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Comment by dr_dshiv | Hacker News Reader

We should redesign the news. What would it ideally be like?

It would reward reporters who are honest and courageous. The incentives right now punish objectivity and reward conformity.

I won’t call some of these reporters journalists, they are more like activists. They aren’t interested in keeping society informed, they just want to push their agenda.

Ba dam bum.

They're like that because that's what the current system rewards. I think that's why the user you replied to said what they did.

The only worthwhile journalism is activism. Discomfort the powerful. Unfortunately it's dangerous to be too good at this, see Daphne Caruana Galizia.

The truth doesn’t have an agenda

Unfortunately, truth hasn't published any articles. So far, only subjective views have been published by fallible humans.

The fact that something cannot be done perfectly is not a valid excuse to do it poolry.

Agreed. However, it would be a good reason to hedge expectations accordingly. Everyone has a bias. Much of the current political acrimony could be avoided if both speakers and listeners acknowledged this.

Instead we have appeals to 'truthiness' and 'fact-check' that defy the basic premises of human nature.

I am not sure admiting that there is a bias would make any difference. Its plain to see. I think the fundamental problem is that the bias is the main thing now. It trumps everything, including decency, respect for your fellow citizen or the profession. Activism has become the mission. The people who think this is OK seem to lack the imagination to realize how quickly the BS firehose can turn towards when unencumbered by the facts.

I'm not sure they are aware of what they are doing. It isn't hard to imagine them claiming they're only reporting 'the truth'. Deep convictions have a way of shaping perceptions.

Partisan 'fact-check' outlets are a good example of this.

An admission of bias would serve as a disclaimer and a reminder for the consumer of news. Integrating the disclaimer into the writing could actively influence how the article is written.

That is interesting. You do not think the people at CNN, NYT, WPro and Foxnews are aware of their biases? It seems so hard to believe.

Let's take WaPo as an example. They changed their tagline to "Democracy dies in darkness" after Trump won.

I imagine they know they don't like the guy, but in their minds it is justified. I suspect there's a fair proportion of their staff who believes enacting Godwin's law isn't hyperbole.

For them, selectively misquoting the Charlottesville press conference isn't misleading, because they believe that they know the _truth_ about his intentions.

All right, but these are intelligent adults, not children, why wouldn’t they see the exact issues you mention? Isn’t it a more natural explanation that they of course see it, but believe their misinformation is justified because Trump in their eyes is an existential threat to democracy?

>believe their misinformation is justified

More or less, but the belief may be strong enough that they don't view it as misinformation. If they already believe Trump is a racist, selectively quoting his press conference in a way that construes him as a racist is accurate in their eyes. The full quote where he criticizes the racist groups could be viewed as Trump lying or hiding his true intentions, so they may feel it is their duty to not report that.

Of course journalists are individuals and there's a spectrum of this behavior on both sides of the aisle, but this is my take. Willful ignorance isn't only for children or idiots. Let's also observe the volume of illogical and often emotional arguments presented.

Sorry, that is exactly the attitude that got us into the mess we are in. I for one care very little for activists doing journalism. Just tell people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as best as you can ascertain it and let them make their own choices.

If you have 1 hour a week or even 1 hour a day, the truths you choose to tell will look just like activism.

Then you should not be in journalism. It can't be done that way and what can be done that way is worse than useless.

You aren't really addressing what I am getting at. There's too much happening for the simple editorial decisions that go into choosing what to talk about for an hour to not end up looking like bias.

Maybe that makes a little sense for live media. Maybe. But you cannot tell me the nyt or wpost do not have the resources for thoughtful editorialization.

What a destructive point of view. There is an enormous difference between activism and journalism.

This opinion is quite new. Unfortunately journalism has been coopted by such folks.

We do need activists, but they don’t have to be journalists. Maybe these groups on youtube that are just filming things without interrupting with questions are the journalists of the future ... https://youtu.be/pW_jsS_JnMY

It is not new, it is more of return back to where journalism started.

I wouldn't call them journalists either, more like royal scribes speaking to a class of courtiers. Real journalists have agendas other than uncritically repeating what some unnamed intelligence source told them.

We can't just redesign the news because the incentive structure isn't there to do so. You have to Foster a culture where people don't treat politics like religion. When the culture doesn't give undue attention to self important people who wear suits and ties, then the incentive structure changes how news is produced to fit that environment. But if we just treat issues like these as engineering problems, tweaking variables to fit a broken environment without considering the human aspect, the system simply won't support whatever improvements we try to make.

I hear you — but I can also see the opposite perspective, at least in the case of TV journalism. Once we lost the almost religious reverence for the nightly news anchor, it devolved into pure spin.

I also think that in a case like the news, there is a real need to step outside of the current cultural phenomena and engineer it — what are the known requirements for the news and how do we move from here to there.

I think Axios is on the right path in keeping news reports as short as possible without too much fluff.

My idea: Wiki-style collaborative contributions, ranked by a fact-checking algorithm.

If the news could:

1. Stop publishing minority opinions as if they were representative.

2. Stop publishing minor stupidities because they are "exciting".

3. Stop trying to be entertaining or interesting. Stick with informative, and if you get less views, so be it.

4. ???? Open to suggestions. Maybe we could write up a set of voluntary rules for journalists with ethics.

Here, the best definition by Denzel. The need to be first, not the need to be true. They don't care who they hurt. https://youtu.be/GXYzjYBTlpA

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