[jblok]

That's a problem with people and their memory, not the news outlet. The headline at the moment literally says it was unlikely to be a drone, but that still doesn't rule it out completely. Following your rules, that wouldn't make it as a story because it isn't factually proven.

[TeMPOraL]

> That's a problem with people and their memory, not the news outlet.

Arsenic being poisonous is in fact a problem with peoples' bodies not being able to handle it. And yet putting it in food and selling to people is not something you're allowed to. The "problem with people and their memory" here is a human universal, something thay can't do much about, so asking them to "just be smarter" is not a practical approach.

> The headline at the moment literally says it was unlikely to be a drone, but that still doesn't rule it out completely. Following your rules, that wouldn't make it as a story because it isn't factually proven.

And it shouldn't. Because on what basis does this story (and previous ones) promote drones to attention? It could be a bird. Or an UAV. Or a piece of plane falling off. Or someone playing with a spud gun. Or a turtle[0]. Or something else entirely. By saying "it's unlikely it was a drone" they're already framing the discussion.

[0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11588384

[cm3]

News should not report stuff they don't know is true. Otherwise it's just reddit on TV and we wouldn't need the profession called journalism.

[untog]

That's a nice idea, but would never work in reality. People want to know things. When an explosion happens people are going to watch the TV network with sources that can confirm off the record what happened, even though they don't "know it is true".

Unless you're going to pass a law requiring all news organizations to behave this way (and when did government control of news ever go bad?) it's never going to happen.

[cm3]

It's not the government who should control news, but just as a journalist may not be put behind bars for reporting uncomfortable facts, news shall not present anything they're not sure of.

I'd like to think the solution is simple, require a license before you can call yourself a news agency and take it away after three unfounded statements. There's room for fun news that reports on some famous guy's divorce, but it should be clearly labeled as speculative rumors.

So, if you don't have a news license, you can still print papers and magazine and have tv shows, but like on cigarette packages, there will always be a label visible at all times: Speculative Infotainment.

Any controlling body must consist of a healthy mix of representatives and no financial persuasion may be allowed.

In essence it's like reading a book and knowing it's fiction, not a report, and most news reporting is the same as information passed around citizens as hearsay.

Moreover, when I look at the way some tv hosts report information, it's more acting than should be allowed for something called news.

There are probably only 1000 or 2000 active journalists today. Most just repeat, reprint, what they got fed by someone else. In some countried here are investigative journalists who have their own TV shows on (partly) publicly funded TV.

What's most important is that before blindly believing a report, one is well served to compare with other agencies who are funded by an opposing interest group. What one might misrepresent can be spelled out clearly in some other place. Relying on a single source for news is like trusting the computer clock in a distributed system.

[untog]

> I'd like to think the solution is simple, require a license before you can call yourself a news agency

Is also something that has not worked very well, historically speaking. Who is going to give out those licenses? Government. Who does the news agency report on? Government.

[cm3]

Not the government alone, no. At some point we need to learn how to make such controlling bodies work, and I'd like to think there are already such control orgs which have proven to work.

[tremon]

Let's use another example then: would you be comfortable with a headline like "Dead body found at Apple HQ, no politician directly implicated"?

[untog]

It's not an issue of what I'm comfortable with. What I'm saying is that we can't ever get to a situation we're "comfortable with" without things like press regulation, which is simply not worth the price of admission.

[TeMPOraL]

Honestly, Reddit is much better than mainstream news. On Reddit when someone says something like this, someone else will be quick to call bullshit. The same is true for Hacker News btw.

[brokenmachine]

This is exactly right. All I see now in mainstream news is corruption and undisclosed agendas, and just a general insult to intelligence.

When mainstream news is reporting stories about reality TV and sports "stars" from the same network, you know for sure it's all a big charade to sell advertising.

Of course, reddit has it's own problems as a source of truth... But there's always /r/thathappened to set us straight.