BuzzFeed has an investigative news group[0] that is separate from the clickbait they got famous for. They publish articles closer to propublica than top 10 lists.
The Internet that has developed since the first ad-monetization almost demands, and at least incentivizes, shady behavior if you want to economically survive as an information processor - news outlet or others.
Many of us on HN would gladly buy premium for something they enjoy but I fear the vast majority of people wants everything for "free".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius#Fabrication_of_...
A dedicated print subscription forces the printer to weigh the consequences of correcting an error more heavily, and a regular reader of a subscribed publication can be presented with corrected errors on the front page of each day's edition.
(Not that any of this would happen in print, either; and not that this is impossible with internet media; but rather that the natural consequences of the print medium pushes heavily towards a different set of behaviours. I doubt anyone would subscribe to an RSS feed of errors.)
Most of the major newspapers in the US are fairly credible, despite having issues like 'both-sidesism' and not doing well with asymmetry.
'Credible' doesn't mean "no mistakes". It means they own them and apologize for them. The Economist is still occasionally apologizing for buying into the WMD narrative during the run up to the war in Iraq.
The danger in "no one is credible" is that it elevates flat out propagandists to the same level as institutions that mostly get things right.
It's sort of like science as a process: what we think we know now may need correcting in the future, but real scientists have a process that allows for (sometimes difficult) course correction.
Do you think the earth is flat or that people who say so should be given equal time?
There are plenty of other instances where one side is demonstrably correct.
To who, an expert or a journalist? Flat Earthers can beat many people in arguments about the earth being flat, because general science knowledge is not very widespread. I could find plenty of journalists that don't know about, for example, the shadow length thing. The idea that newspapers should only quote truth-speakers does not address the reality of the limited knowledge of the journalists themselves. For them, flat earth theory is a choice between either ignoring everything but the mainstream consensus, or sometimes reporting on fringe groups. Clearly the second option is the right policy, especially because reporting on someone's claims does not imply that the newspaper thinks they are true. It may not be a fact that the earth is flat, but it is a fact that flat-earthers think the earth is flat. It may even be newsworthy.
They might do a 'human interest' story on crackpots like flat earthers, but good ones wouldn't "both sides" that issue, just as they shouldn't with other issues where there is strong scientific consensus, or verifiable facts demonstrating the veracity of one side's claims, and none on the other.
This isn't a new problem, and good journalists are capable of handling it.
Will they get it right 100% of the time? No. But the important thing is that there's a process and they're trying, and they'll admit it if they get it wrong. People get fired for getting things egregiously wrong.
None of that is true for propaganda outlets.
I like Scott Alexander’s essay on this subject, The Cowpox of Doubt: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/15/the-cowpox-of-doubt/
Basically, I think an irrational tendency towards “both sides have a point” is a lot better than an irrational tendency towards “my side is right”, and that humans tend to err in the latter way about ten thousand times more often than they err in the former.
There are many with 'high integrity' (i.e. fact check, in depth, write well) but there's so much editorialisation, that they are biased.
You almost have to read the news off the wire, or watch local news to get straight news. Almost everything on CNN, Fox, NYT, WSJ etc. is editorialised in some way, even the non-opinion pieces.
Edit: to anyone that doubts this, consider spending a month reading outlets that you might suspect 'have a bias' (i.e. 'the evil other side'). It becomes very clear, very quickly. Some of the most prominent forms of editorialising, even in the more straight news items comes from what they decide is newsworthy, how the headlines are worded, the facts they decided to leave in vs. what they leave out. The kinds of guests, the form of questions. The main evening broadcast news in the US is decent, but almost everything on cable or in print has bias, even when it's 'high quality'. I should add that this is not an American phenom, there are hardly any large 'straight news' agencies in the world; maybe the BBC.
It's also helpful to read/watch the news from a different country, where you don't have a 'stake in the game' so to speak, and it becomes evident. If you use Google Translate on Die Welt, Der Spiegel, and Die Zeit - you can see how the same news is reported differently.
