YouTube launches new page that only shows videos from "authoritative" sources
niemanlab.org
niemanlab.org
For example, when the AP caught reporter Christopher Newton fabricating sources, they fired him and immediately conduced a review of everything he had written for them, issuing retractions or corrections as appropriate.
This information turned out (a) to be completely incorrect and (b) has far reaching real consequences both in local politics and with respect to actual harm and violence directed at people.
The sources are incredibly quiet now and are saying literally nothing about this having corrected articles and erased the history.
Their irresponsible reporting caused actual harm to people.
When I contrast mainstream media to alternative media, the main difference I see is that alt media is a lot less careful with signaling confidence levels and eventual correctness. No "said X" in the title, no retractions, no requests for comment from affected parties. No journalism. The fact that you can find alt media which is biased in a way that you personally find desirable is not an indication of quality.
Can you imagine applying this standard to other professions ?
Say you doctor says "The Lab technician read your report and says you have cancer" or a scientist says "Our experiments say that global warming is real". You still hold them accountable for their claims, because THEY are the professionals. The whole point of being an authoritative source is that you don't report things until you have it on good authority. If you can't be held accountable to your claims, then that's the failure of your profession. Your role as the intermediary, is to vet the sources. If I have to do it, you have failed.
Is your claim is that : "All media is inherently untrustworthy, but some media is worse than other media"? Because that sounds like a vote in favor of rejecting the premise of authoritative sources.
I have looked at every front page of NYT over the last 48 hours. It started with outright accusing Israel strongly, and then steady reduced the degree of accusation indicated in headline over the next 48 hours. The photos and front page still hints towards Israel being the cause of the blast without saying it. The facts on the ground now strongly indicate a misfire from Gaza, that the hospital wasn't directly hit and expects the death toll to be closer to 10-100, rather than the 500 that has been parroted as truth. Have NYT/BBC/AJ reflected any of these changes in their front page headlines ? NO.
This is just from the last 48 hours and I was fortunate enough to have accumulated trustworthy 'alt sources' to identify the discrepancies on this issue. Add Gellman Amnesia into the mix, and I wonder how many 'authoritative' lies I've gobbled up from despite a decent degree of scrutiny on my part.
Sometimes you never have it on good authority for years, meanwhile the 'thing' is being spread by other sources, so they have report that in the least. Sometimes 'Israel/Hamas spokesperson claims X' is a newsworthy story by itself.
> This is just from the last 48 hours of a issue that I was fortunate enough to have accumulated trustworthy 'alt sources' to identify the discrepancies.
And what are those sources? Have you looked at their record? Do they provide retractions? Do they cover the "other side's" point of views? Would you call them authoritative?
In this case, most of the reliable sources are operational intelligence pages, and people who have done on-the-ground reporting near the Gaza border before.
The minute the news broke out, their reactions were that of confusion. Israeli rockets don't have large fire balls. All major Israeli strikes come with roof-knocking, this one didn't. The Hamas HQ hospital was the other one, so if they were going to lead with genocide, they'd have chosen the other hospital. They asked their audiences to wait and see because the stories weren't lining up.
I have a pretty strong set of alt-sources I trust on specific topics who get things right on issues in their field with a high degree of accuracy. Many of these are PhDs and professionals in the field. They are alt-sources in so far as they don't work for media houses. But, they are certified experts in their area of choice.
Then why are you publishing?
Just write that crap like a research paper and I’d be totally cool with that.
I very much doubt their journalistic integrity when they publish Gaza Ministry of Health (Hamas) talking points without question.
We now know the hospital was not bombed ([1] it hit the parking lot), there is no way there were 500 casualties as was so breathlessly reported by those agencies "that takes accuracy seriously." The consensus also seems to be it was a Palestinian misfire that hit the parking lot, not an Israeli missile as was reported, at the time, as a fact.
[1] https://www.nowtheendbegins.com/al-ahli-baptist-hospital-in-...
If I recall those headlines correctly, they all included with "said Palestinian officials" or similar, which makes the reporting factual no matter who actually bombed the hospital. They were reporting on official statements, not making claims about what happened.
Similar things happen all the time. "State department officials say X" and similar isn't AP or Reuters making claims about X being true or not, they're just reporting statements.
