Still not buying it. I don't feel like journalists are trained to tease out facts, they still tease out stories.
For pretty much any newsworthy event there are lots of facts that are concrete and objective, and frankly, that's what matters most of the time. Life decisions and motivations and biases make for a fun reading, but are otherwise irrelevant.
A politician said something, or did not. A company is going forward with a project, or is not. The proposed law implies a consequence X, or does not. Those are ground facts. I'm not saying they're always easy to establish, but the media sources are not even trying.
I recently stumbled upon an interesting site that tries to run Bayesian analysis on various pieces of information and media reports, to piece out the actual reality. See e.g.: https://www.rootclaim.com/claims/what-caused-the-chemical-ca... What I want to point out there is not their analysis in particular. Just how it's structured. It seems that establishing some objectively verifiable summary of a "messy" real-world story is not impossible.
For pretty much any newsworthy event there are lots of facts that are concrete and objective, and frankly, that's what matters most of the time. Life decisions and motivations and biases make for a fun reading, but are otherwise irrelevant.
A politician said something, or did not. A company is going forward with a project, or is not. The proposed law implies a consequence X, or does not. Those are ground facts. I'm not saying they're always easy to establish, but the media sources are not even trying.
I recently stumbled upon an interesting site that tries to run Bayesian analysis on various pieces of information and media reports, to piece out the actual reality. See e.g.: https://www.rootclaim.com/claims/what-caused-the-chemical-ca... What I want to point out there is not their analysis in particular. Just how it's structured. It seems that establishing some objectively verifiable summary of a "messy" real-world story is not impossible.