> is willing to somewhat own his mistakes while the media never has
Your lack of knowledge about media "owning up" to their mistakes is not evidence they don't. Because they do.
I'm sure most people don't see the difference between actual Journalists (and not necessarily with a degree) and some dude talking crap on a microphone but there is.
> "In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment.
Well, so f what? This is 20% of the work that lead us today
Apparently having done that work (if that was actually his actual work) doesn't prevent him from misrepresenting his work spouting crap 30 years after that.
Best definition for Robert Malone is that "he had as much influence on the vaccine as Graham Bell had on the Lady Gaga's song Telephone"
> And how exactly do you think the "sources we trust" are held to account? They don't hold themselves to account
Perhaps this is a reflection of how little people understand the journalism industry. To get something published on NYT.com, there is a process of fact checking and verification that goes through every comma, every claim. Of course mistakes are made, but they are publicly addressed and accounted for. There is no just thing as a purposeful, objective lie that remains unaccounted for.
> I think you'll find they work hard to cancel anyone who reveals their flaws under their own name.
The Joe Rogan / Tucker Carlson opinion stuff can be left out of this convo without losing anything.
> You thought there were no safety issues with the polio vaccine
Nope. I said "no one had any issues with a polio vaccine MMR, etc." not that there weren't an adverse health effects. You project what you think i'm saying so you can argue against that. I don't know if you are aware that you are doing this, but it would make you a perfect cable news guest as that is the tactic of choice.
If you can't even read what I said and accurately respond, there's no point in continuing. This isn't Thanksgiving and i'm not unlucky enough to be at your table.
> Like which ones?
Again, try and educate yourself in the basic differences in journalism, who follows the rules of accountability and accuracy and who blatantly ignores them while still attempting to come across as "news".
If you still want to respond, cite the claim you've made first:
> "single social media personalities" routinely beat major news media organizations in being correct
> You go on to cite Glenn Greenwald as an example of not a real journalist, who has a Pulitzer Prize and founded a gigantic news organization.
Greenwald clearly was a real journalist, but also fairly overtly quit real journalism specifically over journalistic integrity standards (standards which, even prior to his departure, he had, somewhat unusually, left to others when founding a “gigantic news organization”, fairly overtly because while he at the time recognized their importance to journalism, they were not what interested him about it.)
I would never accuse Greenwald of being incapable of real journalism, only as having, after building a career in it, decided his calling is in building a personal brand in ideological commentary unconstrained by the norms of journalistic integrity.
> how often he even gets the most basic stuff wrong
Such as? That's an outlandish claim unless you have receipts to back it up.
He does get things wrong occasionally, he's only human after all, but he tends to publish very public retractions which is more than can be said for professional journalists.
I don't understand why this would excuse anything. Journalism is almost literally their about to (get to) know better about things and explaining to the rest of us.
At least, that's what it should be -- these days it seems to be mostly about generating clickbait. (Sorry if that's cynical -- I've just read Trust Me, I'm Lying.)
> Ultimately, shouldn't everyone be applying critical thinking and the scientific method to come to their own conclusions about the world?
Of course, but there's limited time to investigate everything in ultimate skeptical detail, and so we rely on others we trust.
>> I believe their mistakes are equally likely to be intentional as they are to be simple mistakes. Especially when it comes to topics where there is an agenda at play.
> To use the case in the example, what is the agenda for under-reporting, by an excruciatingly obvious 3 orders of magnitude, the number of Covid infections?
It's the NYT's agenda to downplay COVID, obviously. /s
IMHO, misinterpreting mistakes as intentional lying is a common tactic to justify ignoring evidence and sources that contradict preconceived beliefs.
It's true that pretty much every kind of media is biased in some way, but I think a lot of people let the perfect be the enemy of the good and overreact to that fact by disengaging with certain reliable sources or with the media entirely. The ironic thing is that often results in relying on even more on biased and unreliable stuff, not less.
> What wasn't acknowledged was the utility of having imperfect information.
That's an interesting take, and one I haven't heard before. My main squeamishness with bad journalism, and even worse, with chat gpt, is not truth-content, but rather sourcing.
If you know the source, you can account for its biases, or, your reader can do so. As such, well-sourced quotes of complete nonsense tend towards adding to the sum total of truth in the world, because it was true that somebody said it, and their perspective is part of what's interesting in whatever event you're discussing.
If you scrub the data of its sources (like journalists do routinely, and chatgpt does by necessity) important information is lost.
>The media doesn't have a crystal ball any more than you or I do.
Sure, but the media is not writing encyclopedia entries. They make hyperbolic claims about how they break stories before anyone else, and how accurate they are.
But since they are human, sometimes mistakes are made, and I think it's pretty dishonest to quietly change an article after it's been published. Publishing a story should mean that you back its content 100%, and it's the best, most accurate story you could have written with all available information. If new information comes out later that changes things, write a new article that references the mistakes of the original. There were still decisions made to include the content that was later shown to be incorrect, and I would _much_ rather see a follow up explaining what they got wrong than "correcting" the article after publication.
> most of them are journalists, AKA experts in nothing that pretend to become experts with a few calls and some google-fu.
