Comment by SandersAK | Hacker News Reader

Comment by SandersAK | Hacker News Reader

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This idea that "truth" and "facts" was ever a profitable business comes from a very naive place. With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit.

Newspapers historically were not driven by facts but by classified ads and cartoons.

TV, even in its golden age, was always about advertisement. And as much as we pine for the days of Walter Cronkite etc, the truth perpetuated in media has always skewed white (fear of the minorities), status quo (fear of a revolution), and capitalist (fear of commies).

Tweet storms and pontifications like these are grand standing but devoid of any real grounded perspective. Just because you're 40 now, and realizing that there's a bunch of bad shit that you don't have control over (and maybe even contributed to) doesn't mean that "tech" or "media" has "gone away from truth."

> With the exception of encyclopedias (and even then...), newspapers (owned by robber barons since day one, and then later mega-corps), text books (read "lies my teacher told me") etc have always been about profit.

This is a profoundly naive view of how media works. In the past, advertisers made ad buying decisions based in part on the reputation of the outlet, and circulation of media was dependent on public consensus that something was a reliable source of fact. Tabloids were a niche market that people did not take seriously. Newspapers might make their money on ads and cartoons, but the only reason they were able to command money for their ad space was because people bought and trusted the paper. Now, the profit motive for content creation relies far less on reputation effects. It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit.

> based in part on the reputation of the outlet

The reputation is where the bias lies. Consider the new york times: you probably respect it if you agree with it. If you don’t, it’s crappy narrative journalism. This certainly aligns with the parent comment’s claim that “facts” have never been the forte of any media; they simply need to agree with their readers. There’s simply little need to get 100% accuracy when 70% suffices to continue subscriptions.

Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to the story than the reporter is.

>The reputation is where the bias lies.

So there's a difference between bias, which exists in every human communication imaginable, and abjectly bad writing and reporting. The major problem today is the latter.

> Also, note that you can only see the issues in reporting if you’re closer to the story than the reporter is.

That is absolutely not true at all. Most bad journalism today is insultingly bad. Take this article, which was the top article on Salon's 'News' section: https://www.salon.com/2017/09/26/george-clooney-donald-trump...

Basically, it is a puff piece about how George Clooney doesn't like Trump and has said as much. This article is clickbait designed to get likes on social media. Much of what is stated is probably true (I would not doubt that George Clooney said these things), but ultimately it doesn't matter. The point of the article is not to inform, it is to provoke a reaction.

Salon used to be a reasonably thoughtful outlet. They now appear to be a tabloid. This is a pattern that has played out over the internet media for the past several years, and we are all definitely worse off for it.

It’s easy to find poor reporting, but many people are blind to the flaws in each outlet. I don’t see any issue with rejecting the idea that any news source is “factual”. That is a downright harmful idea. You want to be sure about something? Go there yourself, or pay someone a lot of money to convincingly verify it.

You know what’s hard? Finding good reporting. Everyone is selling you something, even if it’s just a comfortable world view.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_journalism

This term us from the 1890s, journalism has been terrible from its inception.

What you're describing is the narrative that most media barons pushed from the 50's onwards - the notion of "quality journalism" - it's the reason the Pulitzer prize exists at all (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/04/2015-pulitzer...). It was built to legitimize newspapers.

Media barons didn't hire journalists because they were ethical and factually accurate. They created that narrative because otherwise those people wouldn't churn out relevant and timely content to suit their readership. When the readership changes, media follows it. There is no intrinsic value in serving up the truth as it pertains to stock price.

Now you may argue that places like the NYT are the exception. But even here, this high falutin branding is there only to justify the power of ads for a different (read: intellectual) audience. If the NYT was forced to focus on one of their verticals today, would it be news? No. It would be food, fashion, and lifestyle because that's what drives all their traffic.

>> In the past, advertisers made ad buying decisions based in part on the reputation of the outlet

> But even here, this high falutin branding is there only to justify the power of ads for a different (read: intellectual) audience.

You two are in agreement.

Excellent storytelling, strong narrative.

Got any evidence to back it up though?

https://www.google.com/search?q=the+fall+of+journalism&oq=th...

There are dozens of papers written about this - but the main thought exercise is to just consider that if the "truth" was the core value of media, of course they would double down on it.

So, you're OK with wasting a lot of effort to tell a story, but when asked to back it up, you instantly resolve to the simple "google why I'm right".

People are certainly moving their efforts from facts to opinions and emotion.

Could you please not argue like this on HN? It crosses into the sort of testiness the site guidelines are designed to exclude.

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

Thanks for remark. I explained the reason for my emotions down in the following comments.

Your replies telegraphed not curiosity or interest but just standard internet "source?" flame posts. It's not hard to google any element of what I'm saying to read countless articles in Poynter, NYT, CRJ etc to find stuff to back this up. Why should I waste my time when your mind is already made up?

I will just in case someone actually reads into your reply some genuine curiosity: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/09/business/media/the-return-...

Also, I worked in journalism for years and have met with and worked with most of the major media entities, specifically around editorial and business model, so I guess technically I'm a source too.

