[crocodiletears]

The current information hygiene and media literacy curriculum as I understand it leans heavily on using 'reputable sources'. This is well and good until those sources start to lose their reputability by publishing stories that stretch credulity (WaPo and the NYT with their 'anonymous intelligence sources familiar with the thinking of people near the matter'), become increasingly partisan, or simply appear too selective in their coverages with the benefit of hindsight. Noticing these things invalidates the majority of the curriculum in a student's mind, and leaves them unequipped to deal with the beasts wandering the information wilderness.

If I were to reform this, I'd place greater emphasis on information composition, and source/author auditing. Acknowledge that mainstream publications often miss things that less reputable outlets will cover (albeit poorly), and teach students to think in degrees of certainty.

[slg]

>This is well and good until those sources start to lose their reputability by publishing stories that stretch credulity (WaPo and the NYT with their 'anonymous intelligence sources familiar with the thinking of people near the matter')

It sounds like maybe we should add courses on journalism then too because there is nothing specific about this approach that stretches credulity if done properly. Unnamed sources are a crucial part of a lot of good journalism.

[crocodiletears]

They are, and some of the greatest journalists alive, such as Sy Hersh have built their very respectable careers on anonymous tips and having privileged information from those they can never cite.

That being said, it's important to be exceedingly leery of them, and use them sparingly, preferably as supporting evidence for a larger story. Lacking the same degree of accountability, they just as easily can be used to launder political narratives to sympathetic journalists who will breathlessly parrot them as they can be used to inform the public of goings-on behind the curtains of corporation and state.

Used too lightly as the primary crux of nearly inconsequential stories which hammer in too small a number of talking points, 'anonymous x familiar with y' can quickly become shorthand for 'this journalist/publication is in bed with a subfaction, and this is the new talking point'.

[slg]

Anonymous sources are a tool that is neither inherently good or bad. You singled them out in your previous comment as being linked to untrustworthy reporting.

[refurb]

That’s because anonymous sources been particularly abused in the past few years - reporters taking a source at their word while doing a minimum of verification.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Properly used unnamed sources are a crucial part of good journalism, but much of the problem we've seen recently is that media outlets aren't using them properly. I'd point to the Miles Taylor essay as a good concrete example of what goes wrong:

* They granted him journalistic anonymity for an opinion piece, which is very much not a common practice.

* The NYT published no corroboration of Taylor's claims, and their descriptions of how the editorial got published suggest they didn't even attempt to find corroboration.

* Their description of him as a "senior administration official" substantively misled people - the phrase is generally understood, and was understood at the time, to refer to people like agency heads or cabinet secretaries with direct accountability to the President.

And this is from an uncommonly responsible outlet! Many others will happily publish detailed claims of fact attributed only to "one person with knowledge of the matter".

[slg]

The Miles Taylor column was not a journalist citing an "unnamed source". It was a publisher allowing an anonymous opinion column. Those are different things. It is also important to realize the fundamental differences between reporting and opinion pieces including the expectations on fact checking.

Once again, another reason people should learn more about journalism in school.

[ahepp]

This seems like an incredibly bad faith argument to me.

Do you feel that the "Anonymous" op-ed was published in a manner that encouraged any sort of critical consumption?

[slg]

My point is the '"Anonymous" op-ed' was in fact an op-ed which comes with a different set of publishing standards than reporting. Most people either are ignorant of or refuse the recognize the differences between the two from a journalistic point of view. Fundamentally a bad op-ed in the NYT shouldn't have anyone questioning the quality of reporting that the NYT puts out.

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don't know. I understand the journalistic theory behind it, but as applied here, it feels like the equivalent of an investment bank explaining that it's unfair to hold it accountable for its false Libor submissions. The NYT's institutional reputation was a fundamental part of what made this op-ed work - nobody would have believed it if it were on a random anonymous Blogspot - and that reputation can't be cleanly divided according to the company's internal firewalls.

There's a point where you have to hold organizations accountable under normal standards, rather than letting them set up special rules to define their bad conduct out of existence.

[ahepp]

Wow. I'm a huge consumer of news media and I never saw that this source was revealed. I'm only now learning the identity of the author, but you're absolutely correct that the portrayal was incredibly misleading and I'm infuriated at the attempted deceit.

[disrrrrruptives]

I'll try to cite some hypothesis, hope it helps...

'Within limted thought-processes; which can be owed by censorship, selfcensoring or sure a lack of information, one thought may be proceeding linear.'

"If you may give this one moment more, associating happens within a 'certain' time as well it may make 'a career' and runs on a limited tracks."

Now you may imagine conflicts - as unexpected consequence, resulting in a quiet retreat, in its simplest form to shut up, hardened resulting in isolation - just to reenter a thoughtloop of to rest, to became keeping calm... now add promiscuous, rash, screenwork and you have qualified for obsession and addiction, maybe... ^^

edited: eh! ther was way too many chars and text to 'translate' to round the full -too drunk- picture in this little textbox...so... (-; recursion

[SpicyLemonZest]

I think that's a fair assessment. I don't know if it's still true, but for at least the first decade after Wikipedia went mainstream, I did see a lot of schools compromising their credibility by insisting that it wasn't a "reliable source" so you shouldn't read it to learn about things.

[amelius]

The problem with labeling a source with a "reliability score" is the ad hominem fallacy.