Isn’t this a bit much? This seems very baited and/or flame-war inducing. It’s denigrating towards an entire profession/discipline. I’d almost go so far as to say that this misunderstanding about journalism is at the root of a lot of problems in modern media for both practicing journalists (which I understand may in some ways be your larger point) and consumers of journalism today. Journalism should be about creating an objective conduit for civic impetus. I don’t believe it is fair to say this doesn’t require expertise.
> notice how dumb journos are when they cover subject matter
This is a key takeaway that, I suspect, everyone who has ever been interviewed, covered, or quoted in the press feels.
Every time you see a story in the general media that grossly misrepresents a subject you know well, remember that feeling. Because for every other topic covered, I guarantee there is a domain expert feeling as you did.
I’m three for three in terms of regretting journo contact. Whether it was the local rag or a national broadsheet; misquotation, glib misrepresentation and sheer fabrication are inevitable results.
Corollary: reserve your greatest mistrust for anyone that openly and actively courts the media. They are well aware of the outcomes and are manipulating the game. This includes your in-house PR team and most elected officials, including the ones you voted for.
> plenty of people who i give zero credence to, who otherwise claim "expertise".
At the risk of committing the sin of No True Scotsman, perhaps these people don't really have the expertise they claim.
I would expect a journalist who has actual, real expertise in a particular field to be able to sort out the junk from the newsworthy, at least most of the time. If not, then I don't think their expertise really exists. Sure, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but I would expect people with real expertise to be at least mostly reliable.
>I thought the media's responsibility was to take information from experts and present that information without bias to people who are not experts in the matter.
The media's job is to take attention from people who are not experts in the matter and present it to advertisers.
> I have never researched a topic deeply and found that the media had been covering that topic accurately, ever.
This applies to a lot more than just media, including important to mundane issues inside of an organization. Path of least resistance (aka bullshit) and all that.
> Every gaffe was reported on and some of it also not true
What wasn't true? Honestly curious as I don't remember any truly spurious accusations against him.
> All of this just for profit and tv ratings. There is also ego in there because who want's to be the last to break a story.
Certainly, but that doesn't discount the validity of the reported incidents.
> We see the same thing happening when a disaster occurs. For example the airport shooting. So much false information is reported just because they have to be the first/exclusive.
Yes and no. I think a lot of that comes from reporting on a developing real-time situation where information is constantly revised. That's rarely the case with speeches or political coverage of this sort.
Without agreeing or disagreeing with you, I want to ask: Do you not realize how shaky of a claim this is? Even if you did somehow know this to be true, why would anybody believe that you know this?
Have you somehow both consumed the vast majority of journalism and known enough to judge its veracity (presumably without relying on other journalism)? You would have to be a subject matter expert in just about everything, as well as somehow spend more than 24 hours a day consuming news for your claim to be at all credible.
>> It also shows how plugged in you can be and still feel yourself to be unplugged.
WTF? Is this journalist an imbecile? No. Therefore the journalist knew exactly what 'unplugged' meant and he intentionally mislead his audience in order to save himself spending time on actual research. He should be fired and never allowed to work as a journalist again. No second chances.
I'm sick of nasty lying sacks of shit getting second, third, fourth, fifth... chances while there are millions of honest people waiting in the queue to get their first chance.
> You disagree, and pretending otherwise is pointless.
I don't know if I disagree, so I'm not sure why you think you know that either. My point here is that your claim as stated is indefensible.
> I can write a script to pick any amount of random articles from the New York Times dating back several decades, and you can try to find factual inaccuracies in a random selection of articles.
Now you're actually saying something. You made a prediction that could be tested. You're assuming the outcome for some reason, but the first part is great.
> No, because I'm not an expert, I listen to experts. Why make a weird made up situation?
So did some expert tell you that the vast majority of journalism is accurate? Because it sounds more like it's your gut feeling. Which is fine, it just doesn't make for a very compelling argument.
> This mentality is [...]
I don't know anything about any of that. I'm just wondering what the receipts are for your very broad claim. Is it just "journalists are experts, I trust experts, therefore the vast majority of journalism is accurate"?
That's at least well formed, but are all journalists experts? Are all experts trustworthy? What is considered journalism (is a blogger a journalist? Some would say yes. They're probably not all experts, right?)
Evidently not. When was the last time a mainstream news organization got heat from its own viewer base because of inaccurate reporting? I mean, it's fun to dunk on fox news because you think they're obviously spewing lies or whatever, but that doesn't really matter unless their viewership actually cares. Meanwhile outrage drives clicks, so journalists are strongly incentivized to stretch the truth.
Your lack of knowledge about media "owning up" to their mistakes is not evidence they don't. Because they do.
I'm sure most people don't see the difference between actual Journalists (and not necessarily with a degree) and some dude talking crap on a microphone but there is.
> "In late 1987, Robert Malone performed a landmark experiment.
Well, so f what? This is 20% of the work that lead us today
Apparently having done that work (if that was actually his actual work) doesn't prevent him from misrepresenting his work spouting crap 30 years after that.
Best definition for Robert Malone is that "he had as much influence on the vaccine as Graham Bell had on the Lady Gaga's song Telephone"
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