Inside the Guardian and the Snowden Leaks 239
An anonymous reader writes "An interesting and thoughtful article in the New Yorker about the inner workings of the Guardian newspaper. It explains a lot about why the Snowden files ended up there and not elsewhere. Given all the snark on Slashdot about the sorry state of modern journalism, it is well worth a read to see one organization that got it right. An illustrative quote about Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian's editor: 'He has a really useful piece of equipment that most editors don't have, which is a spinal column.' I would encourage everyone to read this, and if you support the type of journalism the Guardian has been engaging in, think about buying a subscription. The article also talks about the financial side of the newspaper business, and real journalism is not going to happen unless somebody pays for it."
Reference Newspapers (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly, I would recommend reading diverse viewpoints. I read fox news, huffington post, bbc & al jazeera on a daily basis. I buy the atlantic and the economist. Then the daily show & the onion :)
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Honestly, I would recommend reading diverse viewpoints.
I totally agree. Most of these journalists and editors do find out the truth, before they decide how to spin and twist and embellish it to create either sensationalism, or their preferred narrative. And since they don't all have the exact same goals, an intelligent critical thinker can often tease at least some of the truth out of the differing lies.
false diversity (Score:2)
good comment, definitely we should all make a point to seek out different points of view in news...
however, having worked in news (Fox affilitate in Iowa a century ago) I can tell you this is not going to get you 'diversity'
It's the Fox News thing...
See it's a false dichotomy and drastic oversimplification to say 'MSNBC is for liberals, Fox is for conservatives, therefor to have balance I must watch both'
The premise is w
posted in wrong place (Score:2)
/.'ers please forgive my error, I posted the above comment in the wrong thread...will look more closely before I post next time ;)
Re:false diversity (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember how those "think of the children" news are made - I was around 15 y.o. in Moscow, it was around 1992, presumably Japanese news channel (there was russian producer who told us that) filmed as as "Russian punks". They told us to come to building in our block that was scheduled for demolition, generously gave us each 2 packs of marlboro and some vodka, somebody brought a guitar. So we were to sing russian punk songs while drinking vodka from a bottle and smoking cigarettes, all this with broken windows and overall mess of a building scheduled for demolition as a background. I do not know if it was shown or not, if shown we could be orphans of war near dwelling, half destroyed by government aviation in Chechnya, or where it was needed at the moment.
BBCFOX (Score:2)
I see this too, in even historic coverage back to the "War in the Crimea" [wikipedia.org] the news was used to stoke sentiment exactly as you describe.
Charge of the Light Brigade indeed
Fox News talking heads are now openly praising Putin:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/09/10/putin-is-one-who-really-deserves-that-nobel-peace-prize/ [foxnews.com]
full analysis: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/09/06/a-right-wing-media-star-is-born-vladimir-putin/195756 [mediamatters.org]
The U.S. is recovering f
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Reminds me of National Geographic. They came out once to my neck of the woods where I grew up: idyllic farm setting in the mountains.
I guess the natural beauty wasn't good enough. They wanted one of the locals to bring a bathtub outside to the field and pose in it. We were like eh?
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:4, Funny)
I'd probably recommend the reverse order.
Things will get less factual as you proceed from right to left (in your list).
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:4, Informative)
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I'd add either the (UK, not Australian) Telegraph or (preferably) the Financial Times to that list (much better than the WSJ). Particularly for financial/business stories I almost never read the mainstream press, they are simply awful at reporting these things (usually misunderstanding, missing key details, or over-sensationalising stories as well as over-simplifying - the BBC is particularly bad at this). Bloomberg generally does a decent job most of the time on them and is worth following for that as it's
false diversity (Score:2)
good comment, definitely we should all make a point to seek out different points of view in news...
however, having worked in news (Fox affilitate in Iowa a century ago) I can tell you this is not going to get you 'diversity'
It's the Fox News thing...
See it's a false dichotomy and drastic oversimplification to say 'MSNBC is for liberals, Fox is for conservatives, therefor to have balance I must watch both'
The premise is wr
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Alastair Cook used to explain it very well to non-US audiences via the BBC but he is sadly no longer with us. The gruesome footnote to him spending decades explaining the weirdness of American to the outside world is that his grave was robbed by people looking for artificial joints to sell into your utterly fucked up health system.
