The Distorted News Epidemic and Bridgewater's Recent Experience With The WSJ

Perhaps what's happening is that established bad practices are becoming more noticeable as technology advances (in this case, the subjects of stories can post at little or no cost a widely read rebuttal)

> There are stories that were completely made up by Estonian teenagers, with no connection to facts at all, which were widely republished and shared

It sounds like we agree that factual inaccuracies, both on the detail and summary level are harmful. However, in my view, connection with the facts of the matter is only important in that it represents a commitment on the part of the journalist to educate the public on a specific topic. Education toward a more accurate position is the key here.

For example, it was recently pointed out that flossing has no RCTs to support it. This is to not say that flossing has no supporting evidence. Flossing has a tremendous amount of longitudinal evidence to support it. There is also little to no evidence of any kind to discourage flossing. Despite this, the New York Times reported the story as "maybe there's no need [to floss]"[1]. That's a very misleading representation of expert opinion, presumably done to increase readership.

I fail to see how the NYTimes' version of the story is somehow preferable to a hypothetical fact free version written (as in your example) by an Estonian teenager. At least the fact free version is easier to discard as rubbish. One can only wonder how many dental problems the NYTimes' spinned version of the story will cause.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/03/health/flossing-teeth-cavi...

As you say, there's explicitly fake news from organizations that never pretended to be news organizations and were simply web sites spun up to fool the unwary. But there's also a real problem with "real" news orgs publishing highly suspect claims in sensationalist ways. Then there's hyper-partisanship in the news, where allegations against one side are overhyped and allegations against the other downplayed or ignored.

Unless a 3rd party fact checker is an open-sourced algorithm I doubt anyone will accept their definition of 'fact' and 'fake'. Even then someone could game it.

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

>>I haven't seen even the most sophisticated alternative fund allocators (eg big university endowments) sufficiently explain what it is that Bridgewater does.

What? Bridgewater uses leverage. It is the basis for their strategy. They explain how and why they use it right on their website. Also their fees are lower than average. No I don't work there.

When you say you are "in the investment world", do you mean professionally or like you trade stocks from an e-trade account in your free time?

However, suffice it to say I would rather have a plurality of viewpoints, where some may be misleading, than a singular viewpoint handed down to me.

Where the author says: "The problem is that people who are happy with their experience and respecting our rules are not allowed to speak with the media so you end up hearing disproportionately from disgruntled people."

Do you agree or disagree with this assertion? I think it's reasonable to expect that employees seeking to speak with the press are not pleased with the work environment but to determine what that means wouldn't we need to know what % of employees speak to the press at Bridgewater relative to other financial firms?

Where the author says: "We also offered to put Copeland in contact with three prominent organizational psychologists and researchers who" ... "had studied our culture in depth" ... "These researchers" ... "had access to anyone they wanted to speak with when they did their studies. Copeland and Hope" ... "chose not to speak with these experts."

Do you think this sounds like a fair effort for honest reporting? Do you think the author is lying about such an easily verifiable statement or can you explain why the journalists chose not to speak to these individuals?

There's more, but reading through the author's words it appears like he made an honest effort to represent the good and the bad at their company. Years ago, the WSJ was considered a pinnacle of financial reporting so when Rupert Murdoch acquired it there was a lot of concern about the potential for bias to creep in.

I worked for a financial company that was the lead story in the New York Times financial section. I hold no affection for this company but, having familiarity with the circumstances they were discussing, it was clear they misrepresented the facts to make things look as bad as possible.

A neutral/honest article isn't as sensational as one building a bogeyman. Is it possible that this billionaire CIO just has a loud enough voice to point out how inaccurate the reporting was?

Any time I see a subject in the news I'm familiar with I see numerous inaccuracies and misrepresentations, have you had this experience? Do you think that phenomenon is limited only to your knowledge domain?

Yes, the CIO has incentive to discount the article, but do you see how the journalists may have incentive to undermine the company?

Could you point out where he says this, please? (Dalio's rant is quite long, and I didn't see where this jumped out at first skim).

There's no real solution. In the end news firms are bought by businesses as they struggle to survive.

Businesses need profit, so those firms end up giving ground to the necessities of survival. All the firms you see today are the survivors.

The firms which don't deal in interesting stuff, don't carry much weight in the mainstream since they aren't "communicating to their core audience." And are left for those few people who have the time, patience and willingness to dig through what is today considered "long form" journalism.

These firms are in turn targeted by those vested interests who still need the facts massaged. (Cut funding! It's Biased against X groups! It follows a liberal agenda! It's conservative!)

This leads to the final 3 points.

1) a fair media is a source of power. The powerful politically minded will always vie for control or work to discredit it

2) mainstream media will continue to be a lost cause, and actual discussion of facts will be done in specialist and scientific journals. Nothing will survive the vortex of money and power.

3) fact checking is now dependent on the moral and intellectual fiber of the reader. Those people who cultivate open minds and self doubt will be the few who make the effort to know the world. (To what end though, you try to communicate and it will be lost in the vortex)

Propaganda 1.0 was Fox News (and later CNN, MSNBC). A lot of "news" shows are really just opinion factories where the basic "facts" are in dispute. Now we are in a state of propaganda 2.0 where foreign interests have figured out how to influence people on Facebook.

I don't think this is possible to actually stop. This is the continued evolution from the Op-Ed where people want to be told what to think and how to vote.

Edit: And they won't trust true experts such as academics because they "obviously" have a liberal bias "by definition".

In other words, what he describes may or may not have actually happened in this case, but boy does it look exactly like the kind of thing that used to be very routine at every level of the old-line print media, from local papers to big magazines.

Journos (or, in many cases, their editors) have a sensational story they want to tell, and they're going to tell that story regardless of how the actual reporting goes and what facts it turns up. This happens again and again and again. In fact, it used to just be the way things were done, with any positive deviation from that coming about by happy accident. Recent incidents that come to mind are the big Asian nail salon expose that had a ton of problems, or the infamous Rolling Stone rape piece. The list goes on, tho.

So this post is a really good look at how "fake news" has operated for at least the past six or so decades.

To make the undue public attention worse, they (he specifically, as well) lied to the press about the facts of iphone issue, saying things he couldn't know as fact (the difficulty for Apple to crack the device) and inventing other details.

Also, I know he had offers from security firms to crack the phone from day 2. He sat on what he claimed to have thought could have been important evidence in an attempt to force Apple's hand. He could have ruined the investigation and let terrorists escape because he thought it was a good time to showboat.

Also, under his watch the FBI has pursued numerous stings against mentally handicapped Americans in America. Trying to create terrorists by inundating them with hateful propaganda, providing functional arms and ammunition, etc, and encouraging them to commit horrific crimes in an attempt to make the FBI look competent when they catch their creation.

We've rarely had someone either so incapable of doing their job, or so efficient at destroying everything the agency has stood for. In the end what's left will resemble the political wing of the KGB.