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Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

It wouldn't. You need journalists to do that, who are both real people and real journalists. I think many of our divisions come from news sources that are either not curated by real people, or from journalists who are not real journalists.

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The story was huge news when it broke. There wasn’t a conspiracy by journalists to hide it.

The problem was people as a whole didn’t care. I think it’s only very recently that more than a small minority of Americans became aware of the reality that the police and justice system aren’t always people out there doing good—they’re normal people, for better or worse. Up until we got daily police videos of cops killing innocent people, it was assumed that arrested=guilty, throw them away. Even in the face of video evidence lots of people won’t budge from the idea that the justice system had a good reason for doing heinous things.

These people believe that there is corruption in politics and politics in the workplace.

But for some reason they think that corruption in the justice system is impossible. Usually they think the same about assosiated organisations like FBI

That's during a conflict with Russia, a country where all power was seized by internal security services

The motivation of holding these beliefs is very simple, if bad things are done by the justice system to innocent (or not particularly criminal people), then there's a chance that one day the justice system does the same to you through no fault of your own. That's an unsettling idea hence rejected.

I think this is another "just world fallacy"[1] adjacent idea running rampant in our society. You see this fallacy it pop up in a lot of "woo" self-help ideas like "manifesting" or "sending out positive vibrations" as well as things like faith or spiritual healing. The basic idea being that people get what they deserve so people who experience hardship - whether legal, medical, or social - deserve it. While people who do and think good things are safe from these forces.

IMHO, this is a kind of pathological extension of "internal locus of control"[2]. Internal locus of control is good for mental health and achievement, but once you start to project it onto other people without sufficient consideration of their circumstances things quickly get problematic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control

>> The problem was people as a whole didn’t care.

People dont care about the economics of free messaging apps or "tech monopolies", but plaster it enough across enough articles across many years of publication and suddenly it becomes an issue.

I'd argue that the NY Times and other media are the ones who dont care. They get to decide what people care about.

I didn't say there was any conspiracy to hide it.

Yes and no.

The gp isn't asking for automated journalism, just algorithmic promotion. You would still need real people to investigate and write; the proposed algorithm would simply sort.

I actually think this type of thing is very conceivable, but the problem is that it's not a technical challenge - it's an incentivisation one. Current algorithm creation is profit-incentive, and trivial, consumer-oriented & generally useless/inaction-driving "news" are all significantly more profitable than what the gp describes as "important".

In fact, currently many journalistic platforms & publications actively promote themselves on the basis that they already offer what the gp has asked for (which by-and-large they don't of course).

This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

How do we define "real journalist" in a way other than "curates news in a way that I personally approve of"?

Seems like a relatively consistent, generally agreed on definition at least of 'investigative journalist' shouldn't be impossible. Something like... 'A news gatherer, who uses primary sources and triangulates investigative techniques to gather information, establish causation and contribute to understanding of emerging and ongoing news.'

Oh, I don't know, perhaps if you look at any if the huge amount of material from journalism schools on what journalism is and how it should be done, or maybe at journalism's many professional bodies and their codes of ethics, that will give you some ideas?

Cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...

> This is a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Ironically, this is not a real no true Scotsman.

There is no other way.

Is the journalist advocating for something or simply reporting the facts.

I would define a real journalist as someone who adds new important previously unknown facts to a story, or reports on a previously unreported story and who discloses if their sources have a vested interest in the information they've presented.

So that eliminates cable news entirely and most of the work done by NYT, WAPO etc. who basically act as a mouthpiece for government and repeat the same stories ad infinitum.

There’s a whole sub field of journalism called “curatorial journalism” or “meta journalism” that reports aggregated news that has already been reported by other outlets. This means they don’t report any new facts per se, but sometimes the combination of facts over time can color a story differently than when the facts are reported in isolation. I find this form of journalism to be very compelling.

Oh, they are real journalists alright. They are just short of certain morals and ethics.

I don't think the issue is journalists are not real journalists. The issue is that media, especially in America, is a private enterprise and is largely owned by two people. And people like collecting paychecks, so you do what your told. How many of us on HN are for privacy, but yet work in Silicon Valley writing the code that violates that same privacy? I'd wager quiet a few. And it is because we all need an income stream. Being an indie dev works for some, but not most.

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