Citations in journalism is a really interesting thing. Unlike science, where at least in theory, everything is built from the ground up using first principles or built upon raw data collected, the "raw data" of journalism is just various types of conversations with people the journalist then has to verify, and gauge the reliability of. In other cases it's the journalists first person experience of an event.
Citations, (IMHO) aren't a solution to this because human judgement is inherent in explaining human behavior and events.
I personally don't think efforts to "fix the news" as a result of facebook or whatever make a lot of sense in this context. Instead, consumers of news need to habitually engage in the process that you call too much work.
I agree that it's a lot of work, but I don't see an alternative to critically engaging with reporting on human events.
Wikipedia does context amazingly well. If I go to the Wikipedia article on sandals I not only get information on sandals, I get information about why people might want to look at an article on sandals (eg, infectious disease control) and if I care to drill a little deeper a list of all the people who cared enough about sandals to edit the article. And a talk page to cover any controversies although sandals appear to be an uncontroversial subject.
Jumping to this article however I lose 80% of that. This article is light on that data and metadata. I can't tell much about the author (I can see his last 5 articles though) and I certainly can't tell what is primary research or not. Did this journalist see the 'cell-phone surveillance devices'? Is he working off a press release? Are there challenges to this narrative viewpoint? Is this written more out of a sense of entertainment or is there an effort being made not to embellish facts?
I'm going to guess that GP meant 'Citation needed' in a slightly broader sense than just name-the-source. There is a whole culture of open metadata and transparency that has grown up in the last two decades that is simply better than journalism. Wikipedia is trustworthy because the slightest suspicion can be investigated. It is frustrating to think that we are going to rely on journalism for political information when the articles are simply devoid of political context in the sense that is freely available on Wikipedia.
Just putting myself in the shoes of someone at Politico, I think they would point out a few things.
Is it reasonable to compare this article to a wikipedia article? The publishing time frame and the number of people involved are way different. Wikipedia isn't intended to be a source for current events. It isn't journalism.
Maybe more importantly, is Wikpedia really an objective or fair look at an issue? For sandals sure, but look up a controversial event page and I bet things start to seem more questionable. That's a point where the reputation of a newspaper is an advantage over Wikpedia because at wikipedia, each page, each sentence can have a different author with a different viewpoint or agenda.
Is the author as important as the publication itself? The editors are the ones making final decisions on things. For example, The Economist doesn't even use bylines. Journalists see themselves as researchers more than authors. The role of the "Author" if there is one is the editor.
An exhuastively cited and sourced article is difficult to read. The narrative is easily lost, and the source content is skipped over by most readers. And you still need to spend a lot of time combing through the source matter for it to be a meaningful improvement over an unsourced article
Last, journalists rely on an idea of common knowledge. They aren't going to provide sourcing on a commmonly reported facts like "stingray-like devices have been found near the whitehouse". That isn't as true in academia where citations probably would be used for that type of fact.
Overall, I'm not unsimpathetic to what you and OP are saying, I think with the internet news media could link articles and sources together better for easier validation.
However, the idea that this type of stuff can eliminate the need for a high level of engagement with the news, critical thinking skills, I don't agree with.
Wikipedia can be quite problematic if you just look at the page - the way you describe using it, and adding in checking the sources and references, it is a great tool.
But if you want to see an example of "opinionated" people ruining wikipedia, just look at the pages about specific philosophy topics and compare them to the SEP. - On wikipedia a self-learned person is worth as much as an expert, and might be able to push his opinion into the article through sheer stubbornness.
An author I follow on Twitter had trouble getting his birthday corrected on Wikipedia - it got reverted repeatedly as "original research" when he tried to fix it. Had to launder it through a third party by posting the correct one to Twitter and asking his fans to edit it on his behalf.
Wikipedia can be quite problematic if you just look at the page - the way you describe using it, and adding in checking the sources and references, it is a great tool.
I think the issue is less about literal citations and more about having any sort of hard fact to back up big claims.
It would be very easy for media companies to 100% fabricate many of the stories we see. I'm not saying that they are, but I have no real reason to believe otherwise. The only supporting evidence provided anymore is 'anonymous sources'.
We have to just trust that what the media says is the truth, because there is no way for us to verify the stories we hear. Whether you do trust these corporations or not, having to rely on that blind faith is a bad system.
> Unlike science, where at least in theory, everything is built from the ground up using first principles or built upon raw data collected, the "raw data" of journalism is just various types of conversations with people the journalist then has to verify, and gauge the reliability of.
Agreed.
> I personally don't think efforts to "fix the news" as a result of facebook or whatever make a lot of sense in this context. Instead, consumers of news need to habitually engage in the process that you call too much work.
