
Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper (1807) - apsec112
https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechs29.html
======
jungletime
"If You Don’t Read the Newspaper You Are Uninformed, If You Do Read the
Newspaper You Are Misinformed" Mark Twain

------
hprotagonist
It is always, always worth remembering the truly vituperous hatred of the
election of 1800. (and the fact that newspapers were truly partisan outfits)

"don't vote for that guy, he's a french traitor who burns bibles! if you elect
jefferson, rape and murder will be legal!"

"oh yeah? well, my opponent's gunning to marry his kid off to the british
crown and make us colonists again and establish an Adams dynasty!"

------
mellowdream
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads
nothing but newspapers." Thomas Jefferson

"Once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever, even to the
protagonists." Norman Mailer

"Newspapers are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident
and the collapse of civilisation." George Bernard Shaw

"In the real world, the right thing never happens in the right place and the
right time. It is the job of journalists and historians to make it appear that
it has." Mark Twain

"I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets." Napoleon

"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are
being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." Malcolm
X

"The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything. Except what is
worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesman-like
habits, supplies their demands." Oscar Wilde

"The lowest depth to which people can sink before God is defined by the word
journalist." Soren Kierkegaard

"Whenever I thought of you I couldn't help thinking of a particular incident
which seemed to me very important. . . . you made a remark about 'national
character' that shocked me by its primitiveness. I then thought: what is the
use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to
talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., & if
it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday
life, if it does not make you more conscientious than any . . . journalist in
the use of the DANGEROUS phrases such people use for their own ends." \-
Wittgenstein

"The newspaper epitomises the goal of today’s educational system, just as the
journalist, servant of the present moment, has taken the place of the genius,
our salvation from the moment and leader for the ages." \- Nietzsche

[https://web.archive.org/web/20180327031901/http://www.aarons...](https://web.archive.org/web/20180327031901/http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews/)

------
refurb
One source of geopolitical information I've found to be head and shoulders
above the mainstream media is Stratfor. Now before you hit the downvote button
and reply "You idiot, it's run by the CIA", hear me out.

I got a free trial a few year back and was pretty impressed with: 1) the level
of detail, 2) the attempt at focusing on facts 3) the lack of "this is what it
means".

I was reading an article on stability in Afghanistan and it read like "There
are 5 warlords...the warlord in Eastern Afghanistan is X, and used to be
aligned with Y, but is now aligned with Z, because of...". It didn't hesitate
to go back 50 years to provide context for a given fact. And there wasn't a
lot of "this person is good and this person is bad".

If you're not interested in the topic it's _pretty damn dry reading_ , but if
you are interested, the level of detail is impressive and I came away actually
knowing more than when I started.

Now of course there is bias in the reports and it will be presented through
the filter of Western intelligence agencies, but if they do cover a topic you
want more information on, I highly recommend checking it out.

------
tdeck
Most of the comments here are missing a big part of the context: newspapers in
the early 1800s didn't do journalism as we know it today. Most relied entirely
on rumors and letters that crossed their desk, combined with cribbing old
stories from the foreign press. Newspaper staff was often just one or two
people doing the writing, marketing, and distribution (and often the
typesetting too). There wasn't this idea that a journalist should be
conducting interviews or investigating stories or even arriving at the scene
of anything. Most papers were funded largely by political patronage as well.

For a great book on the history of American journalism I recommend "Infamous
Scribblers" by Eric Burns.

------
quacked
A primary concern with "the news" is that it has no incentive to be correct,
especially when it is reporting on predictions. Consider a situation where a
respected economist releases a report that predicts a high likelihood of
economic recession. "The news" will circulate something like "HIGH PROBABILITY
OF RECESSION, SAYS FAMED ECONOMIST". The impending recession will be the talk
of the people for the next several weeks.

If the recession arrives, "the news" will report on the economic bloodbath,
credit itself for reporting on the prediction of the recession in a timely
manner, and give itself awards for accuracy in reporting.

If the recession does not arrive, "the news" will report on the surprising
market strength and why economists predicted the future incorrectly, credit
itself for reporting on the inaccuracy of our once-great financial system, and
give itself awards for accuracy in reporting.

~~~
tsimionescu
A related aspect is that a nice, solid, impartial fact-based news organization
will often report on what various public figures have said. Since they are
impartial, objective, and just reporting the facts, they will of course
refrain from commenting on the truth of said declarations - that would be the
reporter's biases showing!

"X says Y" is objective news. "Y is actually not true" is journalists showing
their biases!

~~~
quacked
You're right. It gets really gnarly, really quickly. "X says Y" is objective
news, but it is extremely difficult to evaluate Y without deep knowledge of
both the background of Y and the reliability of X.

"Y is actually not true" is partial, biased journalism, but can also serve as
critical information about the truth of Y, or the reliability of X!

The safest bet is to be aware of what the news is claiming, but remember at
all times that the news is a signal repeater, not a signal generator. Whenever
possible, one must find primary documents or videos.

