It's the same thing in Romania, they strongly monitor and criticise those politicians and public figures who are not europhiles while pretty much ignoring those politicians who are for stronger EU integration and for more power for international institutions and their viewpoints inside of Romania.
But I think I disagree a bit with your annoyance with agenda setting and journalist incestuous relationship with ideology or politics.
Look I dont know how you're taught in Spain but in France we gave up neutral journalism centuries ago. Each newspaper is clearly categorized and we learn as children, around 7 IIRC all the links (le monde socialist, le figaro gaulist trending christian, l'humanité communist, and so on and there are many more subtle variations too French to list here) and learn to read them all, sometimes with clenched fist, but no truth has ever been reveled by a single perspective: embrace the chaos and join perspective to build a multi facet view.
It's something I despair to see in China where politicians, journalist and the mass try to identify a pure source of truth. But no communist think like another, so even their way will never work.
Let them all fight, balance out the arguments, take a decision in the voting booth and stop dreaming of a universal truth given to you from greater mind: even a genius in his lab building a life saving cure will forget to listen to the victims of the sacrifices he requires for the greater good, and that voice must be heard too.
Fight for MORE ideology and agenda in media in exchange for editorial transparency about it, so you're clear who they propose you to vote for when they present an argument, and you'll be free. Any other way, and it goes with fact checking semi anonymous facebook crap, is doomed to muddy this clarity. That s what facebook must do: what is the political party or alignment behind each piece, and you're done (or almost: also need to learn to read and understand all perspectives, the hardest part in the US it seems).
- Nuanced opinions and good information is rarely free, be it in monetary terms, be it in the invested time, relationships, etc. Thus, if you're not planning to give up most of your time for any topic, you better find good proxies. And currently the press provides more noise than signal. This is problematic.
- If you know anything about Spain is that it's basically Game of Thrones made a country. There's so much internal conflict that it even gets translated INSIDE of the newspapers and TV. You can't take any editorial line for granted, because it's more tied to a group of people seeking power than any background ideology or anything similar. So your balance different views style it's not really that practical in Spain.
In fact I can tell you about an Issue where I'm invested that it's awful across the board: Housing policy.
You should NEVER read an article to learn about an absolute reality, but to understand the arguments on a complex issue by a small group of stakeholders, by no mean guardians of reality interpretation.
If you accept that sad fact of life, that we cant know who's right on anything not spawned directly from physical reality (and even then...), then you can embrace journalistic diversity and read several.
I can give you an example close to me in China: there is a debate to have on Tiananmen: the reaction by the communist was certainly aggressive, but there are nuances. The movement failed to accept several compromises because it grew so big nobody could be delegated to represent it officially and they got stuck on successive waves of negociation that could have ended with progress. The army itself struggled and had to recall a first wave who fraternized with the movement to then lie to a second wave who thought they were crushing a rebellion they misunderstood, which probably made the massacre more violent than it could have been. I think the communists were trapped just as much as the movement into an impasse that led to a massacre they didnt enjoy having to commit. They're not evil per se in that regard: they could not see at the time any alternative.
That's my perspective, it's probably hard to read, but I built this complex opinion by reading beyond my comfort zone. I could be wrong and must continue to listen, but you see how this probably cant appear if you just read one side ? And where China is wrong imo is they refuse to discuss it openly in those terms. If a French immigrant raised in the fear of communism can accept to tolerate their side, what are they so scared of ? Throw perspectives at people and they ll figure someth out.
I don't mean to misrepresent the parent's argument, but I think they would demand the same solution of editorial transparency towards the groups of people seeking power you mention. That said, I might be coming from a place of ignorance here.
What GP meant about Spain being similar to GoT, is that there’s a lot of shifting alliances and moving pieces in the background.
You might think channel A has ties to party B, and thus you can asume that they are softening the blow if they’re reporting bad news about B, but Spain has more than two parties (for now), and maybe channel A is actually exaggerating because it would put party C in a good position to sway votes from the opposition while not taking votes from yourself.
