The Increasing Problem with the Misinformed
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2. This article doesn’t really address a) Politifact’s cherry-picking or b) its ownership. Want to paint a politician as more honest? Fact check more statements from them that you know to be true. As long as the aggregate score tops the competition you’re against, you’ve nudged your readership. The article also doesn’t go into ownership - Politifact is owned by a newspaper who has endorsed a candidate, who in turn has owners with interests.
3. As for sites that explain the news, there should be more of them to emphasize what’s important and why, and what the potential solutions are. Sites like Vox, however, are biased and often intellectually dishonest. They’ll use opinion as evidence for their conclusions. See for example (adblockers on) an article where they are claiming to assess media bias against Sanders, and say things like he is “at sea in foreign policy” without providing any evidence or analysis to support that claim. Even 538 - though I admire their data-driven approach - write scathing editorials against Trump. I don’t like Trump, but to say 538’s journalism is objective is to admit illiteracy. See headlines like “Trump doesn’t have a monopoly on intolerant supporters”.
As you pointed out, the editorial process in which a selection is made between newsworthy items is highly subjective. Every day only a few news items make it onto the front page, and there cannot possibly be a neutral metric that can determine which ones.
Journalism doesn't just provide the facts, it also has an obligation to educate and inform the readers. Impartiality -- simply printing two opposing viewpoints side-by-side -- doesn't work. After all, giving equal weight to the opinion of a respected biologist and a evolution skeptic will mislead the readership by implying there is a serious debate where there is none.
Even the process of selecting which authors get published in the opinion pages is subject to highly ideological forces. By necessity.
A higher emphasis on data doesn't fix any of these issues. So instead media should be more upfront about their ideological perspective. The pretense of neutral objectivity doesn't serve anybody. To the contrary, delivering an ideological message in a package of neutral data-driven approach is pernicious. Pernicious because it allows the readers to believe they're the reasonable and fact-based party, while those people are ideological fools. In reality we're all highly illogical and ideological creatures and we should be honest about this, to ourselves and to others.
So I don't think that considering editorial journalism as objective is in any way illiterate. Cronkite may roll in his grave, but the landscape of media has changed.
Plus good journalism is just really difficult. Another comment below referenced the Gell-Mann effect, which is really easy to lose sight of in day to day reading. There is also a lot of pressure to publish quickly - at the cost of quality - and that's on top of the incentives to nab clicks.
I like the notion of journalism as debate, where the sides are clear and each must marshal evidence to support their position. Though like another comment said, we can still get BS evolution vs skeptic debates because too often the burden of evidence is ignored. Then what are the sides? Left vs Right? Corporate vs Independent like Politifact vs Fair.org?
And then: evidence can be manufactured. Need support for a policy? Fund a think tank to do a study it.
Not that studies are always self-interested. Take Y-Combinator's exploration of Universal Basic Income. They don't stand to directly benefit from exploring it; they see a massive challenge, and have the assets to explore UBI as a potential solution.
I do, however, believe journalism will improve in the long run, in large part because I believe good ideas and quality usually survive. And we have more good ideas than ever.
It reminds me of an Issac Asimov story where people didn't have to vote because a computer could predict who would win the election anyway.
It is not so accidental that 538 got picked up by the NYTimes and ESPN when you see how easily it fits into the dominant ideology.
Also, I should add I really liked Thomas's article. It doesn't address some of the points I mentioned, but it's clearly a thoughtful article that backs up its investigation with evidence.
And I am too hard on Vox and 538. I have every reason to believe they're trying to get it right - while balancing the needs of their business - and I'm glad they have entered the media landscape. I hope more players that approach journalism from different investigative and analytical angles will follow. Both orgs could improve, and anyway defaulting to mastheads to assess quality is only a heuristic.
Now you might be going too easy on them ;) It's hard to say Vox is making an effort when crap like this has become a regular occurrence:
http://fair.org/home/voxs-puff-piece-on-goldman-sachs-doesnt...
If this is necessary for "balancing the needs of their business", can they really offer a net benefit to us? Maybe to the severely uninformed — admittedly a huge crowd — but only those who are willing to become informed, and only temporarily while they learn how to inform themselves.
Great OP btw.
I'd even say it's hard for educated people to see this stuff clearly. Not because they are intellectually incapable of distinguishing between reporting and marketing, but simply because it takes effort to make that call. You're cruising through your day, dipping into articles that grab your attention - there's just no way you're constantly critically vigilant - I know I can't be.
And to some extent we're powerless: even if we just read the headline in some feed, well, we're already now aware of a new GS financial product, and we might be curious about it. And some of the marketing is borderline sinister: the "for the masses" phrase in the headline is ridiculous counterspin for GS.
Thank you.
This is not a popular thing to say, but democracy would work a lot better if misinformed people were simply not allowed to vote: https://outlookzen.wordpress.com/2014/01/21/democracy-by-jur...
Children shouldn't even be disenfranchised. If someone wants to coach their children to vote for Trump, let em.