------
smolder
This of course has echoes in the present. I think the public may not be better
informed/closer to the truth than 20 years ago, but not much worse either. A
lot of things probably just weren't widely reported or could stay under the
radar before the internet and social media took over. Now when "undesirable
news" inevitably gets out, it has to be countered with contradictory
narratives and misinformation. It's gotten to the point that aligning yourself
politically one way or the other implies you must adopt a volume of their
favored fiction in addition to a shared interpretation of the real facts.

~~~
clairity
> "It's gotten to the point that aligning yourself politically one way or the
> other implies you must adopt a volume of their favored fiction in addition
> to a shared interpretation of the real facts."

being truly independent is a lonely row to hoe in my experience. nobody likes
or trusts you, because you're not all in on their side. despite this very real
cost, more and more people are adopting an indepedent stance, which i find
hopeful.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
Those that adopt an independent stance are often much more agreeable to get
along with.

After all, they aren't usually the ones interjecting political nonsense into
discussions every chance they get.

------
monkeynotes
I don't understand how we as a society turn a blind eye to being surrounded by
lies and misdirection. It's well known to be a folly and well documented that
governments the world over abuse their position of first hand knowledge to
redirect and re-cast truth, and manipulate public opinion in their
favour[1][2].

Perhaps at my age I have come to see patterns and have come to understand that
pretty much everything I don't have first hand experience of is likely to be
distorted to a lesser or greater extent. This is not only true of news and
public discourse, but also in my personal life. People naturally bend reality
to fit their beliefs, world views, and often to just tell a good story.

I am sure many adults are aware of this, but we never really talk about it.
Children are not educated about the nature of this problem. We are not taught
to think about the nature of information we consume, and yet many of us know
our lives are surrounded by lies and manipulators.

Manipulative advertising and government deception, both of which have reams of
psychological research backing their strategies, dominate a majority of our
lives and yet we don't educate each other as such.

I am very sad to come to realize that TV shaped my beliefs growing up, and it
was mostly based on myths driven by advertising dollars. Obviously
entertainment is not going away, and nor should it, but we should have
discourse highlighting who drives the narrative. One of the few facts we can
know is little of what we learn is truly verifiable - knowing that is hugely
helpful and allows us to make better decisions about what we value in life.

[1] [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-
wh...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/03/31/who-lied-to-whom) [2]
[https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-
magazine/2008/f...](https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-
magazine/2008/february/truth-about-tonkin)

~~~
lemonlizzie
Well stated.

------
refurb
What’s more insidious than the accuracy of what you read in the media is the
control the media has on what they actually cover.

If you cast a wide enough net, it pretty quickly becomes apparent that the
media is very selective about what they cover. One human rights issue may get
front page coverage, while another is completely ignored.

The vast majority of people think they are focused on important issues, when
in fact, they are just focused on what the media _tells them is important._

------
082349872349872
Credibility of seventeenth century publications:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859546](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23859546)

===

Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon have the day off from Hell, so they go up to
check out the Washington DC military parade.

"Look at those M1s," says Alexander, "if only I'd had them I wouldn't have had
to prematurely declare victory in southern asia!"

"Look at those F-35s," says Caesar, "if only I'd had them I would've captured
all of persia!"

"Look at this cable station," says Napoleon, peering into the window of the
Union Trust Bar, "if only I'd had it no one would ever have heard of
Waterloo!"

Bonus track:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbH1BVXywY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVbH1BVXywY)

------
bvinc
The problem with this line of thinking isn't that it's wrong. I could complain
about the media all day.

The problem is that main stream establishment media: NYTimes, APNews, The
Guardian, Reuters, etc are the best we have.

The people that complain about the media are the people that seek out
alternative media. Alternative media is infinity more misleading and
misinformed.

Thomas Jefferson surely didn't mean that you should turn to alternative media
like Twitter and YouTube for your news.

~~~
aero-glide
I like APNews and Reuters. Gaurdian and NYTimes are pretty inaccurate, atleast
when they report about my country.

------
njarboe
I would pay quite a bit for a newspaper in Jefferson's proposed format. To be
quite certain that something is true for current events, the reports on those
events would likely have to be delayed days or weeks after they broke. I would
be fine with that and is the complete opposite of today's instant, viral
seeking, click-bait, emotionally charged media landscape.

Edit:It would be even better if this paper was connected to a prediction
market where people could bet real money on if the "Truths" and
"Probabilities" events will be shown to be false at certain time steps in the
future.

~~~
Shoreleave
The closest thing might be the bloomberg terminal. It costs 2k a month, but
you can get a news feed of the topics you care about and it will be accurate
and factual. And then people instantly make bets based on that news.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> it will be accurate and factual

We're still waiting for the Supermicro retraction.

~~~
njarboe
That was a "hard to believe this is true, but it is in Bloomburg" moment for
me.

A nice summary of the situation a year after the article came out in 2018 can
be found here[1]. I wonder what their rational for not retracting the story.
Just one little line somewhere that few would notice would have put the
controversy to rest, but if they did it now. so late after the fact, it would
just add to the intrigue instead of diffuse it.

------
danielam
In this vein, "The Free Press" by Hilaire Belloc[0].

[0]
[https://archive.org/details/freepress00bellgoog/page/n12/mod...](https://archive.org/details/freepress00bellgoog/page/n12/mode/2up)

------
gxqoz
By the American Revolution, newspapers were getting closer to our modern
perception of them. But for the hundreds of years between their ostensible
invention in Germany and the late 18th century they were quite different. Many
only reported foreign news (in part to avoid domestic topics that may have
been more sensitive). They offered very little in terms of editorial. In
France, one particularly dull one was granted a monopoly, stopping
competition.

Andrew Pettegree's Invention of the News covers this in much greater detail:
[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/19/invention-
news...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/19/invention-news-andrew-
pettegree-alain-de-botton)

One other interesting anecdote from the book: For quite some time, the
identity of who was conveying the news was paramount. A nobleman's wild story
would be given more stock from contemporary audiences than several eyewitness
accounts from commoners.

~~~
dublin
Fake News is far more common than people think (not just the Gell-Mann effect,
but that helps...) I quit trusting anything I saw in the media in 1998, when
my wife and I saw NBC totally faking a hurricane report in Corpus Christi. The
reporter was in a rain slicker, and there was a lackey standing off-camera
with a hose spraying water. Corpus was on the dry side of a hurricane deep in
the Gulf that wound up hitting near Yucatan - winds were up, but there wasn't
a cloud for 400 miles. Fake News then, even faker news now.

~~~
war1025
Actual news these days comes from message boards such as this.

TV / Radio news is little better than entertainment.

The trouble the news industry is having is that you can get an equal amount of
information from social media without all the holier-than-thou garbage coming
from news anchors.

~~~
NoSorryCannot
I don't feel that way. Social media circulates a lot of weird takes. For the
many, many hot topics of 2020, I hear a lot of opinions that are something
like, I'm bored of this so it's not important and it's all fake news anyway so
I can make up my own story. That's a take that sounds like it should be quiet
but it's instead really noisy.

