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Comment by AlotOfReading | Hacker News Reader

There are an infinite number of possible events to report, an infinite number of facts about those events to report on, and in most interesting cases the "facts" may not be known or objective. Take these two different summaries of the arrest of O.J. Simpson:

AP:

    O.J. Simpson’s ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and friend Ronald Goldman are found dead in Los Angeles. Simpson is arrested after a widely televised freeway chase in his white Ford Bronco.

Alternate:

    O.J. Simpson's ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson, 35, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman, 25, were stabbed and slashed to death outside her condominium in the trendy Brentwood neighborhood. The former football star was arrested after fleeing from police in a 90 minute chase along the 405.

These are both accurate descriptions of what happened, and they give the reader wildly different impressions.

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Maybe the statement above yours on accurate statements about things that have already happened. should be amended with:

accurate statements about things that have already happened, => minus any added linguistic flair

That second example has unnecessary additives that nudge emotion and has no place in journalistic integrity. At that point it becomes creative writing.

I don't agree. The second one leaves out important information.

I think the test should instead be, if after reader your text, does the reader reconstruct the facts you didn't include? Then you are impartial.

The goal of the article should be to minimize reconstruction error of facts not included. That's when it conveys things correctly.

> The second one leaves out important information.

Did you mean the first one leave out information? The second one includes unnecessary "flair" (extraneous emotive words) that could be used to create negative public opinion about Simpson (or pre-trial public defense of him that makes it difficult for people to admit they judged too soon) before a trial where the evidence will be presented.

Such as: >> were stabbed and slashed to death outside her condominium in the trendy Brentwood neighborhood. The former football star was arrested after fleeing from police in a 90 minute chase along the 405.

Unnecessary things include "football star" and "stabbed and slashed to death" (the gore is not at all necessary and being that they did not have a murder weapon at the time or forensics to determine the cause until some time after the death, it should not be suggested that it was a knife during the reporting of the incident). Also using the term "fleeing" for anyone that did not watch it live may be suggestive that he was reckless (which he wasn't, I watched it -- I am a Houston sports fan even though I don't care much for basketball), and reckless is far more likely to make one think, yep guilty. But he did have police after him which the first one reports in a much more neutral way. Also, "in the trendy Brentwood neighborhood" oh okay, so rich people, I guess I am suppose to grab some popcorn and engage in pre-trial drama now because it wasn't some everyday murder in the unsavory parts of the south side in Chicago, or Inglewood, CA? How is that information useful? The facts of the case presented in the first one already suggest it is not a murder spree so no one in the area need be concerned there is an unknown serial killer creeping around.

*This is in no way what so ever hinting or suggesting at my opinion of the actual outcome of the trial, only more details on my thoughts about the news reporting aspects you replied too.

I disagree completely.

The first one doesn't even indicate that anyone has been killed with weapons. If you saw the first version you could think 'carbon monoxide?' with the second version you know that it wasn't.

Stabbed and slashed to death is critical information. Football star is maybe not important, but it signals in what sort of environment the killing happened, similarly the mention of the trendy neighbourhood.

The goal should be to minimize reconstruction error of excluded facts. If you do, then you will represent everything you have seen. This necessarily means focusing on the surprising bits.

> The goal should be to minimize reconstruction error of excluded facts.

I agree that the job of an investigative reporter is to minimize reconstruction error of excluded facts.

The above is not investigative reporting, it is simply news reporting. Emotive speculation and nudging should be kept to a minimum, preferably not included at all to prevent the emotional speculation the second option is nudging people toward (it is not trying minimize reconstruction error of excluded facts, as all the facts of a crime at the time of reporting on an arrest are not known).

Using the second one for news reporting is polluting the jury pool by stirring up emotions before facts of an investigation are presented.

Journalistic integrity is more difficult and nuanced than you can encapsulate in a one-sentence definition. "Linguistic flair" is an important part of effective communication. We're naturally used to picking up subtle hints that communicate meaning and what's important within a story (which all reporting inherently is). Stripping that out is changing the meaning of the reporting. The effect usually minimizes the impact of the story and implicitly supports the status quo. This kind of neutral fact based reporting was actually a staple of American reporting from the early 20th century, so-called "hard news". It fell out of favor in large part because it wasn't able to adequately communicate the gravitas of particularly emotional events.

To illustrate, here's another AP story on the liberation of Dachau concentration camp, chosen as a deliberately extreme example of linguistic flair being used to educate an American audience on the little-known horrors of the Holocaust being uncovered in Europe:

    The U.S. 42nd and 45th divisions captured the infamous Dachau prison camp today and freed its 32,000 captives. [...] Jan Yindrich and I a few minutes later saw the same thing that greeted the soldiers -- 39 open-type railroad cars ... which went through the walls of Dachau camp. At first glance the cars seemed loaded with dirty clothing. Then you saw feet, heads, and bony fingers. More than half the cars were full of bodies, hundreds of bodies. Downward was driving a jeep along a string of cars when a soldier shouted: "Come here, quick, Colonel, here's a live one!" [...] This grisly spectacle was outside the walls of the camp -- along a widely traveled road inside the city of Dachau where Bavarians passed daily.

I hope we can agree that omitting the emotive "linguistic flair" have been an inappropriate choice here.

The above story is a separate category of journalism, think photo-journalism as opposed to news reporting. My statement on journalistic integrity was specifically referring to the topics' discussion on news reporting journalism.

But I agree there is a type of journalism -- I think there is another name for it but I can only think of photo-journalism atm -- where creative writing, or linguistic flair, can and does contribute if done in good faith (integrity).

The above story is a primary source. Later writers should quote any desired linguistic flair within their later stories, thereby properly attributing the flair to the primary source.

What happens now is journalists throw around secondary and tertiary sources without attribution.

It's okay to report "Bob Jones commented 'Someone is a miserable SOB'." It's not okay to report "Someone is a miserable SOB" as if it's fact not judgement.

None of this is a new variant of journalism. It's just journalism and/or history practices that somehow got forgotten despite the fact that we teach these primary vs secondary source concepts and proper quoting in middle/high school in the US.

It comes from an embedded AP reporter, which was wired and reprinted verbatim in the Seattle Times. They both follow AP standards and they would both be considered primary sources in an academic environment as contemporaneous reporting.

> These are both accurate descriptions of what happened, and they give the reader wildly different impressions.

Indeed, but which one are you implying is impartial?

Neither. The point was to give two reasonably neutral accounts that read differently.

That's fine, but I don't see how either has anything to do with "the status quo" or "moving the needle".

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