Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matheusmoreira | Hacker News Reader

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> Journalists are typically the ones bringing any sort of credibility to topics.

Not at all. "Journalists" are as biased as they come. They'll sing any tune prescribed by the hand that feeds them. That hand is most often advertisers but may also be governments. Chances are the articles they produce are actually hidden advertisements or propaganda. How could anyone with such massive conflicts of interest bring credibility to literally anything? I want access to real information posted by real people, not agenda-pushing "credible authorities".

> Without journalists, it's just randos and bots shit-posting their hot takes.

What makes you think these "journalists" aren't just randoms themselves? They're not really any better than any person on this site. Their particular brand of hot take is not automatically more valid than anyone else's. As far as I'm concerned their only purpose is to generate material for us to comment on.

There is exactly one site in the entire internet I have enough respect for to call them true journalists: LWN. It's just excellent in every way and they don't need to posture as authorities for everyone else to believe it. Everything else ranks lower than HN's comment sections to me.

I think a lot has to do with provenance. For journalists this is their day job, they post with their real name and usually under some larger entities name. They are perhaps as biased as everyone else, but it's easier to figure out the biases.

I don't believe one can make any decisive decision about bias in business funded journalism other than self interest.

I probably misunderstand your point, but if your point is that a given journalist can never be reliable then I agree, but that is also not the idea perhaps. We cannot hope to have only unbiased views, we can only average them out by consuming from multiple sources with known biases.

This is a kind interpretation of what I meant. They all have some kind of bias angle, maybe by researching enough data can we hope to achieve a measure of accuracy.

If 50% of journalists are as you describe, does that mean effectively they are all as you describe? What about 30%, if 30% are as you describe is that the threshold where none of them are worth a damn?

There used to be a time where as a rule journalists were below that threshold unless they were specifically working for The National Enquirer writing stories about Elvis still being alive, but whatever the threshold is, we damn well got closer to it.

It's a fair question to ask, what's the threshold and where we stand regarding it. You cannot say they're all like that, but you can say TOO MANY journalists are like that. I'd even agree with the latter statement. Would the remaining journalists be more or less likely to be out there on Twitter, mostly unheard? How about after Elon Musk's takeover? My sense is that Elon is more likely to get rid of the good ones when they correctly call him out on his nonsense.

> What makes you think these "journalists" aren't just randoms themselves? They're not really any better than any person on this site.

It's pretty ridiculous to compare someone who has a university degree, years of training and experience, professional qualifications, and maybe a strong reputation, with a "random" posting on an internet forum.

In science we don't go by authority. Just because you won a nobel prize, it doesn't mean that your theories should not be tested.

A random university degree is a much lower barrier, and just FYI it isn't required to be a journalist.

> university degree, years of training and experience, professional qualifications, and maybe a strong reputation

Big deal. I have all of those things. Lots of people here do too.

The journalists reporting on a pair of alien hands someone discovered in their backyard and other tabloid pieces have similar credentials too.

> "Journalists" are as biased as they come.

So, you got any other account posting behind a pseudonym, being more unbiased than a journalist posting to Twitter/X using their professional name and attached to their organization? At least with the journalist, you gain some insight into what their biases might be.

> They'll sing any tune prescribed by the hand that feeds them.

You say that as though every dev working professionally on HN is 100% of the time working on projects they want to work on, writing the features they want to add, and releasing on a schedule that ensures the code is at a quality that fully reflects their talent.

> you got any other account posting behind a pseudonym

This is my only HN account. I post pseudonymously and anonymously elsewhere on the internet but not here.

> You say that as though every dev

Devs on HN usually don't make it their business to present their biased version of the truth to vast amounts of people.

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