Not really a replacement for quality journalism.

~~~
war1025
> Not really a replacement for quality journalism.

The trouble (in my opinion) is that major networks don't really offer much in
the way of "quality journalists."

They've mostly devolved into getting hot takes from pundits and "rah rah our
team is great".

I listen to (and donate to) NPR (Iowa Public Radio specifically) because I
think they are about as good as you can get for "quality journalism", but even
their work devolves into garbage as soon as politics or culture come into
play.

It probably doesn't help that a few years ago they redid their program
structure to focus less on news and more on "think pieces" [1]

[1]
[https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2018/08/16/6392099...](https://www.npr.org/sections/publiceditor/2018/08/16/639209921/morning-
edition-resets-its-clock-again)

------
lqet
This reads like it is a statement about today's press

> Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The
> real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are
> in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of the
> day. I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow
> citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief, that they have
> known something of what has been passing in the world in their time; whereas
> the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any
> other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of
> the day are affixed to their fables.

------
InfiniteRand
The fact that no information sources can be trusted completely should be a
call to humility both in individual decisions and public decision making.

On a side note, I wonder if Thomas Jefferson had so low an opinion of the
press pre-1800 (before he was elected and when he was defending the right of
the press to be critical of the Adams administration)

------
totetsu
This reminds me of the 99pi podcast episode that just re-aired about how the
American post office was first set up mostly to share news papers between
colonies and build an informed connected population
[https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-revolutionary-
pos...](https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/the-revolutionary-
post/transcript)

------
abrbhat
Whenever I think of media, I keep going back to Rita Skeeter from Harry
Potter. It seems a very appropriate metaphor that there is no personal ill-
will on the part of the reporter but still the quill just keeps writing in a
scandalous way.

------
jackcosgrove
The fundamental problem with news reporting is that so much of it has
political implications, and political opinion among the public is bimodal. You
can look at the two left-right humps on a spectrum of political beliefs and
see two different worldviews. If you try to report the facts on any story that
has a political angle, you're probably going to alienate one of those
worldview modes. And god forbid the facts fall right in the middle and you
alienate both.

------
notadoc
You can experience this directly yourself on a near daily basis right now,
here's all you need to do.

\- Go on social media and find the endless streams of videos showing mayhem
and violence at many of the protests / riots going on throughout the country

\- Read the 'news' stories about those events, which rarely describe anything
resembling what you see in the videos

Do you believe the regurgitator who likely wasn't at the scene and probably
has bias, or your lying eyes?

------
toss1
Modern Analog in USA: those watching the most politically oriented sources,
Fox & MSNBC are actually WORSE informed than those who watch no news at
all.[1]

And those who watch actual sources (in the case of this study, the Sunday AM
interview shows) are best informed.

[1]
[http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/](http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2012/confirmed/)

------
loughnane
This dovetails with something I've been thinking much about recently:
providing a classical education, or at least a dose of it, to my kids.
Jefferson was a big proponent of this as well [0]

My reasoning is that there are few other venues that young people, in their
formative years, encounter such examples of deep critical thinking. I used to
think it snobbery to reference Socrates/Plato/Aristotle, etc. But reading the
Republic, Apology, Ethics, etc. really prompts you to think about your life
and how it relates to other in a society in a very meaningful way. It also
teaches you to be more critical of all ideas.

It seems to me that such perspectives are more important now than they've ever
been. Jefferson and others have espoused the idea that an educated populace is
required for a functioning democracy. While that may have been true in the
18th century, it is certainly more poignant in a world where people have an
instant and unending stream of comment and opinion coming to them wherever
they are.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_education...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_education#Views_on_classical_learning)

~~~
simonsarris
A classical _and_ a mythological education are both important and missing
today. I wrote recently:

> A mythological education is distinct from the common school subjects. It
> builds in the mind intuition for second-order effects, for the first lesson
> a child learns from one hundred stories is that every thing you do will have
> unintended consequences, something years of schoolwork fails to teach. Myths
> give us shared art and common culture—a set of characters with which we can
> play in and enjoy together. In any culture rich with myths, their vocabulary
> is enlarged far beyond words, to allegories and metaphors. The quality of
> thought follows.

(To this end I've been writing a book of fables, mostly for my children, but
serializing them by newsletter right now, which is turning out more popular
than I expected.)

~~~
sixstringtheory
I think this is very insightful, and is touched on quite a bit in Harari's
Sapiens, which is alluded to in a sibling to parent post, which also mentions
Jefferson:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24364993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24364993)

I picked up an old copy of Grimm's Tales on a whim and read some every now and
then before bedtime. Also Aesop's fables just to refresh my memory of them. I
enjoy them both and think it's a worthwhile format.

------
winter_blue
This letter is truly amazing, considering it was written in 1807.

I'd say the major mainstream publications have definitely gotten better at
having more journalistic integrity. E.g. the NYTimes does check/verify stuff
before publishing as far as I'm aware.

------
air7
I've been thinking about this topic a lot lately. It seems to me that the
nefarious ways in which modern media operates are responsible for a large
portion of the problems we see in the world today.

That's because the world in general is doing better than ever in almost any
measurable parameter, yet the general notion is that everything is going to
shit. This has real world consequences such as violent riots, couples deciding
not to bring a child into "this terrible world", depression etc.

The mere choice of what is news worthy and how much coverage any one item gets
already warps the mind's heuristics about how often this type of event occurs
and thus how important it is. Add to that the "artistic licence" that
reporters take (maliciously or otherwise) and the situation becomes really
dire.

The reason for this problem is that society has decided that news should be a
form of entertainment, and news outlets are for-profit companies. Considering
these incentives the current state seems inevitable.

This has also led me to think of hypothetical solutions. I would argue that
"The News" should be a non-profit, state funded entity (or entities). However,
these must very much _not_ be state controlled but rather allowed to operate
independently. A similar institution is the Judicial System, which doesn't
need to worry about clickbaiting titles for its rulings in order to fund
itself, yet it has, ideally, full autonomy to procecute people in power if the
need arises and we (society) take any attempt of collusion between state and
court to be unacceptable.

Similarly, an independent yet tax funded news agency can deliver boring,
unentertaining news and facts to help save us from ourselves.

