
How can you know what news is real? - flywithdolp
https://blocktvs.com/5dde73a94f1d3-how-can-you-know-what-news-is-real-
======
lm28469
The real question is why are people following the news anyway? It's pure
entertainment at that point. "Hey Karen have you seen that a girl was raped
and murdered 1000 miles away from you ? Have you heard what _unknown
politician of a third world country you couldn't even place on a map_ said !
that's outrageous. A cop killed an innocent man today #thoughtsAndPrayers".

The world would be a much better place if everybody only checked what's
happening around them instead of the other side of the country / world. 99% of
the "news" have 0 impact on you and you have 0 power (direct and indirect) on
99% of what's happening, why even bother ?

~~~
zouhair
Well that's short sighted. It's because of this flawed logic that a lot of
Americans think they have the best education/healthcare in the World.

Just now that they started to look at what is happening elsewhere that they
are starting to understand what they are lacking.

Here is the thing, and it works for everything in life: Knowing a thing is
almost always better than not knowing it, even if it is not clear what use to
make of it.

This said knowing what is happening near you is also very important.

~~~
jankotek
Eating junk food is not healthy...

~~~
pjc50
Did you read that in the news?

~~~
pixl97
No, I read that in a publication of a medical journal.

------
joaodlf
I have, sadly, given up. I can't stand watching/reading the news and feeling
that I am quite possibly being manipulated, so I have completely given up.
Anything I do read, I mistrust.

I don't want to be ignorant towards what is happening around me, but I feel
like I have no choice, I don't want to become bitter and "pick a side", I
prefer to remain ignorant.

Even when friends say "Oh, but try this source, they are soooo much better",
it doesn't take long to realise there is ALWAYS an agenda behind it, a
political leaning... It's exhausting.

~~~
tekmate
identify potential biases in a source and then filter the information of that
source through a bias lense, then use another source and do the same thing to
triangulate "the truth"

giving up on consuming news because everything might be biased is simply lazy

~~~
jl6
Beware that the truth is not necessarily the midpoint between opposing
opinions. Sometimes a source with a general bias gets it exactly right in a
specific case.

~~~
lowmagnet
And there aren't always "two sides" to an issue; there are arguments made in
bad faith and those in good faith and it's hard to tell the difference.

------
marcus_holmes
Having run a newspaper, I know the problem is the business model. Funding by
advertising is a terrible business model for journalism.

"real" journalism doesn't make any money because it's expensive to make and
doesn't generate any more ad revenue than bad journalism.

Most newspapers lose money, and that's getting worse not better. So
billionaires own (and subsidise) newspapers, and get to influence content.

So either we start paying for our news, or we continue with the current
situation. Though it's going to get worse because we're de-training an entire
generation of journalists, and the advertising revenue is shrinking.

~~~
RickJWagner
I don't think public funding is good, either.

The BBC gets its revenues from public funding, but it's got a strong political
bias.

~~~
marcus_holmes
Same for the ABC in Australia. They had some scandal recently with politicians
intervening in stories.

------
barry-cotter
Is this really that surprising? Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news
when they’re football teams, why is it when they’re corporate news
organizations?

Also, if there was ever a time to be concerned about the owners of media
organizations controlling the narrative this is not it. The media, and the
ruling class more generally, being pissed off that the peasants are daring to
speak back and have their own non approved opinions is behind the never ending
stream of invective directed at the big tech companies[1].

Martin Gurri’s book on this loss of control, _The Revolt of the Public_ , is
amazing by the way[2].

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-
co...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/19/the-collapse-of-
the-information-ecosystem-poses-profound-risks-for-humanity)

[2] [https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-
revolt-...](https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/martin-gurri-revolt-of-
the-public/)

[https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/book-review-
revo...](https://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2019/02/book-review-revolt-of-
public-by-martin.html?m=1)

~~~
richthegeek
> Billionaires owning vanity projects isn’t news when they’re football teams,
> why is it when they’re corporate news organizations?

You really can't see the difference between the two? If Mark Cuban has a
problem with a player and cuts him from a game, then only the Maverick's
suffer. If he (owned a paper and) has a problem with a politician and demands
hit pieces, the whole country suffers.

~~~
baq
don't forget that a politician may demand a piece from Mark Cuban.

------
jajag
I find the idea that there can be an _unbiased_ news source deeply
problematic. All reporting of an event has to be from a perspective, and has
to make decisions about what to report, what to leave out; what to emphasise,
what to play down. An honest news source should be one that is one that is
honest about its own biases.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
There is nothing wrong with bias. All media has biases, and those that a
required to be unbiased, such as the BBC, end up causing other biases with
equality of camera time making every issue a discussion. Which has been well
exploited by certain minority views.

What has changed is the mainstream media used to care a lot more about being
honest. Now they often couldn't give a toss.

I don't mind media being partisan, it's always been so, and often it's
revealing to see the reporting from both sides of an issue, and add the FT's
take for the financial slant. I do mind that we're rapidly running out of
sources that care about being honest. Murdoch ruined the Times, the Barclay
Brothers ruined the Telegraph. Both now far more opinion than news. That's a
loss, whatever your politics.

