
Breaking News is broken - marban
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/04/boston_bombing_breaking_news_don_t_watch_cable_shut_off_twitter_you_d_be.single.html
======
DanielBMarkham
The product that you _appear_ to be buying is instantaneous transmission of
the news, perhaps as much as a minute or two ahead of others.

The product you are actually buying is non-existent. You are the product.
People pay good money in order to manipulate your social drive to keep you as
viewers.

I said this to some friends on FB yesterday, but it bears repeating. Of all
the players in this terrible tragedy, the terrorists, the police, the news
media, the administration, the politicians, the security-industrial complex
and so forth -- it's in everybody's interest to create and sustain some huge
public spectacle. That's not a good thing for a democracy or the continuation
of a free society. </rant>

~~~
nostromo
I realized late last week that I wasn't following this story as a news story
anymore. I literally felt like I was watching 24, with cliff-hangers and all.
It had stopped being something I followed to remain a well-informed person and
just devolved into popcorn-munching entertainment.

It's a clear reminder that limiting news consumption is healthy.

~~~
maigret
Indeed. I can only advise you to read "The Information Diet" if you haven't
yet. The state of the media influences a lot the state of politics as well -
and not only that, our whole culture. 24/24 news watching is more than
popcorn, rather like only eating bacon burgers.

------
crazygringo
This is exactly the same conclusion I came to at the end of the day yesterday.

I realized I probably "wasted" three hours following the story. Because at the
end of the day, I gained nothing I couldn't have gotten in reading an article
at 11pm for five minutes.

I swear, it's like a drug. It's exciting at the time, but afterwards you
think, well, that was a stupid waste of my time.

~~~
freshfruit
You're right and Slate is right as well.

However, yesterday a couple million people really needed to know what was
going on immediately. For those of us who live in and around Boston, it's a
really small town (that punches wayyy above its weight). It seems like
everybody I know in Boston was nearby to some part of the craziness. Those who
weren't had a loved one nearby.

Everyone in Boston can say something like, "my friend crossed the finish line
a half hour before the blasts," "my girlfriend worked right by the finish
line," "I walked through Kendall a half hour before the MIT cop was shot," "my
neighbor went to the hospital with a somewhat serious wound."

Given the proximately, we simply needed to know where stuff was happening
immediately. People will point to the journalistic errors and say we were
dangerously misled at times. But that is the risk of all information that pops
up on the internet. Everyone living in the internet age has learned to attach
probabilities to everthing we read. I give CNN breaking news 60% probability
of getting it right. I give @YourAnonNews 30% probability of getting it right.
Although Twitter reports are often wrong, the right story is usually in there,
and thoughtful people are always questioning the right facts.

I just want to come back to where I started. You're right that breaking news
is broken. But yesterday, the chatter on Twitter alerted us of risks hours
ahead of sound/verifiable reporting. Although many of those reports were
quickly rescinded, I believe many Bostonians made prudent, timely choices as a
result.

I guess my point is that news has different purposes for different audiences.
For at least one audence yesterday, I thought the information coming over good
accounts on Twitter was a blessing.

~~~
nwzpaperman
142 characters is not journalism and never can be. 142 characters is gossip--
some truth mixed with lots of speculation and spin.

~~~
freshfruit
Hmm... perhaps that's a productive definition of "journalism." ... But I guess
I don't understand your point.

If you're saying that meaningful information can't be conveyed in 142
characters then I think you'd be dismissing the majority of spoken
conversations, chat, sms, etc. A good example to the contrary:
<https://twitter.com/Boston_Police>

But I think I've missed your point...

~~~
nwzpaperman
If diluted quality and deluge quantity--firehouse, ahem--is what this thread
is about, those are the points I speak to.

Trivial information can be shared in 142 characters. Sure, T is used by some
as an aggregator/reader/chat tool, but then what are we doing talking tech
here at HN instead of on T? The format and structure just isn't optimal for
these functions. It's breadth and no depth with that format and structure.

I never said gossip is of zero value, but I did say 142 characters will never
be journalism. The legacy media structure is precisely why the world is in
such a bad spot today. That you jest about journalism is just an example of
the systemic problem in society writ large. What you should be complaining
about is quality, not the function itself.