First - they are substantially bigger and have much wider operations than any of them - by far. They have global correspondents etc. - a much bigger news room.
Second - they are neutral. NYT, WSJ and WaPo are not. Their editors would admit that, clearly. NYT is a left wing American commentary. WSJ is an economically liberal entity. The BBC actually has oversight and scrutiny because it's a public institution.
It's easy to demonstrate: take any contentious news item of the day, and then see the coverage by those outlets. WSJ won't even cover social issues. BBC generally runs straight news, the NYT will have a lot of editorial coverage op-end on it.
As for 'India' - your confusing short (or wrong) coverage with bias.
I'm from Canada - and I see this all the time: US outlets constantly misrepresent Canadian political issues. This is not because they're bad, it's that different nations are hugely different contexts - it's often very difficult to communicate something nuance without spending an hour going over the issues. And sometimes they just get it wrong. Indian political affairs are complicated - it's hard to narrow anything down to a few sound bites without getting some things wrong. I'll also bet $100 that none of the WSJ, Wapo or WSJ even touched on whatever Indian subject the BBC was covering, their readers don't care, and they don't have the budget or correspondents. I should have pointed out obviously the BBC has a national bias - most outlets do.
What shocks and saddens me is the complete decay of the French language news, quite sad for such an intensely literate culture.
How is that different from what WikiLeaks did (with regards to NSA spying and the Manning leaks) that HN praises them for?
This is a titanic error, any new scoop from them must be verified from other sources now for them to be taken seriously.
It's interesting - Buzzfeed's claim is:
The facts of Cohen’s lies and his interactions with Trump are, largely, now settled. Our sources — federal law enforcement officials — interpreted the evidence Cohen presented as meaning that the president “directed” Cohen to lie. We now know that Mueller did not.
The Mueller denial of the Buzzfeed reporting is very limited:
"BuzzFeed's description of specific statements to the Special Counsel's Office, and characterization of documents and testimony obtained by this office, regarding Michael Cohen's Congressional testimony are not accurate,” Robert Mueller’s spokesman, Peter Carr, said.
This was prior the Mueller report being released.
We now know Mueller report says: "While working on the congressional statement, Cohen had extensive discussions with the President's personal counsel, who, according to Cohen, said that Cohen should not contradict the President" and "Cohen also discussed pardons with the President?s personal counsel and believed that if he stayed on message, he would get a pardon or the President would do "something else" to make the investigation end.[2]
The dispute seems mostly around the term "directed", and if it was directly by Trump or by his legal team. Both Mueller and Buzzfeed's sources agree that Trump and his legal team knew in advance that Cohen's congressional testimony contained lies.
The Buzzfeed reporting was based on an official's notes that said “he was asked to lie by DJT/DJT Jr., lawyers.”
Politfact agrees it is open to interpretation.[3]
In any case, it seems calling it "fraudulent" is going too far. It seems like there is broad agreement that Trump didn't use the words "Please lie", but he did imply that is what he wanted and that Cohen would be rewarded if he did, and Trump's legal team approved the statements that they knew included lies.
I'm going to do a HN taboo here and talk about voting. I realise this is an emotive subject and people have their predefined views. I'd ask people not to just vote on if they like Buzzfeed or not, and if they support Trump or not and instead consider if any of the things here have information they didn't know before. I believe that the answer to misinformation is information and I've tried to gather as much relevant information as possible here, and present both sides in as clear way as possible.
[1] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/bensmith/how-we-charact...
[2] Muller Report, part 3, page 134 https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/5955118-The-Mueller-... (Note that because of the weird pagination in this document you need to go to page 346 of this link to read part 3 page 134)
[3] https://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2019/feb/28/di...
Is it not newsworthy if a major witness is repeating his testimony to a reporter? How would you prefer they reported it? If news orgs never published the comments of known liars, we'd have very little political news.
