night slime posted:

Transcript of it here if anyone cares: https://citystrolls.com/articles/the-necessary-illusion/

I read Marr's later (2017) response recently. Didn't think it was that great

Lord of Lies posted:

Not necessarily, but it isn't really disputed that media outlets are biased, and Western outlets can reasonably be expected to have a Western bias. Does that bias exist due to influence of corporations and government, though? That's what PM would claim, but no, that cannot be proven. Does the existence of that bias mean that the events in Xinjiang are not genocide? No, it absolutely does not, and if one ever finds themselves viewing media coverage of those events via that lens, that means it's time to pause and reflect on one's own biases.

Ytlaya posted:

No one is arguing that you should just automatically assume that reality is the opposite of whatever the media is reporting. That's a strawman you've been forced to use as a weird sort of "god of the gaps" argument ("as long as any examples exist of the media conflicting with the government, it means the media doesn't usually support government narratives"). You and others are the ones actually making radical assumptions here. You're choosing to default to a belief that things the media says are true unless proved otherwise. This is not a reasonable assumption given the history of both US media and media in general - it is the position that requires evidence. The reasonable starting assumption about media should not be that it is independent and reliable - that's the position others should have the burden of defending.

Ytlaya posted:

The correct way to think of this isn't "the government and owners/funders tell the media what to say" (though I don't doubt this also happens). It's "media has strong incentives to avoid conflicting with certain people/institutions." Sometimes there are situations where there is a conflict between stakeholders for a media organization, so there are exceptions where reporting might occasionally be opposed by the government. But one can very easily look at the history of US media and see that, far more often than not, it stays within the bounds of what is acceptable to our government and ruling class and agrees with US foreign policy narratives. The only times it doesn't tend to be situations where there's a partisan conflict (like media rarely reporting on Yemen or the conditions of US border camps until Trump was president). And this makes sense - from the point of view of being a business, a media organization is going to want to stay on friendly terms with the government and avoid angering their sources of funding.

Panzeh posted:

I think some of his assumptions don't really work today, even if they might have in the 1980s. It is, for example, very possible to run a media outlet with no access, simply regurgitating social media or reporting from other institutions with any kind of ideological framing a consumer might like. The barrier of entry to actually run media has never been lower(though the barrier of entry to actually gather information and do reporting is higher), though there are fewer paying jobs out there. This has resulted in a media that is more diverse than ever. Sure, you can say the PM still applies to respectable media today, and that's certainly possible, but then, how much does it really matter? It's easier to find marxist-themed news content than ever, whereas in the days of Manufacturing Consent, it was quite limited in availability.

The Kingfish posted:

The PM was always more applicable the more “respectable” media got. It’s spelled out explicitly in Manufacturing Consent. I don’t think anybody would disagree that certain media outfits don’t follow the PM, but nothing has fundamentally changed about how print or (most) tv news operates.

quote:

Thank you it's very nice to be here. What I was going to do is address myself to two basic myths one the myth that we have a free and independent press and media and two the myth that it's a liberal press. And then I'll also say something about entertainment because it's part of the it's an extension of it after I wrote Inventing Reality I realized there's a, when you look at television there's the other 85% of television which has nothing to do with the the press or the news media and that's the entertainment field so I wrote another book called Make-believe Media about the entertainment media and I say something about that also.

First I'd like to point out that our free, quote free and independent press is neither all that free nor is it all that independent. For one thing if you work in the news corp you find that there's a lot of government censorship an enormous amount of government documents or information is classified you can't get to it so that means that in our democracy there are people that are doing all sorts of things that one can't really find out and hold at for which they can't hold them accountable.

There's a innate dependence on government sources when you're in the media the press corp, the Washington press corps it depends, the the government official them controls literally the lifeblood of that media which is information and they can let it flow or they can withhold it and uncooperative reporters often get punished they don't get, they get their false information, no story breaks where they're frozen out of travel pools or things like that.

Cooperative reporters are rewarded get inside is scoops special appointments they often get government appointments also in fact what you find rather than adversarial thing of a free and independent press challenging the government questioning the government what you find is a remarkable collusion between government and media. So what we've called the revolving door between government and media you have people like Leslie Gelb, Ben Bradley most of the top management leadership of the Coakley newspaper chain all having worked for the FBI-for the CIA, FBI also has their pet journalist and columnist. Jay Edgar used to feed stories to favorite journalists to plant stories and whatever else but they worked for the CIA for a long time. The Church Committee discovered that over 500 hundred journalists were also in the pay of the CIA.

In some cases they were reporters who were recruited by the CIA in other cases they were CIA people who posed as journalists in various operations and things. Diane Sawyer, Diane Sawyer is a very good case she worked in the in the Nixon administration when Nixon got kicked out of office in disgrace, resigned she went off with him to San Clemente and stayed there for two years with Pat and Dick to help him write his autobiography. And then she came back out of government and then is in the media now and works for ABC and there's a big what would you call it, anchorwoman would everyone call a host of his show.

Pat Buchanan, Pat Buchanan has been in his entire work life has been either working in the Nixon administration, Reagan administration either working in government or working in news media as a journalist and columnist government media journalistic or in other words in his whole life he hasn't had an honest job I mean that's really you know.