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Adding noise to your sample doesn't improve its accuracy.
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.economist.com/ [economist.com]
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Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.economist.com/ [economist.com]
I second this. The journalists at The Economist are mostly British, although most subscribers are American. It is very entertaining to read news about America from an outsider's perspective, especially about typical American issues, like our dysfunctional health care system, guns, abortion, etc.
As for American news magazines, like Time or Newsweek, I wouldn't even use them to line my parakeet's cage, for fear that I would end up with a retarded parakeet.
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I used to read The Economist regularly, and also had a print subscription for a year too.
As an Indian, let me tell you this: The Economist doesn't have "outsider's perspective". Although that is how it is marketed (and is received in most of the Europe). It is a British publication. And, as any avid non-European reader can tell you, it is vapid anti-China. You should take that seriously because it is coming out of an Indian's mouth.
I guess it looks more balanced than most American publishers because the Br
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I used to be a huge fan of the Economist. However, I won't be renewing my subscription this time around.
The Economist's "outsider perspective" on America has become anything but.
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Or maybe you're just disagreeing with them? They have pretty evenly been conservative leaning in their opinions for a long time. Lately, they HAVE been bandying around the opinion that the state of the US is pretty stupid, and they've been naming blame.
Perhaps you don't like who they're blaming? Lately, it's been the conservatives.
Out of curiousity, what decline in quality are you noticing? Can you give some more information? They seem just as informative and fact presenting as they've always been to me
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)
4 Points
1) Diversity is good, but... You must keep in mind that is not sufficient reason to read a source. A 'diversity' of falsehoods is worthless.
2) You can't read everything. Choose the areas that mean the most to you (international affairs, economics, national or local politics, etc) and try to find 2-3 sources that seem to do good work in those areas.
3) Be aware who is paying the bills. The consumers/adverisers in typical newspapers? Purely advertisers as in television/online reporting? Government in state funded broadcasting? I don't believe reporters will bend their views to match the person paying the bills. Instead reporters with unsympathetic views will often not get hired in the first place (probably not a lot of leftwingers in Fox or rightwingers on MSNBC). I'd strongly recommend reading Manufacturing Consent [wikipedia.org] for more information.
4) Let your choices evolve. The editors today may not be the editors tomorrow. Companies get bought out, new ones arise. How much longer will the Guardian's editor remain?
My recommendations:
The guardian [theguardian.com] -- You already have your reasons. I think their dissimenating the NSA leaks and wikileaks info when no one else would [gawker.com] is justification enough.
al jazeera [aljazeera.com] -- Particularly foreign viewpoint, high quality.
Democracy Now [democracynow.org] -- Not the best quality but clearly believe what they say and is run off donations. Also provides an American (important to me as I am one) viewpoint on things.
Their are others I think are probably good and have seen other posters mention already but I'm not experienced enough with them to know.
The Financial Times (Score:5, Insightful)
Their focus is mostly financial, but I really enjoy their world news reporting. Whenever I pick up a "normal" paper here, even (especially?) one of the "big" ones, it seems that they're trying to sell me an extreme viewpoint - and maybe some male enhancement products to go with it - rather than actually impart any information. The FT is much more reporting like I remember it used to be. Maybe because they actually charge enough for their paper to cover their costs.
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The English translation of the German magazine, Der Spiegel [spiegel.de].
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In the UK, I rate the Independent, along with the aforementioned Guardian.
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In France: Mediapart http://www.mediapart.fr/ [mediapart.fr] and Le Canard Enchaîné http://lecanardenchaine.fr/ [lecanardenchaine.fr]
Mediapart has an english version: http://www.mediapart.fr/en/english [mediapart.fr]
Mediapart outs corrupt politicians, while Le Canard Enchaîné has a lot of information from government's insiders.
Mediapart is serious, and wants to go on a crusade against corruption.
Le Canard is humorous, full of excellent puns, and somewhat disillusioned about politics (they are systematically sued, but rarely lose their law
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And I forgot Le Courrier International, which is less France centric:
http://www.courrierinternational.com/ [courrierin...tional.com]
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DER SPIEGEL being DER SPIEGEL does not have a Kindle edition. They rely on apps for iOs and Android and v
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The Independent [independent.co.uk] is another good UK paper. It seems positioned slightly less left/more liberal/more free market compared to the Guardian (my take). They also make a point of having intelligent dissenting opinions in the paper - so you get to see well reasoned arguments from different sides instead of a battle of talking-heads-who-shout-loudest.
