Comment by stoicShell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by stoicShell | Hacker News Reader

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I think it's the same when we ship beta software to users and then expect the first batch to essentially debug it — then comes the proverbial ".1" patch which fixes most glaring issues. (as if they weren't obvious in the first place)

Now why do we do that in software? because "agile", cost, "let's ship and risk breaking some things and see what happens? We'll fix things later in some update, on a need-to basis"

Well I think journalism has gone the same road: "let's publish first and risk breaking some truths and see what happens? We'll fix things later in some update, on a need-to basis"

Can't really blame the business entities themselves. I wholeheartedly agree with GP though, there definitely needs to be more regulation and parent's point is one of the most salient target for that — it's disingenuous at best to silently update/remove, not to mention actually false from a documentation standpoint, it skews history basically. Very dystopian. News articles should be versioned exactly like git, we should be able to diff each public update.

Yes, but you can still find the .0 version in the github. I'd be totally OK if the news were on github and I could easily see how the article looked a while ago (extra credits for git blame feature).

It immediately irks me that I'm defending agile here, but part of the point of agile is that the developer doesn't really know what the end user needs, so it's, in theory, better to get a minimum viable product out that meets the user's need, then refine on subsequent releases, rather than spend years working on releasing something perfect that it turns out doesn't fill the user's need.

From a similar perspective for journalism, I think there's an argument that can be made that it's better to get most of the information out right away, even if some of it is inaccurate, and then correct the inaccuracies later, rather than wait until every piece is confirmed and edited perfectly to release the information. Argument to extremes, think of a hurricane or volcano explosion.

You make great points and I agree with your take on agile — I actually mentioned "cost" to indicate that reality was deviating from the 'ideal' agile approach, when it stops being "the right thing to do" — buggy, etc. — because you're trying to meet some arbitrary deadline or favor marketing, please mgmt, etc.

Likewise, I think it's fair to assume the economic competition between news outlets may push some to be too aggressive in shipping fast, too fast.

And you know what, deep down I think it's OK, as long as you don't falsely advertise what you're doing. "We want this <content> (whether code, news) in the hands of our customers asap, so we're releasing it now; but be aware it's not 100% guaranteed until scrutinized by the crowd and corrected accordingly."

I'd love to have a choice between some "fast news shippers" and some "slow, vetted pieces". I think there's room for both and everything in between. Just don't be disingenuous about it, and if it takes regulation to enforce that, then so be it — every legitimately regulated activity pretty much brings it on themselves, give or take some political latency.

> From a similar perspective for journalism, I think there's an argument that can be made that it's better to get most of the information out right away, even if some of it is inaccurate, and then correct the inaccuracies later, rather than wait until every piece is confirmed and edited perfectly to release the information. Argument to extremes, think of a hurricane or volcano explosion.

Following the argument to the same extreme, it's a bad idea to get out the information "there is a hurricane or volcano explosion due south of you" immediately, and to wait until the flight north begins to issue the correction "actually, it's due north of you."

But I don't think you would disagree the following is worthwhile:

"There is a hurricane, and we're hearing initial, unconfirmed reports that it's to the south. We want to stress these are unconfirmed at this time, etc etc"

Which is something that would traditionally be broadcast in an emergency.

Obviously, we're really talking about an extreme hypothetical, but as long as it's clear the information may not be complete or accurate at the time of reading, I see no problem (as long as it is eventually accurate).

No, Journalism and Software are not the same. Would you make the same argument that software on the 737 Max should be shipped and then fixed later? Absolutely not. Journalists need to understand that what they write has real-world impact and can actually lead to lot of unnecessary anguish if they publish things that are not true. Truth should always be paramount to speed in journalism. You can't always correct your mistakes as a journalist because most people only see 1 version of your draft and don't wait around for later corrections before jumping to conclusions.

> Would you make the same argument that software on the 737 Max should be shipped and then fixed later?

No, I wouldn't, but that goes to why not ALL software should be agile, not that it's best to have some journalism be "agile."

I was going to mention space flight regarding software mistakes (https://itsfoss.com/a-floating-point-error-that-caused-a-dam...), but figured it was more of a digression than it was on-topic.

But all journalism has the potential to become viral and once that happens you will never be able to fix the damage you've already done.

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston S. Churchill

Allow me to reply, I think you've misunderstood parent's point:

- there is a spectrum of "importance" to software: a shopping app crashing is generally less critical than medical software crashing during surgery.

- there is a spectrum of "importance" to the news: surely the benefit and damage of reporting on Netflix's latest show is lesser than reporting on an incoming tsunami.

If you are warned upon fast release of a piece of news of "lesser impact" that it's "unverified", "untrusted source", etc., then you get to choose the impact: you either wait for further confirmation or act now, that's on you.

Conversely, for the "important" part of the spectrum, then we all agree that like critical software, it must be vetted and validated before release. There's no question about that.

As for where to draw the line, it's anywhere each particular new outlet feels it should be; but the mention of where we are on that spectrum should be at least industry-wide ethics for the Press, and enforced by regulation if necessary (see other comments for great suggestions about how to indicate trustworthiness of information, extent of research, sources, etc).

As a journalist, you don't get to determine importance because you don't what people value, who is going to read your stuff, and who they are going to tell about it. A large number of people think Kim Kardashian is the most important news. I think it's you who misunderstands.

> I think there's an argument that can be made that it's better to get most of the information out right away, even if some of it is inaccurate, and then correct the inaccuracies later

But parent's aren't really talking about mistakes, like errors in software. They're talking about lies.

Sure, go ahead and get all the information you have out right away. But qualify their accuracy level. There's a difference between "Foo frobnicated a Baz", vs. "a certain quux told us[0] that Foo frobnicated a Baz" (with [0] leading to details like the top post mentions). The former is stating a possibly inaccurate information as if it was a sure fact. Essentially, it's lying. The latter form lets the reader understand the degree of uncertainty involved, and choose how much they're willing to believe it.

>Can't really blame the business entities themselves.

Why not? Why is it acceptable that the profit motive trump everything else? These people play a critical role in our society. Obviously they have to stay in business, but I'm not going to give them a pass on foregoing their duty just because they want to make more money.

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