So the latest example is Pete Williams I don't know if any of you saw Panama Deception, the documentary film that won the Academy Award which you know I signed the petition because the film was suppressed in Panama they wouldn't show it. But we shouldn't overlook the fact that the film has been suppressed in the United States. It wasn't exactly government that suppressed it but you can't get it on the networks. It is shown in one or two PBS local PBS stations. I have a vested interest because I'm in the film for and who knew I was going to be an Academy Awards him so you're looking at a star here.

Also in the film is one Pete Williams who was the Pentagon spokesperson and would come on we'd have cuts of him he come on you say "I have heard of no such thing of Panamanian civilians getting killed like that no" and then we cut to a shot all these bodies lying there and things blowing up in this man and you I back to Pete Williams "I have heard, no, that has hadn't happened and all that".

So here was this Pentagon flack you know, worked for the government and now he is NBC national reporter. So how free and independent is this guys with this revolving door and then sometimes in a case of Leslie Galvey he went from the government to the Washington, no, New York Times back into the government and back to the Times I mean.

Now if this happens in a totalitarian country you say look at that if you say if you said you know in Soviet Russia you had people in working for Pravda who then were in the KGB and then worked for Pravda again oh and then went into some other ministry you say "wow you can see they don't have a free and independent press they they're all just kind of in bed together there" well we got the same kind of thing here I'm sorry to say.

But most of the censorship isn't even government censorship most of the censorship that goes on in the media is actually done by the media themselves, by the publishers, the editors and the like. That's another control. In fact the media it often is quite happy and accepts government censorship during the Gulf War when the army and when the US military put that put the clamps down on all press, nobody go out and look for themselves and whatever else Tom Brokaw said "well they will burn the military was burned in Vietnam and now they're being cautious and you can't blame them" I thought that was kind of a remarkable statement to make for a Pressman to say "I don't mind the government censorship I'll take whatever handouts they give me whatever they say about the war, how it's going, what it's about and all that's what I will simply write".

And so you have what some people are called the stenographers for power. That the media becomes the guys who write whatever the State Department says A-B-C it's A-B-C the next day the line changes to X Y C then it's X Y Z. What I'm saying then is that the major form of news control can be found in the structure of the news organizations themselves the major media and by the way the major media I mean the New York Times, The Washington Post and by the way they have national syndicates.

When you, I did an op-ed at editorial for the New York Times once and a friend in Denver, Colorado, so I've had 2 Op-ed editorials in New York Times. The first one I had a fight for about a month against the superior editor who tried to the censor the other editor to finally get the thing I had to rewrite it 3 times and it finally came out on the Saturday paper but then a friend of mine in Denver Colorado said "hey I saw your op-ed editorial in Denver Post and you realize that the New York Times has a whole syndicated thing. And you don't get by the way you don't get any reprint permission fees for writers that you have to sign away the LA Times the same thing you sign it away so they can use it and reprint it all sorts of places and resell it dozens of times and the writer doesn't get a penny for it.

So the L.A. Times, the L.A. Times, Washington Post has a national syndicate the New York Times has National syndicate by the major media that's what I mean those two papers and The Wall Street Journal and NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN. That pretty much is what we're talking about and we talk about the major news media and most of the other newspapers are spin-offs I mean they use or feed in to those lines and the major news services Associated Press, UPI and Reuters.

Now those major media are not close to corporate America, they're not friendly to corporate America, they are corporate America I mean they are integral components of corporate America. NBC is owned by General Electric. How many great fighting exposes are you going to see on defense contracts and NBC documentaries no and NBC TV when it's owned by General Electric. All these media are owned by multi billionaires, the Grahams, the Hearst family, Newhouser, Knight Ridder, Gannett.

In the newspaper business you have newspapers and not only the big chains are not only buying up small independents they're buying up other chains. And so the degree and level of concentration is getting greater and greater. 90 something like 95 it changes every year it was 91,94, it's 95 it's probably 97 by now minute of all cities don't have competing newspapers so you get one one information. When you do have more than one newspaper they almost all run from mildly centrist to to mildly conservative or maybe outright right-winger.

And those owners do not hesitate, the major media and the major networks are run by boards of trustees, the boards boards of directors that call board of trustees our University same guys they literally are often the same guys. They are are manned by the people who inhabit these boards of directors are overwhelmingly drawn from the major corporations and banks in America. If you look at CBS's board of director you have representatives from Ford Motor Company, from Chase Manhattan Bank, from ITT and various others so the influence of these major corporations in the economy the multi-billion dollar businesses extends also to the influence they exercised directly in the media.

DuPont owns the chains of newspapers Copley, Sulzberger, "Punch" Sulzberger of The New York Times old man Sulzberger has a computer, he's retired now his son is even more conservative than he is, has a computer on his desk and would call up every day the editorials that are going in the next day. This idea that these, you talk to editors they don't, they won't give it "are you telling me I have you know that I'm completely independent" well you work for Sulzberger you'll find out something different. He can call up the editorials every morning or every afternoon for the next morning and he will change if anything he doesn't like boom he beeps in and and he will even look at the front page and if he doesn't like a story he'll say kill it or put it back, cut it, this that the other thing spike it .