Makes a good reading companion to the Guardian.
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Dear slashdotters, The Guardian is quickly becoming one of my preferred references. Can you help me broaden my horizons by naming other good newspapers? (English/French/Spanish language only sorry)
Not sure if it counts as a newspaper (it comes out fortnightly), but in the UK there is the Private Eye. A lot of the content is satire, but they also report on topics not covered by other papers.
As an example, when the Leveson report was being released, they covered the bits that the other papers were not reporting on (namely the bits that made them look bad), and also recently have reported on some of the big the tax evasion techniques being used by big companies (again, some of the other newspapers eithe
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My three daily readings are :
new.google.com - not a reference site per se but sometimes news can be reported from less mainstream media. Chose a national edition (/?ned=xx in url) for other languages, spanish speaking world has quite a different coverage.
Al Jazeera [aljazeera.com], as many pointed out here. Many subjects are covered with much less biased point of view than in western media. Pretty good and quality journalism. Some in-depth coverage samples: BP disaster [aljazeera.net] and one year later [aljazeera.net].
Slashdot ... again not a refe
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The independent has some very good journalists and good stories, although slightly more tabloid oriented they are quite happy to take on the establishment. Especially a certain Robert Fisk (if you're interested in middle east news at all) his columns are unmatched.
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:4, Informative)
They say "real journalism" but in my experience, the "real journalists" never really seem to get most things accurate. Every time I've been aware of the events behind a particular story (in some cases, being involved in the story) the "journalists" always seem to miss important details or flat out have some details wrong (for example, a plane crash one of my classmates was involved in, it was reported that all passengers died when in fact there was a survivor.)
The so called "bloggosphere" tends to be more accurate in my opinion.
The Blogosphere woudn't know what real investigative journalism is (and unfortunately they are not the only ones since most traditional newspapers have forgotten what journalism is. Hint : it is not government PR) if they were hit by a 10 foot pole.
Thank god some good actors still exist in the US and abroad. Propublica in the US and The Guardian in the UK. In France Le Canard Enchaîné. While Le monde and Le Figaro may seem independent they survive thanks to government grants. So they'll never ever tell the whole story. In Italy ha no one. Each newspapaer is more corrupt than the next, and all all of them receive government aid.
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If you're going to mention the Canard Enchainé in France you might also want to mention Private Eye in the UK.
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Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)
Glad it's only an opinion because there is no evidence to suggest this is true. One can use the Boston bombing as a classic example of how the blogosphere got it completely wrong. Same with Sandy Hook, to use just two examples.
The reason why blogs appear to be more accurate is because they generally cater to one specific area whereas those in the industry cover just about everything and need to put that information in a form digestible to the masses. Even though they may have a reporter dedicated to an area, that one person has to cover the gamut of the subject which isn't easy under any circumstance. When you're on a deadline, it is much more difficult.
Unless someone is on the scene, recording things as they happen then write about it in an unbiased manner (or as unbiased as they can be by not using terms such as "pigs", "gestapo" and so on), their reporting will be significantly less accurate than those who do this for a living. Further, and as previously mentioned, they need to put concepts and ideas into neat and compact sound bites for people to understand.
That said, and to use a tired quote, even a broken clock is right twice a day. Same with the blogosphere.
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)
The so called "bloggosphere" tends to be more accurate in my opinion.
Exactly. They seem more "accurate" to you because the ones you visit share your views.
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Same as newspapers and web sites then.
Re:Reference Newspapers (Score:4, Informative)
Except wikileaks (and Assange himself) is already known to embellish the truth, or even outright fabricate it. For example, what they claimed were cameras in that "collateral murder" video were in fact weapons. I'm not even an expert and I clearly saw both Kalashnikov and RPG being carried by those people walking - I don't know how anybody could mistake those for cameras. Assange himself admitted that his intent is to cause outcry, even if he has to lie about it.
All of which are false (those in fact were cameras, held by the two reporters named Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh working for Reuters), more info here [wikipedia.org]. I think we have additional evidence that in fact bloggers are a much worse source of news than reporters. Instead tending to reinforce the beliefs and opinions of those that seek them out rather than provide accurate commentary. Slashdot, please mod AlphaWolf_HK down.
