[…] I presume we don’t want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media […]
You, then, clarified that:
[…] a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.
If you are referring to the original root source (assuming that it’s, for example, a conversation with someone), to me, that reads like you are saying that a journalist can’t cite the report by another journalist who first interviewed that source (ie novel information), and that each journalist needs to independently interview the source themselves in a novel way.
No, but most original reports would be expected to in fact reach out to a primary source, and fact-checking them would often require the same thing.
That doesn’t need to be novel. Verifying a source or a piece of information often just requires reaching out to a primary source to have them confirm the second-hand report that is available elsewhere. Not all journalism is built by aggregating other reports, the process needs to start somewhere. And you can’t just take the fact that a source is mentioned as a guarantee of accuracy, you have to verify information.
This is, as I said, a full time job for a reason. Many corners are cut in the modern day of endless news cycles, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require work to do properly.
[…] That doesn’t need to be novel. Verifying a source or a piece of information often just requires reaching out to a primary source to have them confirm the second-hand report that is available elsewhere. Not all journalism is built by aggregating other reports, the process needs to start somewhere. And you can’t just take the fact that a source is mentioned as a guarantee of accuracy, you have to verify information. […]
I feel like this could be self-limiting — once enough independent verifications have been completed and released, the collection of them should reach a point where its deemed unnecessary to further prove its veracity. I think it would be akin to meta-analysis.
You need far less info to reach a bar for journalistic veracity than you do for a meta analysis paper. The question is where in the process the effort is being aggregated.
If a journalist phones a couple of sources, hears from them the same thing they are seeing somewhere and publishes that information, then the fact-checking has been done once and reaches thousands or millions of people.
If the way the information is disseminated requires those thousands or millions to do the fact-check themselves using the same process, then that is entirely impractical, which was my original point. Crowdsourced fact-checking is always going to be less reliable and exponentially more work than properly verified broadcast news sources. Even if many of them share their fact check, we have plenty of data to suggest the reach of that correction will be much smaller and it will still require a lot of private effort to correct the original info.
That’s the point of the entire “it’s a real job” argument. Journalists are doing a lot of legwork once and we’re all relying on that job to acquire a lot of our information instead of all of us doing the same legwork again. The two problems we’re facing are 1) that this trust opens us up to propaganda from activist or opinionated journalism, and 2) that we’re no longer just getting neatly processed info that has gone through a journalistic process, we’re also getting a firehose of misinformation from many individual content generators over the Internet.
If a journalist phones a couple of sources, hears from them the same thing they are seeing somewhere and publishes that information, then the fact-checking has been done once and reaches thousands or millions of people.
If the way the information is disseminated requires those thousands or millions to do the fact-check themselves using the same process, then that is entirely impractical, which was my original point. Crowdsourced fact-checking is always going to be less reliable and exponentially more work than properly verified broadcast news sources. Even if many of them share their fact check, we have plenty of data to suggest the reach of that correction will be much smaller and it will still require a lot of private effort to correct the original info.
Sure, but would it not be better if they had also just cited the transcript of their contact with those sources? I understand that the news outlet can just fabricate a source, but at least a source will give readers an official starting point for investigation rather than just blind continuous skepticism. I’m of the opinion that a sketchy source is better than no source at all.
Well, no, a sketchy source should not be published in the first place. That’s the job he journalist is supposed to be doing during the verification stage.
The process we’re discussing isn’t about verifying the final article, it’s about verifying the source itself.
[…] That’s the point of the entire “it’s a real job” argument. Journalists are doing a lot of legwork once and we’re all relying on that job to acquire a lot of our information instead of all of us doing the same legwork again. The two problems we’re facing are 1) that this trust opens us up to propaganda from activist or opinionated journalism, and 2) that we’re no longer just getting neatly processed info that has gone through a journalistic process, we’re also getting a firehose of misinformation from many individual content generators over the Internet.
Those are both hard problems to manage.
I agree that they may be hard problems to manage perfectly, but I don’t agree that citing sources won’t put a dent in the issue. Take your first problem:
that this trust opens us up to propaganda from activist or opinionated journalism […]
Say you have an article that says “A young man stole a car.”. Just as a very basic example, language like “young” is an opinion — it’s not an exact definition of age and is left to the reader for how they interpret it. Such interpretations open the door for emotional bias. I think it would be a different story if the article actually cited the age, or simply stated the age with a citation for where they know it from.
See, your point is exactly why the way you are thinking about this doesn’t work. You’re almost there, just coming at it from the wrong direction.
Yes, basic language choices indeed create an emotional framing to a story.
Basic language choices create a framing to a story EVERY TIME. You can’t avoid it. Any mediocre professional can alter the framing of a story under any style guide, with any requirements for information sourcing.
Editorial guidance for neutrality can be enforced. By an editor. A human person that reviews a piece of writing and assesses its skew and its style to correct it if it doesn’t fit the requirements.
But as a rule? Using citations? If the average journalist wanted to present a specific framing the guidelines you are suggesting would barely slow them down.
“A young man stole a car”
“Man, 28 (link), steals car”
“Man, 28 (link), of latino descent (link) commits crime in our town (link)”
Which of these is complying with your guidelines closest and which one is creating a more biased narrative?
Think about it this way, the effort to process the information is some multiplier of the effort it takes to consume the finished piece of information.
Some info comes in, a journalist of some description processes it into finished, verified news ready for consumption. That effort is some magnitude bigger than just reading the unverified news, and that work is enough to keep a lot of people working full time for the volume of information we all consume each day.
