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Comment by lhorie | Hacker News Reader

> come up with a framework to penalize misleading journalism, while at the same time, preserving the independence of media

Why this obsession with penalizing people? Journalists might not know better. At some point one needs to take some responsibility in determining whether what they are consuming are actually reputable data sources or just cheap/free entertainment and hearsay, and one needs to realize that news outlets have inherent biases towards telling stories that are extraordinary or otherwise appealing.

Ultimately, shouldn't everyone be applying critical thinking and the scientific method to come to their own conclusions about the world?

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If anyone it’s the journalists who should uphold themselves to that responsibility. If they don’t, then their purpose in this world is moot. We might as well have 100% social media reporting.

> Journalists might not know better.

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.

>these days it seems to be mostly about generating clickbait.

Yes it's a bastardization of their profession, but everyone needs to eat.

Who knows if we'll ever get back to the quality of journalism in the Woodward/Bernstein era, when the large majority of middle-class Americans paid a monthly subscription to have professionally composed news delivered to their doorstep every morning.

Subscribe to nonprofit, or family-run, journalism that cares about the truth. ProPublica, Guardian, WaPo, now maybe LA Times, NYT (but avoid their bothsidesist politics coverage), Mother Jones, Talking Points Memo, New Yorker, etc. As long as truth seeking journalists are in control, all good - but carefully watch for ownership changes.

> I don't understand why this would excuse anything

I don't see it as an excuse, just as an observation of reality. Journalists can be misled by their sources. They may misinterpret data or make mistakes. They can have ulterior motives, or they may see the world through different glasses than you/me (e.g. conservative/liberal oriented news outlets). They may be pressured by deadlines to put out subpar quality material. There's noise amplification and echo chambers due to the role of social media. There are many reasons average journalism today might not be up to some standards.

The way I tend to think of it is: trust but verify. Some things matter directly to my personal life and it's in my personal interest to verify that I have the correct information about them. Why then, should I trust the (possibly exaggerated) interpretation from some WSJ journalist on some recent research paper rather than doing my own homework?

News about Theranos at this point, for example, is not one of those things that directly affect me or my family, and the accuracy and outrage of this story is of only mild entertainment value to me. Recognizing that, I can choose to consume news about it with the implicit understanding that I'm probably getting sensationalized editorials with no more value to me than a random hollywood movie, and not some data source that I should be investigating.

I'm not sure. But as another commenter mentioned, carrot (incentivizing responsible journalism) seems like it would be a far more effective response than stick (punishing bad journalism) for this issue. In the current environment there is already plenty of stick and hardly any carrot, so to speak (or even perverse incentives).

I don’t know how any honest, intelligent person can hold this position post-JournoList.

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