Journalism's trust problem is about money, not politics | Hacker News Reader

Journalism's trust problem is about money, not politics

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28 pointsPaulHoule23 comments

My default position has been that all journalists are liars since the early 2000s.

In the early 90s I was interviewed for a newspaper for winning a writing contest and an exact and precise 0.0% of the quotes attributed to me were spoken by me.

Later I was in the Army and I was interviewed by a major national news network while preparing to deploy overseas.

The 7 seconds of me talking, extracted from the five or so minutes of interview, that made it to air was so chopped up and out of order in relation to the questions being asked that it formed an actual, intentional, lie on the part of the person who created the video.

If "intrepid" reporters are willing to lie in a four-paragraph story in the middle of the Metro section of a newspaper, what are they doing for the big stories?

There is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has been specifically created to train you on how to communicate with journalists, to make it harder for them to lie on your behalf.

As far as I can tell, the journalist combines the morals of hollywood producers, the ethics of used car salesmen, and the smug self-righteousness of mid-century urban planners into one profession.

Not what one would a representative data sample from which to draw broad, sweeping conclusions about the entire industry. As opposed to the particular news outlets you were speaking with, for which it would have more validity.

It's kind of like saying: "Lawyers? I've dealt with them twice -- and let me tell you, they're all a bunch of lying scumbags who ..."

But interesting data points, nonetheless.

>It's kind of like saying: "Lawyers? I've dealt with them twice -- and let me tell you, they're all a bunch of lying scumbags who ..."

If you deal with two lawyers and on both occasions they lie to you that is a perfectly rational and defensible position to take.

Kinda like being bitten by the same breed of dog twice or opening two bottles of beer from the same brewer on two different occasions and finding them both to be filled with water.

The thing about default positions is that they only represent a beginning.

Two data points are statistically insignificant. It’s definitely not rational. As you said, it’s a beginning, but it’s not rational to state blanket statements even then.

I am neither a scientific paper nor the personification of logic. (and you aren't either, despite what you may think)

I am a human.

I am also not an at-bat in a game of baseball. Two strikes and you're out.

That you are human, or not a scientific paper, or not personification of logic, or an at-bat in a game of baseball doesn’t make your original statement with the two lawyers rational as you stated. I don’t care that if you think that “two strikes and you’re out”, it won’t be rational.

Especially, that probably your two strikes rule can be applied such way to groups of people that everybody would be “out”. For example if they are white, then all white is out, and also everybody in the whole new world, and the north hemisphere, and everybody who lives on continents, etc. But I’m quite sure that it would be possible to form such groups from which you would be the only who is not out.

You can think like that, I don’t care, sometimes I do too, but it still doesn’t make it rational.

> It's kind of like saying: "Lawyers? I've dealt with them twice -- and let me tell you, they're all a bunch of lying scumbags who ..."

It's a bit more like saying: "Lawyers? Both I've dealt with were lying scumbags so I'm distrustful of lawyers in general."

Not that it's especially more rational but it at least allows for trusting particular journalists.

I don't know how you would even conduct a controlled study of such things to get "representative data". But for what it's worth, I and several friends have had similar experiences for news stories where we were directly involved. So I find the claims by @snakeyjake completely plausible. Proper journalism including fact checking has almost entirely disappeared.

I am pretty sure the US is literally the only place where people generally think journalists are trustworthy. I don't know if it's the fluoride in the water or what but there's a very sad mass delusion going on here.

People generally think journalists are trustworthy.

That is ironically, in itself, a gross distortion of what I'm saying here.

Lol maybe I am conflating the lack of deep skepticism of all writing by journalists with slackjawed belief in their writings up both end up being the same practically.

You are, apparently.

Whether this is a useful way of looking at the world or not is up to you.

But in any case: no, they're definitely and obviously not the same.

Just because someone's view of a particular situation isn't exactly as diabolically dark and sinister as yours -- doesn't mean they see it as all rainbows and unicorns, either.

It's not dark and sinister lol. It's how literally everyone in the entire world views journalistic writing except Americans for some bizarre reason.

That doesn't at all jibe with my extensive observation of both Americans and non-Americans. But hey, it's your life and you can keep on forming beliefs about the world based on crude (and frankly rather trite) stereotypes like this, as suits your fancy.

I will. Good luck in whatever little bubble you are in lol.

> Not what one would a representative data sample from which to draw broad

Can you present some sample data from which to draw something ? /s

This seems like a good place to shove everyone's favorite Janet Malcolm quote:

>Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that what he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.

From her book The Journalist and The Murderer

I admit to be on the side that is very suspicious about journalists, but I haven't given enough thought as to the role of money in their bias. Money obviously trumps everything (pawn not intended :) ), but there's also the question of where the money comes from, or what money is to be made from applying certain manipulations on the public. All in all I think the notion of an 'objective' media is absurd to the point of puritanism. In democracies, the media is just another political force, like the parliament or the government, only it is not appointed by elections and less regulated, but also has no actual force, only 'soft force' (which in some cases is stringer than 'force force').

I agree the sample size is way too small to mean much.

But it's very obvious that the press plays to eyeballs over veracity.

A whole article making bold claims about a whole industry based on 34 people interviewed by Zoom?

The author links to a study to back up their claims, and that study is a single survey of a grand total of 34 people. A survey of 34 people was turned into a vast, sweeping, manipulating, headline + article which claims that the journalism trust problem is about money, not politics. From a single survey of 34 people, they're decreeing what the problem with journalism is.

I'm not going to attempt to point out all the other litany of logical fallacies, disgusting social manipulation tactics, and other problems with the rest of the article, I could type page after page. It's so ironic how many problems exist in this article which writes about problems in journalism. They have no self awareness.

I agree, although a group of 34 people if sampled correctly can yield a statistical significant signal. My main problem with the methodology here is that it is completely qualitative with no reason. It would have been very simple to do a quantitative analysis and reach numbers that have statistical significance.

> a study I recently published

I agree that there is a lack of self-awareness but it's also possible to spot a conflict of interest in this particular case.

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