The Wall Street Journal’s Fake and Distorted News | Hacker News Reader

The Wall Street Journal’s Fake and Distorted News

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46 pointstvvocold40 comments

During my career in IT the New York Times did a handful of articles involving either the small company I worked for or on some subject area I was heavily involved in. Each time I was amazed at the level of inaccuracies and misunderstandings the in the articles. Given that this happened in a small sample, it could be that these were unusual cases, but I highly doubt it. I have a feeling that this is all too common. Since then I look at mainstream media reporting with lots of skepticism.

Former newspaper editor and publisher here. The quickest way to lose your faith in the media is to have them cover something you actually know about.

I worked on a project that was the subject of media interest that management wanted to keep under wraps. We would occasionally read bad news about the project in the NYT or the WSJ, management would deny the news, and then future developments would confirm that the reporting was correct (other than some inconsequential details that management would harp on).

These folks might not know much about 3D printing or blockchain or whatnot, but they are experts at sourcing, verifying, and reporting information. Dismiss them at your peril.

Hmm, if they were truly experts at that then there'd be far fewer mistakes that people notice. And they'd have widely discussed, mature, sophisticated systems for catching errors, sort of like how the software industry invests so much into type systems and other quality techniques.

I think it's more likely you just remember that incident because it was so directly relevant to your life, so it gets magnified. I can add my voice to the chorus of people who have noticed a vast gulf between what gets reported and reality, especially when op-eds get involved.

This doesn't happen all the time. I've been involved in some stories which were pretty accurately reported. But it's completely dependent on (a) the skill of the individual journalist and much more importantly (b) if the story is relevant to something the journalist cares about. It's relatively easy for journalists to cover 3D printing or blockchain "reliably" (by the standards of the press) because they don't actually care about these topics. When the issue you know about starts to intersect social worldviews or power games within the political/journalistic sphere itself, things get crazy really fast.

And there's no consistency between journalists. The entire press industry is set up to consider journalism to be the act of a heroic and noble individual rather than the outcome of a process, a system. The "Jim Lehrer's Rules of Journalism" story that was discussed here recently is a good example of that. It wasn't actually a set of rules in the sense an engineer would understand it (i.e. something checked and enforced), it was a personal honour code. Journalism will never be able to increase its reliability whilst it treats the output as the product primarily of a writer + editor.

"As for The Wall Street Journal’s claim that I’m refusing to let go of control of Bridgewater, I can assure you that that is not true and that if it was true, I’d tell you it was true."

He claims their piece is full of factual errors but never addressed a single one in his LinkedIn post, and never provided any kind of evidence or arguments to support any of his other hyperbolic claims of systemic problems in journalism of the WSJ. Then he does something that is common in people who are actively dishonest: the old "Trust me, I'd tell you the truth." statement. Generally people who are honest are eager to present logical arguments backed by facts that can be verified. They don't need to ask for trust because trust isn't required to form independent conclusions based on evidence.

His LinkedIn post, after I read it, makes me believe the WSJ article more, not less.

One good piece of advice from Abercrombie is that only liars say "trust me". That would never occur to anyone who's really being honest.

Ironicallly, it's actually iamleppert's post that seems to be misrepresenting things.

Firstly, the Dalio doesn't say "trust me" anywhere. The word trust doesn't appear in it at all, and the closest it gets semantically is the closing paragraph where he says:

You are now faced with a choice. You can believe my account of what’s happening or The Wall Street Journal’s. What you do is up to you.

The story he's taking argument with is about inter-personal relationships and subjective claims so it's hard to prove anything about it objectively. But nonetheless, he actually has "provided any kind of evidence or arguments to support any of his other hyperbolic claims of systemic problems in journalism of the WSJ".

Specifically this: Dalio states that one of the journalists applied for a job at his company and was rejected, the WSJ knew that, and kept him on the story anyway. That would create a problematic conflict of interest (plus it seems Bridgewater and this specific journalist have a long running fight of some sort). The claim is uncheckable directly but the journalist has replied to Dalio's post with nothing more than a link to his article and "Happy Sunday". If such a very specific and problematic accusation were false, presumably he'd dispute that.

To me that's sufficient to support his claim of bad journalism at the WSJ. It's not a claim hyperbolic if they're assigning failed job candidates to cover a company.

