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Comment by readams | Hacker News Reader

ProPublica definitely has a viewpoint though and I would not recommend treating them as neutral.

Which ProPublica articles would you claim are most inaccurate?

[EDIT: if you're only referring to the 2021 "CEOs living off loans against unrealized CG", see my comments below. Any other set of articles? I've seeen some quality work from ProPublica on e.g. the US justice system. You'll never see that from Forbes, or Cato, or Heritage Foundation, or AEI.]

Accuracy is not the same as neutrality.

Acciracy exists, neutrality in reporting is a myth. One that is simply not worth pursueing.

There's no such thing as neutral and you shouldn't treat any journalists as such. I don't know if their viewpoint is relevant here though; the question is about their ability to verify a factual assertion.

One may count and add things correctly, but one may count things that are not connected or double count items. That's the kind of thing people fudge when trying to convince people one way or another. They usually don't outright make things up.

it is for precisely not resorting to these dirty tactics that ProPublica is considered the gold standard.

They have their issues from time to time: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5158216/

And they also tend to go with investigations that go their way and those that don’t line up get dropped.

The secret here is they only investigate the things that support their narrative. In this article they actually explicitly stated they're looking to cover a specific list of negative things associated with the industry. They would not, for example, publish an article about how much lower our standard of living would be without the industry. Or to attempt to weigh the positives adjust the negatives of the industry.

So you can always publish "gold standard" journalism and yet still present a distorted version of the truth.

Your criticism seems to suggest a standard for journalism that no outlets would possibly reach.

It’s a variant of the “both sides” fallacy.

Good call, my minor in philosophy fails me once the fallacy falls outside of the usual suspects.

So you can get information from multiple well researched sources. This is one of them. Don't expect anyone to do all the work.

"You're not publishing full investigative journalism articles on absolutely everything." is not a valid criticism of your article, or a reasonable criticism of the publisher.

Yes, this type of criticism is baffling and, frankly, a bit morally outrageous.

ProPublica can't be expected to do all the work of uncovering all sides of the truth. They already do the hardest work: uncovering what the powerful would rather that we not know. They do enough; what are the rest of us doing?

I would agree that it's historically been uncommon for the media to give balanced perspective on civilizational progress, but some good sources for this have emerged in recent years. One of my favorites is Works in Progress magazine: https://worksinprogress.co/

I feel that the "pro-"extractive industry side of things has so much obvious monetary incentive behind it that it isn't really necessary to worry about independent reporters not adequately presenting it.

They wouldn’t in the case of California oil production because it’s long past peak and would have little impact if it went poof.

In general, these companies have made enough money that they are insulated from any meaningful punitive action. “Polluting Oil Well 32668 of Los Angeles, LLC” will go bankrupt if sued and disappear once it becomes untenable.

That’s no secret, and being the HN Lorax for oil extraction is both bizarre and a futile effort - the die is cast, and taxpayers will be stuck with the bill.

From what I understand there are huge deposits of untapped oil in Central California.

I’m sure that’s the case, but wouldn’t the courts be able to seize the relevant land in that case, too? Or pass some special blanket law stating any site that requires the government pay for clean up reverts to public (government) ownership?

At least in that case the government gets a lot of land back that can be sold for solar farms or, in higher density areas like Los Angeles, developed into higher uses like housing+parks?

It’s not enough.

Skipping oil and going to power generation, you have the same thing. Spin off the power generator, leave it with no money, the land has negative value, go bankrupt. This has happened in Oxnard for example, and the city is trying to not have it happen again (good luck).

Not the US, but I gained some insights into the legal treatment of industrial polution in Germany after working at two chemical companies. Over simplified, the last one to turn the lights off in a certain industrial site is stuck with the bill of cleaning up the mess. Decades upon decades worth of mess. Those sites are, by now, multi user sights, it is the users who are responsible for clean-up and costs, not the site owning entity.

The result is, some of the sites are kept at minimum operations just to avoid the tremendous shut-down costs.

Avoiding those costs by spining the operations off doesn't really work. The new entity would have to take the risk of shut-down costs, if it is clear those cannot be covered from the get go, it is the original entity that is in the hook. So, worst case, e.g. 3M wpupd have to declare bancruptcy. One common work around is to push those outdated operations down to other cheap skate companies, e.g. from Asia, who can buy them, including clean-up liabilities, for a symbolic price. Then they extract whatever value is left, before reselling it again. As long the overall site, or rather park, is operational this works. Which is bad for the last operator left, he risks being stuck with the bill.

By the way, those costs for clean up are accounted for as potential liabilies in the balance sheets of operating companies. Just putting everything in seperate legal entity, and letting that one go bankcrupt, doesn't really work. Which is a good thing, IMHO.

They certainly would publish articles about what would happen to our standard of living without the industry. This is one such article.

The whole article is about what would happen without the California oil industry: it would cost the people 21.5 billion dollars to clean up the industrial operations of that industry.

That's why you should be reading outlets for opposing sides, to get the best arguments for each side.

But if one side doesn't bother to mount a defense or do their own individual research, and resorts only to dismissing the other side based on the fact that it's "the other side", they aren't doing themselves any favors.

Two wrongs dont make a right. Or at least what my mother said growing up

That’s different. It is when two wrongs compound, not balance each other out.

Reading both sides is itself a bit of a fallacy. Most problems don't fit neatly into two 'sides'. For example, take gun control -- typically associated with the liberal wing of the democratic party, and opposed by most of the republican party. The leftist wing of American politics, however, is often opposed to gun control. Organizations like the Socialist Rifle Association and John Brown Gun Club and Pink Pistols.

In the case of environmental review, there's also a multitude of different perspectives with different objectives. From indigenous groups whose land was (typically) stolen, to anti-oil activists, to pro-business democrats (like Biden/Clinton) who want to keep profits rolling at the expense of pristine wildlands, to the various concerns of the right. I know plenty of republican folks who are religiously compelled to take care of the earth and oppose oil drilling. I know plenty of republicans who believe that anthropogenic climate change is "impossible".

Quite frankly, it's not wrong to read a few viewpoints, or read only the viewpoints you agree with and just acknowledge there are other viewpoints. Just don't get lost in believing your viewpoint is the only reasoned one.

> the question is about their ability to verify a factual assertion.

No, the question is about their inclination to critically examine a claim made by their side.

Some viewpoints are correct.

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