section has developed such a strong brand (and their audiences are increasingly polarized), such that their now Twitter-policed editorial viewpoint is increasingly expected to be enforced in the "real" news products, too.
If you want less biased reporting, there are outlets that provide it, but they tend to not publish as much inflammatory clickbait and thus tend to go under the radar of many information consumers.
ProPublica is OK but falling from grace as it leans harder into manipulating heartstrings.
Both are notoriously, extremely biased on all kinds of topics, for example Brexit/the EU. The Financial Times actually flies the EU flag above its offices: rather hard to get a clearer statement of bias than that.
That's a strong claim without evidence.
I'm not sure how you'd prove this rigorously though. Just look at other comments in this thread. One commenter observes he never saw a pro-Brexit op-ed in the FT, ever. They're always anti.
The FT and Economist are both focused on economic issues. I don't think you can expect them to campaign for a cause that is (by the admission of its supporters) going to damage the economy. They do consider the positive economic outcomes and possibilities of Brexit within their reporting, but there just aren't many compared to the negative ones. I don't think that's biased, it's fact, and it's fact that is agreed upon by both sides of the debate.
The idea that Brexit will harm the economy is:
1. Highly controversial to begin with. Plenty of Leave campaigners and voters were motivated by a belief that the EU is sclerotic and adopts many anti-growth economic policies that could be reversed or ignored once out. The idea it's economically harmful is not at all agreed on by both sides, but if you read the FT you can be forgiven for having a highly one-sided view on this!
2. Discredited. The whole population was told even just voting to leave would cause a huge recession. In fact the economy grew. Economists quite clearly cannot predict the effects of Brexit because they tried already and were as wrong as wrong can be.
Even Paul Krugman admitted that the stated beliefs of economists on Brexit were "dubious" and "motivated reasoning" ... of course he only admitted this after the vote was in:
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/freshwaters-wro...
What we’re hearing overwhelmingly from economists is the claim that it will also have severe short-run adverse impacts. And that claim seems dubious. Or maybe more to the point, it’s a claim that doesn’t follow in any clear way from standard macroeconomics — but it’s being presented as if it does. And I worry that what we’re seeing is a case of motivated reasoning, which could end up damaging economists’ credibility.
At this point, reporting on what economists think is about as useful as reporting on what epidemiologists think. They all disagree on everything all the time, so it's a way for the journalists to speak through their chosen 'experts'.
Both papers do provide quite good coverage of particular economic topics, framed by their editorial perspective. But if your understanding of Brexit or Trump (or anything politically contentious) comes only from the FT, you are setting yourself up for a huge surprise.
Probably not as useful to you if you're US based, but I find it really useful for living in Europe.
The editor changed in January, I unsubscribed a month before. Perhaps things have changed since.
I've subscribed for over a decade, and for the first time am questioning whether I should keep paying to be misinformed.
It's very strange as FT subscribers often have money at stake and the last thing they want is to be surprised by events.
Maybe their subscription numbers are falling and Nikkei is chasing the mass market and ad revenue. I don't see that working, as divisive clickbait is available everywhere for free... looks like a doom loop to me.
I have found, in general, that there's a lot more sloppy editing across the news media, which is understandable given how much has happened.
I really like FT myself. I am not in business so much but I think business news sources often get at a lot of interesting angles that others miss.
For example, I read a BBC article a while back about a sand shortage in India. It turns out the government imposed a price-ceiling, and there was no shortage at all (sand was available in the black market) - there was just a shortage at the government mandated price point.
Any economics 101 student can tell you that if you set a price-ceiling there will be a shortage.
To be fair, lots of people in the UK don't like them because of their stance on Brexit, but I really appreciate their coverage of conservative political voices is much more restrained rather than the click-driven style of the Guardian or the NYT.
Their environmental coverage is terrible though, so I wouldn't treat them as my only news source.
Both Stephens and Weiss are not only Jewish, but pro-Israel. Weiss had even written an entire recent book about anti-Semitism [1]. Many in the far left support the anti-Semitic Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) movement against the only Jewish country in the world. China invaded Tibet, puts 3 million Muslims in camps, taking their DNA and facial recognition but no China BDS.