~~~
kaesar14
I think there are plenty of things going wrong in the world as it exists
today, at least as an American, that would dissuade me from having children.
The exploding costs of childcare, healthcare, and education, let alone the
impending crisis of climate change and ecological collapse, are all pretty
scary. None of those things need to be exaggerated by the media.

~~~
ledauphin
I tend to think this proves the point.

Healthcare and childcare and education are in fact (largely though not
comprehensively) nonessential goods that are already in very many ways far
better than they were 50 years ago. Childcare wasn't even a thing except for
the incredibly wealthy until pretty recently. It would be very difficult to
argue that the overall options for post-secondary education (and the number of
people taking advantage of them) are not better than 30 years ago, even though
their costs are known to be rising much faster than their quality. Most of the
kinds of healthcare that are clearly price-gouging were not even categories of
healthcare 50 years ago, and most of the ones that were are so qualitatively
better now that we're comparing apples and oranges. Etc.

Climate change is the one where by almost any objective measure we're headed
for potentially irrecoverable catastrophe, and yet this one doesn't actually
receive media coverage commensurate with the weight of the potential risk and
its probability.

~~~
kaesar14
Saying things like, "look, it really is better!" when wages haven't gone up in
50 years as college has gotten twice as expensive in the last 20 I think is
really missing the point and being overly dismissive of people's life
experiences.

Price gouging because kinds of healthcare most people weren't really getting a
few years ago? My best friend was billed 1100 dollars for an ambulance ride
and 4000 dollars for a recent hospitalization that lasted 12 hours. Get out of
here with this dismissive nonsense.

~~~
bhupy
> when wages haven't gone up in 50 years

This argument is made time and time again as though it's a self-evident
truth...except it's not true at all. The inflation-adjusted median personal
income is higher than it's ever been.

[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N)

The median disposable income in the US is in the top 3 in the world:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disposable_household_and_per_capita_income#Median)

Since 1967, the middle class has been shrinking...because the upper class has
been growing:

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrink...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/01/25/upshot/shrinking-
middle-class.html)

Yes, college has gotten more expensive (and there are a lot of reasons why),
but it's also worth contextualizing: the median number of years to recoup the
cost of a bachelors degree, adjusted for inflation, has gone down since the
1980’s, from about 22 years to about 10 years.

[https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-
va...](https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2014/09/the-value-of-a-
college-degree.html)

This is all information you're not going to read in most news media today,
because it's, well, pretty boring and doesn't generate revenue.

Yes, there are always improvements that we need to make. Healthcare is indeed
a bit of a mess. There are a number of ways to fix it (and not just the one
proposal you keep hearing about). Does that mean society is crumbling?
Absolutely not. We're living in just about the best time in _human history_.
But climate change is very real, and just about the most catastrophic thing we
have to worry about.

------
m0zg
Fiery, but mostly peaceful article, written by an austere scholar and revered
military leader.

------
ajkjk
Surprised to find this uses "it's" in ways that we would today is are
incorrect. Is this letter just wrong or did which is correct change in the
last two centuries?

------
erikig
I had a chuckle at this proposal:

"...Perhaps an editor might begin a reformation in some such way as this.

Divide his paper into 4 chapters: heading the 1st, Truths. 2d, Probabilities.
3d, Possibilities. 4th, Lies"

------
fortyrod
I think you can still extract a small amount of useful input from todays
media. I usually go with the "inverted axe-grind" metric that upvotes info
that goes against an outlet's normal bias. So, anything good CNN says about
Trump or anything positive that Fox says about Obama. Those are bad examples
as you would wait a while for anything to leak through. Someone needs to point
their magic NLP / sentiment thingy at this and automate it. That will give the
SEO optimizers something else to work on, anyhow.

------
blueridge
Good books to read on the subject:

1) Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle

2) Daniel Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America

3) Jacques Elull, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes

------
tantaman
picture of the original writing:
[https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=tex...](https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=text)

------
joshjs
"The lies of the day" is a great phrase. Stealin' it. Thanks, TJ.

------
maynman
Reminds me of Ecclesiastes. "There is nothing new under the sun".

------
kitotik
“We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the
American Public Believes Is False.”

—- Former CIA Director William Casey

------
elwell
Nor can UberEats ETA's be trusted

------
mensetmanusman
“ I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed
than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth
than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. “

This is the best quote, because they sensed to be true what we now know is
true for pew research data. The more you watch and read the news, the more
likely you are to be less informed about the state of things.

This is obviously the case when you recognize that the media focuses on the
long tail of interesting topics. The average is never interesting enough to
sell clicks/papers, so the entire focus is on outlier events (this is how
Trump got focused on and eventually elected).

------
WheelsAtLarge
News organizations have to compete for people's attention so they present the
news in a way that impacts people's emotions most strongly. Fear is a favorite
subject. Most news is framed in a way that highlights how it MAY negatively
effect the reader. FEAR is a very effective way to get and keep people's
attention.

Also, the news has to compete with entertainment so it's entertaining. It's
the first "Reality TV." You may get some information that you can use but the
goal is to keep your attention by entertaining you.

Most people would be better informed by reading a newspaper once a week and
spending the other free time reading a good book. Everyday news is a waste of
time.

~~~
minimuffins
This post is unfairly downvoted. Downvoting is for content that violates
community norms. This post doesn't do that.

If you don't agree, just say why. Don't downvote.

~~~
minimuffins
This post is unfairly downvoted. Downvoting is for content that violates
community norms. This post doesn't do that.

If you don't agree, just say why. Don't downvote.

~~~
krapp
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

 _Please don 't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good,
and it makes boring reading._

------
pryelluw
Same can and should be applied to websites (including this one).

------
insidepgsmind
I love this part: “I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper
is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is
nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who
reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all
false.“

When I read the headlines or scan articles here on HN I’m under the impression
that I know things and understand things, but it’s really just surface level.

