US Politics Mega-thread - Page 6272

Broadly speaking, there are two groups of media outlets. First, there's the evil "mainstream media" (and here I'll include Fox for reasons which will become clear). Second, there is the fringe press. I use one clear distinction between the two.

The "mainstream" press actually attempts to validate that the facts underlying their stories are accurate. Putting aside editorial content and decisions about what to cover (where there is a valid discussion to be had), the underlying facts in a news article from these sources tend to be accurate. They have editors and fact-checkers. Overall, a key element of their mission is factual accuracy. A great example is the Fox News memo during the campaign noting that non-scientific online polls do not meet their journalistic standards. I will also say that some, particularly the TV networks, do stretch this in certain cases. When you read stories that simply say "rumors are circulating" or other lead-ins like that, that's my indication not to take the story seriously. Not every article is created equal. You don't tend to see those in the NYT, WSJ, etc. nearly as often as on CNN/Fox/MSNBC who do some "covering the coverage." Basically, though, the prior probability (for any statisticians) on these sites/papers is that the underlying fact are true. You may disagree with conclusions, that's fine, but the vast majority of the time the facts will be accurate.

The second group is the fringe press, like Infowars, that doesn't have any journalistic standards. They post whatever the hell they want and they don't care if it's true. This is how you get Infowars' stories about chemtrails, gay frogs, and weather control devices. Some guy says it so they write a story about it. They don't seek confirmation, they don't seek dissent, they just write it. Do they sometimes post accurate stories? Sure, particularly when they repeat stories from actual news outlets. However, the prior probability here is that the story has no factual basis. I only believe a story on these sites if I can validate it with other sources or a general sense of credibility of the source study/information (such as a study from a historically credible organization).

It's pretty easy to apply this rubric to the story posted here. First, it's on a fringe site, so before getting other information I'm going to assume it's not accurate. OK, so next step, what is their actual source on this article? A study from votefraud.org and a guy named Greg Phillips. I'm already skeptical because the author of the article isn't actually reading the study (to ensure it seems reasonable) but is only writing about a tweet. So, I then googled votefraud.org (no longer operating, at a new site) and Greg Phillips. The only references I can find are people talking about the tweet and his claim. No bio of Mr. Phillips, so history of the website doing similar analysis which has been validated by peers. So after doing some legwork, I have no reason to believe this "study," because there is no supportable information about the actual study or the credentials of its author.

You're conflating two issues here. The problem is that people on this board seem to view media only through a left-right lens. That's just not accurate. Sure, there's a left/right orientation, but this affects what to cover and the conclusions you reach (as I mentioned in my first post). It does not affect the underlying facts. That is a second axis to evaluate.

Examples (assuming the scale is left/right for ideology and high/low for factualism):

NYT/WSJ - top for factualism, slightly left/right respectively for ideology
MSNBC/FoxNews - Lower on factualism, further left/right
National Review (especially the historical print version) - decidedly right on ideology, still generally high on factualism
Infowars - far right on ideology, rock bottom on factualism

An outlet can be incredibly biased yet still accurately report facts. That's having a viewpoint, and I don't have an issue with it. I can disagree with conclusions, but we're all still working from the same reality based in objective fact. This seems to be what we are losing, and I don't know how to reverse it. There was a 2+ page thread recently about the "final election results" which was totally false...and it didn't stop the thread from barreling on.


Somewhat related, one of my biggest issues with cable news is that they conflate opinion and journalism with no clear delineation. There's a reason the opinion page in newspapers is clearly distinct from the reporting; that bright line doesn't exist on television news channels.