And that goes on all the time top-down control of information and news. Now reporters, Rupert Murdoch by the way was interviewed I saw an interview of him in Vanity Fair was very interesting because they said to him you know he's buying up news media TV stations radio stations and they say to him "well do you you're known as a a right-wing conservative or you were do you do you have your opinions today do you allow your opinions then to in-, do you exercise an opinion influence over your publications?" and I thought the guy was going to say no I respect the autonomy and professionalism of my editors and journalists and all that he said "of course I do" he said "I'm not a right winger I'm a radical conservative" which means even more conservative than than that he said "and you bet he says the buck stops with me yes", "do you do you you leave your conservative influence on your publications?" and he says "yes indeed".

Reporters and editors who don't comply with that eventually run into problems reporters worry about getting their copy cut they get passed over for promotion they get reassigned to you know some Siberia desk or something and and they get off the the juicy story so they don't get him or never else and they have these problems. Oddly enough if you talk to most reporters most of the reporters I know who have given me stories about censorship about top-down control and all are ex reporters they're often people I began noticing "well I used to work for Associated Press" or "well I used to work for CBS" "well I used to".

The ones who were still in there absolutely vehemently denied that there's any such thing like this they get very indignant they say "are you telling me that I'm not my own man I'll have you know that in 17 years with this paper I always say what I like" and I say to them "you say what you like because they like what you say".

And you know the minute you move too far and you have no sensation of a restraint on your freedom I mean you don't know you're wearing a leash if you sit by the peg all day it's only if you then begin to wander to a prohibited parameter that you feel the tug you see so. You're free because your ideological perspective is coterminous, congruent with that of your boss so you have no sensation of being at odds with your boss. You see others will tell you though yeah you can be censored others will say you have to have very finely attuned antennas to just how far you can go or not go and you know otherwise you'll run into trouble.

And we're talking here you know of a really very subtle process of socialization the boss doesn't necessarily come down and say "you write what I like and if you don't do that" although I have examples in Inventing Reality that condition of a few choice cases like that where the owners says "you will not say anything negative about any Republican candidate that will not be allowed in the press during the entire campaigns that you will not say anything positive about any Democratic candidate". I mean sometimes you get that but generally that isn't the way it works what will happen is somebody will mosey over to you with the water cooler and say you know don't get over involved in your story here or you don't get run off becoming a cause person or you got to be objective and objective means objectivity means taking the world as officialdom says it is objectivity means not bringing up troublesome information that might cause discomfort to people of power and position especially economic power especially big corporate advertisers who pay our bills and the like.

Nicholas Johnson former commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission said there are four stages that journalists go through:

1. In the early stage you're a young crusader and you write a expose story about the powers they be and you bring it to your editor and the editor says don't kill it, we can't touch that, too hot.

2. Stage 2 you get an idea for the story but you don't write it and you check with the editor first he says no won't fly and I think the old man won't like it don't do that he has a lot of friends in there and and that would get might get messy

3. Stage 3 you get the idea for the story and you yourself dismiss it as silly.

4. Stage 4 you no longer get the idea for that kind of a expose story.

And I would add a stage five you then appear on panels with media critics like me and you get very angry and indignant when we say that there are biases in the media and you're not as free and independent as you think. And those biases as I'm saying are not liberal biases they actually move in a conservative direction another control besides these rich conservative owners all overwhelmingly all of whom are conservative Republicans is the advertisers. Advertising I mean you know they say journalists are people who write on the back of advertisements and look at you if you think that's such a joke look at your newspaper next time and just do a rough content analysis you're turning the pages how much of it is actual copy and how much of it is advertising how much of it is news copy how much of advertising copy.

Sulzberger- Norman Bauman did a study and he quoted Sulzberger as saying for years the New York Times could not write a story that was critical of the automotive industry that it was unsafe in this net. A young lawyer about almost thirty years ago now, a young lawyer in Washington did it did an expose an investigation of automobiles and he wrote up a whole expose about how unsafe they were how dangerous they were everything from dashboards to visibility. He couldn't get that story published in a single major media. His name was Ralph Nader nobody had ever heard of him but the story was interesting he had to publish in a little obscure magazine called Fact Magazine then it got picked up here got picked up he finally wrote a book called Unsafe At Any Speed which became a best-seller. So then Congress couldn't ignore it and they had hearings and all a sort of thing. But he couldn't get it in and one of the people who sells Berger was a typical example he had a rule nothing in the New York Times that's critical of the automotive industry ever why he was very clear "they are our biggest account" "Ford, GM and Chrysler were our biggest account" in those days this is before Toyota and Japanese took over much of it.

Todd Gitlin interviewed Network bosses NBC CBS and he talks to when he hit records an interview he has in one of his books and he asked the guy do advertisers influence the content of your TV shows programs you know and again I thought the guy was going to give the usual blather "well it's a it's a pressure we could feel now and then but we have our professional standards and we have keep our autonomy" no as I thought but that's what he's gonna say he said "you bet you absolutely hey yes all the time are you kidding of course they pay the bills yes sir we always check with them on things". I'll give you some examples later on when I talk about the entertainment industry.