I like the idea of ignoring news and instead read quarterly long form
magazines or books. The really important stuff will bubble to the surface and
be examined more intelligently.

~~~
dang
Trollish usernames aren't allowed on HN because they effectively troll every
thread they post to. I realize it's a borderline case, but a username like
that is going to forever exert a trollish skew on every thread (especially on
this site, given the particular celebrity you're referencing) and we've
learned that it's better to deal with this earlier than later, so I've banned
the account. Happy to rename and unban it if you want to pick a more neutral
username.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20trollish%20username&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20trollish%20username&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0)

------
dimitrios1
> The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who
> are in situations to confront facts within their knolege with the lies of
> the day

Well ain't this the cold, hard truth, eh HN? How many times have we seen
science and technology just completely butchered, twisted, manipulated, or
sometimes, all three, by the "truth-seeking journalists" over there at the
establishment media companies? Yet we [willfully] ignorantly turn the page to
the next section, say on sports or local affairs, and assume we are being fed
facts.

~~~
altcognito
More dangerous are the people who would implore you to ignore all sources from
what they perceive are enemies and pay attention only to their (or your own)
bubble and prejudices.

Posts with catch phrases like "establishment media companies" are usually a
red flag.

This submissions feels more like launching point for arguing, little value to
community.

~~~
dimitrios1
Lot's of assumptions in this here reply that I would be happy to report back
to you are incorrect (such as the one that I or others who feel this way
subscribe to a certain particular "bubble", or that I am suggesting in any way
shape or form you ignore anything)

And since you brought up feelings, this reply to my post feels like I may have
struck a nerve with one of the aforementioned "establishment media companies"
that you may hold near and dear to your heart. Is this how constructive
conversation works?

How about this: let's talk about the situation I alluded to in my original
comment, something called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. Something that has
countless documented occurrences in (sorry to use this word again)
establishment media companies. Does this meet your criteria for providing
value to the community?

~~~
altcognito
Claiming someone is responding to you is "triggered" is tiresome. Another red
flag, and yes, you're fitting a particular profile. A constructive
conversation can still be had, but I'm not particularly interested in Gell-
Mann Amnesia which you alluded to in your last post because I [don't] think a
focus on "newspapers" is very accurate or interesting.

Newspapers are no different than anything else. Errors are found in all
writing.

My only points are: Evaluating truth based on the identity of the source
instead of the content in question is not a good approach. Journals, thesis
can and are all written with errors and misleading information.

I stand by original comment that this thread and the content was put here to
cause injury to the a persons confidence that they can know what is happening
in the world from reading the news. Which is a very particular viewpoint.

------
robomartin
Here's the full text of the letter between Jefferson and Norvell. Very
interesting.

[http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-
jefferson/letter...](http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/presidents/thomas-
jefferson/letters-of-thomas-jefferson/jefl179.php)

I've often wondered if the protections afforded to the press in the first
amendment of the US Constitution could have benefited from greater clarity.
What I mean by this is that I sincerely doubt the authors intended to protect
lies, deceit and libel. It would make no sense whatsoever to create a law that
effectively says "You can lie cheat and steal all you want and this shall be
protected by the highest law in the land".

Here's the text from the first amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Some might say: Well, libel is addressable through other legislation.

Well, yes and no. It just so happens I was involved in a libel case many
decades ago. In this case a newsletter (this was before internet days) had
given a competitor a monthly column to author. This competitor decided to
dedicate one column to attack our company and print a bunch of outright lies
about our products. Things like "they don't test", "they ship their customers
untested products", etc. I mean, this guy knew nothing about us and yet he
focused an entire page to defaming me and my company.

A meeting with my attorney resulted in letters to the publication's entire
board as well as the author/competitor. The only way I can characterize the
reaction from the other side was "they shit in their pants". I came to learn a
libel lawsuit is a very serious and potentially financially crippling event
for someone without the means. Large companies can manage them but individuals
can lose their home, savings, job, etc.

I wasn't interested in destroying lives or taking their home and savings. They
agreed to print a solid retraction, fire the competitor/author and hire
someone without skin in the game to pen that column.

Here's the problem: Retractions don't work. We saw an immediate and lasting
hit to product sales. It took about a year to recover from the hit piece.
Reputation is something that is hard to regain, particularly when people enter
a fearful mental state. In retrospect I should have been smarter and should
have gone for a financial settlement of sorts to compensate for the damage
they caused. Our competitor actually gained sales and status in the industry
as a result of this hit piece.

My point is that lies are like climbing to the top of a hill with a feather
pillow, ripping it open and letting the winds take the feathers in all
directions. Fixing the damage caused by lies requires finding every single
feather, which is impossible.

Sometimes I think we need to rethink this one aspect of the first amendment
and either modify it or bolster it externally (through separate legislation)
in order to prevent the kinds of lies and manipulation that have been a part
of the press since, well, according to Jefferson, the very founding of this
nation.

~~~
pdonis
_> I sincerely doubt the authors intended to protect lies, deceit and libel._

I think the authors intended to prevent the Government from being able to
declare by fiat what counts as "lies, deceit, and libel". That some people
will use their freedom to do wrong is the price we pay for freedom. It's still
preferable to the alternative.

You actually describe the right way of dealing with lies, deceit, and libel in
a free society later on:

 _> In retrospect I should have been smarter and should have gone for a
financial settlement of sorts to compensate for the damage they caused._

Exactly. Another quote from Jefferson seems apt here: "Eternal vigilance is
the price of liberty."

~~~
robomartin
What I didn't describe was the non-trivial cost, workload and time it took to
deal with a very simple libel case. When you have publications, major TV
networks, where almost literally every single piece they publish is filled
with lies and manipulation it becomes an impossible task.

A couple of years back I decided to highlight such lies to a group of people I
was in regular online conversations with. Friends and people I have known for
20 to 30 years, not strangers. The effort and time required to research and
gather the evidence necessary to demonstrate falsehoods in just _one_ story
per day was significant enough that I had to quit after a couple of months.
Not to mention the fact that writing-up articles on these findings and then
discussing them until people understood they had been lied to also consumed a
ridiculous amount of time.