Bennet had also been Jerusalem Bureau Chief for NYT for 3 years and thus would be knowledgeable about the situation there. He may have stopped inaccuracies printed about Israel in his role.
Bennet was the likely candidate to be elevated to Exec Editor when the current one retired in a couple of years. I believe a lot of the staff didn't like Bennet because of Jewish/Israel stance and the idea of him being the Exec Editor frightened/angered them.
I believe that an external inspector general type figure should evaluate the entire situation. Weiss's complaints are consistent with a toxic work environment that nobody should have to deal with. She said the source of some of the harassment she experienced was on an internal slack channel and thus easy to investigate.
Readers of HN are analytical enough to realize that when something obvious isn't mentioned it may well be the underlying cause.
[1] Weiss: How to Fight Anti-Semitism https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07P51KC9Z/
I feel like there's a real market opening here, for a centrist, general-interest newspaper. (Suggested slogan: "Like the NYT Was 20 Years Ago.")
Are they perhaps also exaggerating and wording stories to get something that sells? And perhaps adding an ideological filter? Maybe choosing what to report and what not. E.g., all negative stories about some people will be reported and all positive stories about others will be reported.
Just because they're gathering facts does not mean they accurately describe reality.
Where would you go for information if I told you about some surprising event occurred and people on Twitter are posting very different statements of fact?
Stop trusting outlets. Find journalists with integrity and follow everything they do, no matter the outlet.
That much is actually true - I grew up not far from there, and it was a mistake for Khrushchev to give Crimea to Ukrainian SSR - it's been a part of Russia since 1783. But back then it was unimaginable that the USSR would fall, so nobody made much of it. Ukrainians were an ethnic minority in Crimea, and Russians were 67% of the population at the time it re-joined Russia. Not something you will find in US mainstream press. This is why Greenwald's input is valuable - he actually studied the issue rather than parroting the mainstream party line.
To see why he's right, consider this: Russia took Crimea _without any bloodshed_ and with fairly minimal military presence. This would not be possible if populace wasn't in agreement.
Leaving aside the formalities, Ukraine's grasp on Crimea was tenuous at best, and its fate was decided when Ukraine threatened to kick Russian military base out of Sevastopol - which lets Russia control the vital Black sea. With Russia no longer there, somebody else (e.g. NATO) could take its place, which Russia will not allow for geostrategical reasons.
But even ignoring Russia's interests in the region - one could argue Crimea was never really "Ukrainian" in the first place, and their temporary possession of that land was a historical mistake, which has now been corrected. It's not even clear if Khrushchev had the authority to give it away in the first place.
No opinion on the West Bank, I don't have first hand info on that.
Would Russia have annexed Crimea if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons?
No argument there.
> Would Russia have annexed Crimea if Ukraine still had nuclear weapons?
It likely would not. But that's a hypothetical, so there's no way to tell one or the other. MAD is a thing, and neither country would deploy nuclear weapons this close to itself, let alone do so in a MAD-inducing way.
What is certain is that Ukraine would be a different level of a player on the international stage if it had nuclear weapons. Other countries (including Russia) would bend over backwards to keep it stable (much like everyone bent over backwards to stop proliferation in 1991), and there'd be no talk of NATO presence at Russia's border with Ukraine.
People in the US (which never had a real, total land war on its soil) don't understand: there are kinds of things that Russia simply will not allow. In contrast with the US, Russia had total wars on its soil several times, and lost tens of millions of people in those wars - a level of sacrifice unimaginable here in the US. Russia does not have natural barriers to a land invasion. So it cannot and will not afford the "buffer states" around it (such as Ukraine or Belarus) to fall under NATO or anybody else's control. It's not even a question of cost or international law. It's a question of national security and survival. Those concerns always dominate.
