I don't read the opinion section because you can get opinions anywhere and there are better blogs on Substack. The news reporting in the Washington Post seems as good as ever, as far as I can tell.
- Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise
A large part of credibility in expertise is the ability to naturally lead. People tend to follow who reads as credible. If someone doesn't read as such, it isn't the fault their missing audience.
If they are credible and yet lack the ability to communicate that, I'd suggest that's both rare in-practice but would be a dire skill issue. Examining what is wrong with them and why better people aren't employed would be the logical next step.
It wasn't a complete suppression of the facts, but an awful lot of genuine experts were manipulated into saying things that were misleading.
So I could pardon that particular mistake, at least a little. But I hold it against him for not recognizing where this manipulation was coming from, for well over a decade after it was blindingly obvious.
To your context, it simply means you havent seen bias in the facts, but dont evaluate the completeness thereof.
This specifically is what wikileaks did in 2016 against the DNC.
So unless you scour the internet for each topic, the full bias isnt obvious.
This is part of what I had in mind, selective reporting of facts is a method of fact manipulation, statistical gaming is another.
> So unless you scour the internet for each topic, the full bias isnt obvious.
Bias on a mass scale is a tool of propaganda, and it cannot be dealt with, if it isn't understood as such.
But I think there would still be a market for a 1990s BBC style on the ground, completely opinion free reporting, and someone could fill this niche because a lot of people WOULD actually pay for this. But it would take a big investment and it's a big risk.
Look at the article currently promoted at the top of Post opinion page: "Trump is off to a good start with an AI action plan" https://archive.is/ERCme
Regardless of what you think of the quality of that opinion, it took very little effort to make.
Compare the sources they used to the work it would take go out on the ground and do novel research:
- Their own news article about it (itself based on press releases and an off-the-record comment that obviously would have come from someone in the White House press office assigned to promote the press release)
- Their own past opinion pieces
- Reuters.com
- WhiteHouse.gov
- Online govt statistics
- CNN.com
- NeurIPS' blog
- Columbia Business School blog
- Matthew Yglesias' blog
- Greg Lukanioff's blog
I could have found those sources based on vague memories of tweets I've seen by following journalists on Bluesky and a few hours of googling. I suspect they did the same, except they used X instead.
> But I think there would still be a market for a 1990s BBC style on the ground, completely opinion free reporting, and someone could fill this niche because a lot of people WOULD actually pay for this. But it would take a big investment and it's a big risk.
AP and reuters are still doing this today
(I have no idea how to describe, categorize most (opinion) columnists. Vishy? Quislings? Judas goats? Gossip columnists?)