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Comment by mikeyouse | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, but ProPublica does really great investigative work. They recently took over many of the technical functions that The Sunlight Foundation was going to shut down. They do important work on civil rights, criminal justice reform, asset seizure, public corruption, corporate corruption, etc.

If you have some spare cash, setting up a recurring monthly donation in any amount really helps them operate and plan for the future. I've added a subscription to the WaPo and recurring donations to ProPublica, ACLU, and The Marshall Project. This work is too important to neglect.

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There are some stories they do that are really good. But as with all stories - ProPublica or not - please understand there may be an implicit bias or agenda.

On a different matter involving trial lawyers and an industry group, they reported a "scandal" where there was none. I am familiar with that issue (so I have my own biases!). It was my opinion that they were repeating the trial lawyer's argument and calling that an investigative journalism piece. Others may disagree with my assessment. I do not want to link to that story here.

This is one reason why I choose not to financially support ProPublica.

EDIT: I'm getting sick of the downvotes on Hacker News. This is not reddit where a downvote == disagree. Just don't upvote it. It's frustrating to take a few minutes to write a comment and then watch it get nuked because it's "controversial". But please feel free to downvote away because my off-topic rant.

Fair point, they won't be perfect for everyone and they may rightly or wrongly ding organizations that people hold in high esteem (e.g. when they displayed the rank incompetence of the Red Cross a few years ago).

I'd argue that funding ProPublica and then funding an outfit who takes a contrary position on whatever issue is important to you is a better solution though. We need more journalism not less.

That's a useful concept. Sort of like a free speech hedge, or like buying carbon offsets. Could be gamed, though -- start an extreme paper to pump donations to your centrist paper ;)

If they're both high quality enough, then citing xkcd, "mission accomplished."

Just because a side is associated with trial lawyers doesn't say anything about bias to me, one way or the other.

Sometimes they get involved in issues which seems like it would increase undesirable litigation. (of course people have differing opinions of what is undesirable).

But going further, sometimes laws are setup by congress which essentially 'outsources' enforcement to private parties. You can hold a good or bad opinion of the practice, or specific laws which are enacted, but in those areas, cases going to litigation can be the only way that the law is ever enforced.

I downvoted you because you are repeating the tired old trope about implicit biases and agendas. It's as if once we think we've identified someone's agenda, we can tell whether they're telling the truth. But this is false: the proper way is to assess the quality of reporting first, and if it is low-quality, then we can ask questions about how shoddy work got through, and then the answer might be biases and agendas. If it's good reporting, then biases and agendas are irrelevant. But in any case objective quality always comes first.

You can have objective high quality reporting and still be pushing an agenda. It will show in what you choose to report and what issues you just don't talk about.

In that case, I'd say choosing what to report is itself part of reporting, and if the choices are poor, that's low-quality reporting. So I don't really see an issue.

Does "objective" here apply to the reporting or to the assessment that it's high quality?

The alternative is neutrality, as in the old "we have to give 50-50 time to both sides". So 50% to climate change activists and 50% to climate change deniers, and so on. Is that really better than objective bias? I would think it's not. NYTimes also (publicly) gave up on neutrality in 2012, I believe.

The real problem today is most media today (and I don't include ProPublica in this) isn't even objective anymore. They're just biased, and engage in biased activism, with little objectivity and facts in its way.

Glenn Greenwald did an interview on this issue recently, which I think is worth watching for his perspective on this. Some may see Greenwald as "biased", but I think he's not only less biased than most "journalists" or pro-establishment figureheads on TV, but that more journalists should strive to be like him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTC-GvWRlQ8

The 50/50 method is often referred to as "false balance".

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

I found the media bias article on Wikipedia to be a good primer on types of bias to keep in mind while reading.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_bias#Types

It's also been useful in identifying which types of bias people refer to when they're talking about bias. I know I personally didn't have a system in place to categorize these things, and generally thought of only a few of them at a time.

It's literally impossible not to have an agenda.

Accurately reporting current events is an agenda.

So for a meaningful criticism, you need to point out how their agenda is pernicious or contrary to their stated purpose, not just complain that they have it.

Well, there are ways to convey the uncertainty. When there is only one side of a litigious story available, an article should underscore that fact.

Often one side is objectively wrong, as such you don't always need to cover both sides.

'Balance' is often used as a cover for an agenda.

Is that really true? Good, quality reporting doesn't necessarily make biases irrelevant. If (hypothetically) it's true that both candidates in an election are corrupt, though one is more corrupt and dangerous than the other, a story that carefully exposes and discredits the less-corrupt one may be objective reporting on its own, but still serve a biased agenda.

