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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

#5 and #7 are a problem - they can be exploited by bad actors. That's how you get the "views on shape of Earth differ" reports.

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It seems to me that #5 (two sides) needs more nuance. It is often the case, as you point out, that one side is just wrong. But even then it is worth considering why they are wrong, and whether that analysis should be included in the story. I agree that we shouldn’t be re-litigating basic historical or scientific facts, but I have learned a lot about other people (how they think, what motivates them, how to communicate with them) from this kind of analytical reporting. And I suspect some preemptive debunking has helped me to avoid some bad takes of my own.

But ignoring it is how you get journalists parroting lines like “the middle class has been stagnant for decades” without reporting on all the contrary views.

Vast majority of journalists don't make it past #2. The problems you mention are stretch goals, it would be nice to have them.

It's the job of journalists to vet the stories. No journalist ever has or ever will suggest that the earth is flat. That's a strawman.

The concern as I understand it is not that a journalist would just straight-up defend a conspiracy theory. Rather, the concern is that if you give any airtime to conspiracy theorists, even in the form of a debate, some viewers/readers will conclude that there must be some nugget of legitimacy in the conspiracy (why else would it be on the news?). Indeed, conspiracy theorists have relied on this to gain support, especially before they had the internet, when strategically baiting the media was the only way to get their bullshit noticed.

A far greater concern than conspiracy theorists getting taken seriously are actual conspiracies perpetrated by mainstream media outlets. I gave two examples elsewhere in the thread: Weinstein and Epstein. Those aren't "conspiracy theories", they're know and active conspiracies. There were a multitude of opportunity to report on them but the stories were actively stifled for personal and political gain.

That was deliberately a less controversial one than climate change, and newspapers publish denialist claims of basically the same level of substance as flat Earth ones all the time (e.g. James Delingpole)

All the rules are a problem for modern journalism ... that's why they are radical.

You can 'yea but' anything. For example, for rule #2: "Do not distort, lie, slant, or hype." ... yeah, but what if the subject is evil.

(Also, I have yet to see one mainstream news report on Flat Earth, much less a favourable one ... is that actually a problem you're worried about?)

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