How the media covers its tracks when proven wrong | Hacker News Reader

How the media covers its tracks when proven wrong

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14 pointsjb7758 comments

"The Media" is not a monolith. It's many hills and valleys.

I'd consider it a monolith considering most major news sources are owned by a handful of people. Vertical and horizontal integration across the board.

Matt Taibbi is relentless in documenting media like NYT, etc. covering their tracks when they run with bogus news stories that end up having harmful effects on our country try.

synopsis: At the beginning of the pandemic, many evidenceless claims were labeled as fringe.

A year of evidence gathering produced some data to support one of the claims. That claim is no longer tagged as fringe.

OP's link is to a twit'r who examines this case - where media rejects claim when it is baseless and and later accepts it when it gains material support. Twitr's conclusion is this proves media bias.

Actual synopsis: An example of a narrative that didn't align with MSM's agenda, so it was baselessly labelled a "fringe conspiracy theory". When evidence was provided it was swept under the rug, and that person was labeled a "fringe conspiracy theorist liar".

A year of evidence gathering by the "conspiracy theorists" found more and more credible evidence, and it reached the point the media could no longer cover it up. Now the media acts like they never labeled it a "fringe conspiracy theory" in the first place.

Just because a broken clock is right twice a day doesn't mean we should ever give it credit for telling time correctly. It's completely useless to even acknowledge it as a clock. The claim that it was man made wasn't "baselessly labeled as a conspiracy theory", it was baselessly claimed as a legitimate theory.

When there is no evidence to support a claim and the science indicates that it unlikely to be true, I expect headlines to reflect that. Similarly, if we later gather evidence that changes what we believe to be most probably true, I expect headlines follow suit. And that looks to be exactly what happened.

The only bias I see here are the broken clocks thinking they contributed anything of value.

Considering it's true, how was it baselessly claimed as a legitimate theory last year? There was plenty of evidence back then, it's just that people like you bury your head in the sand when someone presents evidence on something you don't want to believe. It's called cognitive dissonance. THAT's the real bias here!

Also, how exactly did "science" indicate it as being unlikely true? Coming from a person who likely believed it came from someone eating a bat sandwich...bc CNN told them to believe that.

I understand that this type of discourse is par for the course on Twitter and Facebook, but please don't track it in here.

Because you asked, the expert consensus at the time was that it was highly improbable that the virus was of lab origin:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9

While you're right that laypeople in media and on twitter indulge in absolutes and sensationalism, the science seemed to be carried out appropriately. So if knocking over straw men is your thing, twitter is the more appropriate venue.

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