I think we need to ask ourselves: when we seek out the news source's agenda first, what are we really trying to accomplish? Are we trying to think critically about what we're about to read? Or are we applying a quick heuristic filter to decide whether to read at all?

Think about it this way: I come across an article on XYZ site. I determine (or guess) that XYZ's agenda is generally conservative, and I consider myself a liberal. What do I do with that assessment? Do I stop reading and move on? Do I preemptively and summarily discount anything the article has to say? Or do I continue to read, perhaps skeptically, but nevertheless with an open mind?

I'd like to think we're doing the latter. But I'm not convinced.

My point is, it's totally fine to consider the source when making assessments of an article. It's totally fine to consider the source's agenda. But if seeking out the agenda becomes a routine, primary step in the process of consuming news, that worries me. That's essentially just seeking out confirmation of one's own biases as a reader.

That's fair. I think a lot of this depends on the precise definitions of words like "objective" or "biased." The 'best' strategy would be to always read everything incredibly critically and carefully, but we all need to use some cognitive shortcuts to actually get our news, and I think which shortcuts we choose have deep impacts on our perception of the world.

Yes, and the person you are replying to is suggesting 'consistently high quality' is a far better heuristic than trying to root out the bias.

I downvoted you because you

If you strongly disagree with someone and care to correct them you should actually UPVOTE them. This way the public gets to learn the correct way/thinking/method. If you bury them many who may have the same wrong notion may not get the chance to be enlightened.

But "the tired old trope about implicit biases and agendas" the whole content of the Pro Publica piece here? Take away all the facts just there to support that angle, and what's left?

Can you expand or rephrase? I don't follow what you are saying but would like to understand what you are getting at.

The whole article is about implying pro-merger biases and agendas on the part of the economists on the basis of who they work for and how much they get paid.

Your reply lead to a much more productive discussion than your downvote.

> I downvoted you because you are repeating the tired old trope about implicit biases and agendas.

Hardly tired- biases and agendas caused the deep political divide in the U.S. and Brexit in England. While it's not news to those in the know, it's certainly not something we should hide or stop talking about.

Here's a study for you:

http://siepr.stanford.edu/highlights/sticking-script-rise-bi...

http://web.stanford.edu/~gentzkow/research/politext.pdf

Political actors are supposed to have an agenda aren't they?

My point was that these biases and agendas have more and more driven a wedge, dividing the people of the U.S., Britain, and others.

I'm not sure about this: I think the people were already divided, and this is now being being exploited politically.

> I do not want to link to that story here.

Why not? You say they did something wrong, but then do not cite to what it was other than saying it involved "trial lawyers and an industry group". Why not provide a link to go along with your opinion and let people read it and decide if they agree with you or not rather than insinuating impropriety?

I didn't want to skew the discussion even more off-topic. Plus, I know I didn't have the time today to respond to all the counter-arguments to the article.

FWIW, downvote == disagree is not how reddit is supposed to work either, and didn't used to. So good luck fighting that trend!

I did downvote for "I do not want to link to that story here.". What is that, anecdotal evidence without evidence?

This is not reddit where a downvote == disagree

Says who? Not the creator of this site, at least: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171

(Note: I personally don't downvote when I disagree, but I don't think there's an official position by the site)

I didn't donwvote till you added the edit about downvotes

"Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Don't worry about the down-voters. They are just learning

Everyone has an agenda. Here's an idea; judge a piece or organization by the quality of the work. I'll read pieces from the National Review even though I don't share their bias. Why? Because they employ good journalists and check their work.

Even without the cesspool of comments, I won't read Breitbart because the editorial quality is non-existant. Same goes for crapy left-wing blogs like RawStory.

In once case they released a study of how algorithms used by police were supposedly biased against minorities. Their results were "almost statistically significant". In other words, they weren't statistically significant. But they went ahead and published it anyway, under an alarming clickbait headline. https://www.chrisstucchio.com/blog/2016/propublica_is_lying....

It makes me pretty upset, because that is the study/article that everyone references when discussing that issue.

Can you explain what you mean with agenda? When i read the nytimes i expect a bit of an bias, i am totally ok with that. Every newspaper has an opinion. But i would not be ok with an agenda if you interpret that as selecting stories that mostly fit with your goal and bending stories to favour your goal. That's not journalism.

Thank you for the suggestion. Set up a monthly recurring donation of $5. Will also subscribe to NYT now.

I am not American but after the US elections have decided to actively get involved in supporting progressives/liberals anyway I can.

John Oliver gave them a shoutout on the last show of the year.

They will be sorely needed...

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