Comment by brnt

6 years ago

Disengaging based on an N=1 is not the type of individual action that improves our society. Our society is built on individual (and collective) attempts to improve, and you putting your money towards journalists you found to be doing a good job is the way we leave the world better than we found it.

I hope you'll consider this, because our society cannot function without quality investigative reporting. I of course agree there are many kinds of people who call themselves journalists many of which don't improve our society. We must fight this battle, as we must fight every battle, because that's the only way things change for the better. Do not let cynicism win.

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brnt

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cmroanirgo  6 years ago

And there's the rub. What is "quality investigative reporting" in an objective sense, when most of the MSM outlets are owned by oligarchs, or simply "toe the line"?

In theory I would gladly support the theory of "quality investigative reporting", but the reality is a propagandist machine where opinion pieces replaces actual unbiased, adjective-free objective news.

Some examples of "oligarch news": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwA4k0E51Oo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksb3KD6DfSI

As a former developer who worked closely on Thomson Reuters News feed (in the 00's), I've seen how there is almost zero fact checking for the information that appears on news feeds. Instead, news outlets trust the 'upstream' feeds and then quote the reports verbatim.

To be fair, there are those who are really awesome at doing research and releasing information that are part of the MSM. Unfortunately, there are plenty others who are not affiliated with MSM news outlets and hence aren't regarded as "reporters" per-se. These latter ones are regularly attacked via "fact checking" websites as a way to discredit them.

An article on the latter is here: https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-381-who-will-fact-chec...

In short, there's a bunch of information out there and without each and every news report clearly citing original sources, then MSM or not, it must be regarded as suspect.

So for "quality investigative reporting", the actual reports must rigorously cite objective sources.

  • vinay427  6 years ago

    I find it mildly ironic that you link to a clip from the PBS NewsHour while, from my reading, you also imply that objective reporting or investigative reporting don't exist or are dwindling. There are clearly some sources left that are worth their salt.

    In the US, I've found most PBS/NPR news broadcasts fairly objective, and the various NPR podcasts sometimes chart into investigative territory but there are other sources I rely on for this (e.g. ProPublica) which I don't expect to be just objective.

    I'm not sure I understood exactly what you meant about quality investigative journalism, so forgive me if I misread. I generally agree with your comment.

  • nailer  6 years ago

    > What is "quality investigative reporting" in an objective sense, when most of the MSM outlets are owned by oligarchs, or simply "toe the line"?

    I don't think better ownership changes anything. The Guardian is owned by a trust, yet falsely reported Mark Duggan was unarmed in a front page headline (if you're unaware, this was false and the Gruan had to retract the claim after a PCC ruling).

    • gurkendoktor  6 years ago

      Not sure why you're being downvoted. The biggest German left-wing newspaper (taz) is owned by a cooperative. If anything, I find it more annoyingly partisan than other newspapers. It's a hard problem.

      2 replies →

    • Mindwipe  6 years ago

      Indeed. The Guardian Trust has also ruled in editorial complaints that factual inaccuracies in the opinion section are fine, which seems to be to be incredibly irresponsible.

  • machinehermit  6 years ago

    IMO we need some kind of data driven media/data driven reporting/data driven newspaper type thing.

    Then we can have reporting/debate/conversation on the meaning of the data but without the filters we use to have in place all reporting has essentially become meaningless, untrustworthy, opinion pieces.

skinkestek  6 years ago

> I hope you'll consider this, because our society cannot function without quality investigative reporting.

Where do I find quality investigative reporting?

I support the Guardian and two regional/local newspapers and I' also forced to pay for the state run broadcaster here but I have to say that I also find myself reading a number of other sources to figure out what is really going on (for the Scandinavians here I'm one of those who will happily look to both Klassekampen and Document, in addition to vg.no and nrk to figure out what is really going on in certain cases, and I understand I am not alone in this).

Once you know a bit of history and a number of different angles you realize some things are horribly complicated and big media is making things worse by pushing misinformation, and by conveniently omitting facts. My favourite example from my favourite (i.e. least despised) local mainstream media source: X fired at a number of positions in neighbouring country Y yesterday. <Long article about this>. <Towards the end:> This happened after a barrage of rockets was fired from these positions shortly before. And that is the most honest of them. The rest seemed to just omit the fact that part Y fired first.

PS: The reason I support some of them is 1) because I feel it is the right thing to do. 2) because I feel at least one of them have actually managed to do some great quality investigative reporting as well as some great feature stories in between. We talk about certain companies and public healthcare organizations getting some much needed sunlight.

  • TuringNYC  6 years ago

    >> Where do I find quality investigative reporting?

    One that is limited, but wonderful is: ProPublica

    • mafribe  6 years ago

      According to https://www.propublica.org/supporters ProPublica gets funding from:

      Abrams Foundation, Altman Foundation, Arnold Ventures, Barr Foundation, The William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, The Peter and Carmen Lucia Buck Foundation, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Craigslist Foundation, Davis Wright Tremaine, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Democracy Fund, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, Dyson Foundation, Emerson Collective, The Ford Foundation, Open Society Foundation, Goldhirsh Foundation, The Jerome L. Greene Foundation, Heising-Simons Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The Joyce Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Leon Levy Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Metabolic Studio, Park Foundation, The Lisa and John Pritzker Family Fund, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Select Equity Foundation, Skoll Global Threats Fund, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Solidarity Giving

  • arcticfox  6 years ago

    I've come to really enjoy long-form podcast investigative reporting, as there's enough content that it's pretty obvious whether proper journalistic work has been done or not.

    My favorite in that vein is 'In The Dark' by APM Reports, which was a massive eye-opener for me in terms of flaws in the justice system (especially Season 2).

ggreer  6 years ago

I'm all for quality investigative reporting, but that is not something that 99% of journalists do.

