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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

Meanwhile NYTimes headline:

> With countries trying to close their doors to the variant, African officials note that the West’s hoarding of vaccines helped create their struggle.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/27/world/africa/coronavirus-...

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We need a business model for visualization and quantification of narrative warfare. Journalistic objectivity was always aspirational, but at least it tried to reconcile multiple views into one reality. If readers are now more responsible for reconciling conflicting narratives, they will need neutral tools for analysis.

Wouldn't this system be gamed when it hit sufficiently large enough?

The more I think about it the more I realise that news is mostly a tool for "propaganda". It really doesn't serve much purpose in ones life beyond that

Isn't staying up to date on current events one major purpose? I'd say it's even the reason people will call out media outlets for being biased and yet still consume their content. The alternative is to simply not know what's happening in your city and around the world

In a participatory democracy, information is necessary for informed consent to political and economic decisions that can echo broadly across time and space. As social animals, even the tiny minority of humans with power can be influenced by the (perceived or real) opinions of others.

Ongoing investment in expensive propaganda is proof that public opinion has economic value, otherwise why compete to influence it?

And yet…

> South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has accused developed countries of hoarding shots, and been a lead figure in a campaign to force pharmaceutical companies to share vaccine recipes with poorer nations. Yet the government will not be redistributing excess doses around the continent, said Foster Mohale, a spokesman for the Department of Health.

From the article:

>With roughly a third of South Africans vaccinated, officials there blame a number of factors, including vaccine hesitancy caused by rampant online misinformation. Some critics have blamed a bungled government response. For now, South Africa has far more vaccine doses than it can distribute in time, forcing senior health officials to defer some planned deliveries.

Also Africa is not southern Africa which is not South Africa.

The very subtitle of the NYT article, which can be read without a subscription, apparently has changed and now reads: "With countries trying to close their doors to the new coronavirus variant, southern African officials note that the West’s hoarding of vaccines helped create their struggle in the first place." South Africa is the largest southern African country by a large margin (60M of 68M south Africans live in South Africa) [1]. Furthermore, that vaccine demand is so low that South Africa stopped asking for the vaccine is relevant to an article that is quick to prominently blame "the West" for their vaccine troubles.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/southern-africa...

Uhhh... yup. Which is why I posted the section of the article that mentions low vaccine demand. In response to the implication that it doesn't.

The fact under contention is very specific, not just general vaccine hesitancy. The article appears to fail to mention it, unless there is some other quote that can be shared beyond the paywall. More interestingly, here's an approximate heatchart of the probability that a given paragraph in an article will be read by the average reader, by the position in the article the paragraph appears:

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There is a huge difference in attention between (free) headline & subtitle, and a (paywalled) paragraph squirreled somewhere near the end, which I am willing to bet is the case for the nyt article.

What fact is under contention? That SA has deferred vaccine deliveries? That fact is in the excerpt I posted.

I see. Perhaps you consider "forcing senior health officials to defer some planned deliveries" and "South Africa Asks J&J, Pfizer to Stop Sending Vaccines" are both accurately describing the same fact.

I suppose we should also excuse the prominent biased subtitle, because technically they are just quoting political figures from SA, not making the charge themselves.

The former is more accurate, which is to be expected seeing as it's a detail from the main body of the article rather than a headline. Thankfully, the latter article also goes into accurate detail.

Both can be true.

Sure but they conveniently leave this fact out of the narrative.

Despicable reporting.

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