https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” – Michael Crichton (1942-2008)
Think about all the places you've ever worked, all the organizations you've been part of, where you know how the sausage is actually made, and how that differs from the way the organization portrays itself.
Now think about all the other organizations in the world, whose internal workings you're not privy to.
Reminds me of Gell-Mann Amnesia.
On the other hand, when a journalist follows a story, they must have good high level understanding. Shockingly, youtubers have much better grip on the situation.
The traditional media seems to be losing the plot in this FTX and presenting SBF in strangely positive light, almost as if it is a human interest story.
The talk with him today was very strange.
I generally don't. A journalists job is to report the news, if they don't feel confident in a given domain then they can sit the story out.
To give you an analog, I work on infrastructure, but I don't work on things like AWS policies every day. It generally takes me longer to craft up the right way to restrict a given resource due to that. If I left an S3 bucket open to the public "on accident" I'd expect ramifications from my employer.
That's to say, the onus is on the doer of the work. Now, if news outlets are just telling journalists to give it the old college try on domains they don't know, that's another subject.
It’s not an excuse for the low quality, just an expected outcome IMHO.
Nope. A journalist job is to make clicks. That’s how their job is evaluated: how many click did the story bring.
That’s all. That’s f**ing all.
Every news outlet office now has a giant screen with the list of the stories and the number of clicks. "Journalists" are expected to competed on that metric and that metric alone.
It blew my mind every time to realize that, even in tech, people are still naïve enough to not see that. Just change the word "journalist" by "click farmers" and, suddenly, everything makes sense. (Television has "audience" instead of "clicks" but the reasoning is similar)
While such tangential citations were used, at most it basically discredited the article but not necessarily fully refute the topic.
A case of strong yellow journalism?
Concur.
That may have been the case in the past, but "journalism" has radically changed within the past decade. Today it's more about telling the story that the media conglomerates want the public to hear, than about honest reporting.
Public distrust of the media is at an all-time high, and growing.
So, to answer your question: it's both. It's bullshit I don't want to hear and what a grip of powerful people probably want me to hear.
In theory maybe, in practice, journalists are simply Instagram influencers with fancy degrees. They make content to draw eyeballs for an organization that sells ads.
The media coverage about FTX is extremely odd.
There are some amazing journalists out there and I’m sure they are just as disappointed in the mediocre content their peers produce.
Journalists are expected to source information from experts and from people who are in positions to know, and to attribute the information they publish to their sources.
I am not saying that every journalist or publication does a good job of seeking the truth. Only that the job of a reporter does not require being an expert at anything other than - hopefully - information gathering and reporting.
Look up how Rian van Rijbroek fooled a popular news show in The Netherlands. If they had invited one more random expert in the field, that person would've grilled her.
Its because news is for entertainment purpose not knowledge acquisition from the journalists perspective and secondly because powerful players are involved.
This guy donated 40 million dollars to the ruling political party and has parents with connections. Why would you write a truthful article outlining the grand fraud that took place when you only have something to loose by doing so?
Remember this was the guy who said "FTX is fine. Assets are fine" and "We don't invest client assets (even in treasuries)".
I don't doubt that he did donate some money to the non ruling party but to quote what he is saying as truth or try and attribute a donation by an associated party to him is disingenuous.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-team-amon...
BTW be careful with expecting the media to spoon feed the narratives you want rather than laying out facts and editorializing them to let you decide. That's how you avoid some bias.
Now go look at some other examples where the writer or org has an interest in attacking and you will find, not only no shortage of "alleged"s but also a good dose of extra eyebrow-wriggling, winking and nudging there to suggest whatever number of other crimes can possibly be invented.
Same thing happens early in crises, from the Russian massacres of civilians in Ukraine to Trump's Mar-a-Lago files we get some forms of facts but its the readers who have to draw some to all of the conclusion.
Don't you think it is an interesting question to ask yourself, "why they report it like that?".
"Avoiding libel" doesn't cut it, there's other ways of avoiding libel that don't look like a love letter.
Why? Why is it in the reporter's interest to protect this guy? That is the interesting question. I don't need to guess at why reporting on Ukraine or Trump is the way it is, it's pretty clear.
But with this guy? Why?
Are you looking for opinion or journalism? Ethical journalists aren’t going to say “this is a ponzi scheme and this guy stole money” because that’s not what any primary source is saying. It’s clear that’s what’s happened to anyone reading the articles written.
Like with Nick Sandman or Rittenhouse. runs off cackling
You hire a fcking plumber.
Why can't top publications be held to this standard?
This is not a bald criticism or renunciation of journalism from big publications - I simply mean to provide some understanding and clarity around how journalism so often misses the mark. Even though it misses the mark, journalistic coverage is incredibly valuable and a far better approach than darkness. (People might think of journalism as turning the lights on - more accurately journalism is like shining a flashlight into a dark place.)
In this case, it is very odd that much of the coverage has not been centered on fraud. I genuinely don’t understand why.