Please don't get testy when someone else gets testy. It degrades the discourse as much as the other, and provokes worse.

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

You're right, my mind is made up - to a certain extent. If your parent comments would actually be written well and contain strong arguments, I could change my mind.

But instead, your parent comments reek of the same absence of essence as a lot of modern "high-brow" journalism - and that's exactly why I was so irritated. I'm sick and tired of longreads in NYT, New Yorker, Slate and other presumably good publications that focus on stories, narratives and individuals instead of facts and arguments. How many times have a opened a story about some kind of global phenomena that affects millions and instead of statistics and studies saw most text dedicated to few particular people affected by it! Just like your text - makes a good and emotional narrative, but doesn't have any logical arguments to support author's viewpoint.

The author missed the biggest economic difference between fact-driven businesses and signal-driven businesses.

Today, to make money in a fact-driven business, you must restrict access to information.

For example, those who originate high-quality news have large payrolls of journalists in the field, layers of editors and fact-checkers, etc. They typically fund the business by restricting access with subscriptions, paywalls, premium content, and the like.

Fact-based businesses have small audiences with high cost per customer.

But signal-based businesses that sell opinion, tribal identification, status and emotion thrive through broad distribution. They need to maximize social sharing and generate large audiences.

Signal-based businesses are typically free or have very low per-user costs. They selectively remix content from fact-based businesses for their audiences, and add commentary, outrage, emotion and tribal identity.

Good point. Do you have any examples of fact based businesses? I can think of ONE(!) - Stratecherry by Ben Thompson, but I'm really craving more.

Its not just facts, its facts in service of telling a story - truth. "Raw" facts by themselves are hard to contextualize for an uninformed person. I really want more like that.

You really shouldn't share this here per the ToS. Also, the financial Times and Bloomberg machines are vehicles for expensive facts.

This is manifestly not true in public journalism. In the UK the paywalled newspaper all produce opinion propped up by heavily editorialised reporting, which tries hard to appear fact based but is anything but.

As others have pointed out, what has happened is that the status of "fact-based journaiism" has been degraded - because most "fact-based journalism" was only ever opinionation written in a high-status social register.

The real change has been the obvious shift in the social register of public writing, from schoolmaster-ish formal and paternal authority, to inclusive, child-like, and trivial accessibility.

It's not quite true that neither was ever in the fact business, and the old model did a far better job of hiding it.

But it was much less fact-oriented than it appeared to be. And the old long-form journalistic style of writing used to describe factual experiences - e.g. travelogues - has been replaced by short-form subjective quick-hit social media posts, often supported by amateur photos or captioned memes. (I.e. fixed-format DIY cartoons.)

> It is possible to make enormous amounts of money even when most people think your content is complete bullshit.

most people is far more anecdotal than you might imagine.

The most perverse part of this whole thing is that people cant/wont pay appropriately for truth. Otherwise it would be as simple as setting up a newspaper that is fully paid for by people - no ad money, no one pulling your strings.

Lies are only unmasked as lies months/years later where no one even remembers the whole arc of the conversation well enough, or sees the actors that spread lies to think "huh if we all had known the truth at the outset, none of this shit would have happened".

Its the same problem with online education - you can put up courses but there are many more courses than motivated learners, even fewer who would pay for it except to signal worth to employers.

Do you have any ideas on how to make truth even slightly profitable?

(Tangent: many countries have national tv channels that are paid by license fees or taxation. These channels strive to be independent, neutral and objective. And although it's quite in fashion to be negative about eg the bbc, I think they succeed really very well.)

I dunno man, the BBC from what I hear/read is really biased towards the left.

From my perspective, as a leftist and not a liberal, I'd describe the BBC and NPR as having, largely, a liberal / centrist viewpoint. I don't think I've ever heard the BBC advocating seizing the means of production or NPR agitating for a general strike. If you are in the US, consider that our entire political compass is shifted very far to the right. In Europe, the Democrats would be considered a center-right party and the Republicans would be a far-right, borderline extremist party. Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum, it's important not to fool yourself into thinking you are in the "center" or have some "objective" viewpoint from which you can label things "left" and "right", when everything in politics is so contextual.

A big part of confusion is that the left is no longer interested in the common man and elevating the lower classes. So no, they won't advocate seizing the means. They are instead obsessed with identity politics, which seems to be another aspect of signaling and status seeking. Those who have victim cred wield it, those who don't will display excessive concern to try and be a good ally.

The BBC, like so many others, will absolutely maintain certain narratives from a left Orthodox view, particularly anything to do with sexism, racism or islamophobia.

They decide ahead of time who the victim and oppressor is, and quote only what works to support that hypothesis. There is still a pretense of impartiality, but that's all. There's a reason many classic liberal and alt types have adopted a policy of recording their own interviews and publishing them alongside any outlet featuring them.

It wasn't always so, if you look at articles from their archive of 10+ years ago, you find a much more balanced and neutral perspective.

NPR, too. I think this is largely because it is the left who typically seeks out public funding for social programs.

> These channels strive to be independent, neutral and objective.

yeah, maybe, in some countries. in others, they're exactly where the money leads: propaganda channels of the currently ruling party.

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