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Comment by arwhatever | Hacker News Reader

"Journalism has yet to undergo this awakening. We like to think of ourselves as objective seekers of truth. Which is why most of us have simply doubled down in recent years, continuing to do more of the same kind of journalism, despite mounting evidence that we are not having the impact we once had. We continue to collect facts and capture quotes as if we are operating in a linear world."

Take a look at the, say, top dozen headlines on Google News and tell me you really think this passage above is the least bit accurate. Are the majority of those "headlines" starting simple facts about things that have occurred, or are they trying to convince you to reach their own conclusions about the facts at best, or at worst just link-baiting you with outrage?

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I think the passage is entirely accurate in regards to what they like to THINK of themselves as doing. I'm willing to believe that most journalists are failing to live up to their own self-image rather than being actively cynical (though, mind you, the actively cynical ones are incredibly damaging).

Yep. There have been lots of studies starting in the 1950s showing that journalism wasn't as objective as they wanted to be starting with White's study on "The Gate Keeper" and implicit bias in stories (http://www.aejmc.org/home/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Journal...).

But then everyone immediately forgets.

The thing is, bias will always exist but you can easily get unbiased information if you simply understand how to compare and contrast multiple sources and assess them together. You also have to learn how to take your own biases into account, which is honestly one of the most difficult things to do.

I'd rather not have to do this, but you're right: If you take any 1 headline on an aggregator like Google News, and expand the related articles' headlines for the same news item beneath it, you can do some quite useful comparing and contrasting.

Editors sometimes rewrite headlines to make them stickier. Often you can see evidence of the original headline in the article URL (due to CMS issues).

For the record, here are the current dozen ten Google News headlines:

>Missing youth soccer team found alive in Thai cave

>Michael Cohen Hints at Cooperating With Federal Investigators. Or Does He?

>Suspect accused of stabbing 9 kids and adults at Boise birthday party is on probation in Utah

>Harvey Weinstein could face life in prison following latest sex-crime charges

>López Obrador wins Mexico’s presidential election by a landslide

>State Dept aims to cut Iran oil exports to zero but leaves wiggle room for some importers

>One of these women could be Trump's Supreme Court pick

>Rodan + Fields fires white woman charged with assaulting black teen at pool | TheHill

>Maria Bartiromo’s embarrassing Trump interview

>Man Arrested in Cleveland Terror Plot afte FBI Sting

>Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spanks the predator political class; next item: redeem the nation

>Dog bitten by rattlesnake called 'hero' for saving owner

The majority of these headlines are starting facts about things that have occurred.

When you developed your opinion about the current state of journalism, did you base it on a dispassionate view of the facts, or did you base it on your perceptions of the facts without closely examining whether your perception was accurate or not?

By definition, you're going to see more articles that have link-baiting titles than not, because they work. If they didn't work, they wouldn't be used. If you mainly get your news from social media, you have a biased view of the news itself.

Well, here's a rebuttal. First off you stated Google News, which algorithmically selected these headlines/articles. Let's put aside the fact that they may be even somewhat personalized (it doesn't need to be for the purposes of the discussion). Quite simply most Americans don't get their news online from Google News. You have Facebook in large part, as well as an array of other ways in which information is fed. I get headlines popping up on the sides of articles, for example.

Another commenter pointed out the generation of headlines [edit: emphasis on generation, not just selection]. Well, that is one of the main tickets here, particularly to our legitimate criticisms of media. This article does a fantastic job of explaining the process of headline generation, citing examples and backing up the claims: https://medium.com/@tobiasrose/the-enemy-in-our-feeds-e86511...

>First off you stated Google News, which algorithmically selected these headlines/articles

No, I didn't. The OP did. I was just checking out what they asserted without evidence.

For comparison, here's the top ten from the last 24 hours of r/news and r/politics:

r/news:

>U.S. Court: Detroit students have no right to access to literacy

>Man’s life ‘destroyed’ following classmate’s false rape allegation

>For only the second time on record, no one killed by tornadoes in US in May or June

>UK government to ban 'gay conversion therapy'

>California Supreme Court rules Yelp can't be ordered to remove bad reviews

>3 year old girl dies after mass stabbing at her birthday party

>Rachel Dolezal charged with welfare fraud.

>Seattle bans plastic straws, utensils at restaurants, bars

>Student Discovers Plastic-Eating Bacteria Which Could Solve Global Pollution Crisis

>New charges filed against Harvey Weinstein

------------

r/politics:

>Trump declines request to lower flags in memory of Capital Gazette shooting victims

>Fox News Suddenly Questions Michael Cohen’s ‘Credibility’

>Whistleblower: EPA's Pruitt kept secret calendar to hide meetings

>Judge rules that Trump administration has been wrongly detaining asylum seekers

>Maxine Waters is done with 'nice guy politics'

>Companies buying back their own shares is the only thing keeping the stock market afloat right now

>Fifth Circuit Says No, You Fucking May Not Strip Search A Classful Of Female Students To Find $50

>The Official White House Twitter Account Attacked Senators Who Have Been Critical of ICE

>Dinesh D'Souza, Recently Pardoned by Trump, Shares Tweet With #burntheJews

>Ex-Republican Operative Steve Schmidt: ‘The Party of Trump Must Be Obliterated. Annihilated. Destroyed’

I'm not sure what your point was in posting this. A few points:

First off, Reddit isn't news media, it's social media

Second, "the top ten" is a collection of links from other sites that rise or fall based on their popularity with the readers, not writers.

Third, almost all of these headlines (which, bu subreddit rules, must match the article headline), state a fact.

I posted these exactly because of the same sort of distinctions as you made. The parent comment showed what's at the top of an algorithmically curated list. The commenter stated "If you mainly get your news from social media, you have a biased view of the news itself." That got me wondering what an analogous list for social media looks like, so I looked it up. Others might wonder the same thing, so I shared.

I chose r/news because it's literally supposed to be news. I chose r/politics because politics seems to be more divisive news.

Ah, I overlooked that last sentence in the parent post on the first read.

This is by far the best post in this thread. It would be interesting to see a deeper analysis following the general assumption here.

For the original claim (two posts up), you have an assertion. Please don't forget to try and falsify your own claims every now and then. Confirmation bias can be tough to shake.

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