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Comment by busterarm

8 days ago

I've had the fortune/misfortune to be directly or peripherally involved in nearly a dozen situations that made it to press and there isn't a single case where the story represented in the article wasn't blatantly misinterpreted from the facts. In nearly every case what was mentioned in the article was the complete opposite of what actually happened. Biggest/Most-egregious offenders were Vice and Vox Media but included are the NYT, WaPo and Time.

One can only narrow the things they care about to those they can verify (or personally affect them) and go after primary sources themselves and form their own conclusions. I'm no longer convinced that modern journalism is good for anything more than starting bonfires.

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busterarm

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pas  7 days ago

can you give some examples? I'm very interested in this. (after all we had about a decade of crying "fake news" - and as far as I understand the verdict was that big traditional outlets get the basic facts right - who what where when - but are absolutely clueless about or intentionally spin the "why".)

  • busterarm  7 days ago

    No meaningful ones that I'd want to reveal without doxxing myself. I can give you one of someone else's that can be independently confirmed.

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/sugar-weasel-the-clown-escor... This article by Vice is 100% bullshit. Vice basically published this PR piece for the guy as a favor. A lot of articles that you read are really coordinated press releases -- like the initial Blake Lively v Justin Baldoni NYT hitpiece. Yes, I know this is dumb and totally entertainment and not "news", but this article actually harmed the business of the actual guy that Weasel ripped his shtick off from. Aaron Zilch used to rant about this guy and how bullshit this article was for years. There's a small clown kink/BDSM community in Vegas and those in it at the time this was published all called it out for the bullshit it was. Asked Vice for a correction/retraction and they did nothing.

    Somebody handed them a clickbait story and they published it for the clicks.

dbmnt  7 days ago

Knoll's Law of Media Accuracy: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true, except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge."

See also, Gell-Mann Amnesia effect.

Most reporting is garbage once you get into the details.