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Gumball Gumption posted:Anyways, I get why the Greyzone is a bad source for a lot of stories. I'm not disagreeing with any of that. But I don't understand what makes them so uniquely bad when all of the problems being described keep being described as universal problems and can be observed in many different organizations. It's not that it's uniquely bad, it's because certain posters keep defending it as a viable, not-actually-bad source and using that argument as a springboard to attack the whole idea of analyzing sources. Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:08 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 20:05
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Trustworthiness isn't a rigorous scientific or legal standard gumball. There is no formula for determining that a news source is 73.5% trustworth, nor a panel that can investigate and suspend or revoke a journalism license. Greyzone being a 'bad' source is a value judgement. The thread has been discussing evidence to support that judgement, and that evidence has been acknowledged but circumvented in favor of some bizarre procedural argument about declaring sources officially bad. There is no such procedure; the only thing that should be taken away from this conversation is that the Greyzone's reporting should sometimes be considered suspect because of Blumethal's demonstrated history of providing bad information in support of ideological goals.
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Dec 15, 2021 20:06
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The greyzone supports fascists https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/paul-antonopoulos-forced-out/9972694 quote:This weekend Antonopoulos was stood down and then forced to resign from his job as Al Masdar News's deputy editor after it was revealed he had posted race hate comments 10 years ago on a pro-Nazi website called Storm Front. So a guy was fired because he was outed as a nazi. Then max Blumenthal quotes him in support. https://archive.md/bxKSE https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/983964785376092160 He interviewed a guy called pepe escobar who promoted on his social media a facist confrence hosted by alexander dugin and promoted a website, Unz media full of anti semetic stuff. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYf5h0wOV1Q https://fashbusters.files.wordpress.com/2020/08/pepe-escobar-dugin-conference.png https://lasvegas.adl.org/california-entrepreneur-ron-unz-launches-a-series-of-rhetorical-attacks-on-jews/ quote:Ron Unz, a California businessman and founder of the Unz Review website, whom ADL has written about previously and described as a funder of anti-Israel activists, has embraced hardcore anti-Semitism. In recent months Unz has denied the Holocaust, endorsed the claim that Jews consume the blood of non-Jews, and has claimed that Jews control the media, hate non-Jews, and worship Satan. I can pull up more if need be, but there are a ton of investigative articles on the greyzones links to far right and facist groups. This is the article I'm quoting from. https://fashbusters.wordpress.com/2020/08/26/grayzone-max-blumenthal-boosts-fascists-right-winers/
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Dec 15, 2021 20:14
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Gotcha, and that makes sense. So there's nothing special about them and with any source you need to look at who's doing the reporting, their interests and biases, and this can apply to any media. So you can't just dismiss anything out of hand but you can recognize patterns to give yourself an idea of their credibility. But there is no definitive "good" sources vs "bad" sources. So I should keep reading the Greyzone, filtering their reporting through what I understand of their biases and view and also read lots of other media and continue to try to seek out non-english reporting when I can to get a larger view as well as apply those same filters to those pieces of media. Am I understanding this right?
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Dec 15, 2021 20:14
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Gumball Gumption posted:Gotcha, and that makes sense. So there's nothing special about them and with any source you need to look at who's doing the reporting, their interests and biases, and this can apply to any media. So you can't just dismiss anything out of hand but you can recognize patterns to give yourself an idea of their credibility. But there is no definitive "good" sources vs "bad" sources. So I should keep reading the Greyzone, filtering their reporting through what I understand of their biases and view and also read lots of other media and continue to try to seek out non-english reporting when I can to get a larger view as well as apply those same filters to those pieces of media. Am I understanding this right? Basically, yes. Although there's definitely, absolutely sources you can safely dismiss out of hand (like Alex Jones, to pick an example I think every poster ITT can agree on). Vincent Van Goatse fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 20:19
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Basically, yes. Although there's definitely, absolutely sources you can safely dismiss out of hand (e.g. Alex Jones). Yes but I think, from how I'm understanding all of this, it's backwards to say that you can safely dismiss someone like Alex Jones. You can't because if you dismiss everything he says you'll also be dismissing truths. However his credibility is so low that you can safely choose not to investigate his claims, you will not be losing important truth because it so rarely comes from him and if it does come from him it will also be coming from more credible sources. Credibility helps you decide the effort and work needed to validate but it doesn't allow you to dismiss or accept anything as a rule. Which yeah, in practice it means that you're ignoring Alex Jones because he's an idiot but the mechanics are different enough to call out. And obviously I don't want Alex as my only source of info since that is a mainline of disinformation but that also feels fairly universal. If I only read USA Today I'm going to get less disinformation but my understanding of the world would be very skewered to the biases and beliefs of whoever is working at USA Today. Gumball Gumption fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 20:25
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Fashbusters seems to be just an overwhelming of narrative that leftist groups are all cryptoconservatives, almost like the guy who got run out of Games for being weird may not be posting links in good faith.