Part of this process is reading the news critically, which I enjoy doing. From this article (emphasis mine):
> “The reaction ... WAS very different than it WOULD HAVE BEEN in the last administration,” this person said. “With the current administration, there ARE a different set of calculations in regard to addressing THIS.”
> The former senior intelligence official criticized how the administration handled the matter, remarking on the striking difference from past administrations, which LIKELY would have at a very minimum issued a démarche, or formal diplomatic reprimand, to the foreign government (INCLUDING ISRAEL) condemning its actions.
Citations aren't the answer in this case, but rather epistemology. Stating speculation as fact is an incredibly effective means of distorting the public's perception of reality, especially when the same distortion is presented repeatedly in different forms by various agencies. It seems to have become so common that even smart people don't pick up on it any more. If you start looking for it though, you'll see it everywhere.
Whether this deceit was intentional or accidental is unknown, but the end result remains the same: the public's perception of the details of this story consists of certainty about specific details, based purely on speculation.
I see what you're saying but I don't agree that they were presenting the officials opinion as fact.
The reason we could criticize it in the first place is that it's clearly the opinion of an official who Politico judged as a credible expert on the matter of how these issues are commonly handled.
> I see what you're saying but I don't agree that they were presenting the officials opinion as fact
I don't think you really see what I'm saying. As literally written, they were presenting that particular section as fact. You may remark that I'm being excessively pedantic and that they were just writing a little sloppily, and you may be right, but at the end of the day the result is the same: each individual's mental model of the world is formed based upon the information they consume, and neither you nor I (nor scientists in the field) really know the effect this style of "news" reporting has on people at both the conscious and subconscious level.
Let me ask you this: hypothetically, let's say there was a way to enforce a law outlawing presenting speculation or opinions as if they were facts - do you think this would have an effect on society? I think HN would be a good testing ground for this experiment, but I don't sense much support for the idea.
> “The reaction ... WAS very different than it WOULD HAVE BEEN in the last administration,” this person said. “With the current administration, there ARE a different set of calculations in regard to addressing THIS.”
> The former senior intelligence official criticized how the administration handled the matter, remarking on the striking difference from past administrations, which LIKELY would have at a very minimum issued a démarche, or formal diplomatic reprimand, to the foreign government (INCLUDING ISRAEL) condemning its actions.
I capitalized the key words, as well as changed something from implicit to explicit.
The article states that the last administration WOULD HAVE handled this situation different. This statement is epistemically flawed in a variety of ways, one major one being being it requires not just top secret but omniscient knowledge.
People have a hard enough time deducing what's actually going on even based on first hand and far simpler interpersonal interactions in their own daily lives, it's no wonder so many people are confused when hundreds of leading articles like this are printed and consumed every day. People already "hallucinate reality", we shouldn't be making it worse.
EDIT: Perhaps this is where we're not seeing eye to eye: you may be judging/evaluating (see what I did there) this article based on your presumption of the _intent_ of the author, whereas I am talking about the impact of this kind of narrative-over-facts writing style on people's perception of reality, regardless of underlying intent?
I think you're putting the burden of someone interpreting an article correctly (in your subjective assessment of what is correct) on the news source.
Where I disagree is that I think it's the job of each of us as consumers of news to do the work of critically assessing what we read.
I don't think its about fixing the news, because I don't think thats possible. I think we need to focus on improving people's relationship with the news.
The article isn't saying that. It's in quotes becuase they are reporting the words of someone they've deemed to be a reputable source for the topic of standard administration behavior.
You may have an issue with that source's opinion, but that's different from having an issue with Politico.
> The article isn't saying that. It's in quotes becuase they are reporting the words of someone they've deemed to be a reputable source for the topic of standard administration behavior.
Very good point. My claim: "Stating speculation as fact...." itself could be described as sloppy. To clarify: factually, Politico is printing the words of a third party - it is a fact (presumably) that this person made that statement. The statement itself is speculation stated as fact, but the speaker bears the direct guilt for that, not Politico.
But I'm not pointing my finger so much at Politico for some sort of outrageous bias, in general or in this particular case, but rather the general way that events in reality are communicated to the public, and the way in which this subsequently manifests in society. Even if nothing nefarious has gone on, people perceive reality and the news the way they do (the specifics of which no one fully understands), and I'm suggesting (based largely on observation of apparent beliefs held by people in forums) that narrative and rumor based reporting like this is having a possibly very serious effect on people's perception of reality, the result being some degree of textbook mass delusion or worse in the public, where prior to cable news and the internet the beliefs would generally have been either null or wrong in other ways.
I'm not sure what the Spanish American War has to do with this?
> I wouldn't describe an expert's opinion as "speculation".
The person isn't describing an event that occurred, but rather what someone else would have done under a given set of circumstances....he is discussing something that literally did not happen (well, at least to his knowledge - if it had, then his speculation could be proven true, false, or other. But he doesn't know everything that has occurred).