So when people talk about a free market of ideas in our democracy please remember that it's not afraid that conjures up an image of a lot of little stalls at a bazaar you know and you walk along and you can choose something from this one choose from that or choose from the other. It's more like the free market of commodities in America which is a market that's highly controlled by a small number of giant producers with with other things left really at the margin and that's pretty much it if you've got the billions of bucks you can break major audiences if you don't have it you can't. You will find if you do anything whether you write something or you put a film together or whatever else in. In a capitalist system they'll sell you the typewriter, they sell you the computer, they sell you the video camera and all that and you can make whatever you want. The trick then is getting distribution and that becomes the hard thing and you'll find that the channels distribution are controlled by very big people.

quote:

what will happen is somebody will mosey over to you with the water cooler and say you know don't get over involved in your story here or you don't get run off becoming a cause person or you got to be objective and objective means objectivity means taking the world as officialdom says it is, objectivity means not bringing up troublesome information that might cause discomfort to people of power and position especially economic power especially big corporate advertisers who pay our bills and the like

quote:

quote:

SOURCE ANALYSIS FOR THE INTERNET
By Göran Leth and Torsten Thurén

About the authors: Göran Leth is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communications at the University of Stockholm. Torsten Thurén is Prinicipal Lecturer in the Department of Journalism, Media and Communications at the University of Stockholm.


Summary

Purpose
Internet has become a central medium for news distribution, influencing public opinion, and acquiring knowledge. The purpose of this book is to provide guidance for assessment of sources on the Net. The assessment criteria developed here are based on a method of source analysis. The book addresses experienced Internet users. It is aimed at journalists – those involved in daily news reporting as well as those who can devote themselves to more time-consuming investigative journalism. Moreover, the book addresses scholars and students at universities and colleges. Finally, it is aimed at professionals in various areas who regularly use the Internet, at schoolteachers and their students, as well as at everyone who seeks and tries to assess the information found on the Net.

Internet is a new medium opening new possibilities. Thus, the problems encountered when we judge information on the Net are at least partially different from those we encounter when assessing written information. The traditional rules of source analysis certainly still apply, but application is not always the same.

Internet offers an almost limitless number of sources and an even larger number of information bits. The expression ”cyberspace” is, in several senses, well chosen. Before using a source on the Net we must think twice. But how can we do this and be constructive at the same time? The book argues for sharper and more detailed criticism in many cases, but also for more openness to new understandings and for the recognition of uncertainty.

The information chaos reigning on the Internet is, in a sense, equally distributed. On the surface, it is impossible to see whether a given website is owned by a large, rich organisation or by a small, poor association fighting for its existence. The prestige of glossy paper is over.

The Internet also lacks one of journalism’s traditional power figures: the gatekeeper who screens out all information deemed unworthy to print or broadcast. On the Internet, all information – the useful and the trashy – shares the same space, side by side .


Lines of inquiry

The most important questions we have asked are:

• How can source analysis principles be applied when seeking information on the Internet?

• What routines and principles of valuation have journalists developed for treating digital sources and the Internet? To what extent do these routines and principles provide a sufficient foundation for dealing with this new source situation?

• With regard to those wishing to acquire knowledge, of what consequence are the large amount of information on the Net and the rapid conveyance of this information?

• What kinds of errors and pitfalls does journalism encounter on the Net?

• Is it best to put your primary trust in old, established authorities?

• How should we approach all of the alternative sources available? How can we see through extremist elements’ propaganda on the Net?

• What kinds of information can we find on the Net that are otherwise difficult to access?

• Aren’t there, after all, ”hard” facts we can trust?

• What can we learn from various databases? What is it we’re not allowed to know? In what respect must we be careful when drawing conclusions?

• In practice, how can we proceed when seeking information on a certain subject?


Source analysis and its expansion

Our point of departure is the method of source analysis. It can be summarised in terms of four criteria: time, dependence, authenticity and bias.


Time

In traditional source analysis, the time criterion meant that human forgetfulness must be taken into account. The more time elapsed after an event, the less reliable the witnesses reporting on the event. On the Internet, this problem is somewhat different; it is mostly a question of when the website was last updated. If information is not updated regularly, the presented facts can become obsolete and perhaps incorrect. It is, therefore, important to check when the website in question was last updated.


Dependence

Within both journalism and history research, it is important to know whether different sources are interdependent. If two sources are independent, the credibility of assertions common to both of them increases. On the other hand, if the sources are dependent on one another, credibility is diminished. The most common form of dependence on the Internet is handover, i.e. information is derived in several steps. A person setting up a website often takes information from another website, which in turn has perhaps been informed by yet another website. Things can have changed en route – figures rounded up or down, language altered. In this way, the meaning of the presentation can be different from the original. The following rule should, therefore, be adhered to: if possible, go back to the original source – the primary source. Secondhand information – from secondary sources – or thirdhand information – from tertiary sources – might be incomplete or corrupted. Another rule is to check against an independent source. If, for example, a person claims the title of Professor on his/her website, check the university in question to see if the person is mentioned there and by what title. Or check a library catalogue for possible books written by the person.


Authenticity

It is important to know whether a source is actually what it claims to be. Various types of falsifications have always occurred, and uncovering them belongs to the classic repertoire of source analysis. Previously, such falsifications were relatively easy to reveal. With a little precision and cleverness, we could discover whether text had been erased, a photograph retouched or whether an alleged antique object was a reproduction. But when information is presented electronically, it is much more difficult to distinguish between the authentic and the false. In this medium, additions and changes to both text and pictures can be made without leaving any traces. Thus, on the Internet, the risk of falsification is a significant problem.

