• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Back to the basics: what determines the reliability of a media source or an individual story, and is it possible to give an objective reliability scor

We don't have to abridge anything. But if you want to call yourself a News organization tasked with reporting the factual information to the populace, I don't see why you can't be required to adhere to professional standards for accuracy.

If you would rather be first to report with a catchy headline and a political slant, you are a tabloid whose chief concern is revenue, not information dissemination. You do not get to be called "the news". And if you want to/have to do both kinds of reporting, that's also fine. But there should be a clear demarcation between what is 'News/Investigative Reporting' and what is a 'proffered opinion'.

That's not abridging freedom of speech, it's just professionalism. Most news organizations have an ombudsman to sort through these things and be critical of the way the organization handles stories, so we're not reinventing the wheel here either.

aa

I support your right to create a blog where you rail about Dan Rather, Brian Williams, and the New York times/Jason Blair to your heart's content. I'm sure the fake news organizations that employed or employ these people will cower with the appropriate level of fear at being branded fake news by alcoholic actuary.

And you won't offend the old "congress shall make no law" rule either, so best wishes o Great Captain of Freedom and Democracy.

Excellent idea! I think I'll create the blog, but instead of responding to anyone's actual points, I'll create my own points that no one else is making and then destroy those and then - conclusions!!

I'll call it 'The Dismal-Man'

aa
 
You get what you pay for, so media quality reflects the importance of quality to their funding model.

If advertising revenue is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that gets people to watch it. Truth is not popular; explosions, excitement and confirmation of the audience's prejudices are popular. So that's what you get. Where there are sizeable populations with different prejudices, you will get a set of news media targeting each of these audience pools, and advertisers will target their ads to the various audiences these media can attract. (This is the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News model).

The truth is like poetry-- And most people fucking hate poetry. - Overheard in a Washington D.C. bar by Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short

If the government is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the government's positions (the RT model). This can be tempered by enforcing editorial independence, and having rules that limit governmental ability to interfere with the media it funds (the BBC model).

If viewer payments are the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the prejudices of the kind of person who is prepared to pay for news (the PBS model).

None of these systems guarantee that truth will be highly regarded; but the BBC and PBS models are the least awful.

When we make the mistake of thinking that truth will automatically be more important than money, we get what we deserve.

I think what you have with the American model is in many ways more insidious than something like RT. Most people who watch RT are aware they are getting Russia's position. However, very much the same thing can be said of the major cable media outlets in the United States, except the control is indirect. First, the administration gives favored access to media outlets that play ball. Media outlets, in turn, tend not to aggressively question the administrations narrative. Witness the extreme failures of the media to effectively question the Bush administrations narrative regarding the invasion of Iraq. It was clearly full of holes, but it essentially was transmitted without modification from the White House to the electorate. If you want to witness the extreme schmooziness between the press and the government, watch a White House Correspondent's dinner. It is a testament to a failed Fourth Estate.

The other way is even more direct: influential politicians try to exert control over the narrative. You can read more about this in the leaked DNC e-mails. Since campaigns are **major** advertising-time buyers, the networks will do what they can to keep them happy. Some of the campaigns will even have the gall to call the networks and try to get anchors fired for even the most mild criticism. See:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...paign_tried_to_get_me_pulled_off_the_air.html
 
How to tell if your news isn't biased:

- You are listening to NPR or watching PBS (or CBC/BBC).
The other day NPR had George Lakoff on, and he informed us that all government regulations are protections; the NPR guy didn't call him on it.

Oh boo fucking hoo. Do you care to bring up actual substantive evidence that NPR is not a good portal for news?
 
How to tell if your news isn't biased:

- You are listening to NPR or watching PBS (or CBC/BBC).
The other day NPR had George Lakoff on, and he informed us that all government regulations are protections; the NPR guy didn't call him on it.

They are--the only question is of who.
 
You get what you pay for, so media quality reflects the importance of quality to their funding model.

If advertising revenue is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that gets people to watch it. Truth is not popular; explosions, excitement and confirmation of the audience's prejudices are popular. So that's what you get. Where there are sizeable populations with different prejudices, you will get a set of news media targeting each of these audience pools, and advertisers will target their ads to the various audiences these media can attract. (This is the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News model).

If the government is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the government's positions (the RT model). This can be tempered by enforcing editorial independence, and having rules that limit governmental ability to interfere with the media it funds (the BBC model).

If viewer payments are the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the prejudices of the kind of person who is prepared to pay for news (the PBS model).