As an US equivalent if a third political party had a 10-15% of the votes, you’d see Fox reporting in a way that tried to sway democrats to the third party.
Since in Spain the way seats in congress are allocated benefits parties with bigger percentages, this strategy is possible.
The same happens in the IRS Equivalent, and other institutions, like autonomous comminites (~ US States).
I mean, I'm talking about real plots here, like managing media influence, trying to put people in jail, and all the ingredients for a Netflix series.
It's basically impossible to keep track of it, even for a politics nerd like me.
As long as their leaders and famous journalists are clear they're a perspective and not "the truth", I m fine with the communists fighting the nationalists in their respective newspapers even if I disagree with what I read. At least I know what and why they think these things and I can sometimes accept an argument if only to build an iterative counter argument myself.
The difference I saw with facebook even in France, is that it's all blurred. I cant cross the Figaro with the Monde to figure two of the sides of an issue, now I receive some neutral looking information with a vague source. It struck me when a colleague started repeating an horrendous story and we investigated together to realize she was sourcing it from a facebook post by our "the onion" equivalent !!! She couldnt see the source because it's too blurry in between her grandma rants and some cnn-style generic information.
It doesnt change that in the US I see with worry that even when lines are clear, the debate is heated. Also because there's no spectrum but just two solutions to any issue: democrat and republican. What was hailed as a miracle in democracy (just 2 fuzzy groups of dispationate interest) is starting to look like a weakness (to the death identity conflicts pushed by their respective extremes) while with 13 parties in elections in France, you can express nuances.
The chained duck? (I prefer mine au confit, not enchainé.)
As a nerd in a building trying to build things to save lives from disease (“cure” is too strong a word), there are explicit ethics reviews my work has to go through, with an almost bizarre frequency, so I disagree with this statement specifically. Otherwise, I enjoyed your comment.
How do you know someone is a leftist? He will show you his fascist nature.
One thing though, do french people actually read several different newspapers on different sides? My preconceived notion is that they still just pick one to get their main source of news, even though they might be aware of the others.
And a second thought. If we can agree that there is sometimes truth to be found in what happened, what convinces you that summing up falsehoods from the left and falsehoods from the right will equate to the truth? (I've heard from some people that they "read all sides" but I haven't noticed their perspective being better in any obvious ways)
For example: vaccines don't have side effects, don't worry about it, and we need to get everyone vaccinated so we should force them (left) VS vaccines are alright but seems like they're dangerous and fuck the government so they shouldn't force people to do that (right). The sum of the two doesn't really teach you the truth, but highlights the direct contradictions while giving you the impression that you have to pick one side of another (the US is super bipartisan, not like France which at least has several different parties with different opinions).
The truth here is: vaccines reduce likelihood of bad symptoms, gestation time and viral load, which in turn reduces chances of spreading and therefore chance of mutation which is a feared unknown (hello Omicron), some vaccines do seem to cause issues with younger folks (20-29 years old can get myocarditis) so we should be careful, but all in all, we don't have a better way to fix this situation than getting a lot of folks vaccinated.
Is it Don't have opinion diversity? Control what people hear and believe? Don't allow (what you consider to be) lies? There are so many responses to each of these.
Who would be the regulator? How would the regulator be chosen? How would information be determined to be misinformation? When something truthful is named misinformation, what happens? When a political group accuses this regulator of suppression, what then? When your political opposition gains control of the regulator, what then? How would this regulator also comply with the US Constitution, particular its free speech guarantees?
Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. It’s denigrating towards an entire profession/discipline. I’d almost go so far as to say that this misunderstanding about journalism is at the root of a lot of problems in modern media for both practicing journalists (which I understand may in some ways be your larger point) and consumers of journalism today. Journalism should be about creating an objective conduit for civic impetus. I don’t believe it is fair to say this doesn’t require expertise.