He also disputes the other claims but both the WSJ and his position seem very subjective, it's all about to what extent he really controls the firm and whether there have been internal fights or not. I don't see any way to judge who's right there. You'd have to believe in the WSJ's process for finding the truth to take a side here, but as they rely entirely on anonymous sources and already failed step 1 "no conflicts of interest", I don't see why we should automatically assume the WSJ story is true here.

You're right in that he didn't say "Trust me" but he did say a trust-seeking analogous of:

"I can assure you that that is not true and that if it was true, I’d tell you it was true."

The definition of assure is: "tell someone something positively or confidently to dispel any doubts they may have."

Note the definition of trust: "firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something."

"I can assure you" presented without any assurances or facts otherwise in this context is simply another form of "Trust me".

In any event, without mincing words, the WSJ article presenting some very concrete evidence that his business is both a mess internally and by the numbers isn't delivering compared to a simple index fund. Why didn't he address this in his post if it was untrue? The WSJ even presented a graph with data to back up their claims on rate of returns. I verified the last years numbers (admittedly with a quick Google search, but two other sources seem to have similar conclusions).

FYI: Here is the WSJ‘s "Fake and Distorted News" https://www.wsj.com/articles/ray-dalio-is-still-driving-his-...

without the paywall: http://archive.is/8QSfQ

Google captcha-walled

A lot of comments here suggest that journalists and newspapers are only out to make what sells. That rings false to me in absolute terms. If you read Liars Poker by Michael Lewis you know he was employed at a brokerage and could have stuck around if he was only looking out for money. Does no one else here believe there are journalists who have forsaken the path of making big bucks in other fields to do the right thing?

It feels like there is a broad brush painting over this entire discussion. I can't say Ray Dalio makes a convincing case for himself here.

I saw first hand how the "truth" was manipulated by tech jounralists to create a narrative that they wanted. They included certain things, and omitted others, to make sure that the overarching story they wanted to tell was consistent with their world view. They were searching for the truth, they were trying to make a name for themselves, and then leveraging that for a book deal.

From /U/gwbrooks commenting above you:

> Former newspaper editor and publisher here. The quickest way to lose your faith in the media is to have them cover something you actually know about.

Personal experience of mine was in my much younger days (early 90's and the Tory govt was pushing the 'criminal justice bill) when a rave in a field I was at was raided by 200+ police in full riot gear. They launched an unprovoked attack, beating the shit out of those they got their battons on.

The BBC had Cameras there and on the news that night edited to look like the kids were attacking the police. Never forgotten that, or how the BBC propagandised for the govt.

There have been numerous other examples in my tech & finance careers since then. When I see news, my first thought is what is the agenda of the the author (s) and am never surprised when the real.agenda appears later on.

It's not the reporters, but management that is corrupt. They dictate what can and cannot be printed.

On the other side of the coin, independent reporters don't get much traction / notoriety unless they kneel to sensationalism.

So there isn't any practical way to do unbiased reporting and still get your voice heard.

> You are now faced with a choice. You can believe my account of what’s happening or The Wall Street Journal’s.

Having now read both accounts, I think I'm going to have to go with the WSJ here.

> The Wall Street Journal and other publications don’t have investigative journalists write complementary articles on people because those articles don’t sell, which is why our country has no heroes

This happens all the time. They're called fluff PR pieces. Basically the opposite of what Dalio describes in the rest of his post, but they absolutely exist.

Bridgewater is famous for valuing a culture of almost brutal honesty and fierce internecine warring over ideas. It argues this combination is vital to reaching the deep understanding that is critical to the success of its investments. While Bridgewater has experimented with leadership transitions multiple times, changing directions and reversing course seems consistent and faithful to its internal DNA. Life doesn't always go in neat straight lines. Forcing a simple story line isn't always best.

> As for The Wall Street Journal’s claim that I’m refusing to let go of control of Bridgewater, I can assure you that that is not true and that if it was true, I’d tell you it was true.

So your counter-argument to an article in a publication that has won 37 Pulitzer prizes for the quality of its news reporting is: “they’re wrong, trust me.”

He's the subject of the article? If he himself has no right of reply, then who does?

