Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TangoTrotFox | Hacker News Reader

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A little information is a dangerous thing.

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Sufficiently flawed journalism is perhaps one of the most severe problems in our society. People are fed half truths, and at times simply false information, and then go on to repeat it and base their world views upon as if it were fact. And in the era of social media false and sensational views spread incredibly rapidly while any 'corrections' are basically dead on arrival.

To give a very recent example of this, you probably read about a shocking new study showing that the oceans are actually heating up 60% faster than we thought. Turns out the study was mathematically flawed and its actual numbers are not particularly different than what other studies have shown. [1][2][3]. And the error was detected just hours after publication - apparently not quickly enough to stop the shocking headlines. This is not an implied comment on climate change, but rather just a very recent example of this phenomena of how people are misled without having their views ultimately corrected that happens to involve climate change.

The sites that rely on 'teasing' and then paywalling are some of the worst offenders in the state of journalism today, and in my opinion the world, let alone society, would be in a much better place without them.

[1] - https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/environment/sd-me-...

[2] - https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-oceans-...

[3] - https://judithcurry.com/2018/11/06/a-major-problem-with-the-...

We can all agree that rewriting science department press releases is a bad idea and that journalists often get it wrong. But I wasn't referring to shoddy journalism, naked propaganda, click bait, or low-quality churnalism. My point was that no journalist or publication is perfect, but some are good enough, and what they do is expensive, necessary, and deserving of support.

That wasn't the point I was making at all.

What I was saying is that journalism, in its current state, often runs sensational stories that later end up being false or otherwise unsupported. That report I mentioned was not about the media rewriting a science publication -- the publication itself was published with errors in it. The media just accurately repeated those falsehoods. The problem is that, due to the nature of social media, the sensational stories get let's say a million hits. Later on they either update the story to more accurately reflect the truth or run a retraction. These 'corrections', by contrast get maybe a hundred hits. So you have people who have wildly broken worldviews largely because they take the media at face value.

The following quote from Thomas Jefferson is dated 1807, but it's now more relevant than ever simply because mass media is resulting in mass misinformation: "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day. I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

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