People around the world trust them, like OP over here. They have a responsibility to do even basic verification work before posting something that they know will ignite riots around the world. The IDF seems very open about the strikes they make, were they reached out to for comment? Should the reporter have thought to themselves, "hey, does it make sense that Israel would bomb a hospital packed with civilians right as the US president is about to visit? Would Israel so blatantly destroy the relatively high global goodwill and backing they currently have? What do they have to gain?" It makes no sense if you think about it for half a second, yet these "reputable news sources" sent push notifications to millions of people to spew a complete lie form Hamas when THEY HAD NO KNOWLEDGE OF THE ACTUAL EVENT SINCE IT NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPENED.
Yes, I'm sure they verified exactly what Palestinian officials said. What they didn't verify (and what the articles were not about) is if the "facts" the Palestinian officials gave them were correct or not. The articles are not investigative articles that strive to report only the truth and facts, but more informal articles that gives you what various people had said.
In the text it was less clear, but the damage was done. I lost all respect for Reuters because of this.
I know, because I was arguing on Reddit(person has since deleted their comments, because they were spreading FAKE NEWS) while it was happening.
This is the earliest version of that story I could find from Reuters.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017192141/https://www.reute...
But you could definitely argue that that article repeats the claims from Gaza too uncritically, which is why it was updated within seven minutes of publication to make it clearer the reports were unsubstantiated.
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017195440/https://www.reute...
But that still gives a one-sided story. They say that the Israeli government has yet to comment. Which is why the story was updated again to include information from the Israeli military, arriving at this version within an hour:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017202059/https://www.reute...
The fog of war isn't just in video games. As usual, the New York Times has a good article on this subject.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/business/media/hospital-b...
You might argue (and I would argue) that it is irresponsible to publish any story at all when things are so uncertain. The original story was accurate, but confusing rather than enlightening. That's why I don't read breaking news.
I don't entirely disagree with your criticisms. We can, and should, demand better from our papers. But the solution isn't to write off the best papers we have. People who refuse to read the Times invariably replace it with something far worse.
P.S. There were "around 500" deaths. The current estimates I've seen are 200-300, which is "around 500" when picking through rubble in a war zone.
- Reuters leads by saying the reports come from "health officials", "Gaza health authorities", and "Palestinian health authorities", as if these are reliable third party agencies. These are all Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization that last week went on a killing spree murdering and brutalizing over a thousand civilians including the elderly and children. Reporting what they say without any actual verification is heinous and absolutely destroys their credibility.
> As usual, the New York Times has a good article on this subject
The New York times was one of the most egregious actors regarding what happened. They had a front page story about the hospital showing a completely different bombed building from the other side of Gaza as if that was the hospital that was destroyed [1]. I genuinely don't understand how people are not being fired over this.
> There were "around 500" deaths. 200-300 is "around 500" when picking through rubble in a war zone.
That's just it. There was no rubble. There was no 200-300 hundred deaths. Look at the photo. It was a parking lot that was set on fire with rocket fuel. The building was practically undamaged. People still act like the death toll numbers coming from Gaza are accurate when they are clearly not.
[1] https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F8uNSAbXoAABhR0?format=jpg&name=...
Hamas is the government of the Gaza strip. Anyone following the story should know that. Unfortunately, they're the most reliable source we have for much of this information.
I will admit that it could be made clearer. There are readers who are starting from a place of ignorance. A story should be written such that a 12 year old child could understand it. Also, there are two Palestinian governments and it's not always clear which is being referred to.
But the problem here is, I think, simply that writing is hard.
>They had a front page story about the hospital showing a completely different bombed building from the other side of Gaza as if that was the hospital that was destroyed [1].
The way you are framing this is inaccurate. The same picture had been on the front page for hours before the story of the explosion was published. It was not a part of that story. Here's a capture from hours before the story broke:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231017154440/https://www.nytim...
The caption for the picture also states that it is of a different city entirely.
I won't dispute that the design could be confusing. Also, I don't think such a picture belongs in a newspaper at all. It's useless and voyeuristic, serving more to shock than to inform. But this is clearly not a problem of dishonesty.
Besides, why would they lie? The actual pictures of the aftermath don't look any prettier.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/world/middleeast/gaza-hos...
