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Comment by jjoonathan | Hacker News Reader

If the headline is that Person X said Thing Y, that means the claim is unverified. You should know this. It's basic media literacy 101.

When I contrast mainstream media to alternative media, the main difference I see is that alt media is a lot less careful with signaling confidence levels and eventual correctness. No "said X" in the title, no retractions, no requests for comment from affected parties. No journalism. The fact that you can find alt media which is biased in a way that you personally find desirable is not an indication of quality.

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> It's basic media literacy 101

Can you imagine applying this standard to other professions ?

Say you doctor says "The Lab technician read your report and says you have cancer" or a scientist says "Our experiments say that global warming is real". You still hold them accountable for their claims, because THEY are the professionals. The whole point of being an authoritative source is that you don't report things until you have it on good authority. If you can't be held accountable to your claims, then that's the failure of your profession. Your role as the intermediary, is to vet the sources. If I have to do it, you have failed.

Is your claim is that : "All media is inherently untrustworthy, but some media is worse than other media"? Because that sounds like a vote in favor of rejecting the premise of authoritative sources.

I have looked at every front page of NYT over the last 48 hours. It started with outright accusing Israel strongly, and then steady reduced the degree of accusation indicated in headline over the next 48 hours. The photos and front page still hints towards Israel being the cause of the blast without saying it. The facts on the ground now strongly indicate a misfire from Gaza, that the hospital wasn't directly hit and expects the death toll to be closer to 10-100, rather than the 500 that has been parroted as truth. Have NYT/BBC/AJ reflected any of these changes in their front page headlines ? NO.

This is just from the last 48 hours and I was fortunate enough to have accumulated trustworthy 'alt sources' to identify the discrepancies on this issue. Add Gellman Amnesia into the mix, and I wonder how many 'authoritative' lies I've gobbled up from despite a decent degree of scrutiny on my part.

> The whole point of being an authoritative source is that you don't report things until you have it on good authority

Sometimes you never have it on good authority for years, meanwhile the 'thing' is being spread by other sources, so they have report that in the least. Sometimes 'Israel/Hamas spokesperson claims X' is a newsworthy story by itself.

> This is just from the last 48 hours of a issue that I was fortunate enough to have accumulated trustworthy 'alt sources' to identify the discrepancies.

And what are those sources? Have you looked at their record? Do they provide retractions? Do they cover the "other side's" point of views? Would you call them authoritative?

> Sometimes you never have it on good authority for years

Then why are you publishing?

Yep, I had been building them up during peace-time when I had idle-fascination about the conflict.

In this case, most of the reliable sources are operational intelligence pages, and people who have done on-the-ground reporting near the Gaza border before.

The minute the news broke out, their reactions were that of confusion. Israeli rockets don't have large fire balls. All major Israeli strikes come with roof-knocking, this one didn't. The Hamas HQ hospital was the other one, so if they were going to lead with genocide, they'd have chosen the other hospital. They asked their audiences to wait and see because the stories weren't lining up.

I have a pretty strong set of alt-sources I trust on specific topics who get things right on issues in their field with a high degree of accuracy. Many of these are PhDs and professionals in the field. They are alt-sources in so far as they don't work for media houses. But, they are certified experts in their area of choice.

The bbc video that is still up with 400k views states the false things as facts. Without the claims thing. They show the burning parking lot while stating that it's a completely destroyed and flattened hospital.

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