None of these systems guarantee that truth will be highly regarded; but the BBC and PBS models are the least awful.

When we make the mistake of thinking that truth will automatically be more important than money, we get what we deserve.

I pretty much agree with your assessment. However, the question is what to do about it? Is the status quo fine as is, or are there some sort of reforms that can be made? I think we need to have more classes in public education on critical thinking and how to determine the reliability of information, at a minimum. Not sure what else to do.
 
You get what you pay for, so media quality reflects the importance of quality to their funding model.

If advertising revenue is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that gets people to watch it. Truth is not popular; explosions, excitement and confirmation of the audience's prejudices are popular. So that's what you get. Where there are sizeable populations with different prejudices, you will get a set of news media targeting each of these audience pools, and advertisers will target their ads to the various audiences these media can attract. (This is the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News model).

If the government is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the government's positions (the RT model). This can be tempered by enforcing editorial independence, and having rules that limit governmental ability to interfere with the media it funds (the BBC model).

If viewer payments are the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the prejudices of the kind of person who is prepared to pay for news (the PBS model).

None of these systems guarantee that truth will be highly regarded; but the BBC and PBS models are the least awful.

When we make the mistake of thinking that truth will automatically be more important than money, we get what we deserve.

The United States used to do it another way, sorta. The networks were expected to produce news as a public service, a sort of "payment" for the use of the public airwaves in addition to licensing fees. The Networks then treated the News as a lost leader. News had sponsors of course, but making a profit from news was not as paramount as it is today. This de-emphasis on profit, compared to today, let some damn good journalism through, not the least of which was the exposure of "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy's witch trials and the mortal wounding of Red Scare of the 1950s.
 
You get what you pay for, so media quality reflects the importance of quality to their funding model.

If advertising revenue is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that gets people to watch it. Truth is not popular; explosions, excitement and confirmation of the audience's prejudices are popular. So that's what you get. Where there are sizeable populations with different prejudices, you will get a set of news media targeting each of these audience pools, and advertisers will target their ads to the various audiences these media can attract. (This is the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News model).

If the government is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the government's positions (the RT model). This can be tempered by enforcing editorial independence, and having rules that limit governmental ability to interfere with the media it funds (the BBC model).

If viewer payments are the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the prejudices of the kind of person who is prepared to pay for news (the PBS model).

None of these systems guarantee that truth will be highly regarded; but the BBC and PBS models are the least awful.

When we make the mistake of thinking that truth will automatically be more important than money, we get what we deserve.

I pretty much agree with your assessment. However, the question is what to do about it? Is the status quo fine as is, or are there some sort of reforms that can be made? I think we need to have more classes in public education on critical thinking and how to determine the reliability of information, at a minimum. Not sure what else to do.
Well, the trouble is that the right-wing media is much like a cult, mocking outsiders and dispelling any other info sources as propaganda. Cult worship and right wing politics works pretty well together. Got them to somehow convince conservatives of all walks of like to vote for Trump. I'm not certain what you think the problem is.
 
I pretty much agree with your assessment. However, the question is what to do about it? Is the status quo fine as is, or are there some sort of reforms that can be made? I think we need to have more classes in public education on critical thinking and how to determine the reliability of information, at a minimum. Not sure what else to do.
Well, the trouble is that the right-wing media is much like a cult, mocking outsiders and dispelling any other info sources as propaganda. Cult worship and right wing politics works pretty well together. Got them to somehow convince conservatives of all walks of like to vote for Trump. I'm not certain what you think the problem is.

Any unbiased news source would devote approximately 47% of its coverage to Trump support right?

How much time has NPR devoted to supporting Trump?
 
The United States used to do it another way, sorta. The networks were expected to produce news as a public service, a sort of "payment" for the use of the public airwaves in addition to licensing fees. The Networks then treated the News as a lost leader. News had sponsors of course, but making a profit from news was not as paramount as it is today. This de-emphasis on profit, compared to today, let some damn good journalism through, not the least of which was the exposure of "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy's witch trials and the mortal wounding of Red Scare of the 1950s.

I think the closest we have to an unbiased news source these days is the political fact checkers.
 
Well, the trouble is that the right-wing media is much like a cult, mocking outsiders and dispelling any other info sources as propaganda. Cult worship and right wing politics works pretty well together. Got them to somehow convince conservatives of all walks of like to vote for Trump. I'm not certain what you think the problem is.

Any unbiased news source would devote approximately 47% of its coverage to Trump support right?