~~~
masonic

      the mainstream media used to care a lot more about being honest
    

Quite the contrary, in the USA, anyway. Think back to Hearst and the "yellow
journalism" era.

Never in the history of the world have individuals had such ease of access to
original sources, such as eyewitness accounts, texts of legislation, etc. Yet
people generally stay within their bubbles.

------
k_sze
I'm an avid reader of Chomsky. He often gets his sources from financial and
foreign policy publications. I _think_ I remember him writing something to the
effect of: the best source of truthful journalism is in the finance and
foreign policy publications, the reason being that those publications help
powerful people form their opinions and make decisions, and none of the
powerful people would be subscribing to publications that do a shitty job and
that compromise the powerful people's decisions. So those publications are
necessarily honest, the articles they publish would often be devoid of emotion
or moral judgement (e.g. a "member of the communist party" would be just that,
not a "commie"), they would even openly admit about, for instance, how some
policy protects the interests of certain circles of powerful people.

I can't remember where exactly I've read that and what the exact wordings were
though.

~~~
iagovar
Foreign Policy has biased publications. I know this because I've been involved
in events they talked about and it was indeed biased and lacked information,
and some of the context. The job was still better than main stream media,
that's true.

------
rcMgD2BwE72F
You need to fork this:
[https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais](https://github.com/mdiplo/Medias_francais)

Google Translate:

>French media: who owns what?

>Property relations between the French media and their main shareholders

>The data is organized in two tables:

>1\. 'medias_francais.tsv' contains all shareholders (natural or legal
persons) and media represented on the map

>2\. 'relations_medias_francais.tsv' details the capital links between these
shareholders and the groups or media they own

>Last updated November, 2019

>Technical indication: for those who wish to participate in updating the
database by making a pull request, make sure that the file is encoded in UTF-8
with unix line breaks so that we can merge it all without conflict.

Edit: I wish this was all added to Wikidata so we can chart this for every
country but also map the transnational stake-holding.

~~~
busterarm
I use the NewsGuard (I admit they're far from perfect) browser plugin and
there's an alarming number of news stories that are broken by entities that
have virtually all of the green check marks except that they conceal the
ownership and financing of their newspaper.

------
remote_phone
Overall this post is crap. The whole point about people choosing what they
want to read or get reported on only reinforces bubbles. That’s what Facebook
did.

However I agree that the media is biased and it is worse now than ever. I
think even more than being biased, it’s what they choose to report on or not
report on that matters. Look at the coverage of Andrew Yang on MSNBC. There
are over a dozen instances of ignoring him on charts and graphs and putting
lower-polling candidates on display other than him. A few times is one thing
but it’s literally over 15 times, including ignoring him for the first 30 mins
of the November debates and giving him the least amount of talking time of all
the candidates for the 4th debate in a row. Things like this show that media
is biased to a degree that is undermining our democracy.

~~~
mistermann
See also:
[https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/](https://old.reddit.com/r/bernieblindness/)

I would say this is beyond biased and well into the "literally evil" category.

------
mikece
Something which continues to stun me is how much spin and opinion are added to
the news and that "just the facts" isn't a thing anymore. I listen to the No
Agenda Show podcast (In The Morning!) which can most succinctly be described
as news deconstruction and they go _to the source material,_ transcripts, and
audio clips _with context_ as often as possible -- and then contrast those
against what CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and the rest are saying. In too many cases the
news outlets, both (American) conservative and (American) liberal are claiming
significance and meaning that is either absent from the source material or
_COMPLETELY OPPOSITE_ of what the source material suggests.

Strangely, this is reassuring to my sanity because looking at the opposite
points of view of the media leads the logical person to conclude they can't be
talking about the same thing, that they both cannot be true. With news
deconstruction like they do on No Agenda it becomes obvious that "mainstream
news" in the United States is pretty much a world of make-believe these days.

~~~
NWviking
In the morning!

------
vearwhershuh
You can't.

Despite the social shame associated with it, I no longer even believe main
stream history around things like the kennedy assassination. I don't know
_what_ happened, but I'm skeptical that what they say happened actually
happened.