The problem with the press engaging in constant lies and manipulation is that
the vast majority of the population (I'll guess 99%) consumes without
questioning any of it. Which, in turn, means people, over time, develop
twisted narratives of reality that serve no useful purpose and do nothing but
cause damage to society. The roughly 3.3 million people in the US who might be
wiser or take the time to dig for the truth are powerless in rectifying the
lies and manipulation. Refer to my feathers into the wind analogy on this last
point.

I sincerely doubt anyone would propose we should tolerate the level of lies
and manipulation weaponized by mass media today. The difference with respect
to 1807 is that _everyone_ is now reachable via their phones and computers
through myriad services, with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube perhaps being the
main culprits.

I do concede and fully understand that this is an area of law that requires
very careful consideration and a soft touch. There isn't a simple fix. I don't
like the idea of saying "well, just litigate using existing law" because of
then massive asymmetry between these large corporations and the people. This
approach actually harms anyone who isn't a millionaire or billionaire.

It would be almost impossible for the average Joe to go up against the major
news sources except for the most egregious of cases (where a large law firm
would take the case for a piece of the action). In other words, large news
operators can utterly destroy your life and massively affect public perception
and nothing ever happens to them. The simple proof of this is that they are
full of lies today, which means they haven't been challenged and suffered
enough financially to change their ways.

Sometimes I think the simple addition of the word "truthful" to the first
amendment could be enough. IANAL, so I don't know how that could be
detrimental. As a lay person it makes complete sense:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the _truthful_ press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

~~~
krapp
>Sometimes I think the simple addition of the word "truthful" to the first
amendment could be enough. IANAL, so I don't know how that could be
detrimental. As a lay person it makes complete sense:

>"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the truthful press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and
to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

And to make it easier for the press the government can establish a Ministry of
Truth to determine what is and is not truthful on their behalf.

~~~
robomartin
> establish a Ministry of Truth

I know this isn't simple. However, there are things that are simple. Things
like taking statements out of context or editing videos/audio to distort what
was said to fit a narrative.

What I would like to see are articles with a full list of references and
sources for the reader to dig into. In other words, if you can't provide
backup for your claims, don't publish it. The TV equivalent for that would be
a process through which viewers could access sources via an easy to use link
to the TV network's website.

In other words, we ought to demand more from the press. We have the technology
to deliver more. Lies and distortion should not be tolerated. The rule should
be something like: If you can't confirm your claims and back them up with
evidence, don't say or print them.

The other side of that would be that it would be OK to print and broadcast
opinion (which can be unverified, even lies) with a clearly visible
disclaimer. This could be like the equivalent of the disclaimers in cigarette
packs, something like "THIS INFORMATION IS NOT VERIFIED AND COULD BE 100%
INACCURATE" at the start and end of every article and prominently displayed on
video.

Probably a bunch of silly ideas. I'll admit that having been the subject of
libel has made me sensitive to just how destructive this can be. People
without this experience tend to discount the lies the press/media float every
minute of every day as unimportant. It isn't, but convincing the masses they
should demand and somehow require better is a nearly impossible task.

~~~
pdonis
_> we ought to demand more from the press_

The problem is the first word: "we". Who is "we"? Earlier you said you thought
99% of people believe whatever the media tells them. Anyone in that category
doesn't think there's any more to be demanded.

~~~
robomartin
> Earlier you said you thought 99% of people believe whatever the media tells
> them. Anyone in that category doesn't think there's any more to be demanded.

Agreed. Absolutely correct.

Isn't it interesting how if we go deep enough in root cause analysis the
answer always seems to be education?

~~~
pdonis
_> Isn't it interesting how if we go deep enough in root cause analysis the
answer always seems to be education?_

Why do you think education is the solution to this problem? Education by whom?
Trying to answer that question just creates the same problem we have now. (In
fact, if you look at how public education works, and what the explicitly
stated objectives were of the people who created that system, education _is_
the same problem we have now. The media is just another branch of the
education system.)

~~~
robomartin
When I went to high school --in a third world country-- I studied logic,
philosophy, read the Greeks, learned and practiced how to take apart and
understand arguments and, generally speaking, learned about things that have
escaped US-based educations for decades (I also attended elementary and high
school in the US...it's a long complicated story of a family moving around too
much). A simple example of this was that I could draw and name all of the
capitals of every nation in the world on a blank map of the world (literally,
the perimeters of each continent and nothing else on the map. The same for
major mountain ranges, peaks and rivers.

The point isn't that finding Aconcagua and Everest on a blank map of the world
prepares you for life. The point is to say that our 18 year old leave school
without any real marketable skills, unable to think and analyze arguments,
engage in real critical thinking and are utterly ignorant about almost
everything outside their home town, not to mention the world.

It should come as no surprise that professional manipulators are able to do as
they please with an audience steeped in ignorance and unable to exercise
critical thinking. The simplest example I have of this is the unimaginable,
unthinkable reality to anyone who has lived in any one of, say, two dozen
countries, that you have US universities and US college students and graduates
_actually believing that Marxism, Socialism and Communism are good things_. I
mean, I can't think of anything more ignorant than that _very_ , _very_ real
condition in US education.

It is laughable beyond description to anyone who has lived in almost any
country south of the US border, a bunch of countries in Eastern Europe and a
bunch of other countries in Africa and Asia.

And yet the young in the US are graduating from high school without skills in
logic and critical thinking and then enter college to be pumped with precisely
what millions of people who emigrate to the US or aspire to emigrate to the US
are escaping.

If that's not the foundation for disastrous results I don't know what is. And
it is all centered around a horrible derailment of our system of education.

------
mrfusion
As an exercise, go read the front page of cnn.com right now. Do you still
believe all of it?

~~~
intotheabyss
I get the impression that cnn.com looks like an entertainment site, not a news
site.

~~~
liability
This version of their site has less visual clutter and flashy graphics:
[http://lite.cnn.com/en](http://lite.cnn.com/en)

Spoilers, it's still shit. The biggest problem with CNN is the shitty writing.
CNN articles seem to be written for an audience of borderline illiterate
idiots. Do yourself a favor and read the NYTimes instead. The biases there are
basically the same, you're getting the mainstream American centrist take on
things, with the difference being the NYTimes hires people who actually know
how to write. CNN is dailymail-tier.

~~~
dublin
I call BS: The NY Times is in no way a "mainstream American centrist take on
things", and they now freely admit their Socialist biases. I will agree the
writing there is better than most other sources, but that's a low bar these
days.