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There are a lot of prima donnas out there operating under the guise of being journalist while acting as a surrogate mouthpiece for whatever powerful entity helps them further their career. They aren't real journalists despite their claim to the contrary. The NYT and WSJ editorial staff are good examples of these shills.
These are the same people that put up a fight claiming that bloggers can't be journalists. Essentially, because independent bloggers aren't part of the bought and paid for scheme the "profess
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No, you didn't. As for Ak-47's, those were explicitly allowed by the occupational forces - was Bush not merciful - for personal defense.
Which means that if a SWAT team saw a licensed permit holder walking down a street in America, and opened fire with automatic weapons, you'd support that, right? And then also fired upon anyone who tried to rescue the wounded, right? Right?
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The issue we're discussing is the edits and editorials that wikileaks added to the video.
They are not an unbiased source. If they edited it, it can't be trusted.
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They also "produced" the film "Collateral Damage" by editing out anything that did not support their non-objective analysis. The full version of the video was released later but by then the unquestioning masses had already firmed up their opinion on the whole matter and were not particularly interested in seeing anything that might not agree with their particular line of thought. The release of the edited video by Wikileaks was the first glaring sign that despite all the bullshit about just setting anonymou
Re: Reference Newspapers (Score:2)
Certainly the New Yorker has shown it doesn't know the difference between "insure" and "ensure". That error appears three times in their article. Standards sure have slippedâ¦
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Guardian#Accusations_of_anti-Semitism_and_bias_in_coverage_of_Israel [wikipedia.org]
http://cifwatch.com/2013/04/30/guardianap-story-on-tunisias-jews-omits-history-of-antisemitic-persecution/ [cifwatch.com]
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/91164/antisemitic-guardian-gaza-cartoon-shows-jews-puppeteers [thejc.com]
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/08/reuters-bbc-and-guardian-celebrates.html#.UleSExBFNoo [blogspot.com]
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/05/06/1207175/-Guardian-Battles-Financial-Woes-Antisemitism-Allegations [dailykos.com]
http://www [thecommentator.com]
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A blog with the heading "Monitoring and combating antisemitism, and the assault on Israel's legitimacy, at the Guardian (...)" is definitely going to be a useful source in this discussion.
1st amendment (Score:3)
Very interesting read. The thing that shocks me the most is that there is still such extensive censorship going on around the world, including in the U.K.
" On Davies’s advice, Rusbridger took the unprecedented step of bringing in the New York Times as a partner. A British newspaper might be blocked from publishing, but an American outlet would have First Amendment protection."
Modern journalism (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you expect from journalism?
As long as a story about Lindsay Lohans latest rehab draws ten times as much readers as some background article about the NSA spying capabilities while being less risky at the same time, the development is clear.
Do you really expect someone to risk the ire of that organisation that can dig (or make) up your dirtiest secrets in order to get less readers? You have to be an idealist or crazy (or preferably both) to do so.
Re:Modern journalism (Score:5, Funny)
We all know that NSA surveillance .... wait, did you say there was a story about Lindsay Lohan? In rehab? I can't find the link, do you have one? ;)
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12600 Links according to Google News [google.de] ;-)
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Re:Modern journalism (Score:5, Funny)
I had once the idea to spin a story that the NSA had nude pictures of a celeb and anyone could get them with a FOIA request ;-). But that would be too evil.
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True.
But the point here is not what an average person thinking about himself would do. The point is what a non-ordinary person caring about society can do.
Whether you want our times to be told by the former or the latter, it remains your choice.
What the definition of 'journalist' should be, this is the matter of discussion.
Blogosphere vs. Old Media (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the side effects of the rise of the blogging hordes is the death of traditional journalism. Even if old media is biased one way or another, the decent newspapers of record have some respect for journalistic integrity. Reporting on a government corruption scandal is very different from reporting on the latest iPhone over at Engadget or the endless stream of celebrity garbage "news." Seeking out the real story from actual, verifiable sources rather than a blogger posting their own opinion as fact is the difference. While I'm sure some bloggers are journalists in the traditional sense, not all are, and blogs are even more sensitive to producing content that makes people click than newspapers are.