We live in an epistemological radical age, with mass psychological operations
being carried out by multiple state and non-state actors.

The good news is that the only sane response is to step back and focus on the
ones we love around us, which is what we should be doing anyway.

~~~
k_sze
The problem is that, in order to protect the ones you love, especially their
future, you need to make some important decisions like voting, joining
protests when you need to, and maybe even trying to convince other people to
vote for the same candidate or to join you in protest; all of these activities
require being informed of the true agenda and abilities of candidates, of
important socio-political issues, etc.

You can't just say "I'll focus on the ones I love around me" and ignore the
rest.

~~~
vearwhershuh
I disagree. In as much as any of those distract you from raising good
children, they hurt more than they help, and voting and political activity in
general is pointless (at best) in most countries. The elites are going to get
what they want until there is bloodshed, and probably even beyond that as
well.

Irish Democracy[1] is more effective and more moral than any sort of political
activism.

[1] _" Quiet, anonymous, and often complicitous, lawbreaking and disobedience
may well be the historically preferred mode of political action for peasant
and subaltern classes, for whom open defiance is too dangerous….One need not
have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy.
More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once
called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and
truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or
rioting mobs." James Scott - Two Cheers for Anarchism_

~~~
k_sze
What you are talking about is the "action". I don't think that really
invalidates my point: good old democracy via voting may not be your preferred
mode of political action, but you still need to be _informed_ about issues so
that you take action for the right cause, whatever the form of political
action you want to take.

Put another way, you need to be informed so that you can engage in lawbreaking
and disobedience for the right cause.

Disclaimer: I'm not advocating for lawbreaking or disobedience. What I said
above was just for the sake of argument in favour of staying informed.

~~~
vearwhershuh
Right, but with the main information channels (popular media, academic media,
history) being at least in part a system of disinformation and control, and
with the alternative channels easily overwhelmed by state and non-state actors
as well as kooks, even paying attention is usually a net negative. It takes up
valuable time and energy you could be using locally.

I suppose my point here is mainly one of degree: sure, be somewhat informed as
to what the current disinformation campaigns are, but don't take it too
seriously or think you are getting any "truth" out if it. And read old books,
especially by people who were popular in their time but are now ignored, such
as Henry George.

Voting, of course, is pointless.

------
BurnGpuBurn
From the article: "One way to restore trust is to give power back to the
people, enabling them to choose what stories matter most to them. By doing
this, we can revolutionise the current state of the news media — from an
entity that dictates information to an industry that only reports legitimate
information that has been requested by the population."

That's the only solution that's offered, and a bad one at that. Letting "the
people decide", e.g. democratizing the news, is a bad idea. How would we know
what to choose? How would we know that there's an important issue out there
that needs to be reported on, beforehand? Normal people aren't investigative
reporters.

I don't have a solution either, but I know what it is we need. We need good
journalists to do good journalism and be able to choose freely what they
research and report on. The current for-profit corporate structure of the news
media is incompatible with that.