Falsification on the Net runs the entire scale from gross to subtle. The most extreme form is when a website claims to be something it is not. There are examples of websites falsely claiming to represent a political party in order to discredit the party. Completely fictitious news agencies and other institutions have also cropped up. At the other end of the scale, we have the mildest – and most common – form of falsification. This occurs when people want to seem better than they actually are. Something called a ”research institute” and described as serious on a website can in actuality be a small, obscure sect.


Bias

We can always suspect a person with an interest in something – an involved party – of being unreliable or biased. He or she is perhaps not lying outright, but there are other more subtle ways of distorting the truth. You can exaggerate or downplay, leave out unpleasant facts, use emotional or misleading language.

Biased sources are found on the Internet just as elsewhere, and should be met with the same suspicion. This concerns, for example, sources such as national governments, political parties, interest groups, companies, commercial organisations, etc.

The bias criterion applies not only to facts, but also to explanations. For example, it can be in the interest of one political party to explain foreign conflicts in terms of right- vs. leftwing politics, whereas it may serve another party better to refer to ethnic differences as a possible cause of conflict.


World-view and conceptions of knowledge as sources of bias

In a broader sense, we can also say that a type of bias is at work when reality is described from the perspective of different world-views. All sources are the products of the cultures in which they have existed or currently exist. Cultures are constituted by a number of factors: religious beliefs, traditions, values, history, language and customs, all of which could be summarised as forming various worldviews. We deal with both large and small spheres of culture, each with a specific worldview. There is a Western world-view, but also those from other parts of the world. There is one world-view in the rich (”first”) world, and another in the Third World. It is arguably the case that there have been separate capitalistic and communistic world-views. There is a Christian world-view as well as those of Muslim and Hindu cultures. But there are even differences between world-views in Europe and the United States, between the Anglo-Saxon and the Continental, between Northern and Southern Europe.

In order to assess information from a given source, it is therefore important to attempt in some way to determine the world-view from which it comes. The fact that it is biased in the direction of a certain world-view does not make the source worthless, but in order to approach the information critically, it is important to be aware of this bias. When presenting an event, an essential element might be to compare the various world-views and their respective portrayals of the facts


Credibility

One problem with Internet is the overwhelmingly great number and variety of websites. It is often necessary to weed out most hits and be content with the few sites one trusts. But how should the user choose among the various websites? We believe that the concept ”credibility” can play a role as a complementary source analysis criterion. When we call a website ”credible”, this is based on an assessment of demonstrable reasonableness in the argumentation, accuracy and truthfulness in the mediation of facts, as well as awareness of wellknown authorities and established ideas in the area. Thus, we would not judge as credible a website dealing with categorical predictions of the future. Nor would a site be considered credible that presented information, already shown by experts to be false, as truthful. Moreover, a site ignoring the existence of well established authorities and ideas has demonstrated its lack of credibility.

However, in this sense, ”credibility” is an unwieldy and dangerous concept. The risk is that we will dismiss innovative ideas that contradict established knowledge because we, in a routine fashion, perceive them as non-credible. Nevertheless, we do not believe that credibility is a purely subjective concept. There are, to be sure, no simple rules for revealing credibility problems, but we can make considerable progress by studying how a source presents its arguments and expresses itself. In this way, we can at least uncover the most obviously untrustworthy sources.


Source conditions and features

What can we demand of a source and what can we not demand? Most faults are not a question of wilful deception, but instead of mistakes, forgetfulness, blundering, misperceptions, lack of knowledge, believing rather than knowing, and misjudgements.

The fact that no source is perfect is not a revelation. Traditional source analysis, however, has seldom dwelt on this state of affairs. But Internet’s unfathomable supply of information forces us to take these problems into consideration and to try to better understand them.

Sources make mistakes, without having the slightest intention of misleading people or distorting the truth. Sources cannot deal with certain things, they must confine themselves in some respects; sources run out of time; they are imperfectly co-ordinated; their techniques do not always function as intended; sources believe they have, or give the impression of having, a capacity they do not have in reality.

A special case of source conditions can amount to definitions. Often, the data collection and mediation with which sources can be occupied require that a phenomenon be defined in one way or another. It is not always obvious what a concept means in detail: Who should be counted as Swedish, as self-employed? And depending on how the concept is defined, the source’s information will also be different. If several sources claim to have information on a given phenomenon but use different definitions, the differences can make comparison difficult and compilation impossible.


Examples

This presentation is based on different types of examples. Some are short illustrations of our reasoning, but we have also conducted more far reaching searches in order to analyse different types of source analysis problems on the Internet


Hard facts? The example of figures

With the advent of Internet, figures have become an even more important element in international news distribution. This holds for crimes, accidents, and natural catastrophes, and particularly for financial reporting. But are all these figures the hard facts they seem to be? On closer inspection it appears that figures are not more indisputable than other facts. We cannot describe the world exactly using numbers. There are, naturally, some figures that are more correct than others, and there is no reason not to be precise in this regard. Nevertheless, we must point out that several different figures can exist – all of which are said to describe the same phenomenon – and one need not be more correct or incorrect than the other. All figures contain some truth and a good dose of uncertainty. Moreover, it is clear that the idea of an exact measure is a myth. What is important is to maintain a certain reservation towards all figures, and to provide concrete elaborations on the limited knowledge they give. This is becoming increasingly important, as examples from the area of finance give us reason to believe that, via the Internet, we will be deluged with greater and greater volumes of figures.


