Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by timr | Hacker News Reader

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"I’ve always found the news from my trusted sources to be reasonable and accurate until it covers something I know about. Then it seems like a complete mess."

Same. This year, with the coverage of Covid (an area where I have a certain level of expertise), I've been bombarded with the extremely low quality level of essentially all of the major news providers. They are more than willing to amplify the most speculative voices, credulously, without even basic fact-checking. The ones that depend on advertising are the worst, overall. Writers with no subject-matter expertise will take a scary quote from a single source, won't bother to make even the simplest of efforts to verify the claim, and will publish it just to get the scoop.

I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted, but there are some extremely high-profile "scientific" media figures who are constantly broadcasting utter nonsense. And because they heard it from a "scientist" on the news, people will attack you if you rebut it. I am old enough to remember when journalists were skeptical of the people they interviewed, and the rule was that no fact was published without independent verification (read "All the President's Men" for example).

2020 is the year where the news media fell apart for me -- it is all simply entertainment now, which is unfortunate.

There comes the time in the life of every professional where he is called upon to be interviewed or provide input to the press.

And when they read the article or see the video that is produced, that is the day they lose faith in the press. True 50 years ago, true today.

This is true even if both sides in good faith are doing the best job they can. The media always has its own agenda, which is never identical to the goals of the profession.

Ten times worse if advocacy is involved.

Yup.

My sibling spent some time working around prostitution related issues. When they were interviewed, words were literally put in their mouths as quotes, and what they actually said was ignored. You either fit the narrative that they'd been told to go out and find, or you were made to fit it. I imagine because the Overton Window is small enough that reporters aren't able to work outside of it.

Besides potential misinterpretations by laymen (which journalists often are) the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_bites_dog principle often takes effect.

I have been interviewed twice for articles in Wired and once for Chemical & Engineering News. The resulting articles fairly represented what I said in the interviews and also treated the overarching article subject well.

I generally don't put much stock in anecdotes, but if others are sharing "the press always gets it wrong" anecdotes I might as well share my more positive ones.

This is actually good. I occasionally tell people which ones are unreliable but I've decided to now keep it to my in-group. After all, HN and other such communities of pseudo-smart-money decided that SuperMicro was spying on every CPU instruction because Bloomberg told them that. Easy money on SMCI, boys.

I'm really hoping that this kind of stuff happens slightly more (not a lot more, that undermines the market). Just a few high-profile things that play to the kind of paranoia common here: Maybe another Facebook/CambridgeAnalytica would be a good one. Something to do with Google spying on Android phones maybe? Amazon Echos reporting to the Chinese government?

Holding out hope for a nice panic journalist to put one out. Delicious. Come on. There's got to be someone who'll do it.

> I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted

Interesting choice you're making there - social acceptance prioritised over journalistic accuracy and scientific advocacy.

I think its better characterized as making the meta-level point without specifics as various people's disagreements on the object level would drown out the meta-level point.

FWIW, I think he made the right decision.

> I think its better characterized as making the meta-level point

I couldn't evaluate the merits of his claim, which is that famous people are broadcasting nonsense, because he didn't name any of these people or cite any example. Had he done so, I could have formed an opinion based on the facts presented.

I've seen famous people on the news broadcast claims that contradict each other on covid-19 for 6 months. They can't both be right. This neatly sidesteps my own inability to evaluate claims about epidemiology and disease (because I'm not a physician or public health professional).

> I won't mention names because I'll only be downvoted

Unfortunately, I don't know you or trust you, so this post seems like more noise.

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