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Dec 15, 2021 20:28
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Gumball Gumption posted:However his credibility is so low that you can safely choose not to investigate his claims, you will not be losing important truth because it so rarely comes from him and if it does come from him it will also be coming from more credible sources. Yes, that's basically what I was trying to say, just not in so many words.
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Dec 15, 2021 20:30
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Gumball Gumption posted:Yes but I think, from how I'm understanding all of this, it's backwards to say that you can safely dismiss someone like Alex Jones. You can't because if you dismiss everything he says you'll also be dismissing truths. The risk of accidentally missing out on "truths" by dismissing Alex Jones is pretty low, because if something is actually true then it'll be corroborated elsewhere, and there will be sources that are actually objectively more reliable than Alex Jones reporting on it. In contrast, the cost of accidentally believing and then mediating misinformation is pretty high, not just personally but also socially.
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Dec 15, 2021 21:30
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:The risk of accidentally missing out on "truths" by dismissing Alex Jones is pretty low, because if something is actually true then it'll be corroborated elsewhere, and there will be sources that are actually objectively more reliable than Alex Jones reporting on it. Yeah, I mean I said all of that. I was explaining the mechanics of analyzing media how I understood it and like I concluded the outcome looks the same, Alex is an idiot and it's not worth looking into what he says, but that's different than, Alex is an idiot so you know everything he says is a lie. And this thread seems to be about discussing this topic at that level so it felt important to make that distinction.
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Dec 15, 2021 22:59
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Gumball Gumption posted:Yeah, I mean I said all of that. I was explaining the mechanics of analyzing media how I understood it and like I concluded the outcome looks the same, Alex is an idiot and it's not worth looking into what he says, but that's different than, Alex is an idiot so you know everything he says is a lie. And this thread seems to be about discussing this topic at that level so it felt important to make that distinction. I think it's a distinction without a practical difference, though. Most people have neither time nor the mental discipline that would enable them to take seriously and analyze critically literally any and every source they come across, so they naturally gravitate towards sources that have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, even if some of those signals originate from, say, government sources that the reader might view with strong disdain and contempt.
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Dec 15, 2021 23:22
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Thorn Wishes Talon posted:I think it's a distinction without a practical difference, though. Most people have neither time nor the mental discipline that would enable them to take seriously and analyze critically literally any and every source they come across, so they naturally gravitate towards sources that have a higher signal-to-noise ratio, even if some of those signals originate from, say, government sources that the reader might view with strong disdain and contempt. Sure but I don't think this thread is about the average person. Unless I'm misunderstanding it the thread is about academically analyzing media so the distinction does have meaning. If this thread was just about which sources are good and which sources are bad it would have an approved list of sources and all the things people keep saying it's not about. But I do think your analysis makes sense for why people gravitate to specific sources, just not the mechanics of analyzing sources.