That's why you get more truth nowadays from independent journalists,
researchers and content creators than from the corporate media, which will
almost exclusively lie to you to further an agenda. It's very hard to separate
the weed from the chaff though, and it requires a lot of critical thinking and
observation of the reader.

~~~
mistermann
> I don't have a solution either, but I know what it is we need. We need good
> journalists to do good journalism and be able to choose freely what they
> research and report on. The current for-profit corporate structure of the
> news media is incompatible with that.

Well sure, but how can such a thing really be accomplished, considering all
the difficult pre-requisites, one of the main ones being likely no workable
business model under the current state of affairs in the world?

This fake news thing is a huge problem, but who do we expect to find a
solution, under the current constraints nature forces upon us? Politicians?
Media? Altruistic billionaires? Democracy ("the people")?

In the bizarre matrix of information flow that takes place on Planet Earth
circa 2019, HN happens to be a unique and substantial junction, frequented by
an unusually high concentration of intelligent and logical people. I propose
that if something is ever going to change, if any entity is capable of
bringing the mental horsepower to the table to perform a comprehensive,
unbiased analysis of the problem, and come up with workable solutions that can
overcome the unfortunate constraints, it is going to take the collective
intelligence of something like the HN community. I further propose that not
only do we have this capability, but also that we have a _responsibility_. The
world is what we make of it, and as it is it seems like we're all using our
substantial intellectual abilities to analyze the problem, but then just
complain to each other about it and point out how others (the people mentioned
above) "should" fix it. News flash: they're not going to fix it, _for the very
reasons that people are pointing out in this thread_.

So, what are we going to do about this problem dang?

Or the same idea from a different perspective:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzVmVDCtFg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKzVmVDCtFg)

I've become quite fascinated lately how artists seem able to better
communicate complex, multi-dimensional ideas, where plain language and logic
fails. But then, this has always been the case if you stop and think about it.

I'll throw one idea in the ring: a government-sponsored, unbiased and
transparent, crowd-sourced version of Snopes, that doesn't just fact-check
cherry picked fake news stories, but rather does a continuous review of the
daily news stream. The goal isn't to perform a full, "truthful" telling of
each story, but rather to serve as a "spot the lie" service, pointing out
bias, assumptions, memes, opinions, mind reading, future predicting, history
rewriting, logical fallacies, different perspectives, overlooked
complications, and so forth and so on. The goal is not to tell people what's
_really_ going on, but rather to make it crystal clear that _in actuality, we
don 't really know WHAT is going on_! And that's ok, because at least we'd now
know that, which is quite an improvement from our current state.

Of course, this is kind of what reddit is in a sense, and it typically
degrades into a shitshow of people yelling at each other and voting on their
subconscious biases. Identifying that behavior as a problem, and finding a
solution, is something I suspect the minds of HN could solve. Well, if we
could stop fighting amongst each other that is.

------
schalab
I dont think ownership is the main problem.

The larger problem seems to be global.

The ability to be expressive comes with it certain biological traits and
dispositions. These traits may determine your viewpoints on matters.

So, if I hire journalists purely based on their writing ability, I may find
most of them have very similar political views. If I create an industry of the
best actors/musicians, again I may find them to have similar traits and views.

So, you can have a situation where some view has 50% support in the larger
population, but almost no support in the press, academia, entertainment
industry etc.

In a society based on free speech and no violence, the views supported by
expressive people have an overwhelming advantage. The problem is just because
you are very good at communication, doesnt mean your viewpoint is always
correct. That is the reason some brilliant professors dont make it in the
private sector, while someone who cant string a sentence together becomes a
billionaire.

But when people see, supposedly neutral organizations have an overwhelming
slant to one side of a viewpoint, the organization loses credibility. They are
in a bubble.

When you no longer have institutions of fairness everyone can agree upon, you
create the problem of fake news.

~~~
entropy_
"The ability to be expressive comes with it certain biological traits and
dispositions. These traits may determine your viewpoints on matters."

This is an extremely hand-wavy assumption that you're basing your arguments
on. Any evidence to back that up? It would seem to me that the ability to
express one's views would be orthogonal to one's viewpoints on various
matters.

~~~
pixl97
> It would seem to me that the ability to express one's views would be
> orthogonal to one's viewpoints on various matters.

Since when? I know quite a number of brilliant engineers in different fields.
Most of them should never be put in front of a camera or a general audience
for public speaking. Having strong and even well understood viewpoints does
not mean you have the ability to translate them outside of your domain well.
That is a rather rare trait.

------
dna_polymerase
The info-graphic posted in the article links back originates from titlemax.com
[0]. Their article at least list the owners of some outlets. I've got to say I
am a bit surprised to see such an blogpost from a lending corp. Their wiki
article suggest they faced criticism in the past for predatory lending [1], I
wonder if this is their version of getting back at those who reported on them,
or what their intention for that topic is?

[0]: [https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/who-
owns...](https://www.titlemax.com/discovery-center/lifestyle/who-owns-your-
news-the-top-100-digital-news-outlets-and-their-ownership/) [1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TitleMax](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TitleMax)

------
golemotron
> How can you know what news is real

It's actually easier to tell today whether something is fake because there are
more outlets to determine an intersection within.

Here's how you do it:

Read both CNN and Fox. If something is reported on both, it's real. For
stories that exist on both, notice the slant of each story. Pay attention to
emotive conjugation [1] and ask yourself these three questions:

1\. Why did the editors pick this story?

2\. What is their opinion of it and the actors in it?

3\. What stories are not being reported because the editors are not interested
in them.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotive_conjugation)

------
ra120271
I've always felt news organisations should be legally required to be non-for-
profit and wages capped at some sensible multiple of the national average wage
(e.g 6x)

~~~
krapp
The likely result of that would be news organizations being primarily
influenced by governments, corporate donors and religious organizations.

------
darren0
It's somewhat ironic that you can't even trust this article. There's an
obvious bias towards a "power struggle" view of the world's problems. The
issue with the current state of affairs is essentially assumed to be because
of billionaires and corporate consolidation. The solution presented is then to
give more power to the people. Neither point is substantiated by fact.

One could just as easily argue that the state of the media is due to a failure
to adapt to the internet in which blogs, Twitter, and social media become
peoples primary source of information. So the "power of the people" could have
in fact caused this issue. This also being a conjecture.