And yet I think it’s pretty obvious journalism is not about truth anymore. Gawker might be dead, but the Gawker style of “journalism” is well alive.
You don’t even need to dig that deep to see something is rotten, the two biggest news channels in the US spend the day saying the opposite of one another.
Given the state of American journalism, it is if anything overly kind.
It's right in line with the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect[1].
> Journalism should be about creating an objective conduit for civic impetus.
This is a jump from objecting to "is" statements to making an "ought" statement. It also seems to most likely be promoting what I've heard called "advocacy journalism", which I have the impression is a good chunk of why trust in the news is down.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmn...
I’m sorry this is the impression you were given because my intention was the exact opposite.
> The reality, at least in Spain, is that fact checkers are just a side-effect of the kulturwars and don't bring any truth to the table.
I am sad to note that the situation in the US is exactly the same. Though the majority of "fact-checkers" and all major social networks are on single side of the said wars.
Especially with covid it seems like social media has decided to counter propaganda rather than misinformation. I can see why, but I think it is wrong. Especially if the argument is 'this is false'.
To me, this shows once again that content moderation against misinformation does not fit with private parties.
That's what, at their best, most of the media are doing. Presenting well-researched, balanced, truthful stories, carefully selected to promote their own ideology. Forget journalism - this even happens in peer-reviewed science:
Ceci et al. (1985) found a similar pattern. Research proposals hypothesizing either "reverse discrimination" (i.e., against White males) or conventional discrimination (i.e., against ethnic minorities) were submitted to 150 Internal Review Boards. Everything else about the proposals was held constant. The "reverse discrimination" proposals were approved less often than the conventional discrimination proposals. - https://jsis.washington.edu/global/wp-content/uploads/sites/...
I think we need to work against the latter. I don't think censoring good-faith articles that are often abused is the way to do that.
I think BMJ has a pretty convincing reputation. So how can ANY fact checker flag an article from them without really good arguments?
Debates are all and good, but at some point, a decision has to be reached. Especially for a problem like the current pandemic, this unfortunately involves calls for every individual to radically change their behaviour. That fits the definition of "agenda" pretty well.
So if any "any communication that is calculated to further an agenda" is forbidden, how would you fight the pandemic?
I don't think this is correct. In my experience, most online "fact checkers" seem to get it right the great majority of the time.
Can you point to some examples you are thinking of?
https://www.politifact.com/li-meng-yan-fact-check/
Note they didn't say with scientific humility "we do not know if that scenario actually happened, more data is needed, it's too early to make the conclusion". They say "it's ridiculous and debunked" and rate it "pants on fire" (i.e. an obvious outrageous lie). They act as if they are the ultimate authority with absolute knowledge of the facts and expertise to make such calls - while they don't have neither the facts nor the expertise. And this happens again and again.
You are misrepresenting that article.
Do you believe covid is a bioweapon?
The conspiracy theories these people were pushing as a lab release had themes of gerontocide, eugenics, mind control by 5G, microchipping, general anti-vaxx beliefs most blaming Bill Gates as a sort of Bond villain.
All of these are still being pushed.
Do we have more plausible sources an accident happened? Yes. Was it reasonable to blame China for biowarfare against the whole world including itself, or to accuse Bill Gates for planning to exterminate half the population? No.
Fully agree that Snopes comes off very much in her support here - however, at least they still seem to do their job and describe her actual actions in due detail in the article - even if this leads to a completely ridiculous outcome ("Can bombing a government building really be called terrorism? Hmm, difficult to say...")
This seems better than the OP's fact checker, which just presents the story as "fully debunked" without actually doing so.
Zuck ofc really likes to feed on things. Getting rid of information is okay as long as it doesn't gets in the way of his feeding. FB fact checking is both expensive and crap but still light years ahead of amazon reviews.
I don’t know about you but I don’t like being gas lighted.