I guess the point is that his reply simply is not convincing at all, because it amounts to asking for blind trust in the absence of proof.

What is the threshold for "convincing" though? If I write an article about you alleging or directly concluding something unpleasant, ask you for comment, include your denials, but publish anyway slanting the entire article to my narrative, and you publish your own take on the matter, are you automatically not convincing? "But the people have a right to know, that rumanator did XYZ!!".

This is the entire problem -- there is nothing that will apparently get a media org to retract or back down, because for them, publishing something, anything means revenue and not publishing means going out of business, facts be damned.

Media: "Hey, we're writing an article about this concerning you -- any comment?"

Subject: "It's completely untrue."

Media: "Ooh, you must be hiding something, we're publishing anyway."

Subject: <Publishes online rebuttal>

Online commentariat: "He's not convincing!! The media is under attack and our democracy is dying in the darkness!"

Sure but have they won anything under their new ownership?

I like Ray Dalio. I’m a big fan of his book, Principles and his favorite book recommendation, Lessons of History by the Durants.

However, his LinkedIn post is irresponsible and appears more to do with discrediting journalism than sticking to and stating the facts. It’s becoming more than apparent that some members of the 1% are increasingly threatened about the role that unfettered journalism and left-leaning politics has in critiquing their unchecked power in this time of historically significant inequality.

I don't understand your point. I like the WSJ myself, and have been a subscriber for 15 years. However, the article is clearly biased, in that they give token space near the beginning to the responses of the actual subjects in the article, and then spend the balance 80% of the article continuing their narrative, regardless of what the subjects themselves said!

Ray Dalio is right. Journalism is not about informing or educating, it is about entertaining, and depending on your media source of choice, you are being pandered to.

This is not about "discrediting journalism" or whatever sob story media pushers want to cry crocodile tears about. They have killed their own credibility, and every day they behave badly, and continue to play victim, the more people wake up and stop trusting them.

Edit -- the big thing that media companies hate is that now with the internet and social media, people being covered have a voice and can speak up. Media companies absolutely hate this loss of influence, and again will attack anyone or anything that chips away at that from them. But again, they exposed themselves, and have wrecked their own credibility, hence the dying out of the industry.

I don't know why you think "media companies" hate anything.

I think that they're just doing whatever makes the most money.

Printing hardly researched often untrue shock-garabage makes a lot of money. It gets traffic from people who agree with it and traffic from people who think it's awful. Even lying outright-- there are no consequences and it's cheap to produce. If anyone cares the controversy just means even more traffic.

No great conspiracy is required. Modern consumption patterns have made essentially tabloid grade 'journalism' more profitable than it was while making traditional modes of journalism less profitable. If the commercial operations weren't producing junk at scale they'd probably be put out of business by grass roots tabloid-content production.

I'm sure there are plenty of journalists who would like to do better, but wishes doesn't put food on the table. They produce what earns money or they find another line of work.

We get what we incentivize.

I think media companies hate it because media companies regularly argue that it's bad. For example, there was a major scandal in late 2016 and early 2017 about the fact that nontraditional news sources sometimes publish lies; every mainstream news outlet I saw at the time argued that this is a new, bad trend, and that we should react by refocusing our trust on mainstream news outlets since they don't publish lies.

There are plenty of publishers like the National Enquirer, which make no pretense to be anything other than shock-garbage. The Wall Street Journal has a different stance.

I agree that we get what we incentivize. But there is really nothing new about this at all.

The idea of news outlets presenting unvarnished truth without slant or bias is a fantasy world that never existed. In fact, while the technology has changed, the journalism of today is much more reliable and objective than that of one and two hundred years ago.

> I think that they're just doing whatever makes the most money.

You're assuming that the end goal is profits, although it is not. Profits are what keeps media companies running, but their main goal is power and influence over public opinion.

It’s not even just pandering. When it comes to industry specific coverage, most journalists have no idea what they’re talking about, and are largely writing for an audience that doesn’t understand the industry either. With respect to finance, for example, there are a handful of reporters like Erin Burnett who know what they’re talking about because they worked in the industry. But guys like Matt Tabbi, who have zero subject matter experience, suck all the air out of the room.

In reality, nobody plugged into finance pays any attention to Taibbi. He's a frustrating personality, but only if you pay attention to him.

