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by potatote 2956 days ago
I agree with you about not trusting anything we see on TV/Newspapers (even if it is from 60 Minutes; NYT; whatever-is-reputed-to-be-reliable). I grew up in Myanmar and after reading a lot of one-sided coverage about the refugee issue there (labeled as 'genocide'), I realized it's impossible for news organizations to be almost always impartial and accurate.

They have to obtain information from some source. Almost always, that source of information can mislead the reporter/news writer easily because of the latter's lack of familiarity with the issue, the region or the culture. The reporter, on the other hand, works against time. Plus, s/he is, after all, human (susceptible to persuasion/personal biases and worse, is sometimes too lazy to do a fact-check and more importantly, to hear the voices from the other side).

As most things in life, the truth is always in somewhere the middle.
2 comments
frockington 2956 days ago
Especially since now sources are "someone familiar with their thinking". Why the media thinks that is a reputable source is beyond me and is why I've completely stopped watching television news
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ocdtrekkie 2956 days ago
The challenge is that when you're reporting on companies with legendarily strict NDAs and entire security teams dedicated to finding leaks and snuffing them out, news is going to come predominantly from confidential sources.

For example, in the Theranos segment that followed the Google segment on this week's 60 Minutes, the Theranos employee who first ratted them out stated that he used a fake name when he first contacted the government because he feared reprisal.

Presumably, reporters are supposed to seek adequate proof or confirmation of what they hear from "sources", and we are supposed to be able to trust that they did that job adequately or at least, they are reporting the news as they believe it, until confirmation is available in the form of an official investigation.

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pas 2956 days ago
> I grew up in Myanmar and after reading a lot of one-sided coverage about the refugee issue there

Could you elaborate on this? Show some nyt/whatever articles and explain what they got wrong? (What they omitted, etc.)

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