I did not know this, wow. I appreciate you pointing this out to me since i took the front page image at face value. Having said that, that perhaps slightly lessens the blame, as they should understand how it looks and should have updated the image accordingly.
I guess we agree that the story should have been covered better, as a trusted source of news should be take extra precautions before posting news stories like this.
My main take away from this entire situation is that i was better (and more accurately) informed by scrolling through twitter than a NY times or Reuters reader would have been. That's not a good thing and shows that their is something deeply wrong with our MSM.
> When Hamas’s leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby—and the AP wouldn’t report it, not even in AP articles about Israeli claims that Hamas was launching rockets from residential areas. (This happened.) Hamas fighters would burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff—and the AP wouldn’t report it. (This also happened.) Cameramen waiting outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City would film the arrival of civilian casualties and then, at a signal from an official, turn off their cameras when wounded and dead fighters came in, helping Hamas maintain the illusion that only civilians were dying. (This too happened; the information comes from multiple sources with firsthand knowledge of these incidents.)
> Colford, the AP spokesman, confirmed that armed militants entered the AP’s Gaza office in the early days of the war to complain about a photo showing the location of a rocket launch, though he said that Hamas claimed that the men “did not represent the group.” The AP “does not report many interactions with militias, armies, thugs or governments,” he wrote. “These incidents are part of the challenge of getting out the news—and not themselves news.”
(https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/ho...)
They didn't issue a correction, but they did edit the photo caption to reflect reality.
I would definitely prefer the AP over many other sources.
That is, just because something was reported truthfully doesn't mean we got the full story, or even the most important part of the story. Narratives are crafted with what they don't say as much as what they do.
This works well because it's very hard to point a finger at what isn't there. It's even more effective when so much is consumed so passively (read: no questions asked).
So TV again.
The Russiagate hoax (ie, "Trump is a Russian agent") should have called for widespread reform of the entire media. I can't believe there is a single person who can take CNN/NY Times/LA Times/etc seriously at this point. But when it is 95 percent of the group committing the same outrage, I doubt any of them feel particularly guilty.
Years before was the even-worse "Weapons of Mass Destruction" propaganda campaign. Maybe you're too young to remember it, but that was a whopper.
I am 100% not qualified to speak on medical matters.
YouTube would be completely justified in removing any content I create regarding diseases, treatments, or related matters.
The fact that it is not common knowledge that chiropractors are actual, literal, charlatans is incomprehensible to me.
edit: on further reflection I am probably somewhat more qualified than chiropractors to analyze and determine the validity of medical direction based on its source because the entire foundation of their profession is false and I know this whereas they do not.
https://twitter.com/Jingjing_Li/status/1714895998252621877
They juxtaposed pictures to give the impression that destroyed buildings were the hospital, which was not destroyed:
CFN Headline: "So and so did X, claims Y" is seen as CFN making the claim that so and so did X. I see this time and time again, and it's effectively people not even reading the complete headline.
While I don't blame the journalists for these headlines (people aren't even reading the headlines and instead interpreting them the way they want), I do wonder if there is a better solution.
And I know someone is going to come in and claim "Only put facts in the headline" or something like that, and these are generally fact-based headlines. Someone of interest made a claim, so going completely fact-based isn't going to help, because that happens already and people get confused.
Some would say that we should just wait for both sides to put out info, or wait for independent investigations before reporting anything, but that can take quite some time. On Sept 6 there was a missile strike in Ukraine that was initially attributed to Russia - but it took almost two weeks for investigations to find that it was likely a Ukrainian misfire.
I've seen people suggest that journalists should do the research themselves and report the facts. The assumption here is that the journalist should become the source, which flies in the face of journalistic integrity. Quite the opposite, the journalist should do some level of source verification, but I don't want the journalists themselves making the claims for news reports.
This is why media literacy is so important, and why it's evident it's a skill people lack these days.
The real issue is people not even reading the stories and only taking headlines as gospel. A bit of forgetfulness and telephone (the game) later and "So and so did X, Y claims" turns into "So and so did X".
I wonder if this is a result of limited-character lengths on aggregators. It's easy to chop the end off of a headline and have it still make sense. Couple that with people reading only the first part of the headline and possibly ignoring the second part.
I think your suggestion moving to attribution to the front would be helpful for headlines online. Maybe even have the title of the page have the attribution prepended to handle scrapers.