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Dec 15, 2021 23:28
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Gumball Gumption posted:Yeah, I mean I said all of that. I was explaining the mechanics of analyzing media how I understood it and like I concluded the outcome looks the same, Alex is an idiot and it's not worth looking into what he says, but that's different than, Alex is an idiot so you know everything he says is a lie. And this thread seems to be about discussing this topic at that level so it felt important to make that distinction. I think there's a third stance which is Alex is an idiot so regardless of the validity of any individual reporting, by engaging with Alex's reporting you become more likely to see, intake, and absorb falsehoods/bad information on the same subject or other subjects because no one is immune to this effect, and thus the value of that source further collapses. This ties into what Main said in that for some topics there will be near-zero "true" reporting in the timeframe that some sources want to claim (ie very short-term), and a casual reader is simply incapable of learning what's real. In that case, the better question IMO is "why do you need to be informed?", especially if being meaningfully informed is likely impossible. This is not to say that being uninformed is good - it's not - but I think being cognizant of being uninformed is a better outcome than being unknowingly badly-informed, and clinging to sources with a high rate of misinformation because it happens to include something that the reader thinks is accurate reporting is ultimately going to work towards making that reader less informed regardless of however much additional reading they do (which, I suspect, isn't much since it's so tempting to only intake news that meets ones existing beliefs). Zachack fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Dec 15, 2021 |
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Dec 15, 2021 23:38
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Awhile back, crowdstrike was used as a primary source when the debate about Assange and wikileaks was going on, by a mod no less. Turns out that firm was hired by the Clinton campaign by a guy who's now under federal indictment. https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-crowdstrike Then this week someone comes in talking poo poo about GrayZone and one of their principal sources is some weird blog devoted to proving that any criticizers of American foreign policy are fascists. Huh. Weird. It's like if you go along with the consensus of this thread, you will literally come out all twisted around and uninformed in the world. I think this thread is proving negative help at this point, to be honest.
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Dec 16, 2021 03:30
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Probably Magic posted:Awhile back, crowdstrike was used as a primary source when the debate about Assange and wikileaks was going on, by a mod no less. Turns out that firm was hired by the Clinton campaign by a guy who's now under federal indictment. https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-crowdstrike Then this week someone comes in talking poo poo about GrayZone and one of their principal sources is some weird blog devoted to proving that any criticizers of American foreign policy are fascists. Huh. Weird. It's like if you go along with the consensus of this thread, you will literally come out all twisted around and uninformed in the world. This is a perfect example of what being in an echo chamber and hearing what you want will end you up. Of course Clinton hired Crowdstrike they are one the biggest cybersecurity providers in the world that was never in question. https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic-national-committee/ What the indictment was over is the lawyer Sussman is being charged with saying he didn't represent Clinton when he did, which he is denying and will go to court but even if he was how does that disprove Crowdstrikes claims or has anything to do with them. If you are referring to the part of the indictment where "Tech Executive 1" and "Researcher 1 and 2" are used to maybe incite something there is no proof that it's Crowdstrike in fact the most common theory is that it's Rodney Joffe who has never worked for Crowdstrike.
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Dec 16, 2021 03:46
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Probably Magic posted:Awhile back, crowdstrike was used as a primary source when the debate about Assange and wikileaks was going on, by a mod no less. Turns out that firm was hired by the Clinton campaign by a guy who's now under federal indictment. https://mate.substack.com/p/indicted-clinton-lawyer-hired-crowdstrike Then this week someone comes in talking poo poo about GrayZone and one of their principal sources is some weird blog devoted to proving that any criticizers of American foreign policy are fascists. Huh. Weird. It's like if you go along with the consensus of this thread, you will literally come out all twisted around and uninformed in the world. I mean, you could just look at the tweets by the founder and employees of greyzone I've posted. Promoting aids deniers, saying the douma gas attack never happened, calling a video about a desperate family in Syria propaganda and deliberately mocking their struggles. The greyzone digs its own grave, the investigative articles just push it in.
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Dec 16, 2021 04:47
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socialsecurity posted:This is a perfect example of what being in an echo chamber and hearing what you want will end you up. Of course Clinton hired Crowdstrike they are one the biggest cybersecurity providers in the world that was never in question. "Of course Clinton hired Crowdstrike," and also refused to allow the FBI to look at their servers. You don't see any conflict of interest that the only investigator allowed in this project is a private firm hired by a campaign, one that had heavy reason to try to incriminate Russia because of Clinton's position against them as possible? (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 16, 2021 05:45
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socialsecurity posted:This is a perfect example of what being in an echo chamber and hearing what you want will end you up. Of course Clinton hired Crowdstrike they are one the biggest cybersecurity providers in the world that was never in question. Pretty much every media outlet that pushed Russiagate should not be considered a legitimate news source.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:40
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Nucleic Acids posted:Pretty much every media outlet that pushed Russiagate should not be considered a legitimate news source. Russian interference was an actual thing that happened, though.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:42
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How are u posted:Russian interference was an actual thing that happened, though. In the same sense that they did end up finding WMDs in Iraq, yes.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:44
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How are u posted:Russian interference was an actual thing that happened, though. It’s not illegal for Russians to post on Facebook.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:47
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Nucleic Acids posted:Pretty much every media outlet that pushed Russiagate should not be considered a legitimate news source. So.... RT and OANN are pretty much the only legitimate major news sources? That sounds reasonable.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:50
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Kalit posted:So.... RT and OANN are pretty much the only legitimate major news sources? That sounds reasonable. Russiagate was a coping mechanism for liberals who couldn’t handle the fact that the incarnation of everything they believed in lost to a racist game show host. Anyone who actively pushed it should not be trusted.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:52
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Nucleic Acids posted:Pretty much every media outlet that pushed Russiagate should not be considered a legitimate news source. Crowdstrike isn't a media outlet? Is this comment based on anything I said what media outlet are we discussing here?