"Information is the currency of democracy." -JT

~~~
freshfruit
> That you jest about journalism is just an example of the systemic problem in
> society writ large...

The last thing I wanted was to jest about journalism. I'm an avid reader of
long accounts of events. My point in putting "journalism" in quotes was that
you seemed to be offering a definition to a specific term as opposed to
discussing the capacity to convey information through various media.

I didn't want to argue semantics -- I wanted to discuss the capacity of
Twitter to convey information quickly.

> What you should be complaining about is quality, not the function itself.

Sorry, I don't follow.

------
pseut
This article kind of misses the point in a few ways

1\. During important events, a lot of us want to be/feel connected to what's
going on. Watching on TV does that and following reddit/twitter/web does that
too, but picking up the paper hours later doesn't. You could make the same
argument as the article about the super bowl: if you want to know what
happened, don't use twitter or watch the game on TV (remember when everyone
thought the 49ers were going to score on that last drive to win the game? LOL
FAIL!) just wait until a few hours after it's over and read about it on your
favorite website! I mean, that's all true, but it misses the point. For a lot
of events, for better or worse, we want to know what's happening as it
happens.

2\. I use twitter to follow breaking news and news related to my profession
(I'm an economist), so I choose who to follow based on that and know which
people are reliable and unreliable; @AntDeRosa (among others) is awesome and
responsible; I stopped following some other people for irresponsibility during
hurricane sandy, etc. So there's no universal "twitter." I get a lot of
valuable "breaking news" out of twitter and reddit, but depending on how other
people use it, they may not. I really doubt that the Manjoo really believed
that all of the rumors he read online were true.

3\. Pretty much all of the relevant breaking news on, say, cyprus was coming
from twitter. There are many other examples. For breaking non-mainstream news,
there is no alternative to twitter etc. For this event, some of the threads on
r/news were amazingly informative.

4\. From what I've read, a lot of the misinformation problems were caused by
journalists either on TV or online. Point fingers at them.

edit: and by "them" I mean those particular people, not "journalists" as a
group.

~~~
lovehashbrowns
Pretty much this. I was following the BostonPoliceScanner tag or whatever it
was and that information was coming straight from the police scanners. I could
usually tell that some of the people misinterpreted what they were hearing and
tweeted misinformation but you could easily filter that out by looking at the
tweets as a whole, rather than coming just from one source. Any ONE source, I
don't care who it is, is going to make errors eventually. The more sources you
have, the better.

But I was able to listen in on the major events as they happened and that's
what I wanted. I got to hear on the scanner when the first suspect was
confirmed deceased and I was listening in as the police were chasing after the
second suspect. I heard "shots fired" when they found the second suspect
inside the boat, and "suspect in custody! suspect confirmed in custody!" when
he was finally caught. Then I listened in to the police officers
congratulating each other and feeling proud that their hard work and planning
had paid off.

That's what I wanted to get out of that and that's not something you get from
reading a newspaper a few hours later. You might get a nice narrative out of
it, and some journalist might add some fancy and colorful language to the
article, but that doesn't capture the FEELING of being part of it or the kind
of suspense you get from listening to the entire thing. Nor do you get to
appreciate how much work went into catching this guy. The articles afterwards
read like this: "Suspect 1 dead! Suspect 2 was captured! One officer died,
another officer critically injured! Here's a picture of a bunch of cops
standing around!" But listening in, you get to hear how calm the officers are
as they radio in to report some seriously intense stuff. You get to hear their
professionalism and how much organization goes into everything. You get to
understand fully what it is that they're doing out there. You get a far more
human perspective from the incident. That's what I appreciate more than
anything.

------
rythie
It's broken except for everyone who had to find out they were in lock down and
not to go out as a result.

It's broken except for the people who saw the suspect in the boat - who knew
from breaking news that he was being chased.

It's broken except for the people who wanted celebrate on the streets when the
suspect was caught.

In the UK at least, the newspapers are often wrong in all the same ways
suggested in the article, so that luxury of only publishing once a day doesn't
seem to help that much.