I've plenty of closer crisis to capture my attention as well.
This makes it mostly worthless to me, when most news are simply regurgitated from somewhere else anyway and this aggregation just makes the search results insanely repetitive and it's impossible to scroll down to something else but this type of content.
It's only escapable by searching by upload time, but then you lose any sorting by relevancy among the non-news content.
If anything I'd like a non-news filter. :) News are already available from better, more focused websites.
Then it came out that basically everyone involved had massive conflicts of interest.
Then it came out that scientists were being pressured by Fauci and other higher ups to denounce the lableak story.
Then it came out that Facebook, Twitter, and others conspired - literally - with government to block 100% true information which was inconvenient to the narrative.
... And it's still seen by many as a "conspiracy theory", and there's still been no accountability. None. I was flagged for posting the above information here twice a couple days ago, even after adding sources.
Now they want to pull this shit? Mere days after the breathless 'beheaded babies' claim?
What in the world did we do to deserve this media.
The phrasing is a bit awkward for me. I get the part that YT is looking for channels that are more substance and less blurb. That seems pretty okay.
"Have Yet To Embrace Short-Form" is a weird; it seems to imply that only that news orgs who will eventually do short-form are being considered. I assume that's not what they meant.
Also that ESPN isn't considered - because it's short-forming, not because it's a sportsball channel. That's an oddly specific choice; it could imply a view that sports reporting is as equally important as critical news. Again, that might not be what this article meant.
In light of last yesterday's malicious reporting by the likes of NYT, BBC and Al Jazeera, can any outlet claim to be authoritative ?
> In a sample GIF provided, that included outlets like the Associated Press, Sky News, PBS News Hour, ABC News, and CBS Evening News.
When the primary first sources themselves have been poisoned, these secondary source media houses might as well be completely useless.
NYT can't be held accountable, because they are 1000s of people under a big-tent; by-lines are hidden in small script. People like Derek Lowe, Stratchery, Sinocism and similar high-profile commentators/youtubers can be held accountable. If something goes wrong, it is their fault, and their fault only.
Youtube should embrace what its biggest strength is : granular individualized rewards. Individuals whose rigor outstrips that of major organizations should be promoted far more than traditional media houses. Afterall, they're what makes Youtube unique. If nerds playing geoguesser are better at satellite intelligence and triaging than NYT, then so be it. Geoguesser dude gets my trust.
Many of these outlets on the internet clearly do not agree with this principle. CNN's CEO recently said only 10% of the early Gaza footage they reviewed was usable and the rest was often disinformation garbage. Plenty of these sources you allude to posted the garbage as fact and did not redact.
The authorities release fake news in a way that makes it sound legit. I would rather follow the independent sources with the understanding that they will conflict and I will be able to evaluate the many different points of view to develop my understanding. The best place for anti-authoritarian sources now seems to be Rumble.
The war on "disinformation" marches on. I doubt many skeptics will be won over by this latest tactic. Those with establishment biases can already choose their favored outlets. This raises the obvious questions: Who is this feature aimed at? Will it become mandatory? Will content be further restricted on the basis of truthiness?
YouTube is in a tough situation. Competition from TikTok and their paranoia about 'safety' and 'misinformation' is going to be its undoing. It's already become a shadow of its former self unfortunately.
1) to provide "disinformation governance board"
2) to provide "oversight boards"
3) to provide fact checkers, which Facebook agreed were 'just an opinion'
On the other hands there has been rumors about Russia, China spreading misinformation.
Government tries to limit free speech to fight disinformation, but in reality taking control over free speech.
We will see how it ends.
Once you start controlling the narrative, there is no ending.
Now we could say this is a good thing because there's less radicalization and what many consider misinformation. But I think the clear difference in usefulness wont result in those people not seeing that information but more an eventual move away from the Google services rendering the control useless because the next most viable services will likely be under Chinese control anyway. Yandex already offers a far superior image search to Google, Tiktok video search is preferred by young people over Google text search.
> handful of channels broadcasting worthy and civilized
Maybe that's different for public TV (like BBC), but I found lot more interesting and civilized content on YT than in commercial TV. Commercial TV execs have this elitist notion that common people are stupid and are not interested in any sort of intellectual content.