Some people may cite this as anti-progress, but look at media prior to the Internet, in fact, before cable TV. There were only 3 network news sources, and a few newspapers of record producing content. Now there's tons of media outlets, thousands of random bloggers, and an increasing trend of the medial outlets crowdsourcing content from their readers (CNN iReport, etc. etc.) Having so many choices means that opinions are more diverse, but conversely it also means that it narrows people's viewpoints. Conservatives are Fox News fans, but they're also fans of even more conservative bloggers. It makes liberals more liberal and conservatives more conservative, and that leads to situations like we're in today with Congress and the Tea Party faction. You would never have something like this in the 50s/60s simply because the population didn't have enough customized hot-button content to whip them into whatever polarized frenzy they're into.
Traditional journalism does need to return to media, but as the submitter states, you have to pay for it, and integrity doesn't pay the bills like the latest unverified rumor from a friend of a friend of Lindsey Lohan...
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Budget cuts pretty well killed that off before this site even existed let alone most blogs.
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Investigative journalism takes a lot of analysis of data from a lot of sources and that takes time.
The bloggers also write short 500 word texts. In contrast a proper newspaper will have much longer texts with a lot more detail. I remember reading an article in a weekly publication about the Boston bombers just the week after it happened. They had quotes from the mother, friends, people who knew them.
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obDisclaimer: I have a left wing bias to say the least. But that's not important for this post since it applies to both sides equally.
You do have to admit that Drudge, the Huffington Post and all the others serve as echo chambers for extreme viewpoints. The conservative side gets bombarded with anti-liberal stories day in and day out, and doesn't have to listen to any other opinion if they don't want to. Same thing happens on the liberal side. You wouldn't have heard Walter Cronkite on CBS news during the V
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Watch 'All in the Family' again, with 20/20 hindsight.
Meathead was an arrogant blithering moron who understood nothing (aka philosophy major). Archie was stuck in the 50s but was a decent human when push came to shove. e.g. He let Meathead live in his house for free.
What if Snowden had gone to the New York TImes? (Score:5, Insightful)
The NTY has been riding the work of Woodward and Bernstein since Watergate. That was a long time ago, and now they are in the pocket of intrenched special interests, just like the rest of US journalism.
It's a sad day when no major new organization in the US can be counted on to stand up to external pressure, whether it be economic or political. It ironic that a newspaper in the UK is doing the heavy lifting in this case, since there is no constitutional protection of the press in England, and there is in the US.
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W&B worked for the Washington Post, not the NYT.
The NYT would be reporting it if Bush were Pres (Score:2)
If a Republican were in the White House, the NYT would have reported on this instantly and heavily. When Bush was in office, the NYT leaked confidential info that put our troops in danger. And look at the constant stream of stories they did on Abu Gharib and interrogation techniques. Why weren't they scared of the feds then?
The main reason the American media are holding back on this story is because Obama is currently in the White House.
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Like that time with the Iraq war and the cheerleading?
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At that point there were still high ranking members of the military that were sickened by what the spooks were up to and willing to talk about it off the record.
News sources around the world.... (Score:2)
Many have pointed out Economist, Al Jazeera and The Atlantic. Here are few others worth mentioning...
The New Yorker
The Times of India
The Indian Express
The Hindu
Outlook India and Tehelka (Indian weekly news magazines.)
Der Spiegel (they have an excellent English edition.)
South China Morning Post
Caijing Daily (they als
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Just be warned that the print edition of DER SPIEGEL differs quite a lot from the online version. They have different editorial staff and the truly valuable articles of the print edition never make it into the online version(but you can buy them as PDF). The G
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Re:Don't be naive. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't be naive. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades.
Your point being?
Oh right, you think america should be given respect for free instead of earning it through deed like everyone else has to.
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There were two sides in the cold war. Anti-American doesn't imply impartial; just the opposite. They had a side and still haven't accepted that their philosophy didn't just lose but was WRONG.
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The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades.
Ah, the ever popular "everybody who disagrees with me is wrong and/or evil" gambit. Currently much in vogue with the NSA/MI5 and US/UK government spokesmen.
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The Guardian is a hard-left medium that has proven itself to be anti-American over the decades.
The Guardian supported the Iraq war, which doesn't seem very hard-left or anti-American.
Perhaps the world is not black and white.
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
So? You can be biased and still do good journalism. In fact, I'd say it's impossible not to be biased. Everyone is biased, it's human nature. Organizations can go some way to mitigating that bias but you'll never remove it entirely.