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Dec 16, 2021 16:55
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Nucleic Acids posted:Russiagate was a coping mechanism for liberals who couldn’t handle the fact that the incarnation of everything they believed in lost to a racist game show host. Anyone who actively pushed it should not be trusted. It was a fundamental rejection that America is capable of anything so odious on its own, which if you know America you know 1. We are definitely capable of that and 2. We are unable as a society to see ourselves clearly for what we are
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Dec 16, 2021 16:55
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socialsecurity posted:Crowdstrike isn't a media outlet? Is this comment based on anything I said what media outlet are we discussing here? If you’re going to discuss Russiagate in a thread about media literacy, especially regarding the source of hysterical media reports, then yeah, it’s fair to say.
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Dec 16, 2021 16:57
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Nucleic Acids posted:Russiagate was a coping mechanism for liberals who couldn’t handle the fact that the incarnation of everything they believed in lost to a racist game show host. Anyone who actively pushed it should not be trusted. Cool. I'll start yelling at people who post articles from Propublica/Mother Jones/The Intercept/etc about how stupid they are for believing illegitimate news sources.
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Dec 16, 2021 17:19
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Kalit posted:Cool. I'll start yelling at people who post articles from Propublica/Mother Jones/The Intercept/etc about how stupid they are for believing illegitimate news sources. Just because a lot of people promoted it does not make it true. The lack of mea culpas also isn’t surprising.
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Dec 16, 2021 17:21
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My take away from this thread is that every media outlet is going to be susceptible to having conspiracy and untruths laundered through them. Russiagate can be false even if it was reported on by multiple people and that doesn't necessarily mean they're now illegitimate, it means that they were tricked and reported false info either because it supported narratives they wanted to push or fed into the reporters own biases and they did a poor job at confirming what they're reporting. It's also a huge multifaceted story and there's really no outlet that has gotten it 100% right or 100% wrong. Even deniers acknowledge attempts to manipulate by Russia, they generally just report that they don't see evidence for the claimed impact that other media organizations do see which is also the easiest place for their own beliefs to come in because it's murky and hard to answer the question of how much impact Russia had.
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Dec 16, 2021 17:31
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For the tenth time,quote:“Think for yourself” doesn’t mean rationalize more Equivocating about sources of information doesn't make you sophisticated or savvy. It makes you a mark. Probably Magic septupling down on grayzone via a conspiratorial substack post by one of its authors is a strong demonstration of this phenomenon.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:19
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Discendo Vox posted:For the tenth time, So what are the good purveyors of anti-US Imperialism journalism?
