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Comment by donbright | Hacker News Reader

The Wall Street Journal is the only reason the company was outed.

This same journal was also one of her early boosters.

We already have a framework that preserves independence of the media, the First Amendment. All of the NDAs and Boies style intimidation and legal abuse and harrasment of the whistleblowers and journalists was only stopped by the First Amendment.

We already have a framework that punishes journalists - it's people like Peter Thiel suing them out of existence because he doesn't like what they say. It's big funders buying a newspaper and destroying it like the Denver Post. It's the government putting sources on trial and in prison like happened with the NSA stories. Journalists are murdered constantly for reporting stories. And the industry itself is dying because of changing business models. They dont need a framework to punish them any more.

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I am under the impression that it is rare for journalists in America to be murdered for their stories, is that not the case?

None of your examples are journalists being penalized for lack of due diligence or for being misleading. I think your instinct to protect journalists given their importance and the threats they face is a healthy and important one, and I share it, but I don’t think they’re above reproach. Ensuring the independence and safety of journalists is of paramount importance; ensuring journalists are appropriately incentivized to report accurate stories with healthy skepticism is of secondary importance after that (since most will innately desire that anyway), but it is still also important.

Imagine if the phrase was "Software developers are not murdered for missing estimates in this country". I am pretty sure I would hit my estimates even in London.

Yes Journalists need high standards of professional integrity and the legal air cover to maintain that.

But really the ultimate defence is us - to reject the mountains of crap out there and seek out and subscribe to the worthwhile news sources.

As ever, it's down to us.

Why hold yourself responsible for your actions when you can just say everything is corrupt and imagine that is an excuse? ;)

Can anyone give me a list of respectable independent media that I should be subscribing to?

The economist comes to mind. Any others HN recommends?

For general news, I find NPR.org [1] to be pretty good. I can tell they make an effort to avoid bias and sensationalism. It’s not perfect, but I have yet to find another online source that I prefer.

I also listen to my local station (WUNC) and if you’re in a decently populated area of the U.S., your local NPR affiliate is also likely high quality (plus it’s easy to listen online if you’re not into terrestrial radio.)

[1]: https://npr.org

But journalists aren't murdered in those other countries for inaccuracy, at least not as far as I understand, and not in any of the examples brought up by GP. They're murdered for reporting awful truths more accurately than someone powerful and evil wanted.

I don't see how that obviates the need for journalists to be properly incentivized to report accurately and with healthy skepticism.

>None of your examples are journalists being penalized for lack of due diligence or for being misleading

Rolling Stone after the lacrosse rape case is one example. But more importantly, I think the point above is that journalism is in a vulnerable position where the carrot is more appropriate than the stick. Laws are crude tools for the most part, with lots of potential for collateral damage. It's like chemotherapy: you just hope the treatment kills the good cells slower than the bad.

Punishing bad journalism will have a chilling effect on all journalism, bad or good. It'll increase the costs of doing business by increasing liability insurance premiums. If the industry were thriving, maybe that would be acceptable overhead. But it's not thriving. It's teetering on the edge of collapse. So maybe we should find ways to identify and reward good journalism. Cultivate the flowers in the garden so they overshadow the weeds, rather than dousing the whole shebang in herbicide and hoping you kill what you intend to.

What undeserved penalty did Rolling Stone suffer for the lacrosse rape case?

Great-grandparent didn't suggest that laws are the only possible option to penalize misleading journalism, you're jumping to conclusions. Elsewhere in this thread, I even suggest:

> [Disincentivizing misleading journalism] doesn’t necessarily require an oppressive Orwellian governmental body to dictate truth and punish journalists who veer from the party line. It could be as simple as, after the fact now that we know how fraudulent it was, naming prominent journalists and outlets and pointing out red flags that they should have but failed to highlight, and other similar ways they should have expressed a healthy skepticism but didn’t.

I'm sorry, but ruining people's lives for no reason other than the entertainment of your audience like Gawker was doing is not journalism. Peter Thiel did us all a service there.

I'm glad any random billionaire with cash to throw around gets to make these decisions for us.

The only reason he was able to do what he did was because Gawker broke the law.

Strange that you view it this way. I'm not extremely familiar with the case, but how I remember it is Gawker published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan and refused to take it down. While at the same time lampooning "society" about "the fappening". Hulk Hogan sued Gawker, which brings it to a court. Peter Thiel had a personal grudge against Gawker and used that case to take them down. Either way, it was still up to a court and all Thiel was doing was helping to fund Hogan's legal case. I'd hope that our courts have enough integrity to where if the evidence is against someone, no amount of money will change that verdict. Perhaps a bit idealistic, but I see no evidence that Thiel's money caused an inappropriate ruling in that case.

I'd characterize it as, "journalists" using their platform to go after specific people they don't like. Thiel helping one of their victims who couldn't afford to mount a case without running the risk of ruining themselves if they lost. Seems to me like a really noble thing to do.

>I'd characterize it as, "journalists" using their platform to go after specific people they don't like. Thiel helping one of their victims who couldn't afford to mount a case without running the risk of ruining themselves if they lost. Seems to me like a really noble thing to do.

And yet Breitbart is still up. So this idea that it's just about enforcing the law rings a bit hollow.

I don't read Breitbart, nor do I particularly care what they do. I'm not sure what was done by the company that was illegal?

> The Wall Street Journal is the only reason the company was outed.

No. The company was outed by people long before the wsj. The wsjalong with the rest of the media was the one that built theranos up because they wanted to push the feminism agenda.

The wsj stepped in and took the credit after the exposure/pressure on social media was going to break the story wide open.

It's similar to the nytimes taking credit and getting the pulitzer prize for breaking the weinstein story which they kept quiet for more than a decade. But once social media was exposing the story, the nytimes decided to release the story they kept quiet for so long.

It's like an arsonist who helped set a house on fire dousing the house with a glass of water after the firefighters put out the fire and pretending that they saved the house.

And lets not forget that if you criticized theranos or holmes, most of the media/journalists ( including those working for the wsj ) would attack you for being a sexist or a bigot.

I know what you mean. Often enough any minority is criticized at all it is initially brushed off as simple X-ism..

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