Databases

Through Internet, we often have access to large databases. The most important types of databases respectively contain text, references and facts. Databases provide a convenient way of storing and finding large amounts of information. But databases depend on technique, and technique is not always flawless. Most importantly, databases depend on their systems and programmes, as well as on the staffs that develop and maintain them. Some things are ”doable” on some systems and some things are not. The result can be that a database search gives a misleading answer. The experts supplying the database with firsthand information can have made a miscalculation. An incorrect medical diagnosis can end up in a register and in a database. Information input to a database can – if the database is national – occur at different physical locations, and co-ordination and consensus across the various registration units might not generally be complete. Corrupted, outright false information can be found in all registers. And during certain periods, perhaps the register is not maintained properly


Science

An important but difficult problem is how we can use the Internet as a source of information when seeking answers to scientific questions. We conducted searches within two natural sciences disciplines – environmental studies and medicine – looking specifically at the greenhouse effect and bipolar personality disorder (Manic-depression). We concluded that, in order to assess a website’s credibility, one must already have good knowledge in the area of investigation. It is, however, possible to weed out obviously non-serious websites by simply studying how the information is presented.


Islam

Internet gives great opportunities for seeking information not provided by the major news media. This concerns not least information from the Third World. To test these possibilities, we conducted searches on several Muslim websites. By doing so, we acquired, among other things, information depicting the notorious terrorist Usama bin Laden in a somewhat different light than is common in the West.

Ghana

A search on the West African country of Ghana showed how problematic even seemingly elementary facts can be. Several websites that we perceived as credible contained completely different information on the country’s population size as well as its ethnic and religious composition. With regard to population size and ethnic composition, we were able to work out the cause of the inconsistencies – it was a question of when the information had been updated and how the peoples in Ghana were defined, respectively. However, as concerns religious composition, we were unable to explain the differences between the websites.


Conclusion and advice

Our report can be summarised using two main points of view.

Seeking knowledge on the Internet – as compared to previous methods – requires, on the one hand, more scepticism. There are no ”hard” facts. There are no safe sources. Absolute certainty cannot reign. On the other hand, greater curiosity and openness to new possibilities are promoted. We can give good reasons for preferring one assertion to another. Established and conventional ideas should be questioned. There is always more to know.

Traditional methods of source analysis apply equally to Internet as to other media. But the special circumstances on the Net require a partially different application. To conclude, we give some advice below on source analysis for Internet users. This is not a question of firm rules, but of practical advice based on the experiences previously described in the book.

First, you should conduct a thorough examination based on two principles: source conditions and features as well as world-view
and knowledge conceptions.

1. Source conditions and features.

a) Describe the source as broadly as possible:
What is it? How did it come into being? Who are the people behind it? What procedures underlie its supply of information (how is information collected, selected and checked)?

b) What is the source’s competence? Does it have the capacity to provide correct information?

c) To what degree are new data integrated with extant data? Can current definitions of facts be discussed? If the source is a database: are codes applied consistently or is there evidence of variability?

d) Finally, what other problems might impair the source?


2. World-view and knowledge conceptions

a) From what political, social, ethnic, cultural and other context does the source originate? Are there other sources with different origins that give a contradictory picture of the subject in question?

b) On what grounds does the source claim its expertise? Are there other sources claiming to have the same expertise, but on different grounds? Are there other sources claiming to have the same expertise on the same grounds, but still providing different facts?

c) To what types of facts does the source refer? Are there other sources claiming expertise in the area but dealing with different facts? Are there other sources claiming expertise in the area and dealing with the same facts, but still reaching different conclusions?


Then examine more closely the following points:

1. Choose your search aids carefully.

Consider whether the person(s)/facility recommending the website:

– is impartial or can be suspected of bias.
– has sufficient knowledge of the area in question and/or access to adequate expertise.
– is dependent on others. If so, whom?


2. Identify the website you have chosen

– Look at how the website is presented. Are there formulations suggesting that the person(s) behind the site are not really what they claim to be? Be especially wary of vague terms such as ”institute” and the like. The fuzzier the designation, the more likely that someone is trying to falsely upgrade his/her status.

– Consider the web address. The extensions ”gov”, ”mil”, ”edu”, ”org”, ”com” or ”net” give a good deal of credibility.

– You can possibly find out who owns the website through, for example, https://www.press.nu.


3. Check when the website was last updated.

– Is there information on updates corresponding to different parts of the text?
– Can you be confident that the information
you seek has been recently updated?


4. If you find the same information on different websites, try to find out if the sites are interdependent.


5. If you have reason to doubt a certain fact, check it against an independent source.


6. Try to determine to what extent the website is biased.

– Remember that virtually all websites can be suspected of some type of bias.

– Bias is not necessarily related to self-seeking interests. For a presentation to be biased, a sufficient criterion is that the person behind it is specialised in one area.

– Be especially aware of counterbias, that is, admissions that are harmful or embarrassing to a source’s own camp.

– Remember that you can confuse bias and counterbias.