Plenty of journalists have done serious, important work documenting finance.

Ray Dalio says journalism makes it so that we have no more heroes. It's funny to see that picture of him at burning man after reading his account. He wants to be a hero, deep down, whether he admits it or not (we all do). A flip side to what you point out is that because of social media now "heroes" also have to listen to people that might not share their worship the same way some newspapers often have. Carnegie and Rockefeller would have been covered differently in these times. I'm not disagreeing with you, and I do think the death of newspapers is not just because of journalists destroying their own credibility.

I agree with you that it seems he’s most bummed about not being a hero in the article. At this point, with every little position paper he publishes, and receives massive (and I think mostly undeserved) attention for, its not hard to see why he’d be bothered by the tarnishing of his image. At the same time, I have met one or two journalists, who are by far the exception, where nearly in the instant of meeting them, I know this person is nothing short of a total asshole. The wsj with its hyper-stylized “hedcut” illustrations is kind of the last place you’d expect to see such people, esp. if you’re the “good” banker... but let’s just take this with a dose of perspective, it’s not like they said he eats puppies for breakfast.

> the article is clearly biased,

The article may be biased -- that doesn't mean its wrong. The same facts can be presented in different ways. The fact that the WSJ is presenting them in a way that makes Ray Diallo unhappy doesn't make them untrue.

> they give token space near the beginning to the responses of the actual subjects in the article

Very often the actual subjects of the article are not objective or disinterested. In fact they are often poor sources of information that may be unflattering

> Journalism is not about informing or educating, it is about entertaining

Journalism is about selling ads, nothing more, nothing less. Some journalists may present it as a vocation to truth etc., but the reality is they exist because there is still a market for reliable robust reporting. In the English speaking world, fake news, biased outlets and muckraking have been the norm rather than the outlier over the past three to four centuries.

> Media companies absolutely hate this loss of influence

Media companies hate that thy're being driven out of business.

But apart from all that, with respect Ray Diallo, money talks and bullsh*t walks. If the WSJ asserted disparaging facts about him, call a lawyer and stop writing cry-baby posts on LinkedIn.

The WSJ article is really weirdly written. It definitely seems very biased.

They state things as facts like "Mr. McCormick, 54, had discussed jobs with the Trump administration. He also chatted with BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Laurence Fink about the possibility of leaving Bridgewater, according to this person and another close to the situation."

And yet, further on, it's completely refuted by both McCormick and Blackrock. "Mr. McCormick said the attempt to reduce his stake “did not happen and I did not make that comment.” He said he has a “terrific working and personal relationship” with Mr. Dalio. He also said “I never discussed a job at BlackRock.” A company spokesman added that Mr. McCormick “never discussed with Larry about leaving Bridgewater.” Mr. Fink said in a statement that “while I think highly of David, and we’re close friends, we have not discussed the prospect of him working for BlackRock since he left Treasury a decade ago.” "

The article makes a bunch of assertions, making them sound real, and then they get massive denials from the actual parties involved, but bias the article towards the rumors.

That's exactly it -- when so-called "journalists" themselves are conflating rumours, innuendo, and gossip with "facts" and "truth", then of course they're killing their own credibility, and that of their publishing institution. Nobody will remember these journalists in the long-run anyway, the real damage is to the WSJ itself.

Dalio is the creator of the 'All Weather Portfolio', which was popularized in a Tony Robbins book. The portfolio is very heavy on bonds, a controversial idea.

Dalio is often outspoken on lots of financial matters. I'll be watching this issue, he's an interesting figure.

May be they deserve a Toohey Award: https://tooheys.org/

I don’t really understand why we should care about a fund or its managers.

Unlike product companies, funds don’t contribute anything meaningful to the world. It’s a zero-sum game where someone comes out on top with $19 billion dollars and then goes to Burning Man. That’s acceptable but not admirable.

The only difference between Dalio and Madoff is that the former actually has the money. Neither has a legacy.

Trite.

He is playing in one of the most difficult and competitive games in the world, has a track record of crushing it, and has produced excellent work to document and share the mindset which helps him do it.

He obviously has a legacy. People like me respect him. You don't like his legacy. That doesn't mean he doesn't have one.

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