I've been interviewed by journalists a few times and I've seen at least a half-dozen other people be interviewed. The articles published are totally disconnected from what was actually said. Heck, I've had a journalist make up a quote and attribute it to me.

Don't talk to journalists. If you must, record everything.

graeme  6 years ago

How would you measure good journalism? In OP’s case they could only see a given journalist was bad by personally witnessing the falsity. You don’t get many opportunities like that unfortunately.

I do think some journalism is good. Many reporters at the Financial Times come to mind for example. But I found your reply did not really address the nature of OP’s complaint.

  • cosmodisk  6 years ago

    Financial Times is considered one of the least biased papers out there. I feel the quality dropped a bit recently but in general,they are ligh years ahead compared to the usual suspects of this world.

zkid18  6 years ago

Also stopped reading any news and reports from big media about 3 years ago.

Just curious are there any independent investigation journalists that work on the patreon/subscription model? Would consider donation them rather than NYT or WSJ.

  • TheOtherHobbes  6 years ago

    It's difficult (for values that soon reduce to impossible) to get press accreditation as an independent journalist.

    There are plenty of scrappy little online micronewspapers now, usually with an evident political slant, and some of them do real investigative journalism.

    But there's no chance they'll get the direct access to the political system their mainstream cousins do.

    It's also incredibly easy to astroturf fake news at that level, so not all of those sites are reliable.

    The point about the MSM is that they're mass media with a huge subscriber/reader base. That's what gives them their leverage.

    Journalism is much less influential without that.

  • beshrkayali  6 years ago

    Exactly. The main problem is MSM with corporate money behind it. Getting things wrong is normal, getting things wrong intentionally (or recklessly) is malicious.

    There are many. But they're difficult to find and get into. My favorite is http://www.noagendashow.com/.

  • ytNumbers  6 years ago

    There's plenty of independent journalists on YouTube/Patreon/Alt-Tech, some more reliable than others. Hopefully, in the future, more people will start getting their news from the independent YouTube/Alt-Tech journalists who wound up migrating to those platforms after they were laid off from their mainstream media publications during the past decade of layoffs for that industry. Anyone can find a list of such YouTube/Alt-Tech channels by searching Reddit. Of course, that also means having to go through the process of weeding out the biased low quality journalists. Hard hitting debates are rather rare on YouTube, but, as a general rule, I have found that the YouTubers who are willing to debate others (and who present facts during that debate) are better sources of information than those who are unwilling to ever debate anyone.

    • skinnymuch  6 years ago

      Vice (NYT reporter involved in the overall ordeal) got a person they doxxed to be kicked off Patreon aka their livelihood for some period of time before after she (the person) retaliated against Vice — SexyCyborg. Not sure if there’s a space or not.

  • brnt  6 years ago

    That is deed my criterion as well: I support independent investigative publications only (and I read few other sources, haven't had TV for nearly two decades for instance).

  • kwasson  6 years ago

    I'm not sure about individual journalists, but The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has a donate button. If there's a journalist whose work you admire, you could check if they have Patreon. https://www.occrp.org/en

normalnorm  6 years ago

> Disengaging based on an N=1 is not the type of individual action that improves our society.

Statistical significance is not the only epistemological tool around. I would even argue that, outside of some scientific fields, it is really not that important (and might even lead to a lot of wrong conclusions in the context that is used nowadays, but that is a different discussion altogether).

We are not some dumb statistical machine. We have an entire model of the world in our heads, and one single observation can have profound implications on it. The journalist reports to an editor, who maintains a system of job promotions, and all of this is connected to an institution that holds very real power. The OP observed this journalist manipulating the story, not in a random direction, but in their view in a direction that would appeal to the status quo. It is normal to update one's map of reality when confronted with first-person experience of an event that goes against what you've been told, and when the simplest explanation for how the world works changes in light of this direct observation.

And this is also how your mind works, and this is also how you formed your views on reality, including repeating the "N=1" cliché. None of it has anything to do with p-values.

  • brnt  6 years ago

    My point is that ceasing to participate will make nothing better. Democracy requires participation, invluding engaging with whatever you see as wrong.

mantas  6 years ago

Quality investigative reporting is even more tricky because it's even harder to double-check

In my country, there's a supposedly quality investigative reporting outlet. I did trust them for years. Then one time they did report on something I happened to know more details from other sources. Their reporting was complete BS bending facts to come to opposite conclusions.

Months later it turned out that political party loved favoured by those journalists had an internal struggle and the dude in article above happened to be on the "wrong" side. The report was about his overseas business, not political affairs. As a bonus point, "good" side was involved in bribery scandal.

Another investigative outlet recently published a series of reports on another politician that comes from unfavourable party in among mainstream media journalists. So far all of those reports seem to have little substance and they seem to be in she-said, he-said gray area at best. I'm pretty sure the dude do have skeletons under his bed. But investigative journalists seem to just post whatever rumors they got and see what sticks. Which is not exactly helping their quality investigative reporting image.

yawboakye  6 years ago

I was going to say that we could defer to whistleblowers instead but I realized that that term has also been loosely used. That said, it’s not journalists but news organizations that shouldn’t be trusted.

buboard  6 years ago

Most of the reported news is N=1 events. If the news reported averages instead, it wouldn't sell

  • brnt  6 years ago

    That's a problem specific to news reporting, not journalism as a whole. I consider news reporting seperate from investigative journalism. What happened is far easier to report and consume than a report on why it happened. So, a better filter against biased news reporting, better than averaging, is taking a longer view and reading more comprehensive analyses. You can spin everything, but I find the more the article tends towards a study (investigative journalism), the blatant spinners drop off exponentially. Any bias is usually clear in such texts and therefore easily accounted for.