I do not believe fact checks. They have zero credibility.
Are the partisan fact-checkers in Spain at least competent enough to write grammatical, parsable sentences and titles?
From the BMJ OP: > It has a nonsensical title: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials”
Like the BMJ apparently, I first read this with a comma or mdash after 'Disqualifying' -- hence a broken sentence. With more thought, perhaps the inferrable punctuation intended 'Disqualifying-And-Ingored' -- in which case they might or might not be fact-checking a straw-man claim.
A negligible point perhaps, but the one fact-check I recall Dr. John Cambell on YT examining also included a broken sentence. (Small sample size, I know.)
To me, this speaks to the qualifications and processes of the fact-checkers under debate here, attempting as they are to adjudicate in scientific debates.
Attempting as they apparently are to define truth.
(Or perhaps Meta does A/B testing by breaking sentences in search of more engagement.)
Another thing that affects perceived formality is that "you" in English is both singular and plural and out-of-respect You.
If you've ever done any translation between English and a foreign language, you'd notice that the appetite for such gymnastics is much less. (I think that's part of why there are so many English loanwords in other languages too, but I have no data to back it up)
Yup, that's how I parsed it.
I had to re-read it to find why someone might think it was nonsensical.
The way a political 'side' can so swiftly (and hypocritically) move into authoritarianism because of self-belief in their moral authority is sad, if unsurprising. Much as religion has justified many atrocities through time for 'good,' people seem terrible at critical thinking once they feel 'right.'
Which is silly. At least I can talk about fact checkers in my country: they give you a write-up of all the sources and reasoning they pursued to ascertain the truth of some thing, then add their own evaluation in a scale of true, mostly true, false, pants on fire. How can people say they're biased when they give you a 100% transparent detail of how they came to their conclusion?
Also, it's funny when people say that multi-billion dollar media corporations are biased... towards the left x)
> Claim Susan Rosenberg is a convicted terrorist who has sat on the board of directors of Thousand Currents, an organization which handles fundraising for the Black Lives Matter Global Network.
Rating: Mixture
About this rating
What's True Susan Rosenberg has served as vice chair of the board of directors for Thousand Currents, an organization that provides fundraising and fiscal sponsorship for the Black Lives Matter Global Movement. She was an active member of revolutionary left-wing movements whose illegal activities included bombing U.S. government buildings and committing armed robberies.
What's Undetermined In the absence of a single, universally-agreed definition of "terrorism," it is a matter of subjective determination as to whether the actions for which Rosenberg was convicted and imprisoned — possession of weapons and hundreds of pounds of explosives — should be described as acts of "domestic terrorism."
----
Almost all media organizations are encouraged to publish hate-inducing headlines and clickbait, so in principle fact checking could help people. Stuff like the above Snopes bit is pure partisan comedy that does nothing but undermine the entire idea, though.
There is the famous Elon Musk tweet
``` Aside from the Agnelli family, smaller shareholders in the company include Cadbury, Rothschild (21%), Schroder, Layton and other family interests as well as a number of staff and former staff shareholders. ```
Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000560049389907969?ref_...
Of course they really polish their communication and websites, and they know how to sound scientific-y throwing in some graphs and stuff.
The problem is not only that, but that the same people who works in the media churning BS articles is the people who works in the fact checkers, and most of them are journalists, AKA experts in nothing that pretend to become experts with a few calls and some google-fu.
The reality, at least in Spain, is that fact checkers are just a side-effect of the kulturwars and don't bring any truth to the table.
This specially evident when they talk about something you really know about.
Of course, because fact-checkers happen to be lefty because of the, let's call, overton-window cycle, then the left choses to ignore this problems and just says it's the right-wingers that chose to ignore facts and yadda yadda.
While this is going on, right-wing, and many times right-wing extremist views, become the new punk and many yougsters are flocking to provide new blood to said ideologies.
It's all just so tiresome.