~~~
maynman
Agreed. It's hard to consider a newspaper "centrist" that basically forces
Bari Weiss out of a job.

------
blhack
It's just so sad. The biggest one lately for me has been watching the riots
which are happening all over the US. The really crazy thing is that all of
these things are livestreamed usually by 10s of people in every city, who are
standing a few feet from the people burning buildings and attacking people.
You can virtually attend all of these things from your office.

To watch buildings burning, people chanting that they want to abolish the
police, or burn peoples homes "fire fire gentrifier.", "out of your homes and
into the streets" (while throwing things at windows, spray painting the
outsides of homes, and shooting fireworks at homes), "all cops are bastards"
etc.

And then to see reported in the news that these people are "peaceful". It's a
sort of paranoid schizophrenia that I think we're seeing. People are watching
their own cities burn, then reading CNN say that it's all fake, and that there
is such a thing as peaceful arson, or a peaceful riot, that somehow looting is
justified, and repeating that.

The news isn't just wrong at this point, they are actively trying to mislead
people. It's really, really awful.

~~~
pessimizer
Don't think that just because you're your own editor you can't be deceived by
editing. You're feeding yourself with the material that you're seeking out.

edit: just spend a day only looking up the millions peacefully marching,
rather than the 10s of right-wing livestreams. (Also, give me some information
about the people you've seen attacking and burning private residences, because
I don't know of a single example of this.)

After the day you can go back to watching what you normally watch, but if you
can't find all of these boring people walking through the streets with signs,
I don't know what to tell you. If the millions protesting actually had the aim
of burning middle-class people out of their homes, middle-class people would
have been burned out of their homes.

If there's any problem imo, it's that the protests are generally unfocused
street wandering. If there were a specific focus or target, they would be
effective at accomplishing that target. But when the target becomes anything
other than generalized racism, the ad-hoc coalitions fall apart.

~~~
whiddershins
If someone was peaceful all day and then commits murder, maybe the murder only
takes 5 minutes, or 30 seconds ... would you proceed to characterize their day
as mostly peaceful?

I mean, mathematically yes, but it points to how this word ‘mostly’ is what
journalism teaches is a weasel-word. It renders the statement meaningless.

~~~
Nasrudith
Well there is your problem - you are literally treating a large collection of
very different people like a single person or hive mind.

Seriously pause and reflect since that usually comes up with very severe
bigots and is pretty far down the dehumanization ladder.

~~~
whiddershins
Not at all, I am protesting an abuse of the language that makes for a nearly
Orwellian level of nonsense in thinking and speech.

‘Most of the protestors were non-violent’ is an intelligible and probably
accurate statement.

‘Mostly peaceful protests’ first of all intrinsically refers to the protest as
a singular entity, not addressing the individuality. That’s not my doing,
that’s in the phrase, making the protest the subject, as opposed to the
people.

Secondly if you reread what I wrote, my main complaint is that the word
‘mostly’ is what journalistic editors refer to as a ‘weasel-world’. Weasel
words make a statement that sounds descriptive but in fact could apply to
almost anything.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weasel_word)

Moving past semantics, it is worth noting that the violent protestors would be
completely ineffectual without masses of nonviolent protestors to hide among.

Anyway, I would love it if this writing falls on receptive eyes, I am
concerned that the implication you made: that what I am writing is bigoted,
could indicate you are not very interested in what I actually mean.

------
dalbasal
When I was 15, there was a bus bombing near my school.

A kid in my class was the grandson of a well known politician. A newspaper ran
with a completely made up story about how it was his bus line, and how the
grandfather had panicked. A few days later a fact checker called his mom. Not
sure if they ran a retraction. It seemed incredibly disrespectful to those who
were on the bus. Two died.

About a year after that, some kids that I knew were arrested for cannabis use.
The story made the news. Some of it was true, but some was made up. The made
up parts were embellishments, they made the story better. Age gaps were
exaggerated, romantic narratives inserted...

I think most people who are in the vicinity of a news story irl have such
experiences. Often the lies are minor, but just like with ordinary people who
tell lies... the little lies make you disbelieve everything they say.

We kind of expect this from book authors and documentarians. Their job is to
get a good narrative going. No one thinks "Tiger King" is an honest telling.

IMO the problem is expectations. "Restraining it (a newspaper) to true facts &
sound principles only" is not just boring... it's unimportant. It's the
narrative that makes it salient.

TJ should have understood this. He was a pamphleteer after all. The rights of
man is pure fiction, to quote Yuval Noah Harari. If you dissect a person, you
will find no rights inside.

Calling out intellectual dishonesty is a road to hypocrisy, usually. It's very
common to have someone call it out and practice it simultaneously.

~~~
JackFr
[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-
ge...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/65213-briefly-stated-the-gell-mann-
amnesia-effect-is-as-follows-you)

“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the
newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case,
physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist
has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the
article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause
and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of
them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors
in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and
read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine
than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”

~~~
jkaptur
Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I propose the "Sinclair
Effect" after "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his
salary depends on his not understanding it."

