[jessaustin]

Congratulations on this; it looks great.

Currently this is only designed to open up the fact checking which involves public primary sources.

Limiting the scope to this is wise. It's a tractable problem and it's better journalism. The types of journalists who write "this unnamed source implied that this other unnamed source had implied to another unnamed source..." articles won't like this sort of tool, but those journalists should be encouraged to change careers.

Some might not realize that articles like that are fairly common. For an example, I went to NYT homepage and this was the first article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/03/us/politics/william-barr-...

First sentence: "Some of Robert S. Mueller III’s investigators have told associates that Attorney General William P. Barr failed to adequately portray the findings of their inquiry and that they were more troubling for President Trump than Mr. Barr indicated, according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations."

This sort of crap gets swept under the rug within a couple of weeks, but we're certainly paying attention to it now.

[beat]

What's the problem with that sentence? People speak to the press off the record all the time; it's part of the process. Unless the NYT doesn't actually have these sources, there's nothing wrong with it. Of course, all we have for proof is their reputation as a newspaper for integrity, and the word of any reporters involved, but reporters have often gone to jail rather than reveal anonymous sources.

[Macross8299]

>Unless the NYT doesn't actually have these sources, there's nothing wrong with it

It doesn't even have to come down to bad intentions or journalists intentionally lying about their anonymous sources, it's the fact that I have no way of reasonably knowing whether the NYT got tricked or lied to. Maybe their so-called "anonymous source" is just taking credulous journalists for a ride. I'm expected to just put blind faith in their opaque verification process and accept that anonymous sources are equally as valid as someone going on record?

Interestingly enough, the credibility (or lack thereof) of anonymous sources is an easily tractable problem that could be easily solvable with ring-signature cryptography [0] if there was the will to do so. And the trustless nature of that solution does not require journalists to be deemed the anointed arbiters of The Truth(tm). Alas, the social and cultural factors are just not there such that every government official, business leader, etc has a public crypto key.

[0]: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/RST01.pdf

[beat]

Crypto aside (I think it's useless nonsense in this case, but that's me), my gripe with journalism isn't the facts... it's the stenography. Some serial liar (coughcoughTrumpcough) says the sky is falling because the Sun rises in the West and the idea that it rises in the East is liberal fake news, and the media dutifully reports the quote and doesn't call them on their shit. And then the debate over whether the Sun rises in the east or the west is treated as he-said-she-said opinion by the media.

That is a real problem. Not anonymous sources or fact-checking.

[jessaustin]

1) I've never heard of Nicholas Fandos, Michael S. Schmidt, or Mark Mazzetti. I don't suspect them of anything horrible, but neither do they have "reputations" on which I can rely. Taibbi in his recent essay observed that reporters without established reputations get lower-quality anonymous tips (i.e., "lies") from insiders than better-known reporters get. In this case multiple no-name authors are actually less reputable than one no-name author would be, because we don't know which of the authors received the anonymous tip at the heart of this article.

2) The basic proposition addressed by that sentence is that "investigators are uncomfortable with Barr's summary", but the implication is that there is a problem with that summary. The rest of the article addresses the potential meaning of this "big, if true" implication but gets no closer to the question of whether that implication is true. The alleged feelings of randoms are not interesting to the average reader. If investigators or anyone else has specific knowledge of wrongdoing that should be made known to the public, they should contact reporters directly.

3) Even if the basic proposition were firmer, we're approaching it through too many layers of indirection. The reporter didn't talk to the investigators. He didn't talk to associates of the investigators. He talked rather to "government officials and others familiar", and not about what those officials and others had heard from the investigators but rather about what associates of the investigators had heard from the investigators. How the government officials and others heard about it is not specified. We're at least four layers deep here, and nothing believable is four layers deep. These reporters are under no threat of "going to jail", because even if the basic question were important no judge could decide that the reporters are close enough to the truth to justify contempt.

4) The basic question is not important. Eventually politicians of both parties will read the entire un-redacted report. The public will not, because grand jury testimony will be redacted to protect the reputations of Republican operatives whose transgressions were not judged to merit indictments while "sources and methods" will be redacted to protect Democratic FBI (and possibly NSA?) agents whose transgressions were under color of law. It's not surprising that Barr's report had a political slant. Everything in DC has a political slant. Maybe if they found the Lindbergh baby, this tottering tower of misdirection could be justified. Nobody here found the Lindbergh baby.