------
radley
You're doing it wrong.

Most breaking news isn't meant to be watched continuously. Most news is
designed for people who are busy doing other things and checking in once in a
while. Breaking means it's so new they haven't had time to summarize & package
it for you, so it'll be rough and weird.

That's it. The reason it's repetitive is to sound fresh for the next guy who
checks in.

If you're spending time watching it repeat, expecting something new to happen
as you're watching, you're frankly doing it wrong.

~~~
olefoo
So the technical solution is to have our news reading environment be aware of
which items we've seen, and only alert us when new information on a topic
we've expressed an intent to follow comes in.

So imagine that CNN tries to reinvent themselves after this weeks fiasco. They
spend a bunch of time and money setting up their newsgathering operation to
tag everything with metadata and provide special software to consume the tag
feeds and manage users attention; gobs of customisation options, in depth
access to the underlying data, not just for financial news, but also the
analysis of breaking events and the public reaction thereto. Basically a
Bloomberg Terminal, with a broader focus.

And if they do all of that. They will continue to lose money to outlets that
treat events as a cross between a circus-freak sideshow and a particularly
bloody genre of morality play ( FOX and NYPost, as instances of the Grand
Guignol approach to journalism ).

~~~
crusso
_FOX and NYPost, as instances of the Grand Guignol approach to journalism_

It's always amusing how Fox is so popular to slam that even in an article
where CNN is flamed for doing what they seem to do quite often - you have to
go after Fox.

Outside of the talking head shows on Fox, I find their reporting to be as good
or better than CNN. I think it's the result of the accepted culture of
attacking them because their talking head shows are to the right. They have to
be better than the next channel because they're under more scrutiny.

~~~
olefoo
Any news channel whose announcers are so visibly aroused by the prospect of
bombing countries that they actively demonize has lost any claim to
seriousness, sorry, that's the way it is.

~~~
crusso
Not sure what specific incident(s) you're talking about, but are you saying
that journalists who show bias in some way "lose any claim to seriousness"?

If so, I can point to many examples of bias on all major news and media
outlets.

------
lubujackson
The way to fix this problem is easy. Cite your sources. "According to a Boston
beat cop...", "According to a high-ranking FBI agent..."

I am SO sick of hear "according to a source" because they don't want to clue
in other news organizations. There was a time when news reporters considered
their jobs partially a civic duty. Protecting sources solely for selfish
reasons has completely diluted the concept of these "unnamed sources".

~~~
uxp
Late yesterday evening as the entire event was winding to a close, I sat on
@BostonGlobe's twitter page while listening to the audio stream. Every tweet
they put out was nearly identical to what was coming from the scanner audio,
prefixed with "A source says ...". The reason it was only "a source" was
because no one except the dispatcher and other cops on scene knew exactly who
was saying what. It's just some voice coming over the radio who is assumed to
be a cop.

------
ereckers
Don Lemon of CNN just now did a segment on how America can start to "heal"
with Dr. Drew, so they do have that going for them. Then Wolf at CNN spent
about 20 minutes describing how cool thermal imaging of the boat was, while
failing to mention the kid was actually discovered after the owner of the boat
noticed his boat cover was ripped and went to check it out.

I'm not sure that news outlets like CNN are "broken" per se as they had
abandoned "news" a long time ago (would OJ be a turning point?). Just like the
History channel is "broken" cable news is "broken". They just don't care about
news, it's really about audience retention and ratings. There's really nothing
wrong with that, it's just up to us to abandon them just as they have
abandoned their original intentions.

------
estsauver
While I appreciate the sentiment, there's a very real reason to watch breaking
news while you're in the area. My school was shut down and everyone was told
to stay inside, which makes it awfully hard to grab a book and let things blow
over.

It's a fundamentally different thing to watch the news about somewhere else
then it is to watch the news about where you are.

------
kmfrk
New York Times's "The Lede" was perfectly fine as an online resource.

From what I've read, MSNBC's Pete Williams - I think it was - also did a
stellar job, which could mean that "fixing" breaking news just means turning
to MSNBC instead of CNN.

Twitter is as good as the people you follow. Duh.

Stupid linkbait article.

------
Paul_D_Santana
Easy solution: Don't read, listen to, or watch the news.

If I recall correctly, there was even an article about this idea on Hacker
News just a few days ago.

If there is ever anything really important, I am bound to hear it via
conversations with my family, friends, or co-workers. Or even a quick scan of
headlines on HN. No need to be glued to CNN.

However, articles on HN about inspiring topics, software engineering
principles, or new ways of thinking, there's something worth reading.

------
mcphilip
Ridiculous article, IMHO. Breaking news isn't 'broken', it's just that there's
an immaturity in the consumers of breaking news when trying to interpret the
info.

For instance, a couple of years ago when I first joined Twitter after
realizing it was the best way to get breaking news (i.e. I literally joined to
follow @BreakingNews), one of the first breaking news tweets I ran into was
"NORTH KOREA SAYS WAR WILL RETURN TO THE CONTINENT". My initial reaction was
"wow, I'm glad I joined Twitter and have early access to this important
information". It didn't take long to realize that while the breaking news was
true in that it quoted an official NK representative, it was useless in
alerting me to a new war because I was not yet aware that NK pulls this kind
of stunt relatively frequently.

While there are plenty of incidents in the past week where false information
was spread, it doesn't imply to me that I should ignore breaking news until it
is properly spoon fed to me in a newspaper article the next day. Instead, it
just reminds me that something like a feed from an unfiltered police scanner
should be considered as a source of limited information about an occurring
event.