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Re:Erm, ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone has an opinion but reporters are to report the news.
"Reporters reporting the news" is hardly immune to bias:
1. What is considered "the news" anyways? I think we can agree that "Planes Flown Into World Trade Center" is news, and "Area Man Posts Cat Video" is not, but how about "50 People Protest" versus "Double Homicide On Fleet St" versus "10 Brokers Convicted of Mortgage Fraud"?
2. Who do you talk to in order to understand the news story in question? For example, in discussions on Syria's chemical weapons, does your report mostly contain information from (a) the White House, (b) US Congressional opposition leadership, (c) the Kremlin, (d) the UN, (e) Bashar al-Assad's government, (f) Syrian rebels, (g) the Israeli government, etc, etc.
3. Who's information do you believe, if there is disagreement about something? Which sources do you challenge aggressively and which sources do you treat as fairly impartial observers? For example, on an economics story, do you accept a government report as truth if there's a competing report by another group, especially if that group has a political ax to grind?
4. Even if you've perfectly balanced issues 1, 2, and 3, what comes first in your report and what becomes the headline? For example, on 9/12/2001, many headlines in the US read "America Attacked", which was true but conveys a somewhat different story than "18 Terrorists Attack World Trade Center and Pentagon".
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Sadly, Yahoo! (or the wire services they syndicate) seem to disagree on the latter. The bulk of the "Oddly Enough" section is at the level of "area man posts cat video", when it used to be interesting but unusual actual events.
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There are always 2 sides to a story
No there aren't: Sometimes there are 5 sides. Sometimes there really is only 1 side. Sometimes, what's being examined is so obscure that nobody has taken sides yet. Interesting stories typically have a lot of different completely truthful angles to take, and reducing everything to 2 sides is probably misleading.
This is especially true of political stories: If you've talked to 1 liberal and 1 conservative, you are not actually done accurately reporting the story, because you should be then determining who li
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:4, Interesting)
ObDisclaimer: I happen to like the Guardian.
So? You can be biased and still do good journalism.
That is the third-most stupid thing I have read on slashdot this week; And this week has been particularly harsh on my brain meats. While the literal definition of journalism, "the activity or profession of writing for newspapers or magazines or of broadcasting news on radio or television," does not include mention of the ethics of journalism, I expect people to have a grasp on it. As you do not, I shall now dispense a brief explanation of why it's so important.
Democracy can only function well with an educated populace. You simply can't vote the most capable candidate into office unless you know the issues, and that means knowing facts. Not interpretation of them. Not skewed versions of them. Not partial lists of them. You need to know everything about it, or you're not making an informed decision, you're making a decision based on propaganda and lies. When your audience is millions of Americans, your voice carries a lot of power. With great power comes great responsibility. And anyone who passes off their own biases as fact is not a supporter of Democracy and I do not want them on my team.
In fact, I'd say it's impossible not to be biased. Everyone is biased, it's human nature. Organizations can go some way to mitigating that bias but you'll never remove it entirely.
Your argument is that because we can't be perfect at something, we shouldn't even try. This is such a classic mistake we've given it a formal name: The Nirvana Fallacy. And yes martha, there is a wikipedia [wikipedia.org] on it.
Organizations can go some way to mitigating that bias but you'll never remove it entirely.
The institution of science does a pretty good job of limiting the effects of bias. Oh yes, you can point out the problems. Oh yes, they're very real. But compared to say... Fox News, they're doing a pretty good job. There's a reason scientists have been alternately revered and burned a the stake throughout history -- it's because of their stubborn devotion to the truth regardless of religious or political preference. And that stubborn devotion has catapulted forward all of humanity from banging rocks together to make fire and foraging for food, and sleeping in caves, to all the modern conveniences you have before you.
So I see your nilhism and perfectionism and raise you... rationality. Your move, Internet.
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:4, Interesting)
So see it this way then: you conflate bias and variance, which is a big no-no in experimentation:
I don't dare to comment on others because I haven't read them often enough. The idea is that you can subtract or add YOUR perception of known bias to calibrate a signal to approximate what you think the real value is, but with high variance the signal is just too noisy to bother.
... odd.. why don't they call it Fox Entertainment then. Truth in advertising.