You open the newspaper to an article on some subject that you know well,
because your salary depends on it. In Tourre's case, finance. In mine, tech.
You read the article and see that the journalist isn't a subject matter expert
and has made an error about some fact. Often, the error is so small that it
doesn't affect the story at all. I call these the "well, actually, some
streets are sheltered from the rain" stories. In any case, you dismiss the
entire story and stop reading it, and then turn the page to national or
international affairs, and read as if your technical expertise somehow gave
you insight into a place you've never been and a culture you've never
interacted with. You turn the page, and forget the gaps in your own knowledge.

~~~
ardy42
> Is there a name for the opposite effect? If not, I propose the "Sinclair
> Effect" after "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when
> his salary depends on his not understanding it."

I think this is a fantastic comment, especially given the cavalcade of robotic
quotations of that "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" passage that happen whenever the
press comes up. One should definitely read the newspaper with a certain degree
of skepticism, but I feel that people who take the "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect"
to heart often get into weird places (like thinking that reading raw
scientific papers is somehow a replacement for reading the newspaper, as if
anyone could actually keep up with them in more than a narrow area and science
is the only thing that matters).

While I think the self-interest from the Sinclair quote is definitely a reason
to doubt "Gell-Mann Amnesia effect" dismissals (i.e. maybe the story actually
is right, but you think it's wrong because you have biased take), I think the
problem you're getting at is ego. A lot of people want to be the guy who is
smarter or sees things more clearly than others, so they latch on to ideas
that let them superficially dismiss things that others trust as a way of
proving their greater insight (maybe only to themselves).

I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a timely first rough
draft of history. First rough drafts are always going to have errors, but
you'll be the last to know if you wait for those to be corrected before
reading. If you keep up with the rough drafts, you'll see the corrections as
the stories unfold.

~~~
acqq
> I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a timely first
> rough draft of history.

Only, it's not what "the news" are. One can reconstruct the history using "the
news" as source material, but it's a grave error to think that "the news" are
"a first draft of history."

Try to find how the media covered the claimed "weapons of mass destruction" in
Iraq in 2003, and how they wrote many years later about the same events. What
you believe to be a "first draft" was historically completely false. But it
was at the time used as an excuse to start the war, which are both now
verified historical facts -- both the fake "news" in the major media and the
start of the war.

If you are interested in the topic you can even read how the local pressure on
journalists makes them "following the editorial policy" even when they know
that what they write about is false.

In short, there's no substitute for treating the news as only "pieces of
information" which have to be verified, behind which could be different
interests and which surely don't have to be true at all.

~~~
ardy42
>> I think it's useful to just see the news for what it is: a timely first
rough draft of history. First rough drafts are always going to have errors,
but you'll be the last to know if you wait for those to be corrected before
reading. If you keep up with the rough drafts, you'll see the corrections as
the stories unfold.

> Only, it's not what "the news" are. One can reconstruct the history using
> "the news" as source material, but it's a grave error to think that "the
> news" are "a first draft of history."

> Try to find how the media covered the claimed "weapons of mass destruction"
> in Iraq in 2003, and how they wrote many years later about the same events.
> What you believe to be a "first draft" was historically completely false.
> But it was at the time used as an excuse to start the war, which are both
> now verified historical facts -- both the fake "news" in the major media and
> the start of the war.

I don't really see how that contradicts the idea that the news is a rough
first draft of history at all. First drafts have errors, and you've pointed
out some errors. Similar things could even happen with established history
(for instance a later discovery proving some document that the old history
relied on was a forgery or some account unreliable, etc.). You shouldn't
expect perfect accuracy with the news, and to criticize it for not being
perfectly accurate is to misunderstand what it is.

~~~
acqq
> to criticize it for not being perfectly accurate is to misunderstand what it
> is.

I gave example where the news were completely and utterly false compared to
what the real truth was -- that's not just "not perfectly accurate" but
_completely_ opposite of the truth.

------
minimuffins
The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in
the world is really debilitating.

I spend probably an hour a day reading headlines from major outlets with a
bunch of different political alignments, and to be honest, I don't really know
why I even do it.

By the end of it, all I really have is a vague silhouette of a picture of what
might have happened, according to a handful of corporations whose job it is to
turn the smallest amount of factual raw material into maximally entertaining
spectacle. The factual raw material can even be done away with sometimes as
evidenced by how much of the news is just media reporting on itself (often
centering on Twitter!).

There is not a technical solution to any of this. "Decentralization" into
forums and social media and whatnot is not a solution. At best it's a good way
for some of us to discuss the problem among ourselves as it unfolds.
Decentralization is better termed "de-professionalization." The institutions
which used to, at the very least, dedicate serious resources to going out into
the world and gathering facts no longer function properly or just don't exist.

I remember seeing an interview with Christopher Hitchens where somebody asked
him how he informed himself about the world, what news he liked to read. He
said, not much. Mostly he relied on people he knew personally in various parts
of the world who have firsthand experience and write him about it. Must be
nice!

~~~
ardy42
> The feeling that it's just completely impossible to know what's going on in
> the world is really debilitating.

Honestly, I think the standards you seem to be setting for yourself are too
high. As far as I know, none of us are God, so it is completely impossible for
us to know what's going on in the world.

> according to a handful of corporations whose job it is to turn the smallest
> amount of factual raw material into maximally entertaining spectacle.

Which ones are you referring to, specifically? While there are certainly some
companies that just want to turn the news into "entertaining spectacle," I
think it's over-cynical to say they all do. I try to focus on the ones that
seem to feel they have a duty to report on the news and columnists who seem to
feel they have something important to say (and whose columns are interesting
enough that that may actually be true).

> There is not a technical solution to any of this. "Decentralization" into
> forums and social media and whatnot is not a solution. At best it's a good
> way for some of us to discuss the problem among ourselves as it unfolds.
> Decentralization is better termed "de-professionalization." The institutions
> which used to, at the very least, dedicate serious resources to going out
> into the world and gathering facts no longer function properly or just don't
> exist.

I totally agree with you here about de-professionalization, but I'm less
dejected about traditional news gathering institutions. They're definitely on
the decline, but they're not dead yet. Some are still soldiering on and
functioning reasonably well, especially if you're interested in
national/international news or live in a major city.

~~~
osn9363739
Not just about corporations turning the news into "entertaining spectacle".
Its scary from a climate change perspective that in my country (Australia),
that people invested in the mining and fossil fuel industries are also
investing in TV.

~~~
an_opabinia
The NYTimes definitely prints stuff that is factual. A lot of the entertaining
stuff is factual. It just depends on your goals. For example, if you read
NYTimes every day since March, you'd sell at the bottom of the fastest stock
market recovery in history.

Things can be factual and yet point you in the 200% wrong direction. And since
that direction, for the average person, really means, on average, making tons
of money, the average news source's pessimism (the actual continuity between
1807 and now) is going to... lose you a ton of money.

