It wouldn't. You need journalists to do that, who are both real people and real journalists. I think many of our divisions come from news sources that are either not curated by real people, or from journalists who are not real journalists.

This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

How do we define "real journalist" in a way other than "curates news in a way that I personally approve of"?

> This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Ironically, this is not a real no true Scotsman.

Seems like a relatively consistent, generally agreed on definition at least of 'investigative journalist' shouldn't be impossible. Something like... 'A news gatherer, who uses primary sources and triangulates investigative techniques to gather information, establish causation and contribute to understanding of emerging and ongoing news.'

There is no other way.

Oh, I don't know, perhaps look at the huge amount of material from journalism schools on what journalism is and how it should be done, or maybe at journalism's professional bodies and their codes of ethics?

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...

Is the journalist advocating for something or simply reporting the facts.

I would define a real journalist as someone who adds new important previously unknown facts to a story, or reports on a previously unreported story and who discloses if their sources have a vested interest in the information they've presented.

So that eliminates cable news entirely and most of the work done by NYT, WAPO etc. who basically act as a mouthpiece for government and repeat the same stories ad infinitum.

There’s a whole sub field of journalism called “curatorial journalism” or “meta journalism” that reports aggregated news that has already been reported by other outlets. This means they don’t report any new facts per se, but sometimes the combination of facts over time can color a story differently than when the facts are reported in isolation. I find this form of journalism to be very compelling.

The story was huge news when it broke. There wasn’t a conspiracy by journalists to hide it.

The problem was people as a whole didn’t care. I think it’s only very recently that more than a small minority of Americans became aware of the reality that the police and justice system aren’t always people out there doing good—they’re normal people, for better or worse. Up until we got daily police videos of cops killing innocent people, it was assumed that arrested=guilty, throw them away. Even in the face of video evidence lots of people won’t budge from the idea that the justice system had a good reason for doing heinous things.

I didn't say there was any conspiracy to hide it.

These people believe that there is corruption in politics and politics in the workplace.

But for some reason they think that corruption in the justice system is impossible. Usually they think the same about assosiated organisations like FBI

That's during a conflict with Russia, a country where all power was seized by internal security services

The motivation of holding these beliefs is very simple, if bad things are done by the justice system to innocent (or not particularly criminal people), then there's a chance that one day the justice system does the same to you through no fault of your own. That's an unsettling idea hence rejected.

I think this is another "just world fallacy"[1] adjacent idea running rampant in our society. You see this fallacy it pop up in a lot of "woo" self-help ideas like "manifesting" or "sending out positive vibrations" as well as things like faith or spiritual healing. The basic idea being that people get what they deserve so people who experience hardship - whether legal, medical, or social - deserve it. While people who do and think good things are safe from these forces.

IMHO, this is a kind of pathological extension of "internal locus of control"[2]. Internal locus of control is good for mental health and achievement, but once you start to project it onto other people without sufficient consideration of their circumstances things quickly get problematic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

>> The problem was people as a whole didn’t care.

People dont care about the economics of free messaging apps or "tech monopolies", but plaster it enough across enough articles across many years of publication and suddenly it becomes an issue.

I'd argue that the NY Times and other media are the ones who dont care. They get to decide what people care about.

Yes and no.

The gp isn't asking for automated journalism, just algorithmic promotion. You would still need real people to investigate and write; the proposed algorithm would simply sort.

I actually think this type of thing is very conceivable, but the problem is that it's not a technical challenge - it's an incentivisation one. Current algorithm creation is profit-incentive, and trivial, consumer-oriented & generally useless/inaction-driving "news" are all significantly more profitable than what the gp describes as "important".

In fact, currently many journalistic platforms & publications actively promote themselves on the basis that they already offer what the gp has asked for (which by-and-large they don't of course).

Oh, they are real journalists alright. They are just short of certain morals and ethics.

I don't think the issue is journalists are not real journalists. The issue is that media, especially in America, is a private enterprise and is largely owned by two people. And people like collecting paychecks, so you do what your told. How many of us on HN are for privacy, but yet work in Silicon Valley writing the code that violates that same privacy? I'd wager quiet a few. And it is because we all need an income stream. Being an indie dev works for some, but not most.

Such an argument would need to have a deep understanding of the human condition and how the world works in order to provide such output. I think it would basically require a full-fledged AGI (artificial general intelligence).

deep understanding of human condition - prodive example of the thing that is not human and understands it the least? You couldn't make it up

How about, you know, philosophers and other learned people who's life job is to study it?

I don't quite understand what exactly are you saying.

I have mistakenly written "argument" instead of "algorithm" in my original post (edited now), which may have lead to a misunderstanding. Otherwise, could you please elaborate?

You might just need a large amount of click stream data from wikipedia, there is probably a cluster of people who trend to have such an awareness of the human condition. So it wouldn't require AGI to figure out a list of topics you should probably be aware of based on some sample topics. Although afaik such data is not stored by Wikimedia for privacy reasons, only less useful referrer data[1].

Another signal source might be based on the assumption that the important bits would be subject of suppression efforts, like topics that disappeared from school curriculum, internet censorship filter rules (for example [2]), takedown notices, banned books, topics journalists wrote about that were fired/defenestrated, wikipedia articles that were removed/renamed or heavily edited, unusual court cases with abnormal patterns might be recoverable from public records (like the Steven Donziger case [3]), websites on the internet archive that were taken down by infrastructure companies, there might be topics that are ignored by modern historians etc.