No. In no rational world would that be any part of what it means to be an unbiased news source. NPR should report on the objective facts about Trump, which all show that Trump is mentally unstable, emotionally stunted, extremely ignorant about everything relevant to Presidential decision making (including economic decision within the bounds of the law), a pathological liar, a criminal in mutliple ways from economic fraud to sexual assault, and creating a cabinet full of people who share most of these traits.
Note that nothing in this list is even a value judgment and doesn't qualify as either being against Trump. If the facts are such that all decent people view these objective traits of Trump as negative, that isn't NPRs fault and they should not make any effort to hunt for "positive" traits that don't exist just to appear "fair and balanced" to idiots who don't know what being unbiased and objective actually means.
IF anything, NPR likely has failed to report on all these facts as much as they should have because they make Trump look so bad, and NPR were overly afraid of having the appearance of bias, even if that appearance were an invalid assessment.

Reality and fact strongly favor liberal and Democratic positions. So, on average, objective and rational analyses that unbiased media should be doing will favor liberals and make conservatives "look bad", just like science tends to. The GOP is the party of anti-science, anti-education, and pro-irrational faith. This is why Scientist in the US are about 8 times more likely to be or "lean" Democrat than Republican, and why increased education leads to liberal and Democratic leanings, and this relationship is notably strongly when race is held constant (such as when examining the Education-political relationship just within whites).

Unbiased media outlets should be highly appealing to the more educated people who have more knowledge about what is being reported and thus are better able to detect misinformation. NPR has the most education in general and studies have shown have more accurate objective knowledge about specific facts related to topics widely covered by most media outlets (such as 9-11, the Iraq Invasion, climate change, unemployment, election results, current international events, current make-up of Congress, etc.).

In fact, not only were NPR viewers more accurately informed on both Domestic and International political events, but Fox News viewers were the most misinformed of all TV media viewers and the only audience who actually knew significantly less than people who consumed no media news at all (meaning that most of what they "learned" on Fox was lies and made them worse than merely being uninformed and ignorant).

This is the result of just the most recent such study, but other studies done over years ago regarding basic fact of 9-11 and the Iraq Invasion show the same pattern of results.

Correct answers to 4 purely domestic questions and 5 involving international events. Note these are all events that all the outlets "cover" in some way just not all with any regard for the relevant facts, such as the economic bailouts in Europe, sanctions against Iran, battles in Egypt and Syria, etc.).

news-sources-fdu.jpg
 
Any unbiased news source would devote approximately 47% of its coverage to Trump support right?

No. In no rational world would that be any part of what it means to be an unbiased news source. NPR should report on the objective facts about Trump, which all show that Trump is mentally unstable, emotionally stunted, extremely ignorant about everything relevant to Presidential decision making (including economic decision within the bounds of the law), a pathological liar, a criminal in mutliple ways from economic fraud to sexual assault, and creating a cabinet full of people who share most of these traits.

Hmm, I'm not sure you understand what these words "objective facts" mean.

It is an objective fact that millions of people voted to (successfully) elect Trump president. Their views and perspectives obviously should be presented by any objective news source. Without all the sneering condescension, of course.
 
No. In no rational world would that be any part of what it means to be an unbiased news source. NPR should report on the objective facts about Trump, which all show that Trump is mentally unstable, emotionally stunted, extremely ignorant about everything relevant to Presidential decision making (including economic decision within the bounds of the law), a pathological liar, a criminal in mutliple ways from economic fraud to sexual assault, and creating a cabinet full of people who share most of these traits.

Hmm, I'm not sure you understand what these words "objective facts" mean.

It is an objective fact that millions of people voted to (successfully) elect Trump president. Their views and perspectives obviously should be presented by any objective news source. Without all the sneering condescension, of course.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that you are engaging in the fallacy of equivocation.

It is a fact that millions voted for Trump. That in NO WAY implies that their opinions, views or perspectives are also facts, or that those views are worthy of coverage as news.

"Many Voters Thick As Pigshit" is a viable (but perhaps too widely known to be newsworthy) story that is objectively factual.

The precise details of the ways in which stupid people are wrong is not newsworthy. Nor is failure to cover those details in any sense an indication of bias.

Facts are not subject to popularity. It's not bias to fail to give equal time to the flat earth society at a geological symposium, and for the exact same reason, it's not bias to fail to give equal time to the opinions of voters who are factually incorrect, no matter how numerous those voters might be.
 
Hmm, I'm not sure you understand what these words "objective facts" mean.