I think "preparing voters" would move political pressure into the education system, where similar problems would re-emerge as schools become "rating-agencies" of political ideology.
So, where does that line get drawn? Who decides, and how? The current regime? The line seems to have always been in motion. I don't think there's an institutional answer to it.
1. If the knowledge required for the exam is just basic stuff like 'how the voting system works', then it's not really much different from how things are right now. Not knowing how your votes affect the system isn't really the issue leading to misinformation right now.
2.If there's absolutely any possibility for political 'bias' to seep in, then such an exam/educational system would have devastating effects. I mean, we've already got problems in some schools and local educational systems with religious folks trying to have 'intelligent design' taught as science. What stops them trying to put Fox News esque talking points in the exam and doing their damn hardest to try and push for religious conservatism among the next generation? Or in areas with opposite political views/population demographics, 'progressive' talking points being snuck into this example/course? Imagine a system where questions about religion and abortion/gay marriage or about 'social justice' issues are in the curriculum and anyone who don't answer them in the way the education leaders don't like doesn't get the right to vote? That could turn very bad, very quickly.
At least learning to drive is pretty neutral on a political level. There's no one trying to tie parallel parking and three point turns to Satanism or racism.
While understanding the how and why of US Civics is important, it doesn't much illuminate or educate the average voter when it comes to relatively straightforward ballot items. Imagine a ballot item that is a small sales-tax increase to fund highway renovation for a city; the knowledge of US Civics isn't really necessary to understand that if it goes through, there will be construction to fix a highway, but things like grocery bills will be slightly more expensive. Civics knowledge isn't really necessary to help determine the voter's feelings about such a bill.
I think one of the biggest issues is that a lot of times voters just don't know what is on the ballots or are unable to find lay person explanations for bills. When I lived in Washington, every election residents would be mailed a voter's pamphlet by the state. The pamphlet contained a state provided listing of every item on the ballots, what the cost/impact would be, the intended outcome, and then both proponents and opponents were afforded a small section (maybe 500-700 words) to explain their point of view on the item. The pamphlet was super useful, and I could see something like this helping to alleviate at least a little bit of the misinformation and lack of information that is persistent in voting, even if the majority of voters just throw it in the trash (which is what many of my friends and colleagues told me they did). It's a real shame that the pamphlet wasn't more popular, since it was pretty well done during the years I lived there. I wish more states would adopt it.
I'm not sure the linked post actually addresses the problem of misinformation. Forming random juries of hundreds of participants and somehow magically causing them to become less misinformed is presented as a solution but I'm not sure people work like that.
Something like this just becomes a tool for the rich and powerful to shut out the people 'too stupid to agree with them' and for the status quo to be maintained in perpetuity. For something like that to work, someone has to decide who can vote. That someone has opinions that a significant amount of people won't agree with.
by giving voting rights to everyone you keep the system in check, you cannot ignore certain parts of the population as you need their votes.
the under-class in highly developed countries has been raped by free trade (see the recent articles in bloomberg about this) - hence the rise in new populist movements on both the right and left to cater to their needs.
and yeah, good luck with your definition of misinformed. for powerful pieces of society galileo was misinformed (god is the center of the universe). MLK too (blakcs are not equal people). gandhi ditto (the superiority of the anglo-saxon populace is clear and evident).
the only way to even be able to argue like you - you have no clue about history, hence you are misinformed. really should not be allowed to vote, eh?
Nitpick: Geocentrism was wrong but this is not geocentrism. In medieval cosmology the center of the universe is the worst place to be (as opposed to the heavenly spheres) and is where hell was traditionally located (in the center of the earth)
(I originally intended to keep this post completely neutral, not mentioning my feelings on such things, but, fuck it: felon disenfranchisement is awful and it fills me with sadness that we put up with it)
Citizenship is always going to be a requirement for voting though, at least if countries exist. Democracy doesn't work if people from outside a region can have more effect on the laws than the people living there.
That would make more sense, anyway. Citizenship is just a weird concept, as is much to do with nations and nationalism. Heck, throw in a five year delay (or whatever the voting period is) and you may even be able to placate the eternally xenophobic weird people (nah, not gonna happen …).
-- For European Parliament elections, you need to be UK resident on the day of the election and a citizen of any European country. I think that's pretty similar to the rules in the rest of the EU.
-- For local elections, you need to be resident on the day of the election and either an EU or Commonwealth citizen.
-- For national elections, you need to be either resident on the day and a Commonwealth or Irish citizen, or you need to be a British citizen who's been resident at some point in the previous fifteen years.
-- If you actually want to stand as an MP, you need to be a Commonwealth citizen and resident for the entire term.
-- And for ministers, including the Prime Minister, there's no citizenship or residency requirement at all: whoever wins the relevant election or appointment process gets the position. Which made the whole Obama Birther thing seem a bit weird.
Admittedly, the UK's history makes it a bit of a special case, but it at least demonstrates that it's possible.
