[germanlee]

Rather than being an honest game to reduce "disinformation", this game is simply defending mainstream media. It's message is essentially "trust mainstream media". Not that shocking coming from cambridge considering they are at the forefront of cultural war being waged in the west today.

How about get opinion/news from a wide variety of sources ( mainstream and fringe, big and small, national and international, right and left, globalist and nationalist, etc )? That's the only reliable way to wade through all the disinformation.

Especially regarding controversial, cultural, military, trade and geopolitical issues.

If you are getting your "news" from one source then you are getting propaganda and lies. How many wars have we been sold on lies by the media? And yet, we are expected to trust them regardless of their lies. And that's just the most glaring and obvious example.

For example, with the recent hong kong protests. It would have been nice to see what the chinese media or asian media were also saying about the issue. I suspect it's a lot different than the "news" we've been seeing about it in the US. If we are interested in the "truth", then it would be nice to see what iranians/iranian media and the media of nearby countries are saying. Rather than just a one sided pro-war "news".

But I suspect that neither cambridge nor the media they are protecting truly care about "news, disinformation, fake news, etc".

[SantalBlush]

This is 100% false. It is an "appeal to the middle" fallacy based on two assumptions:

1. that all news sources are equally biased;

2. that aggregating those biases produces an unbiased result.

Neither of these assumptions are credible.

[germanlee]

1. I didn't say all news sources are "equally biased". Saying all news sources are biased is not the same as saying equally biased. Some are obvious more biased and more propagandistic than others. But without a doubt, every news source has biases. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to look into the history of every news company. Who created them, funded them and who is running them. But I suspect you already know this.

2. I didn't say the "aggregates" produce an unbiased result. I didn't mention anything about "aggregates". Seeing different opinions exposes to you the biases of every news source. If you just watch foxnews or cnn all day, you won't be able to pick up on the bias. But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious. I'm not saying watching both somehow magically makes CNN or Foxnews "objective" and "honest". Quite the opposite.

3. Neither of those assumptions are credible because I didn't make them. You made those assumptions in an attempt to defend mainstream media. Which I see all over social media recently.

Every comment about being skeptical about media ( especially mainstream media ) gets met with your type of comment. Makes me wonder.

[TomMckenny]

Infowars: Clinton runs a child abuse ring from a pizza shop.

Pulitzer Prize winning news source: Clinton does not run a child abuse ring.

How does ignoring Infowars because it is intentionally lying make me less informed?

>Every comment about being skeptical about media ( especially mainstream media ) gets met with your type of comment. Makes me wonder.

Our conspiracy has been exposed! Back to Moscow comrades!

[germanlee]

You forgot other Pulitzer Prize gems.

Pulitzer Prize winning news source : Nayirah, Yellow cake, assad syria chemical attack, Trump working for Putin conspiracy.

But then again, Pulitzer was the founder of yellow journalism, the original fake news.

I don't think winning an award named after the founder of yellow journalism is anything to be proud of.

"Back to Moscow comrades"?

That sounds like the fake news we've been hearing from many pulitzer winners.

The difference between infowars fake news and pulitzer winners fake news is that the pulitzer winners' fake news has resulted in the death of millions of people and the pulitzer winners should be facing war crime charges.

[TomMckenny]

You mean Assad has never conducted chemical attacks on his people? Even though Syria, Russia, Iran and youtube conspiracy theorists claim he is Innocent, the actual fact of chemical attacks it is well established. It is actually found in victims blood.

And Nayirah was invited by congress to lie in those chambers in order to give Bush justification for his war. None of those parties are news papers. In fact it was the press that ultimately exposed those lies, not a guy in his basement on youtube.

By yellow cake, I assume you are referring to the article[1] that _exposed_ Bush's lie about WMD in Iraq coming from Africa. The article that resulted in white house retaliation threatening the life of Valerie Plame.

In addition, there were a series of op-eds _opposing_ the war by Joseph C. Wilson and others. The only degree to which real journalism is guilty is the degree to which it gullibly repeated what the whitehouse said. I believe we are all aware now that the whitehouse lies profusely.

And indeed, the respectable papers report the Trump organization's meetings and deals with Russia. If this data looks like an accusation to you, I have to agree that evidence is quite damning.

So here is a counter proposal: The far right is trying to discredit and ultimately crush the free press and academia as always. One of the tools is a re-write of history so that somehow those institutions that opposed war are now blamed for it. And the hawkish right who actually did start the war is falsely portrayed as opposing it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/what-i-didn-t-fin...

[SantalBlush]

>One of the tools is a re-write of history so that somehow those institutions that opposed war are now blamed for it. And the hawkish right who actually did start the war is falsely portrayed as opposing it.

I've been noticing more frequent references to WMDs lately, which is meant to imply that people who follow the mainstream media are being duped again. The issue with this narrative is that they weren't really duped the first time. Iraq was the most widely protested war internationally in modern history. The whole comparison between modern news events and WMDs is just grasping at straws.

[SantalBlush]

>I didn't say all news sources are "equally biased".

>I didn't say the "aggregates" produce an unbiased result.

This is correct. I didn't quote you. I'm saying that in order for your conclusion to hold, the above assumptions must be true, which they're not. Whether or not you stated the assumptions is irrelevant.

>Seeing different opinions exposes to you the biases of every news source. If you just watch foxnews or cnn all day, you won't be able to pick up on the bias. But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious.

There is zero reason to believe that watching one source will accurately expose the bias in another source, rather than simply contradict it. What I mean is that watching multiple news sources will not necessarily help you distinguish fact from bias.

To give an example, if news A presents a factual statement, and news B presents a lie that contradicts A, you are no better off by watching both news sources.

My statement has exactly nothing to do with "mainstream media." I'm just addressing the fallacy stated above.

[germanlee]

I told you why your assumptions were false. And please don't use philosophical and logical concepts you clearly don't understand.

> To give an example, if news A presents a factual statement, and news B presents a lie that contradicts A, you are no better off by watching both news sources.

Actually you are better off since you can then verify the "factual statement".

You are assuming "news A" is pushing "factual statements". That is itself a logical fallacy. I'll let you furiously google a list of logical fallacies to find out which.

You aren't addressing any "fallacy" because you built up false assumptions and are now arguing against your incorrect assumptions. That is also another logical fallacy.

You have a very "journalist" way of thinking. Illogical, agenda driven and misleading.

[dang]

Crossing into personal attack like this is a bannable offense on HN. I don't want to ban you, but if you keep posting flamewar comments, we're going to have to. We've already asked you repeatedly to stop.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[jpfed]

>But if you watch both, the biases of both become blatantly obvious.

I don't think this is true, though. You may be able to see differences between them, but without access to the "ground truth" (whatever that might be) you can't tell how each source differs from the ground truth.