[eldavido]

I think this is all too true. I think a lot of what's going on in the world right now is explainable through the death of ubiquitous, reliably-sourced information.

Growing up in suburban Illinois, we had a local paper. It was nothing special but at least had a commitment (in theory) to report things accurately. In a world where most people get their news from social media, people are driven by their incentives/dopamine conditioning toward a lot of behaviors that promote neither truth, nor engagement with opposing views.

What I find interesting, and absent from the conversation, is the social class dimension of this. The rich have always paid for reliable information, whether through newspaper subscriptions, magazines, or other high-quality private newsletters, some of them absurdly expensive (hundreds/thousands of dollars/year). As I get older, I find myself much, much more discerning about what I read. I've completely stopped using facebook (5-6 years ago), but now read The Economist, The SF Chronicle, Stratechery, and a handful of blogs from authors I trust. I don't know for sure, but I suspect "willingness to pay for good information" is a pretty strong correlate of wealth worldwide. I just have no idea whether it's causal, or a side effect of having disposable income, or what.

[zombieprocesses]

> but now read The Economist, The SF Chronicle, Stratechery, and a handful of blogs from authors I trust. I

I'm the complete opposite. I've gone from being a subscriber to the economist, nytimes, npr, etc and accepting them as gospel to seeing them for agenda pushing institutions.

> but I suspect "willingness to pay for good information" is a pretty strong correlate of wealth worldwide.

I think you are missing the point. The wealthy don't read the economist. The wealthy hire the people to write in the economist.

Ultimately, social media is ( or at least has been ) the "people's" propaganda. The economist/etc are the wealthy elite's propaganda. It looks like the elite want to take over social media and make it part of their message platform as well.

[eldavido]

So this is a gripe I have with the American view of "news".

OF COURSE they push an agenda. EVERYONE pushes an agenda. But I do think there's a brightline between "pushing an agenda" and "publishing things that are false". The Economist is at least open about it, calling what they do "editorial journalism". Publications like the NYT that purport to be "objective" chafe me way more. I'm not a Trump supporter but I promise you the NYT will report any wrong he does 10x as loudly and harshly as anything remotely positive.

It's OK. You just need to be aware of it.

The bigger problems, I think, are (a) people who believe things that are blatantly false, or (b) people who get all of their news with the same ideological slant. As someone who considers himself a "centrist" living in SF, (b) is decidedly not my problem. lol

[BoiledCabbage]

> I'm the complete opposite. I've gone from being a subscriber to the economist, nytimes, npr, etc and accepting them as gospel to seeing them for agenda pushing institutions.

You haven't said what you've replaced these news sources with.

I my eyes, a big part of problem is people letting perfect be the enemy of good. People conclude the nytimes or economist or any news source has some inherent bias in it. Those biases are smaller than most info sourced, but definitely but present. They then replace that news source with a non-factual (or significantly less factual) information source that more closely matches their biases.

Saying "I stopped reading the xyz mainstream paper and replaced it with my Facebook feed" is not a net win. Nor is replacing it with some guys blog online, nor an opinion show that includes factoids. But as little as people admit it, this is most of what I see happening.

The other answer I often hear is "I now take in a ton of different sources and make up my own mind." Which is a great philosophy as people should always be making up their own mind. But again, when usually pressing someone on the sources they take in, the majority are low-factual sources. That's not improving anything.

It's like a person having the same few meals every day. Their Dr says they should get more variety in their diet, so they add 30 different types of junk food. Yes it's technically more variety, but it's absolutely not an improvement.

[gt_]

I come across reverence for these publications regularly but I don’t say anything because I fear bipartisan reactionism would label me a conspiracist before I have a chance to defend myself.

I actually get most of my news filtered through HN comments and from independent podcasts by journalists I trust.

[randcraw]

I treat news like it was an claim about nature by a scientist. Do other (independent) experts agree? If not, then I'm not ready to accept the claim yet. But if so, and the argument seems sound, then I'll tentatively consider believing it.

Or if opinions on the proposed news/idea are mixed or absent, I'll look at how bold the claim is and how disruptive the consequences of accepting it. Bold claims must offer more compelling support (or more undeniable) than mild claims, be that support evidentiary or logical.

Without sound support, at most I'll consider a claim to be plausible and perhaps intriguing. But it's not really trustworthy yet as news, and certainly not as science.

[Erlangolem]

I love this outlook, and I share it. I’d add that I like to take patterns of claims into account, past and present. Patterns of claims can be illuminating as to the reality of underlying motivations, even where claims are true. Sometimes claims are accurate, but by presenting only one segment of a story the reader’s conclusions are moulded a specific end. For example claims that video games cause violence recur in predictable ways, as do PR submarines.

Another useful filter is to identify which of Logos, Pathos, or Ethos is being employed most. Is an article trying to support its claims with citations, original research, and sound logic? Or is it just calling everyone who disagrees with it immoral?

[eldavido]

HN is too narrow. My personal gripe with some of the beliefs here:

- Belief that product/engineering/tech always trumps distribution. Sometimes it does. Often it doesn't.

- Way too focused on software as "tech" to the exclusion of everything else (physics, science, etc). Super-focused on programming languages, dev tools, anything that touches code.

Re: "bipartisan reactionism", my wife sits a little left of me politically so I tend to read more conservative news (e.g. WSJ), whereas she gives me the scoop from NPR and NYT. We meet in the middle. It's nice.

[BoiledCabbage]

> I actually get most of my news filtered through HN comments and from independent podcasts by journalists I trust.

Hacker news is not a great news source. A very limited view, a very hash filter, an echo chamber with extremely like-minded people on tech.

As a result you get the frequent ideas that tech is the solution to everything (in fact it's horrible at most human nature problems), and the bias that the majority of people on here have been brought up with privilege even if the don't like to admit it, and are also currently living a life of privilege - most don't know what the world looks like for even the majority of Americans.