~~~
Joeri
You sound like someone still addicted to breaking news.

The point of the article is that the reliable information value of breaking
news is exactly zero. Until you get the summarized and verified end-of-week
report, you're being entertained instead of informed.

Breaking news is lead generation. It's a stream of leads which may turn out to
have a fact at the end. The right audience for that are journalists, not
regular people. Tracking live news without doublechecking everything you hear
is a way of satisfying information addiction, but it is not a way of getting
informed.

~~~
mcphilip
I get your point and think it's well stated, I just don't see that it's valid
for all types of breaking news. My usage of breaking news is mostly related to
participation in the stock market. Sometimes there is breaking news that will
immediately alter the outlook for stocks and bonds around the globe.

For instance, the Bank of Japan recently set a target of purchasing 60-70
trillion yen worth of long-term debt and securities per year in an effort to
fight against deflation. This type of news is released unpredictably and
waiting for an "end-of-week report" may not adequately meet my asset
management goals.

------
lotharbot
It's not so much that "breaking news is broken" as that breaking news has
certain specific failure modes.

When "breaking news" is covering an ongoing disaster or police action, where
the information they're getting is potentially second- or third-hand, and
where the primary sources might not fully understand what they themselves
witnessed, there's a lot of opportunity to go wrong. Crimes and disasters may
play out very differently from expectations, and may therefore require careful
after-the-fact analysis of every available shred of information, before
they're actually understood.

On the other hand, certain events can be fully and clearly understood right as
they happen. Consider "new Pope selected", "tornado spotted 3 miles west of
Townsville", or "School track team takes second at Rival Invitational; Person
wins 4 individual events". Official announcements, or events happening
according to an understood pattern, generally come through the "breaking news"
cycle without problems.

------
brianmackey
I basically stumbled onto this strategy this week. My job doesn't leave me
with much time to obsessively follow breaking news on Twitter or TV. The first
day or two, I listened to NPR for a couple of hours (full disclosure: I work
at a member-station). But it wasn't until the next morning, reading my dead-
tree edition of The New York Times, that I felt like I had a decent grasp of
what the facts were.

Of course there are limitations: my NYT still had the suspects at large Friday
morning. Obviously the story had developed considerably since press time.

Nevertheless, Manjoo's point is well-taken. If you don't live in the immediate
vicinity (and thus need the news for personal safety), your knowledge -- and
your blood pressure -- will probably benefit from a bit of moderation in news
consumption.

------
austenallred
The problem isn't that there are unconfirmed reports floating around, that has
always been the case and always will be. The problem is that the major news
bodies are reporting unsubstantiated rumors as truth without having the time
to investigate.

Basically news is a race, and since the major reporting institutions used to
be the only ones racing they would always win, so they would make sure they
would do it right. Now they're racing with Twitter, yet trying to have the
same authority as they used to. It's a race you can't win.

Just listen to the news for a few minutes and you'll hear "Many sources are
saying that..." That really means "We're watching Twitter, and..." but they're
not willing to admit that they don't really know for sure.

------
MatthewPhillips
As someone who exclusively followed this story online, the idea that it can
replace traditional media is much overstated. Traditional media might grasp at
straws and over-analyze, but you at least get some indication of what is going
on. The last hour of the standoff I had no idea what was going on other than
the suspect was in a boat. And I was following all of the people you're
supposed to.

On a personal note, I found myself nervous all of Friday. I did check twitter
frequent, refresh a few websites, etc. So from a sanity standpoint, I
completely agree with the author and I'll be taking the advice next time. Go
do something productive. Get your mind off the horror; you can update yourself
tomorrow.

