
Some notes for journalists about cybersecurity - colinprince
https://blog.erratasec.com/2018/10/some-notes-for-journalists-about.html#more
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tptacek
Journalism is no more based on the idea of telling a perfect truth (rather
than a "near" one) than software development is based on shipping bug-free
software. The AP doesn't fire photographers for failing to relate a perfect
truth, but rather for deliberately deceiving its readership. Like software
development, journalism is a system of processes aimed at producing the best
approximation of a practically unobtainable perfect outcome.

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pdonis
_> Journalism is no more based on the idea of telling a perfect truth (rather
than a "near" one) than software development is based on shipping bug-free
software._

Nobody expects journalists to be perfect. But doing your best to ship bug-free
software that does what your users want, while sometimes failing to detect a
bug, is not the same as shipping software that does something subtly different
from what your users want, in order to serve your own interests. I think the
journalistic equivalent of the latter is what the author of the article is
accusing journalism of (and I tend to agree).

 _> The AP doesn't fire photographers for failing to relate a perfect truth,
but rather for deliberately deceiving its readership._

How is photoshopping the photographer's own shadow out of a picture that's not
even about the photographer in the first place (so the shadow has no
significance in the picture, it's just a distraction from the actual content)
"deliberately deceiving" the people who look at it?

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detcader
I don't see how all journalism is not inherently self-serving to the
journalists' own narratives to a non-zero degree. I don't believe you can
prevent that. Glenn Greenwald did a good job making the point in an interview
from 2016: [https://current.org/2016/03/glenn-greenwald-on-the-
adversari...](https://current.org/2016/03/glenn-greenwald-on-the-adversarial-
force-of-a-free-press/) starting at "So is it your position..."

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Paul_S
Whatever happened to the Bloomberg story, did they apologise in the end?

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catacombs
The Bloomberg editors stand with the reporters, so no apology. Besides some
angry press statements, there hasn't been detailed evidence that, without a
shadow of a doubt, disproves Bloomberg's story.

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Animats
That's not good enough. If this was real, Supermicro motherboards with that
"feature" should have been found by now, and the technical press should have
scanning electron microscope pictures of what's inside that chip.

~~~
catacombs
> Supermicro motherboards with that "feature" should have been found by now

Maybe it already has, and the problem is so serious they do not want the
public to know how badly they fucked up. The tech companies aren't immune to
catastrophic PR.