I have never seen more than soundbytes of Fox News, but is it true that a reporter had to claim that he was legally insane, in order to continue to spew lies without being called on it? I.E. "everybody knows its only entertainment, we don't claim to produce real news". That's just
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You simply can't vote the most capable candidate into office unless you know the issues, and that means knowing facts. Not interpretation of them. Not skewed versions of them. Not partial lists of them. You need to know everything about it, or you're not making an informed decision, you're making a decision based on propaganda and lies.
It is completely impossible for any one person to know everything about every major issue. Whatever you know about something outside of your extremely narrow specialty will necessarily be incomplete and relying on expert opinion of some sort.
For example, if you ask many people on Slashdot the proper way to calculate algorithmic efficiency of a Quicksort, you'll get some definitive answers. If you ask those same people who provided definitive answers about how to properly determine cost-of-living increases t
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That is the third-most stupid thing I have read on slashdot this week... As you do not (understand the ethics of journalism), I shall now dispense a brief explanation...
Great way to engage with someone. Jump to concusions and throw insults. Good luck.
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Re:Erm, ok... (Score:4, Informative)
You could go so far as to say that if a news outlet claims to be free from bias, they probably aren't doing journalism. Because they probably mean that they present "balanced" stories, meaning not neutral, reality-based stories, but rather stories that always present two and only two sides to an issue, even if the only proponent for one side is an obvious idiot or crook, and even when there are four sides with equally valid points to make.
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
You can be biased and still do good journalism.
If you are aware of your bias and tell your reader, you are an excellent journalist.
If you are aware of your bias and do not tell about them, you are a propagandist
If you are unaware of your bias, you are a terrible journalist
If you do not have bias, you are not a human person
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Re:Erm, ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's where you biffed it. The Guardian is as heavily biased as Fox News is. But you tend not to see biases towards things you agree with as clearly as things you disagree with, so I forgive your temporary bout of insanity in making that statement. Maybe they got this one instance right, maybe not. An entire slashdot thread has been created just so we can scream at, er, I mean, debate, the veracity of that statement. But... the Guardian is biased. Sorry man.
You don't have to be a post-modernist to agree that all media (hell, everyon) is biased. However, I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it is fair to compare the bias of the Guardian with the bias of Fox News. There are degrees.
I gotta say, they're just as biased as Fox News, just differently biased since they are from a different country with a different political landscape. If you're looking for less-biased news from the UK, the gold standard example is the BBC. And once you've seen good reporting, then it should be pretty obvious that The Guardian is heavily biased.
The problem with the BBC is that their abhorrence for bias can lead to excessive caution.
Re:Erm, ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC is great, but they are just as biased as any news outfit. Their bias tends to be toward a sort of civilized middle-of-the-road establishment view, but it's a mistake to think that that is not a bias.
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Your claim seems to be that everybody is equally biased, and that is a failed argument on any subject, not just bias. If you can't distinguish between different sources, then how can you even measure them to say they're the same? You'd need to be claiming that you can see differences in the field, before it would make sense to claim that two particular examples are equally biased.
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I didn't claim that they are equally biased—I claimed that they shared the same quality of being biased. There is no way to compare bias in the sense that you mean, because it isn't a number, or even a vector. The idea that that is the right way to address the problem of poor journalism is a red herring.
Practices like starting from your bias and looking for facts to confirm it, and then writing the story around those facts, are common, and produce garbage. Practices like going and getting someone
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The Guardian is as heavily biased as Fox News is.
No. Fox News is far more unbalanced. The Guardian is middle left from a european point of view and Fox News would be far right. And there is one other point. You can be biased and write smart stuff. One of them does, the other...?
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I think that's a bit unfair. I appreciate very much what the Guardian is doing with Snowdon's revelations, and would love to support them. It's too bad that their best user interface is the free web version, and all the editions you'd pay for are less usable. It's a classic case of "why won't you take my money?" I have the same problem with Wired—I'd gladly pay to get access to the web site without ads, but that's not on offer, and I do not want a subscription to their paper version or their h
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Not just journalists. I'd prefer if I, a scientist, knew which bits of preliminary data and which hypotheses to ch
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Sometimes you do need such a bullshit filter. This is how communication works.
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In contrast today's issue of the Guardian has a 5k words piece with quotes from editors of other(and reputable) publications explaining how responsible journalism works. They used very short words but I don't expect that they will get the message across to the Daily Fail or the people who wrap their cod&chips in it.