Again a very enjoyable important read. I wasn’t sure where you were going with it at first. I expected it to look at the way facts can be manipulated by all political parties and that most people are happy to believe and repeat the version that their political party of choose tend to spew!
I continue to be amazed that the Wikipedia has found a way to moderate all dissension about their articles, remains at least basically-trusted. The fact that it is one of the few information sites that is not trying to make money should be noted.
Journalism may imagine it has "peer review" in that they all criticize each other, but they might consider going to academic peer-review standards: everybody contributes time to a pool of reviewers, assignments are random, reviews are anonymous.
Media organs participating get a seal of quality of some sort.
A fascinating and thoughtful analysis as always, Justin. You argue convincingly for the media's over-reliance on fact-checking in the Trump era and for your case that public trust in news media is eroding as a result. Let's not beat up on journalists too.much, though. They had not dealt with such a compulsive liar in such a high office before, and fact-checking jn real time seemed like the best response. What may be a better, though admittedly longer-term project, is to teach people from primary grades on how to spot disinformation and misinformation, to separate facts from conjecture and lies, to question the source of the falsehoods and the motivation behind them. To that end, I recommend the work of Dr. John Cook of the Centre for Behavioral Change at the University of Melbourne and his app, Cranky Uncle. See crankyuncle.com. and no, I didn't make this up! However, even if constant fact-checking isn't the way to go, we do need journalists to keep exposing public figures who constantly use cherry-picking and logical fallacies (*cough* Pierre Polievre *cough*) to fire up their base. Don't call it fact-checking, fine. But keep investigative journalism alive. We need it more than ever.
Thank-you for the very enjoyable read, but I can't quite make out the main points. Definitely listing ingredients and their amounts on products we consume and use is incredibly important, and one reason I stay away from the "Big Natural" health industry. But fact-checkers in journalism are essential, no? In spite of Substack etc, I still enjoy reading several journo's from the main-stream media, and would trust their news stories over what I hear on social media any day. I'm sorry but not surprised that Meta and the rest are abandoning a hopeless task, but also hope fact-checking is not given up everywhere, tiresome Trump-hating lie-counters regardless.
A bit of a tangent, I am re reading One River, by Wade Davis. I just finished the part where he out lines how the panic around cocaine in tonics in the USA was twisted into a form of cultural genocide (not a term he uses) against the Indians of South American. How coca was a staple food product for thousands of years before cocaine was isolated from the plant. That coca is one of the most nutrient rich editable plants known to man and the alkaloid cocaine makes up a fraction of a percentage of the overall plant and during the frenzy and following panic the words coca and cocaine were used interchangeably even though they are very different things.
On the main topic here, I think what your looking for is a more educated general public. educated in the broader senses has having an ability to critically think about the information we are being fed. where does the media fit into that. Telling us what to think is always going to back fire. giving us things to think about is probably right. The question about who is responsible for teaching us how to think about things is more difficult to answer.
In the words of George Carlin “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
Death to the Fact-Check
Again a very enjoyable important read. I wasn’t sure where you were going with it at first. I expected it to look at the way facts can be manipulated by all political parties and that most people are happy to believe and repeat the version that their political party of choose tend to spew!
I continue to be amazed that the Wikipedia has found a way to moderate all dissension about their articles, remains at least basically-trusted. The fact that it is one of the few information sites that is not trying to make money should be noted.
Journalism may imagine it has "peer review" in that they all criticize each other, but they might consider going to academic peer-review standards: everybody contributes time to a pool of reviewers, assignments are random, reviews are anonymous.
Media organs participating get a seal of quality of some sort.
A fascinating and thoughtful analysis as always, Justin. You argue convincingly for the media's over-reliance on fact-checking in the Trump era and for your case that public trust in news media is eroding as a result. Let's not beat up on journalists too.much, though. They had not dealt with such a compulsive liar in such a high office before, and fact-checking jn real time seemed like the best response. What may be a better, though admittedly longer-term project, is to teach people from primary grades on how to spot disinformation and misinformation, to separate facts from conjecture and lies, to question the source of the falsehoods and the motivation behind them. To that end, I recommend the work of Dr. John Cook of the Centre for Behavioral Change at the University of Melbourne and his app, Cranky Uncle. See crankyuncle.com. and no, I didn't make this up! However, even if constant fact-checking isn't the way to go, we do need journalists to keep exposing public figures who constantly use cherry-picking and logical fallacies (*cough* Pierre Polievre *cough*) to fire up their base. Don't call it fact-checking, fine. But keep investigative journalism alive. We need it more than ever.
Brilliant, simply brilliant, Justin. Thank you.
Thank-you for the very enjoyable read, but I can't quite make out the main points. Definitely listing ingredients and their amounts on products we consume and use is incredibly important, and one reason I stay away from the "Big Natural" health industry. But fact-checkers in journalism are essential, no? In spite of Substack etc, I still enjoy reading several journo's from the main-stream media, and would trust their news stories over what I hear on social media any day. I'm sorry but not surprised that Meta and the rest are abandoning a hopeless task, but also hope fact-checking is not given up everywhere, tiresome Trump-hating lie-counters regardless.
A bit of a tangent, I am re reading One River, by Wade Davis. I just finished the part where he out lines how the panic around cocaine in tonics in the USA was twisted into a form of cultural genocide (not a term he uses) against the Indians of South American. How coca was a staple food product for thousands of years before cocaine was isolated from the plant. That coca is one of the most nutrient rich editable plants known to man and the alkaloid cocaine makes up a fraction of a percentage of the overall plant and during the frenzy and following panic the words coca and cocaine were used interchangeably even though they are very different things.
On the main topic here, I think what your looking for is a more educated general public. educated in the broader senses has having an ability to critically think about the information we are being fed. where does the media fit into that. Telling us what to think is always going to back fire. giving us things to think about is probably right. The question about who is responsible for teaching us how to think about things is more difficult to answer.
In the words of George Carlin “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”