~~~
gkoberger
I don't think you were following the "all the people you're supposed to",
then. In this particular case, Reddit did an awesome job of staying up to date
(and correcting misinformation).

EDIT:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_th...](http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1cnwms/mods_removed_thread_live_updates_of_boston/)

~~~
kens
Specifically, the Live Update threads on reddit.com/r/news were amazingly
detailed. I'm not normally a reddit user, but the minute-by-minute details
went way beyond what I found elsewhere. (Although you end up with a lot of
unfiltered stuff - anyone know what's up with the 70-year old man with the
trigger switch that was being discussed there?)

On the other hand, Fox made me gnash my teeth when a reporter on the street in
Boston presented "breaking news" that there would be a press conference in a
few hours, which is hardly news let alone breaking news.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I disagree. Particularly when nothing is happening, you can't beat a TV crew
telling you that nothing is happening (or talking about / repeating old
information which is the same thing as saying nothing is happening).

When all you have is a twitter stream and a few websites to cmd+r you are left
with the feeling that you are missing something. It's the advantage of visual
media and aggregation.

------
Symmetry
Generally speaking I'd say that the problem is more that most daily news will
give you a distorted view of the world as you come to believe that newsworthy
things are much more common than they really are. I try to follow the news
only on a week to week only basis, a long enough lag to let people actually
get their facts straight before rushing to report. Reading the wikipedia pages
for events also tends to result in a really good summary without excess fluff.

Of course, last Friday I was stuck inside with everyone else in my section of
Boston and I mostly spent the day following my friends with scanners on
zephyr. So the temptation does get to be too much when the news is too close
by.

------
mightybyte
I've thought this for quite some time, but it became especially clear to me
yesterday. I was at the gym where TVs were unavoidably visible, but the volume
was turned down so I couldn't hear anything. I was there for an hour or so and
the picture and headline didn't appear to change at all the entire time. It
said something about cops with guns drawn in Watertown...THE WHOLE FRIGGING
TIME!

I have almost zero interest in the sports stuff that normally graces the gym
TVs, but yesterday I was longing for ESPN. This just leaves me more convinced
than ever that mainstream news the way it exists today is actually harmful to
society.

------
anigbrowl
So's opinion-writing based on breaking news. Slate's just feeling blowback
from the clumsily-written opinion piece they published earlier this week in
which one of their writers expressed the hope that the bombers were white
Americans - presumably because he doesn't want to see another ill-thought-out
foreign military adventure.

A worthy enough sentiment on its own, but expressed so insensitively and
divisively that these criticisms come across as nothing more than an attempt
by the publisher to deflect scrutiny onto other media outlets.

------
pritianka
I completely agree with the comments here that news coverage has devolved into
addictive popcorn munching fare. Sadly, this onion piece hits home:
[http://www.theonion.com/articles/breaking-has-the-word-
break...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/breaking-has-the-word-breaking-
lost-all-its-meanin,32115/)

Having worked in PR, I truly feel the world of media and journalism needs some
serious disruption (hate that I used the word, kill me now). Hopefully some
startup is cranking away :-)

------
senthilnayagam
Twitter as news is bleeding edge, not for the weak hearts, and it is not
trying to replace news channels.

most of the initial tweets were wrong, you are seeing the thought process
before it has been confirmed.

One good part, with people tweeting and the power of amplifying via retweets,
it would tough to stage events as in conspiracies

------
Aardwolf
In fact, I often just read the Wikipedia article after the facts. It is often
must better organized than the combination of articles from the days before.

Of course, the news did help, it made me aware of the event in question
happening. But it's not really the source of actual information.

------
D9u
_...I’m choosing not to mention his name here, that’s not going to accomplish
very much—it’s already been stained._

How about, instead of your current headline, you put his name in your
headline, along with the words, "HE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!"