One of the things Russia will not allow in particular are NATO bases within easy striking distance of Krasnodar, Rostov, and much of its agricultural base. Another is Belarus affiliating itself militarily with the West. Baltic states were lost, so now there's a NATO military base within 200 miles of Saint Petersburg (in Estonia), which is significantly raising Putin's blood pressure and could result in action if escalation continues there. These things start small. Some people, a few tanks. Then there's an air base. Then there are rockets and long range radars being deployed under the pretense of "protecting Europe from Iran" (for those who don't know where Iran is on the map). And so on and so forth.
That’s the state US “journalism” is in.
But, do you believe this is a new problem? Was it always bad to trust outlets?
Reuters, Bloomberg, the Associated Press, and Fox News all come to mind for the metrics you've brought up. The NYT is not a peerless entity. I'm sure people will bemoan Fox News being on that list but they're none the less one of the largest news orgs in the country and their actual news segments aren't wildly different from what other orgs pump out.
Every new organization has an editorial line, within its own Overton Window, both of which can shift over time. So it's not a new thing. Even being centrist is a bias.
It's easy to take potshots, show me a news source that's better.
I am arguing against being blind to the news source's virtues. If we don't want to be blind to the world we have to pick our poison(s).
WSJ was solid right in the editorial but pretty neutral in news (though clear ideological bias was creeping in in the last decade or so) back before News Corp bought it out to augment their right-wing propaganda empire.
Now, it's definitely more high-brow and less in-your-face, beat-you-over-the-head with unsubtle propaganda than, say, FOX News, but it's just as clearly directed at the same ends.
The incident with Scott Alexander of SSC left a particularly bad taste in my mouth.
If FT wasn't available, I'd pay for Substack newsletters from trusted authorities.
There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.
The most obvious first step is to form a leadership group to manage coordination. Different people to be in charge of printing/hosting and distribution, payroll, HR, research, etc, etc.
If someone wants to publish news, they don't need those things. Just publish it.
How do I tell the difference between an honest citizen journalist, a propagandist, a liar, a lunatic, or a troll?
Conventional journalism of course is not perfectly trustworthy, but at least there is some penalty for extreme untrustworthiness in the form of loss of reputation of the paper and its brand. The NYT is an illustrative case. My opinion of that paper dropped significantly after its role in providing only the most softball criticism of the (then impending) Iraq invasion. I'm not the only person I've heard say this. NYT paid a price for cheerleading for that disaster.
Critical thinking skills, independent research, and open dialogue
A lot of people stay at the dunning-Kruger peak on that for a very long time and over-evaluate their (i for sure did for several years at least).
> independent research
Those who have the time to do this for half the semi-important issues in the world are lucky(like most of of on HN i think). And i started 2 month ago informing myself about climate change and what does it mean to stop using oil, i did not have any time for myself between that and work until recently. Research takes a long, long time if you wnat to do it well. I'm still not certain about anything.
> open dialogue Yes if it mean what i think, this is very helpful. Paper journal used to offer opportunities for that.
Many prefer poisonous fast food to a healthy home cooked meal, just as many prefer to read twitter comments and click bait than to read a book
You captured a facet of climate change I feel few can properly articulate. Modeling and digesting complex systems is incredibly difficult and at this point I share the same position.
It seems to be we have no clue how severe the impacts of climate change will be but based on gut feelings we are in for the same problem as technology development.
> We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.[0]
That makes sense: people often buy newspapers for the analysis that reconfirms their own world views, and gives them intellectual ammo for their pre-conceived notions.
With citizen journalists (a.k.a. bloggers) they start out with no pre-existing reputation so tend to depend on other ways to quickly build credibility, like using lots of hyperlinks to sources so you can check their claims, or leaving comments open so commenters can criticise and respond. Even today in 2020 it's standard for news articles to provide no citations or hyperlinks at all, even when e.g. the entire report is about a research paper, and often comment sections are now closed. Exactly because so many commenters would often point out flaws in the articles!
The library
Who is doing more collective discovery (and making it accessible to the public at a price an average person can afford)? I can only think of a handful of organizations that are serious candidates (Reuters? The BBC? Wikipedia?).
Weird puff pieces, drama on the editorial pages (what else would there be?), declining standards, you could find the same complaints any year since the first newspaper. I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery.
[1] https://www.nytco.com/journalism/journalists-on-the-ground/