Hacker News Reader

Comment by nuz | Hacker News Reader

I can't be the only one suspicious that there seems to be a coordinated set of articles (guardian and NYT) roughly at the same time pushing the same narrative (conveniently about something threatening their business). Gives me "this is extremely dangerous to our democracy" vibes.

View on HN

This happens across journalism and topics, certainly not limited to this one.

I'm not sure exactly how they all have the same ideas at the same time, I suspect that journos are highly interlinked and when a spicy tip or publication drops, they all get excited about it.

A big enough fraction of a group of people attends the same events or sees the same set of tweets/articles, and eventually a decent fraction of that fraction comes up with the same ideas.

The journalists don't talk to each other, the PR agency that created the story sends it to multiple journalists.

Journos absolutely do talk to each other...do you know any journalists? How many of their friends are journos as well do you figure?

The press release effect is real however

Journalists always overlap their coverage. Even 'exclusive' stories will get articles describing the exclusive coverage. A story/theme being covered from multiple sources is hardly evidence of conspiracy in a vacuum.

How is slop threatening Guardian?

The Guardian in particular has a nickname of "Grauniad" owing to a historical failure to spot typos before going to print.

More broadly, there's the Gell-Mann amnesia effect, which had been noted well before it was given that name, including by Thomas Jefferson.

https://benwheatley.github.io/blog/2024/03/19-14.53.05.html

You're suspicious that multiple journalists are covering current events? This must get exhausting.

No need for that tone

Conspiracism merits it. JAQing isn't a virtue.

Agree to disagree

No. A functional epistemological environment requires something much more along the lines of extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and JAQing is an abrogation of the latter duty implied by the former action.

"Agreeing to disagree" is the last redoubt of conspiracism because it's so bankrupt in the standing of a given claim that there's nothing else to lean on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com