~~~
dredmorbius
Studies suggest that trying to correct myths and errors in this way tends to
backfire. I _did_ correct posts I'd already made tying the Brown student to
the bombers.

------
SonicSoul
it is some sort of human phenomenon, where we put up with a lot of
inconveniences just to get the real time (or near real time) experience of
something..

i think waiting in line for an apple product, putting up with commercials to
watch some tv show on the night it airs, paying large premiums for a device
that will be a lot cheaper in 6 months, wasting hours in live news coverage to
be the first to hear about the new developments of the story all fall into the
same category. it just doesn't make sense because all of these things are
better at a later time. when there are no lines, and the story is polished and
more factually correct.

------
arocks
Not just news, it is often better to be unplugged most of the time if you like
to get your creative juices flowing. The constant distractions are actually
the real roadblocks to critical thinking and creativity these days.

------
dclowd9901
I like when media takes an effort to critique itself but since the critics are
generally simply writers, no actual progress is made in bettering things.

It has all of the effectiveness of a meeting that results in no action items.

------
jusben1369
It's worth noting that TV news had the same impact on print as social media
now has on TV news. It's very new right now and we're finding our way.

------
npsimons
Upvoted for the (TL;DR) byline alone:

 _Don’t watch cable news. Shut off Twitter. You’d be better off cleaning your
gutters._

Too true.

------
caseysoftware
Newsflash: Rumors move faster than facts.

Film at 11. Uninformed conjecture at 10.

------
nwzpaperman
It's only the old public information structure that is broken. A purpose-built
public information system is already well into development and early-adopters
are seeing the future. I'm lean and committed, so feel free to engage in
rational argument.

The recipe:

1) Geospatial information system 2) Transparency 3) Exclusively peer-generated
content

<http://nwzpaper.com/socialContract>

~~~
guylhem
On "Exclusively peer-generated content", you may want to add the stuff you
create here on HN to nwzpaper.com, especially after having read your thoughts
on Assange and anonymity.

It's just a php copy/paste -
[http://en.blog.guylhem.net/post/48447265179/adding-a-
hacker-...](http://en.blog.guylhem.net/post/48447265179/adding-a-hacker-news-
ticker-to-your-website)

I can write a javascript version for you if you want.

~~~
nwzpaperman
Thanks for the input! I tend to adapt my comments into articles when the
entire thought comes together coherently. I will write an article on the flaws
of anonymity. Opportunity cost means trade-offs exist, but the internet
already has plenty of anonymous conduits for sharing information.

Addendum to the JS thoughts:

As people saw with RSS after reader went down, the data structure isn't
consistent across the RSS world either. That makes the reader problem more
complex than first perceived.

Rather than try to distill complex content and fit it into a para-structure,
nwzPaper is designed to be a transparent third-party to standardize article
format in the publishing form:

1) title 2) abstract 3) location pin 4) article body 5) media

Each article includes the journalist's name--not to be confused with the new
legal distinction of blogger--and a link to his or her content inventory and a
link to a structured "perspective" to interpret the journalist's information
product through.

If a search engine or aggregator organizes third-party content there will
always be an indexing/crawling delay. That makes traditional search brands
only useful for non-news, historic information query and analysis.

Search was a big deal ten years ago because it got rid of categories, but it
is insufficient for solving the news problem.