Eliminating gerrymandering through non-partisan districting is an obvious example.
They are clearly driven by agenda, and biased, and misinformed. The example about Cologne just describes the fact that as the media have been very reluctant to report certain facts for well intended reasons , they have lost a lot of credibility.
Also, maybe we could skip voting all together and just use allotment to assign the parliament, drawn from a pool of people with high scores on (say) national tests, no criminal record and over a certain age...
That was the definition of democracy from the beginning, and I'm starting to think that it won't be worse than the current plutocracy, or maybe even better, and probably a lot cheaper.
That's the problem? The fact that you take a site at face value regarding its fact checking score, which could be totally BS, partisan, inaccurate, etc., in real life, isn't a problem?
>But look at the above graphs. If PolitiFact was clearly biased, they wouldn't be as wide ranging as this.
That still leaves two ways it can be partisan (or, off) wide open:
1) It can be partial to the shared assumptions/ideology of both parties (who are more alike than different compared to how parties are in other western countries).
2) It can be partisan to one party, and still mark as "bad liars" its people -- only for that party it does it for second players, whereas for the other party it does it for the leadership and first-rate players.
This still gives a total like "here, we have reported on 100 lies from Democrats and 100 from Republicans" thus we're impartial, while still hurting one or the other party far more.
Just look how many debunked stories on Snopes comes from sites whose sole purpose is to trick people on Facebook.
In addition to this, a lot of journalists need to ask themselves whether people's distrust of them comes from them being treated as 'idiots' by the press that's supposed to represent them.
There's a point here where the article says:
"Only about 20% feel positive towards newspapers today, again following the decline in trust in our politicians."
But how about another reason? It's not just the fact the politicians are seen as almost completely non trustworthy, but the fact the press are seen as completely out of touch and more interested in supporting the 'status quo' than the population. It's the fact that having an opinion to the left or right of the media gets you labelled as 'crazy' or 'bigoted' or 'horrible'. That supporting Sanders gets you called a 'Bernie Bro'. Etc. The level of contempt a lot of journalists show towards their audience leads to people hating them, which leads them finding people that exploit that hatred for less noble ends (usually extremist groups and publications).
That's something else the press needs to fix, and fast.
> "For instance, I thought Sanders was more truthful than Clinton. I has also assumed that Rubio was as bad as Cruz. But, as you can see, my personal assumptions were wrong."
Then you see statements like those in the article -- does the author really believe that someone's overall truthfulness can be gauged in this manner?
Basically, OP argues that people who disagree with him haven't been preached to enough. This condescending article is more of a reason than an explanation for why people think it's OK to slam reporters.
PolitiFact does the same thing. They take what is clearly an opinion and rate it: http://www.politifact.com/texas/statements/2015/dec/04/ted-c...
It's not some unsubstantiated claim from politicians that the press is lying. They're simply the closest to the action. Watching Youtube or Liveleak videos of various events posted on social media and then hearing about them on the news is how I have developed a lot of contempt for journalists and journalism.
And it's not a new observation.
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.
The Internet just made it easier to learn more about various subjects. You don't have to passively listen to some anointed fact-checkers, and you're not limited to your narrow area of expertise.
Ted Cruz: "[...] federal government is going after school districts, trying to force them to let boys shower with little girls."
Did they leave out something he said beforehand?
The average person will understand that sentence as "all boys", while even the least favourable interpretation of the reality is "some boys".
I'd also point out that while a misinformed public is bad, the main-stream-media becoming more and more overt with their biases to justify skewed reporting is fanning the flames of mistrust in the media and large institutions in general. The boy who cried wolf here is a very fitting analogy, when the media wants to report something important, and then proceed to report it straight, there is a large amount of the public which will assume there is a hidden agenda, regardless of the supporting facts. I personally believe this was one of the reasons it took so long for the country's opinion on climate change to beign shifting.
I can only imagine that most politicians and public figures are making several thousand statements per year. PolitiFact has this to say: "Because we can't possibly check all claims, we select the most newsworthy and significant ones." In other words, their selection process is completely arbitrary. They aren't taking representative samples.
Just as an example, 10% of Trump's statements might be completely false, but if you're selecting the most outlandish and newsworthy claims to evaluate, it may appear to be 90%. Which is fine and all, until you start believing you can use this to compare the honesty (or whatever criteria) of various candidates.
- Stop the clickbait (you won't believe, will shock you, etc..)
- Stop ads camouflaged as articles (no, a tiny 10% gray label is not enough..)
- Stop the fear mongering.
Thank you in advance.
Setting the clock back to the 1890s.
It's getting hard to find any news source with any decent news judgement. The Reuters RSS feeds are still reasonably good. The Economist remains useful. But it's hard to find a mainstream news source that doesn't suck.
I can read twitter and the drudge report too. Sell me something better.
It's also why a lot of these 'opinion' articles are being written. Because there's a clear 'original' copy that will never quite be matched by the imitators.
"Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."