– Consider in what regard a source is biased. In certain respects, even biased sources can be highly reliable, e.g., when expressing their own ideologies and opinions.

– Bias does not necessarily imply lack of objectivity. On the contrary, in certain contexts the bias itself requires correct facts.

– The missing elements of a biased report can be just as interesting as those included.

– Be careful when drawing conclusions about a website’s bias based on its outgoing links. Study closely how the links are presented. Are they expressly recommended? Are reservations made, stating that, for example, the site does not share all opinions presented in the linked website? Keep in mind that links can be made to an adversary.


7. Differentiate between facts and explanations/ interpretations.
Facts are in principle provable, but explanations and interpretations are not.


8. Differentiate between facts/explanations/interpretations and opinions.
With regard to opinions, there are several things you should consider:

– Does the person expressing the opinion mean what he/she is saying, or is it just a play to the gallery?

– If it is just a performance, at what audience is it aimed? Has the audience already seen the light, or is the intent to attract new followers?

– How representative are the conveyed opinions?

– Consider the difference between opinions that are openly and explicitly expressed and those revealed unconsciously.


9. Consider the credibility of the person(s) behind a website.

– Is it made clear in the website’s text how information has been acquired and how credible it is?

– Does the mode of expression seem credible?
Absolute certainty in the face of controversial issues is often a sign of lack of objectivity.

Owlofcreamcheese posted:

Nothing has changed in print news in the way nothing much has changed recently in horse carriage technology.

ted hitler hunter posted:

Please timg this.

FCKGW posted:

That's basically the framing many news orgs are taking lol

https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1410831313704304641?s=20

https://twitter.com/waffle_iron/status/1410679023840239620?s=20

The Kingfish posted:

The “Editing the Grey Lady” Twitter account frequently has good examples of consent being manufactured in realtime.

Corky Romanovsky posted:

Some appear extra messed up if you don't realize the page in question is a "latest story" type thing.

Discendo Vox posted:

I'd appreciate it if you could crosspost this in the media lit thread; it's a great example of abusive sourcing.

quote:

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/13/larry-summers-biden-inflation-499502

While there is clearly some growing trepidation among senior White House aides (But we're not actually going to report any evidence of this), officials maintain that the year-on-year numbers appear worse than they are given that they're up from the depressed price levels at this time in 2020.

The situation will improve, they say, as the economy fully reopens this fall, supply chain issues get resolved and more workers re-enter the labor market when emergency supplemental unemployment benefits expire in early September.

White House officials also note that bond market investors on Wall Street don't seem worried about runaway prices, given the low yields on Treasury bonds.

“All of these data points need to be put into the context of an economy that is recovering rapidly as the U.S. is leading the world in terms of growth,” a senior administration official said of the latest inflation figures.

The official, who was not authorized to speak on the record, dismissed claims that Summers has been vindicated. “Those most concerned about the inflation picture would tell a story about a spiral that would be hard to stop,” the official said. “That view is in no way vindicated by what we’ve seen in recent months and in fact the opposite is true.”

gradenko_2000 posted:

i loving love fact-checking

quote:

The influencers were also provided with a list of links to share - dubious articles which all used the same set of figures that supposedly showed the Pfzer vaccine was dangerous.

When Léo and Mirko exposed the Fazze campaign on Twitter all the articles, except the Le Monde story, disappeared from the web.

quote:

3. Political actors are increasingly outsourcing disinformation.

In 2020, Facebook and Twitter attributed at least 15 operations to private firms, such as marketing or PR companies.The outsourcing of social media disinformation to third-party actors first gained notoriety in 2016 with Russia’s use of the Internet Research Agency, an ostensibly private company run by Prigozhin. Since then, third-party actors, from troll farms in the Philippines to strategic communication firms in the United States to PR firms in Ukraine, have been accused of running disinformation campaigns.

On its face, outsourcing disinformation is puzzling—if the operator wants to keep an operation secret, why risk exposure by adding a third party into the operation? But it also has benefits, including lending deniability. Technically, outsourcing makes it more difficult for a platform to link an operation to a sponsor. Technical indicators may suggest to a social media platform that an inauthentic network is run by a marketing firm, but the platform will likely lack digital evidence as to who ordered up the network in the first place. Politically, even if people can guess the likely sponsor, the PR firm caught red-handed offers political players a scapegoat.

quote:

In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal.

A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it.

But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine. Stranger still, the agency, Fazze, claimed a London address where there is no evidence any such company exists.

Some recipients posted screenshots of the offer. Exposed, Fazze scrubbed its social media accounts. That same week, Brazilian and Indian influencers posted videos echoing Fazze’s script to hundreds of thousands of viewers.

The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.

Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.

They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.

quote:

A set of pro-Beijing operations hint at the field’s capacity for rapid evolution.

Since 2019, Graphika, a digital research firm, has tracked a network it nicknamed “Spamouflage” for its early reliance on spamming social platforms with content echoing Beijing’s line on geopolitical issues. Most posts received little or no engagement.

In recent months, however, the network has developed hundreds of accounts with elaborate personas. Each has its own profile and posting history that can seem authentic. They appeared to come from many different countries and walks of life.

Graphika traced the accounts back to a Bangladeshi content farm that created them in bulk and probably sold them to a third party.