The only point in this article that is well substantiated is that trust in
media is low and I feel this article is perfectly on trend.

~~~
pixl97
Its generally thought that trust in media was dropping before the advent of
the blog. Massive consolidation in the media industry along with the event of
24 hour news where something had to fill the channel at all times is
considered a precursor to the situation we are in.

------
insickness
There was a post going around showing a screenshot of CNN versus Fox after
Sonderland's testimony at the impeachment hearings. Each had a wildly
different take on what was said, at least in the headline. It was posted as a
complaint that one of these sites was fake news and the other reflected
reality more accurately.

I don't see a problem with two wildly different takes on the same incident,
particularly when it is political. In fact, I would say this is a sign of a
healthy democracy. Compare it to the alternative: a single, typically state-
sponsored viewpoint in a totalitarian state.

This isn't to say there aren't problems with fake news, the corporatisation of
media, sensationalism, etc. But competing narratives imposes at least some
checks and balances.

------
faissaloo
You can't. Start asking how the information the news gives you is actually
benefiting you.

------
mstrlaw
First, start by seriously broadening the range of sources you get your news
from. Specifically, choose to put in some "contrary" sources to those you are
used to. Second, analyse and average out the stances & reporting angle from
the articles that are put out about any subject. Finally, be mindful to always
look at things critically and don't take things at face value. These are
businesses and therefore have agendas. Besides Google News there's nothing out
there that is able to cluster news articles from multiple sources into a
single topic, so here's my shameless plug:
[https://thoro.news](https://thoro.news)

------
mc32
One attempt could be forming professional associations where members get
disbarred for violating principles for reporting.

It wouldn’t be perfect but could be better than what we have where there is no
responsibility or accountability for misrepresenting news events.

~~~
k_sze
I'm afraid that in the bigger picture of modern media landscape, that's not
going to have much of an effect.

Let's say you disbar some John Doe so he cannot be hired by a news media
organisation any more.

There is still nothing stopping him from blogging, tweeting, instagramming,
and tiktoking. I suspect that the people who really know how to spin stories
and get a following don't really need to work for a newspaper at all.

What I'm saying is that the news corporations may not be as influencial as
some people believe. Let me take, for example, the Hong Kong protests/riots
(whatever you would like to call them). There were plenty of fake news and
rumors circling around Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc; and those had real
influence on how people viewed the protests/riots; none of those fake news or
rumors had to come from a "proper" news tv station or newspaper.

~~~
mc32
You make a good point about that and this doesn’t solve that issue.

The issue it tries to address is the one where people are looking to find
journalistic news based on confirmed evidence rather than hearsay,
speculation, playing loose with statistics, posing opinionmakers as experts
and driving narrative, etc.

------
grumple
First, don't trust anything that isn't a direct, verifiable quote (basically,
on camera). Ignore headlines and anything that is an interpretation of what
someone said. Same goes for any other facts - believe what you can verify, or
where there's direct testimony from people who were there and know what
happened.

Second, make an effort to understand the context of any actions or quotes.
This may require some more research and understanding. You can rarely extract
this from a news article and requires some careful language parsing to
determine what the facts are vs some reporters opinion or agenda.

~~~
sideshowb
You have heard of deepfakes, right?

~~~
IngvarLynn
The need to properly digitally sign absolutely all content is higher than
ever.

~~~
pixl97
Which again, has a multitude of problems.

------
DanielBMarkham
If you think about it, this is the same problem faced by any student of
history. Some facts are "solid", some are squishy, interpretations are vague
and/or self-serving, much is made up to support various narratives the
participants are peddling.

I wonder if we'll start seeing 1) better tools for historians, and 2) tools
historians currently used accelerated/improved to do more real-time news.

------
RickJWagner
I think the biggest problem isn't reporting false statements. It's reporting
marginal or true statements, but presenting only one side of the story. Or
controlling the narrative-- by selecting which questions to ask/answer, the
purveyor totally controls the conversation.

I think the only defense is to get news from a variety of diverse sources.

------
k_sze
Completely off-topic.

Came here to say that I hate that stupid ticker at the top. Utterly
unnecessary, gratuitous, overboard animation, _even when the price of an item
didn 't actually change_!

Immediately switched to Reader View in Firefox because the ticker was too
annoying.

------
known
Very difficult due to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)

------
markus_zhang
You can't. And to be frank, consuming multiple news sources doesn't move you
closer to the truth, especially for political stuffs.

------
vinniejames
By reading different news sources and forming your own opinion. The truth is
out there

------
hos234
I get my news from PewDiePie

~~~
busterarm
But he stopped Pew News. :(