BuzzFeed News also backs up Cohen's claims with the transcript of his House testimony[2].
Mueller's office (per your link) was pretty unspecific about what part of Cohen's statements they thought were misleading.
1. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/cohen-tr...
2. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6021026-Michael-Cohe...
"President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter."
Nevertheless, the article they linked to adds weight to the idea that the Buzzfeed reporting was definitely not "fraudulent" (as you characterised it).
Notably this exchange:
“So we’ve identified two crimes that you say you believe Donald Trump in some way directed you to take the actions for which you have pled guilty?” asked Rep. John Ratcliffe, a Republican from Texas.
“No sir,” Cohen said. “Three.”
“Ok. What is the third?”
“The third one is the misstatement to Congress. Two for campaign finance violations and one for misrepresentation — well, for lying to Congress.”
Now it's true that Muller didn't find enough evidence to support that. But nevertheless, Cohen certainly believed it, and claimed it to congress, and what he claims mirrors what Buzzfeed reported.
If we are discussing the reliability of Buzzfeed - well they reported something that ended up being confirmed by the person they were reporting about. I think that makes them at least somewhat credible.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/19/business/media/buzzfeed-n...
Any “inaccuracy” in Buzzfeed’s reporting was more or less based on a semantic dispute. Under a narrow definition, Trump didn’t “direct” Cohen to lie to Congress, he just suggested it using mob-boss-type language and coordinated the lying testimony through his other lawyers, and his longtime fixer Cohen knew how to read between the lines.
Immediately after Cohen’s lying testimony, one of Trump’s lawyers then called Cohen to congratulate him and tell him Trump was happy with his performance.
Buzzfeed stood (and still stands) behind their story, and the Mueller report and Cohen trial materials largely corroborate their reporting.
However, the Mueller team concluded that there is not enough direct evidence to e.g. indict Trump for suborning perjury in this case.
* * *
The people still selling the story that Buzzfeed completely screwed up and had their facts wrong are (hopefully unwittingly) peddling the same kind of disinformation that the article currently under discussion is talking about. There are some wealthy and powerful people trying to push this message down to further their own antisocial agendas for personal benefit.
I'm exceedingly doubtful that Mueller et. al. would make statements that were misrepresentative or lacking in credibility.
But when Buzzfeed asked several outside legal experts (not Mueller’s team), they supported the article’s use of the word “direct” to describe the President’s communications with Cohen. The way Buzzfeed’s critics have attacked them for this story is largely disingenuous, especially after the first few months, when additional evidence came to light largely corroborating Buzzfeed’s reporting.
As I said, this is a semantic dispute about the meaning of the word “direct”. There is plenty of available evidence that the President wanted Cohen to go make lying statements to Congress, and successfully (using his typical mob-boss-style language) communicated that desire to Cohen, and then followed up with congratulations about a job well done afterward.
But the Special Counsel’s office presumably wanted to avoid any possible confusion about the precise nature of available evidence that might undermine their credibility if taken up by e.g. right-wing media pundits.
I didn't say they were protecting their credibility or not.
I said they wouldn't say anything that lacked credibility.
I'm saying the Mueller team is not going to lie, whatever they are saying. They are careful and deliberate.
Yes that was precisely my point: the Mueller team made a correction out of an abundance of “careful and deliberate” caution.
They did not want the public to misconstrue the Buzzfeed News article’s language that Trump had “directed” Cohen to lie to mean that the Special Counsel’s office had uncovered an explicit statement to that effect. The main thrust of Buzzfeed’s reporting is clearly correct, but Mueller’s office wanted no room for misinterpretation based on differing understandings of the word “direct”.
I don’t understand why you would say you were “exceedingly doubtful” only to repeat my same argument.
Re-reading it, I see how someone might think I was disagreeing.
[1] - https://www.journalism.org/2014/10/21/appendix-c-trust-and-d...