The network pushes strident criticism of Hong Kong democracy activists and American foreign policy. By coordinating without seeming to, it created an appearance of organic shifts in public opinion — and often won attention.

The accounts were amplified by a major media network in Panama, prominent politicians in Pakistan and Chile, Chinese-language YouTube pages, the left-wing British commentator George Galloway and a number of Chinese diplomatic accounts.

A separate pro-Beijing network, uncovered by a Taiwanese investigative outlet called The Reporter, operated hundreds of Chinese-language websites and social media accounts.

Disguised as news sites and citizen groups, they promoted Taiwanese reunification with mainland China and denigrated Hong Kong’s protesters. The report found links between the pages and a Malaysia-based start-up that offered web users Singapore dollars to promote the content.

theCalamity posted:

I figured this should go here

https://twitter.com/asawinstanley/status/1341011225140981761?s=21

I don’t see any positive in a news organization that caters to the need of the US government

Discendo Vox posted:

Dawn doesn't work for Reuters the media company, she works for Thomson Reuters, the larger corporation that owns Reuters.

Gulping Again posted:

Do you ever read your own overly-long posts about how everyone besides you is wrong and should be punished for not writing as many words about exact technicalities as you do

'she doesn't work for the media company she works for the company that owns and operates the media company, these are completely different things and this is totally not a conflict of interest where an alphabet soup alumni is being placed in a position of authority in the media'

socialsecurity posted:

She hasn't worked for the company at all in 3 years and that tweet is from 8 months ago what relevance does it have now? Did you actually read his post?

quote:

TR is a massive conglomerate that includes a bunch of companies contracting with the US government for information and publishing activity. Westlaw, for instance, is a TR company.

quote:

Scalisi appears to have been hired in an effort to build up their government contracting. This sn't new. TR's had, or tried to have, data science divisions doing contract work for law enforcement for years

quote:

you can scroll down from the earlier link and see some of their projects (I'm not clear on how successful they've been; most of their activity has been buying up and dropping startups, or putting a fresh coat of marketing and UI on existing datasets).

Gulping Again posted:

I don't see how pointing out that the tweet is pointing at an old page makes the 33 year CIA veteran who got a cushy job trying to bind the bundle of Government and Private Enterprise ever tighter somehow okay to begin with. Like bad things don't magically stop being bad when you point out that they happened in the past, despite what Handsome Ralph believes.

Gulping Again posted:

This is ghoulish.

Gulping Again posted:

I don't see how pointing out that the tweet is pointing at an old page makes the 33 year CIA veteran who got a cushy job trying to bind the bundle of Government and Private Enterprise ever tighter somehow okay to begin with. Like bad things don't magically stop being bad when you point out that they happened in the past, despite what Handsome Ralph believes.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

I went ahead and looked at that lady's LinkedIn profile, and I don't know where the "33 years of CIA" number comes from:







Now, math isn't my strong suit but these numbers seem to add up to only 21 years or so.

The only thing that's objectionable about this lady is that she graduated with a bachelor of science in marine biology, then got a job at the CIA analyzing Soviet nuclear security and arms control. Like, what the gently caress? Way to waste a cool and interesting BS degree by doing something boring.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Anyone who ahs ever willingly worked for the CIA should, at the very least, be in jail forever.

The CIA is the vilest loving organization in the world and anyone who has ever worked for them is a dead-eyed psycho. You can't trust them, and if you do you're very stupid.

MonsieurChoc posted:

Anyone who ahs ever willingly worked for the CIA should, at the very least, be in jail forever.

The CIA is the vilest loving organization in the world and anyone who has ever worked for them is a dead-eyed psycho. You can't trust them, and if you do you're very stupid.

Thorn Wishes Talon posted:

Can you clarify what you mean by "at the very least"?

CommieGIR posted:

That's pretty much every intelligence agency ever? Not disagreeing, but pretty much every countries Intelligence Orgs are evil, torturing, lying bastards.

fool of sound posted:

This isn't really the thread to detail exactly how evil the US Intelligence apparatus is, though it is valid to point out that someone who has spent most of their adult life in their service is probably going to seriously slant their media career.

Discendo Vox posted:

The tweet isn't really relevant to media literacy or criticism except as a demonstration of how misinformation can be recirculated, and how when its problems are identified, people who are its targets can become trapped in its initial framing.

MonsieurChoc posted:

It is kinda relevant as it point show willing people are to ignore the many many links between American media and the darkest parts of American govenrment. You twisted yourself into a pretzel to somehow say the tweet was inaccurate when it is. She was a high-ranking Reuters director who also worked for the CIA for 30 years.

The fact that you have these massive media conglomerates that own a lot of medias and are staffed with intelligence and military adjacent personel should lead you to doubt a lot of what you're told.

quote:

To confront power is costly and difficult; high standards of evidence and argument are imposed, and critical analysis is naturally not welcomed by those who are in a position to react vigorously and to determine the array of rewards and punishments. Conformity to a "patriotic agenda," in contrast, imposes no such costs. Charges against official enemies barely require substantiation; they are, furthermore, protected from correction, which can be dismissed as apologetics for the criminals or as missing the forest for the trees. The system protects itself with indignation against a challenge to the right of deceit in the service of power, and the very idea of subjecting the ideological system to rational inquiry elicits incomprehension or outrage, though it is often masked in other terms.