It is an objective fact that millions of people voted to (successfully) elect Trump president. Their views and perspectives obviously should be presented by any objective news source. Without all the sneering condescension, of course.

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that you are engaging in the fallacy of equivocation.

It is a fact that millions voted for Trump. That in NO WAY implies that their opinions, views or perspectives are also facts, or that those views are worthy of coverage as news.

"Many Voters Thick As Pigshit" is a viable (but perhaps too widely known to be newsworthy) story that is objectively factual.

The precise details of the ways in which stupid people are wrong is not newsworthy. Nor is failure to cover those details in any sense an indication of bias.

Facts are not subject to popularity. It's not bias to fail to give equal time to the flat earth society at a geological symposium, and for the exact same reason, it's not bias to fail to give equal time to the opinions of voters who are factually incorrect, no matter how numerous those voters might be.

It is a fact they have opinions, and any objective news outlet would certainly want to air those opinions.
 
Hmm, I'm pretty sure that you are engaging in the fallacy of equivocation.

It is a fact that millions voted for Trump. That in NO WAY implies that their opinions, views or perspectives are also facts, or that those views are worthy of coverage as news.

"Many Voters Thick As Pigshit" is a viable (but perhaps too widely known to be newsworthy) story that is objectively factual.

The precise details of the ways in which stupid people are wrong is not newsworthy. Nor is failure to cover those details in any sense an indication of bias.

Facts are not subject to popularity. It's not bias to fail to give equal time to the flat earth society at a geological symposium, and for the exact same reason, it's not bias to fail to give equal time to the opinions of voters who are factually incorrect, no matter how numerous those voters might be.

It is a fact they have opinions, and any objective news outlet would certainly want to air those opinions.

Why?

The detailed opinions of stupid people are not valuable, not newsworthy, and rarely entertaining.

So why would any objective news outlet want to waste airtime on those details?
 
It is a fact they have opinions, and any objective news outlet would certainly want to air those opinions.

Why?

The detailed opinions of stupid people are not valuable, not newsworthy, and rarely entertaining.

So why would any objective news outlet want to waste airtime on those details?

That's not an objective analysis it's an editorial value judgement.

Let's consider some objective facts from the last US election:

Fact: one candidate was under FBI investigation
Fact: many people who are under FBI investigation end up serving long prison terms
Fact: millions of American voters thought one candidate should be sent to prison
Fact: no one has ever been sent to prison for making comments about pussy-grabbing to an entertainment reporter more than a decade ago

Given these facts presumably any objective news source would have wall-to-wall coverage of the FBI investigation, including tours of prisons where a candidate might end up and interviews with voters who thought she belonged there. And no coverage about the pussy grabbing comments made to an entertainment reporter except maybe to point out how desperate they are to distract from the FBI investigation of their candidate that could result in a long prison term that they'd bring up such old and meaningless stuff.
 
Why?

The detailed opinions of stupid people are not valuable, not newsworthy, and rarely entertaining.

So why would any objective news outlet want to waste airtime on those details?

That's not an objective analysis it's an editorial value judgement.

Let's consider some objective facts from the last US election:

Fact: one candidate was under FBI investigation
Fact: many people who are under FBI investigation end up serving long prison terms
Fact: millions of American voters thought one candidate should be sent to prison
Fact: no one has ever been sent to prison for making comments about pussy-grabbing to an entertainment reporter more than a decade ago

Given these facts presumably any objective news source would have wall-to-wall coverage of the FBI investigation, including tours of prisons where a candidate might end up and interviews with voters who thought she belonged there. And no coverage about the pussy grabbing comments made to an entertainment reporter except maybe to point out how desperate they are to distract from the FBI investigation of their candidate that could result in a long prison term that they'd bring up such old and meaningless stuff.

As I anticipated - not particularly entertaining.
 
Jimmy Higgins said:
How to tell if your news isn't biased:

- You are listening to NPR or watching PBS (or CBC/BBC).
The other day NPR had George Lakoff on, and he informed us that all government regulations are protections; the NPR guy didn't call him on it.

Oh boo <expletive deleted> hoo. Do you care to bring up actual substantive evidence that NPR is not a good portal for news?
I'm sorry, I must have missed the part of my post where I claimed NPR is not a good portal for news. Point it out for us all, will you?

NPR is an excellent portal for news. That's why I listen to it more than any other. That's why I was even aware of the incident I mentioned. But it's biased. The only way you could possibly have failed to notice this is if either you rarely listen to it or its bias happens to be well-aligned with your own.