5) That this happens "all the time" is actually a serious problem. Every day, well-placed people insert self-interested opinions into the public discourse not as self-interested opinions but rather as journalistic fact. This has terrible effects on our society and on our military victims around the world. Soi-disant journalists should stop aiding this terrible process, and this tool could help them do that.

[pvg]

I've never heard of Nicholas Fandos, Michael S. Schmidt, or Mark Mazzetti. I don't suspect them of anything horrible, but neither do they have "reputations" on which I can rely.

Two of these people have multiple Pulitzers between them. Schmidt is on tv practically daily. These are not low quality tips to no-name reporters - that 'fact' you made up to fit your preferred narrative. Or at least, did not bother to fact-check!

[jessaustin]

Thanks for the update; it's really hard to figure out who has won a Pulitzer! Schmidt, in particular, seems to show up in the pictures without his name appearing at the top of the prize announcement. I would have recognized the name "Ronan Farrow". [0] Is it meaningful that the intern is the first author? Might he have written the first line in the story, which as we've established is the only claim of any substance, such as it is?

[0] https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/new-york-times-reporting-le...

[beat]

I haven't heard of the journalists who wrote the article. I have, however, heard of the New York Times. I trust the NYT to vet its reporters carefully, and to review relevant facts. If someone wants to go off on "liberal media fake news", well, fuck them. They're not interested in facts anyway, and there's no point in debating such idiots.

As for "specific knowledge of wrongdoing"... well. What's "wrongdoing" here? Barr presented a summary of the Mueller Report to the public. Apparently, people in the investigation itself are unhappy with that summary and consider it deceptive (yeah, no shit, saying the Trump administration misleading people is like saying water is wet).

Yes, this is multi-layered, anonymous leakage, BUT. BUT. Is it untrue? Are investigators actually fine with the Barr summary, and the sources are lying to the journalists? Probably not. So despite the abstraction layers, the gist of the story is most likely true. And the NYT certainly doesn't have to run a story that says "Mueller is totally fine with the Barr summary" next week, so they're not going to print it unless they believe it true. So smell tests are fine here.

And the basic question is important. It's not whether Barr lied, but rather whether he intentionally misled - or more to the point, if Mueller's team believes he misled. That is relevant to the public, and to me.

[Macross8299]

>Apparently, people in the investigation itself are unhappy with that summary

But the article doesn't even say that they heard the investigators say that. At best it's hearsay and gossip of n-th degree, at worst it's outright misrepresentation of the facts.

Look at the weasel words: "according to government officials and others familiar with their simmering frustrations."

Who are government officials in this usage? And what qualifies someone as "familiar" with the matter? How many people work as a government official in some capacity and could claim some vague familiarity with the Mueller report? Does a park ranger in Wyoming who follows political news qualify? It wouldn't be technically lying to cite them as a "government official familiar with the matter", right?

[beat]

Stories are leaked through cutouts like this for good reason, politically. What I'm saying is that the layers don't make it untrue, and decent journalism will catch most misrepresentation.

You say "weasel words", I say "We think you should take this with a grain of salt". They're being explicitly clear that their sources are secondhand. What's your answer? That they shouldn't run the story at all?

[Macross8299]

>What they shouldn't run the story at all?

Well, I think as you get more and more degrees removed from a primary source, the closer the article gets to being gossip and/or somebody's opinion and not factual news. Which is fine, there's a market for stuff like that. But I don't think that's very sustainable if you want to maintain a reputation as a purveyor of fact-based reporting.

There's a reason hearsay isn't generally admissable in a court of law.

[jessaustin]

Wow, that's, like, meta-weasel-words. Well done.

Absolutely, a story based entirely on odious unattributable anonymous innuendo like that we see here should not be published. If the "government officials and others" want this important information to get out, they can still talk to Rep. Schiff. He will repeat anything that hypes up RussiaRussiaRussia, and he's on TV all the time. If, in fact, he isn't the "government official" to which this piece refers in the first place.

I don't say this because I support Trump or voted for him (never did, never would). I say it because this whole multiyear journalistic dumpster fire has guaranteed his reelection. TFA is all about putting out the flames, which I do support.