It’s kind of absurd to break down that statement to this level of detail, but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.
I feel we may be going around in circles with this; I think I’m not describing my interpretation well enough, but I think I understand what you are meaning when you say that journalism is full time — it’s not exactly how I would use the term, but I understand what you are saying. I completely agree with you that the work of a journalist is non-trivial. I also agree with you that a professional journalist deals with large volumes of information, and, to be able to process those large volumes of information, it would generally require one to work full time.
Well, a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.
I’ll grant you, it very often doesn’t happen, but still.
Are you saying that journalism only deals in novel information?
No. Not sure how you get that from the quote.
Let me try to clarify my thinking:
You stated this:
You, then, clarified that:
If you are referring to the original root source (assuming that it’s, for example, a conversation with someone), to me, that reads like you are saying that a journalist can’t cite the report by another journalist who first interviewed that source (ie novel information), and that each journalist needs to independently interview the source themselves in a novel way.
No, but most original reports would be expected to in fact reach out to a primary source, and fact-checking them would often require the same thing.
That doesn’t need to be novel. Verifying a source or a piece of information often just requires reaching out to a primary source to have them confirm the second-hand report that is available elsewhere. Not all journalism is built by aggregating other reports, the process needs to start somewhere. And you can’t just take the fact that a source is mentioned as a guarantee of accuracy, you have to verify information.
This is, as I said, a full time job for a reason. Many corners are cut in the modern day of endless news cycles, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require work to do properly.
I feel like this could be self-limiting — once enough independent verifications have been completed and released, the collection of them should reach a point where its deemed unnecessary to further prove its veracity. I think it would be akin to meta-analysis.
You need far less info to reach a bar for journalistic veracity than you do for a meta analysis paper. The question is where in the process the effort is being aggregated.
If a journalist phones a couple of sources, hears from them the same thing they are seeing somewhere and publishes that information, then the fact-checking has been done once and reaches thousands or millions of people.
If the way the information is disseminated requires those thousands or millions to do the fact-check themselves using the same process, then that is entirely impractical, which was my original point. Crowdsourced fact-checking is always going to be less reliable and exponentially more work than properly verified broadcast news sources. Even if many of them share their fact check, we have plenty of data to suggest the reach of that correction will be much smaller and it will still require a lot of private effort to correct the original info.
That’s the point of the entire “it’s a real job” argument. Journalists are doing a lot of legwork once and we’re all relying on that job to acquire a lot of our information instead of all of us doing the same legwork again. The two problems we’re facing are 1) that this trust opens us up to propaganda from activist or opinionated journalism, and 2) that we’re no longer just getting neatly processed info that has gone through a journalistic process, we’re also getting a firehose of misinformation from many individual content generators over the Internet.
Those are both hard problems to manage.
Sure, but would it not be better if they had also just cited the transcript of their contact with those sources? I understand that the news outlet can just fabricate a source, but at least a source will give readers an official starting point for investigation rather than just blind continuous skepticism. I’m of the opinion that a sketchy source is better than no source at all.
Well, no, a sketchy source should not be published in the first place. That’s the job he journalist is supposed to be doing during the verification stage.
The process we’re discussing isn’t about verifying the final article, it’s about verifying the source itself.
I agree that they may be hard problems to manage perfectly, but I don’t agree that citing sources won’t put a dent in the issue. Take your first problem:
Say you have an article that says “A young man stole a car.”. Just as a very basic example, language like “young” is an opinion — it’s not an exact definition of age and is left to the reader for how they interpret it. Such interpretations open the door for emotional bias. I think it would be a different story if the article actually cited the age, or simply stated the age with a citation for where they know it from.
See, your point is exactly why the way you are thinking about this doesn’t work. You’re almost there, just coming at it from the wrong direction.
Yes, basic language choices indeed create an emotional framing to a story.
Basic language choices create a framing to a story EVERY TIME. You can’t avoid it. Any mediocre professional can alter the framing of a story under any style guide, with any requirements for information sourcing.
Editorial guidance for neutrality can be enforced. By an editor. A human person that reviews a piece of writing and assesses its skew and its style to correct it if it doesn’t fit the requirements.
But as a rule? Using citations? If the average journalist wanted to present a specific framing the guidelines you are suggesting would barely slow them down.
“A young man stole a car” “Man, 28 (link), steals car” “Man, 28 (link), of latino descent (link) commits crime in our town (link)”
Which of these is complying with your guidelines closest and which one is creating a more biased narrative?
I mean, I would say only if one wants to do it continuously — I suppose it depends on how you are defining “full time job” in this context.
Think about it this way, the effort to process the information is some multiplier of the effort it takes to consume the finished piece of information.
Some info comes in, a journalist of some description processes it into finished, verified news ready for consumption. That effort is some magnitude bigger than just reading the unverified news, and that work is enough to keep a lot of people working full time for the volume of information we all consume each day.
It’s kind of absurd to break down that statement to this level of detail, but that doesn’t mean it’s not accurate.
I feel we may be going around in circles with this; I think I’m not describing my interpretation well enough, but I think I understand what you are meaning when you say that journalism is full time — it’s not exactly how I would use the term, but I understand what you are saying. I completely agree with you that the work of a journalist is non-trivial. I also agree with you that a professional journalist deals with large volumes of information, and, to be able to process those large volumes of information, it would generally require one to work full time.
I agree.
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