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Wikipedia_clickstre... [2] https://lumendatabase.org/faceted_search?sender_name=Europea... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger

I'm pretty sure this is the kind of thing maximized by current increase GRAAARGGH feeling in readers algorithms, there's just so much, you were probably getting your GRAAARGGH maximized by something else.

anyway look at it this way - if the algorithms were working at giving you this important stuff in a way you were aware of it, you might have chosen a different username.

> Why have I never heard of this?

My hunch is because of some combo of

a) The attention economy. We're all overwhelmed. Filtering signal from noise is exhausting.

b) Manufacturing Consent's five filters of mass media. The economics of daily "news" determines what is covered. Yet another attention economy; and it's not clear to me that any other arrangement would be better.

c) Professional courtesy. Billionaire media moguls generally aren't going to narc on their billionaire hedge fund buddies.

--

Don't feel too bad about missing this outrage, or any other particular story. There's no shortage of outrageous stories. It's unending.

As a news junkie, from long before doom scrolling, I binge on this stuff. It's unhealthy.

Talking about it makes you sound like a lunatic to most people. Even worse, this stuff distracts you from living your best life and doing your own awesome thing.

The more effective policy people I know manage to somehow compartmentalize. Fighting the good fight is their day job, left at work. Off the clock, they do normal people stuff. The activists I know that don't do the work / life balance burn out. (Like I did.)

--

FWIW, outlets like Democracy Now!, Thom Hartmann, and Project Censored try to day light these memory hole stories.

Justice for Sale – Part 3: Greed Breeds Corruption [2015] https://www.projectcensored.org/justice-for-sale-part-3-gree...

Project Censored's Yearly Top 25 Most Censored Stories is a treasure. Allows me to binge less and periodically catch up on stuff I've missed.

https://www.projectcensored.org/top-25-censored-stories-of-a...

Russell Mokhiber’s corporate crime reporter is a good source also. https://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/

Thanks for the work and for the fighting. It is not intuitively realized, but justice is warfare, conducted with money and information. I am borderline misanthropic and people like you make me happy.

you look at 10,000 ads a day, how the heck are you supposed to remember anything of value?

>> Why have I never heard of this?

You havent heard about this because the NY Times and other "liberal media" care more about the "monopoly" of free messaging apps and justice in Ukraine than justice and human rights in the USA. This isnt an opinion, it is a fact based on coverage (or lack thereof.)

Literally the first citation in the Wikipedia article:

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/us/28judges.html

That's behind a paywall for me.

Just turn off Javascript or use Noscript to get around it.

What are you alluding to? The "Kids for Cash"[1] incident is from 2008, and isn't not being covered because of the things you mentioned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

I’ve often thought I’d like to subscribe to the changelog of what’s taught in school, as the snapshot I received is increasingly dated by advances in science, refinements to social onboarding, and the continuation of human history.

Maybe historians would be better stewards of meaningful “news”.

It's not an algorithm, but I like Project Censored [0]. It's worth reading about their top 25 most censored/underreported stories [1]

[0] https://www.projectcensored.org/ [1] https://www.projectcensored.org/category/the-top-25-most-cen...

those are good articles (the top 25) but the site has a left liberal bias which shows only censorship from the right. I have followed https://ground.news/ for a while which shows stories missed in what are classified as right, left and center media...

Dang, I guess trying to tell the world about kids getting thrown in jail for kickbacks is somehow "left liberal bias". US Conservatives have fallen so far from the Teddy Roosevelt push for small government, maintaince of our national parks, and justice for the oppressed it's actually insane

Are we really saying that a story about a world record sized pumpkin is being “censored”? Come on. At a certain point people just have to accept that “nobody cares” != “censorship”.

Just follow what the proverbial social justice people care about, a lot of it has merit before going off the rails.

You'll get familiar with a lot of broken aspects of society, much of which could take a lot of time and adjustment to understand why its not as productive as seemed. And some might seem like farfetched things to change, but you'll be familiar, especially after its old news and has been changed.

> How would a "important things in the world" algorithm work ?

I've tried to figure that out myself. The best I've come up with is Wikipedia's current events page. It's not ideal, but as a bone dry, non-sensationalized summary of things going on worldwide, it's pretty impressive. Sometimes it would be nice to have more context, but the linked articles usually help with that. It's biggest problem for me is it's a bit overwhelming realizing how often ferries sink and buses crash.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

I did not know this existed. I've been struggling to find ways to stay somewhat aware of world events without wading through the toxicity of social media or the sentimentalization of mainstream media.

PBS NewsHour is the other source I've used because it tends to be less rage-baiting, but this fact-based presentation is great.

Can’t edit the comment now but meant to say sensationalization.

When this happened, the nation went through a significant financial crisis consuming almost all media headlines. Injustice sucks, but potentially losing your home and retirement is probably a higher priority to most.

Maximizing engagement is tangible and pays well.

You’re wanting to optimize for something intangible, philosophical and something most people would just prefer to ignore.

Technology can still help though… look, you learned about it from HN!

However, you cannot automate this process entirely because caring, compassion and looking into the dark corners of our socioeconomic system require human judgement at every step. This human decision making, consensus forming and problem solving process is also known as ‘politics’

I suggest that the reason you didn’t hear about it is that you didn’t care to be informed. I live in a backwaters Canadian town and I knew about this story years and years ago. And it’s not like I do anything special to be informed: I simply scan headlines on a daily basis. The news media didn’t repress the story, you just didn’t look.