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Dec 16, 2021 18:21
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Discendo Vox posted:For the tenth time, Right but doesn't that cut both ways? People are also calling sources illegitimate using conspiratorial blogs. It feels like there is a difference between you can't trust any sources and the argument that even reputable sources get it wrong. Even reputable sources get it wrong and are influenced by their own agenda and bias.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:24
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Gumball Gumption posted:Right but doesn't that cut both ways? People are also calling sources illegitimate using conspiratorial blogs. It feels like there is a difference between you can't trust any sources and the argument that even reputable sources get it wrong. Even reputable sources get it wrong and are influenced by their own agenda and bias. That all sources of information are imperfect does not actually justify using conspiratorial blogs. It is not possible to apply universal scrutiny to all sources, and it is not feasible to have a discussion in which bad faith mediators of information must be endlessly entertained. The equivocation between sources of information is specifically used by the mediators of this information to justify legitimizing sources that are spreading misinformation, especially information that is ideologically appealing or useable as a rhetorical cudgel. Users who weaponize these sources of information are themselves media sources- they are ideologically committed and socially incentivized to spread misinformation and attack other forms of discussion. Again, this is all in the OP, and indeed in the paragraph I just quoted.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:35
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Discendo Vox posted:That all sources of information are imperfect does not actually justify using conspiratorial blogs. It is not possible to apply universal scrutiny to all sources, and it is not feasible to have a discussion in which bad faith mediators of information must be endlessly entertained. The equivocation between sources of information is specifically used by the mediators of this information to justify legitimizing sources that are spreading misinformation, especially information that is ideologically appealing or useable as a rhetorical cudgel. The NYT regularly publishes conspiritorial blogs in the form of op eds. Obama’s favorite, David Brooks, has made a career promoting the conspiracy theory that poor people are poor because they have bad values, not because they have no money. Utterly tinfoil hat garbage.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:37
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Discendo Vox posted:That all sources of information are imperfect does not actually justify using conspiratorial blogs. It is not possible to apply universal scrutiny to all sources, and it is not feasible to have a discussion in which bad faith mediators of information must be endlessly entertained. The equivocation between sources of information is specifically used by the mediators of this information to justify legitimizing sources that are spreading misinformation, especially information that is ideologically appealing or useable as a rhetorical cudgel. So what's a good information mediator on US military activity? The state department alone?
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Dec 16, 2021 18:39
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selec posted:The NYT regularly publishes conspiritorial blogs in the form of op eds. Obama’s favorite, David Brooks, has made a career promoting the conspiracy theory that poor people are poor because they have bad values, not because they have no money. Utterly tinfoil hat garbage. Has anyone here said to believe everything the NYT posts without any scrutiny?
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Dec 16, 2021 18:41
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socialsecurity posted:Has anyone here said to believe everything the NYT posts without any scrutiny? Just making the point that “conspiracy theory” is a thought terminating cliche without actual value in determining truth. It’s an ideological statement about the person who uses it’s feelings, not what they do or do not know. It was a conspiracy theory they the ruling class hobknobbed openly with sex traffickers and pedophiles until it became very difficult to control the information about your Jimmy Savilles and Bill Clintons and Jeffrey Epsteins. Up until quite recently that was all laughable tinfoil stuff. Conspiracy theories are just mental models that upset someone with the authority to challenge them. It has no relation to the truth or falsity of the theory. selec fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Dec 16, 2021 |
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Dec 16, 2021 18:43
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Kalit posted:So.... RT and OANN are pretty much the only legitimate major news sources? That sounds reasonable. How’d you get that out of what you quoted? For reference, in case you want to read it again: Nucleic Acids posted:Pretty much every media outlet that pushed Russiagate should not be considered a legitimate news source. You’re making stuff up that isn’t there.
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Dec 16, 2021 18:45
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selec posted:Just making the point that “conspiracy theory” is a thought terminating cliche without actual value in determining truth. It’s an ideological statement about the person who uses it’s feelings, not what they do or do not know. So what would describe being anti-vax and anti-lockdown because you think covids all part of some government plot to control everyone?
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Dec 16, 2021 18:47
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Discendo Vox posted:That all sources of information are imperfect does not actually justify using conspiratorial blogs. It is not possible to apply universal scrutiny to all sources, and it is not feasible to have a discussion in which bad faith mediators of information must be endlessly entertained. The equivocation between sources of information is specifically used by the mediators of this information to justify legitimizing sources that are spreading misinformation, especially information that is ideologically appealing or useable as a rhetorical cudgel. Ok, then I don't understand the difference between the idea that you can't use this to create a list of credible and not credible media but you can use it to rule out media that is not credible. Like I've read the OP and I know others are in a weird slap fight about credible sources which seems to not be the point of this thread but I really do just want to understand this concept. Forget about the Greyzone because I really don't care about them. I'm just trying to understand what criteria allows for some media to be considered so uncredible that all reporting from them is useless while other media is credible even if they also do things to push an agenda or their own bias. Is there an academic criteria here? Is it just a general "you know it when you see it?" How does that work? Is one of the books in your list a good place to start? If a student was wondering this in your class or whatever you do that allows you to study this what would you tell them?
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Dec 16, 2021 18:47
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