It is necessarily speculation, my or your opinion has no bearing on the matter.
"yellow journalism" was a major factor in swaying american public opinion into supporting a war with Spain. It's a very long standing problem. Not a recent development.
I don't think my point can be made any more clearly.
People are misinterpreting the news. It seems like your position is to blame the news, and you seem to think this is a new issue.
My position is that this is an inherent factor in production and consumption of the news. Books like Manufacturing Consent, and The Condition of Postmodernity are important to understanding this view and the social processes that support it. A classic example is the reporting on the sinking of the Maine more than 100 years ago.
I don't think that forcing news agencies or social media companies to change is a real solution. The solution lies in improving people's ability to read news critically across all mediums and to understand the context of media and social conversation and how it subtly serves those in power.
Lastly, I don't agree with your characterization of very standard reporting practices as "presenting speculation as fact" and I've clearly explained why above.
This will be my last comment in the thread. Thanks for engaging.
> People are misinterpreting the news. It seems like your position is to blame the news, and you seem to think this is a new issue.
Do you deny that it is possible in the English language to write things in a way that are technically and pedantically true, but misleading? I suspect not since you mention Manufacturing Consent, so what is it that you mean?
> I don't think that forcing news agencies or social media companies to change is a real solution. The solution lies in improving people's ability to read news critically across all mediums and to understand the context of media and social conversation and how it subtly serves those in power.
You have two groups: producers of news, and consumers. The former is small, organized, generally well educated, and already subject to regulations. None of this can be said about the latter group. Do you actually think the optimum approach is targeting the latter group? This seems logical to you? (Not to say that we shouldn't also be doing that.....that we aren't is suspicious in itself if you ask me.)
> your characterization of very standard reporting practices as "presenting speculation as fact" and I've clearly explained why above
You aren't even able to acknowledge that talking about something that didn't actually occur is necessarily speculation, it's not surprising we disagree.
The basic idea is that there is fact and there is truth. When fact is communicated it is intended to build truth in the audience.
When truth is communicated it is the product of the system that produces it. In our system, that truth serves a specific set of individuals, insitutions, and social relations. This isn't an explicit process it is inherent in human relations.
There is no way to "fix" the production of news and truth. What we can improve is how people consume the news
On this specific issue, the original question wasn't "is this speculation" it was "are they presenting this statement as fact". They are not presenting it as fact, it is clearly identified as a quote from a government official.
However, someone with poor reading skills might interpret it as such, which gets back to the original point that the focus should be on improving how people consume the news, not in trying to fix a problem that (imo) cannot be solved.
edit: can't reply to your latest comment. It sounds like your position is now that no one should be allowed to voice opinions about hypothetical situations because that is not a fact. Is expert opinion not a legitimate part of a news story? Or are you saying that the way they presented their opinion made it seem like a fact? I don't agree with either intrepretation.
> The basic idea is that there is fact and there is truth.
Yes, of course. There is also untruth, and then there is another category: unknown, which often results in speculation, which is then presented as truth. Leaving aside what's the case here, are you able to acknowledge this is possible?
> There is no way to "fix" the production of news and truth.
How are you able to know what isn't possible? How many times in the past have things been declared impossible, until suddenly someone found a way?
> They are not presenting it as fact, it is clearly identified as a quote from a government official.
>> The article isn't saying that. It's in quotes becuase they are reporting the words of someone they've deemed to be a reputable source for the topic of standard administration behavior.
> Very good point. My claim: "Stating speculation as fact...." itself could be described as sloppy. To clarify: factually, Politico is printing the words of a third party - it is a fact (presumably) that this person made that statement. The statement itself is speculation stated as fact, but the speaker bears the direct guilt for that, not Politico.
> However, someone with poor reading skills might interpret it as such
You seem confident. I challenge you to address my question about how someone can speak factually about the details of something that did not (to their knowledge) actually occur. This is the third time I've pointed this out, if you're confident you are correct, there should be no need to be evasive in conversation should there?
I think the reporter is the key here. Something analogous to an H-Index for reporters' quality over time could work. How many times has their reporting been refuted? How many times cited? Etc.
That could actually be something really big for news. Actual quantifiable credibility.
Keep in mind that reporting is very often inherently political or otherwise sensitive. Often complaints are signs of a reporter doing their job well, lack of complaints a sign of a hack.
Citations, (IMHO) aren't a solution to this because human judgement is inherent in explaining human behavior and events.
I personally don't think efforts to "fix the news" as a result of facebook or whatever make a lot of sense in this context. Instead, consumers of news need to habitually engage in the process that you call too much work.
I agree that it's a lot of work, but I don't see an alternative to critically engaging with reporting on human events.