The BBC is less biased in my experience. I don't recall the CBC being particularly biased; but then back when watched it I wasn't really old enough to judge.
 
No. In no rational world would that be any part of what it means to be an unbiased news source. NPR should report on the objective facts about Trump, which all show that Trump is mentally unstable, emotionally stunted, extremely ignorant about everything relevant to Presidential decision making (including economic decision within the bounds of the law), a pathological liar, a criminal in mutliple ways from economic fraud to sexual assault, and creating a cabinet full of people who share most of these traits.

Hmm, I'm not sure you understand what these words "objective facts" mean.

It is an objective fact that millions of people voted to (successfully) elect Trump president. Their views and perspectives obviously should be presented by any objective news source. Without all the sneering condescension, of course.

Their objectively racist, sexist, and xenophobic views and reasons for supporting Trump were accurately and frequently reported. The fact that their views inherently make all decent humans cringe in disgust isn't the fault of the media outlet that accurately shows these facts.
It is also an objective fact that compared to those who supported Trump, there were 3 times as many American adults who did not support Trump being president, and more who did and still do despise him and view him as more worthy of prison than any public office.

Besides, it is not media's job to recite the public's own view back to them. Given that the public's views are so often at odds with fact and rational thought, the content of any unbiased and honest news source should look very little and often the opposite of what the content of the general public's views are. Should the content of a scientific journal look like it was written by random selection of Americans? No, that would be evidence of the journal being dishonest and incompetent. The same is true of any news media.
 
You get what you pay for, so media quality reflects the importance of quality to their funding model.

If advertising revenue is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that gets people to watch it. Truth is not popular; explosions, excitement and confirmation of the audience's prejudices are popular. So that's what you get. Where there are sizeable populations with different prejudices, you will get a set of news media targeting each of these audience pools, and advertisers will target their ads to the various audiences these media can attract. (This is the CNN, MSNBC and Fox News model).

If the government is the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the government's positions (the RT model). This can be tempered by enforcing editorial independence, and having rules that limit governmental ability to interfere with the media it funds (the BBC model).

If viewer payments are the primary source of funding, then you get 'news' that supports the prejudices of the kind of person who is prepared to pay for news (the PBS model).

None of these systems guarantee that truth will be highly regarded; but the BBC and PBS models are the least awful.

When we make the mistake of thinking that truth will automatically be more important than money, we get what we deserve.

The United States used to do it another way, sorta. The networks were expected to produce news as a public service, a sort of "payment" for the use of the public airwaves in addition to licensing fees. The Networks then treated the News as a lost leader. News had sponsors of course, but making a profit from news was not as paramount as it is today. This de-emphasis on profit, compared to today, let some damn good journalism through, not the least of which was the exposure of "Tailgunner" Joe McCarthy's witch trials and the mortal wounding of Red Scare of the 1950s.
+1 Agree with this. And this is the answer to Axulus OP.

We had real news in Walter Cronkite days and it all went away when Reagan discontinued the "fairness doctrine". The news actually worked back then and we need the "fairness doctrine" back again today. We also need to de-monopolize media and break them up into smaller pieces using anti trust regulation.

Which then begs the question, when society clearly learns that something has become much worse and non-functional than it was in the past......why are we so loath to change back again? Why can't we just go back to what worked in the past???? The Glass Seagall act also comes immediately to mind. Sometimes progress is NOT progress.

These are questions directed to you Axulus if you are still here.
 
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Why?

The detailed opinions of stupid people are not valuable, not newsworthy, and rarely entertaining.

So why would any objective news outlet want to waste airtime on those details?

That's not an objective analysis it's an editorial value judgement.

Let's consider some objective facts from the last US election:

Fact: one candidate was under FBI investigation
Fact: many people who are under FBI investigation end up serving long prison terms
Fact: millions of American voters thought one candidate should be sent to prison
Fact: no one has ever been sent to prison for making comments about pussy-grabbing to an entertainment reporter more than a decade ago

Given these facts presumably any objective news source would have wall-to-wall coverage of the FBI investigation, including tours of prisons where a candidate might end up and interviews with voters who thought she belonged there. And no coverage about the pussy grabbing comments made to an entertainment reporter except maybe to point out how desperate they are to distract from the FBI investigation of their candidate that could result in a long prison term that they'd bring up such old and meaningless stuff.

Because pussy grabbing is:
1. More obscene profits for the media oligopoly empire
2. A feminist cause to beat up white men
3. Good defensive interference for Hillary
4. General entertainment due to sexual reference
 
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