[BeetleB]

> Newspapers are usually correct with the facts when they do report on a story.

For an important issue that is covered ad nauseum, sure.

For an issue that was hot today but not next week, I hard disagree. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45585287

One simple example: The FBI raided my friend's workplace. All the news reported the business as having shut down permanently. Yet my friend worked there for at least 4 years! He said they shut down for a few days max.

For smaller stories, talk to people involved, and you'll get an idea of how inaccurate they can be.

[rixed]

Match my experience as well. For every event I've been part of that's also been reported in the news, I've found the news wildly wrong. Not innacurate, wrong. And lately, on top of that I've also had the terrifying experience of wikipedia opting for the wrong reported news and dismissing several objections from people actually involved in the actual events.

The worse is that it's oftentime not even attributable to some malicious agenda, or gross incompetence of someone in particular. It's just how this industry functions.

Someone down the thread is asking "what's the alternative". The alternative is to admit that you are not informed beyond your immediate horrizon.

[BeetleB]

BTW, another HN submission demonstrating how inaccurate news articles can be:

https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/10/i-have-no-facts-and-i-must-...

[Braxton1980]

They said usually. There's also no alternative as it's great for this one situation you had insight but the vast majority of people don't.

[BeetleB]

And I'm saying it's "usually" only for major stories that have continued coverage.

For the rest (which may be close to the majority), I'm saying "No".

> There's also no alternative as it's great for this one situation you had insight but the vast majority of people don't.

I've had insight in a number of unrelated events that were covered by journalists. Each time they get important details wrong.

There is an alternative. Don't trust the articles on these stories.

[Braxton1980]

What's the alternative that is reasonable?

Is trust binary?

I think that Republicans push mistrust of the media to eliminate any sources of information besides their own representatives

[BeetleB]

> What's the alternative that is reasonable?

Not reading news that doesn't have a significant impact on your life is entirely reasonable.

The guy who got arrested in the other state for hacking into the DOD? It's totally reasonable not to bother knowing about it.

> I think that Republicans push mistrust of the media to eliminate any sources of information besides their own representatives

Ha! I was a news junkie in the Bush/Obama era. Getting busy in life finally cured me of that scourge, but I learned a lot of lessons. Long before Trump came on the scene I was an advocate of "There's no middle ground with the news - either go all in (time consuming) or mostly all out" - and while I didn't shout "Fake news!", it was my sentiment - you really can't trust much, and learning what you can trust will take years of aggressively analyzing the news and how it works - time most people don't have.

It was disconcerting that the person who got people to distrust the news was Trump.

Anyway, in case people think I'm advocating never trusting news: It ain't so. As I think I said elsewhere - one can find quality articles and quality journalists. You just can't do it as a casual hobby.

[Braxton1980]

>Not reading news that doesn't have a significant impact on your life is entirely reasonable.

Our discussion was about trust in sources. The assumption is we need the information.

Also, this attitude allows suffering to occur as long as it doesn't affect the majority of the people.

The government can harm people that get its way and no one would care because it doesn't directly harm them

[BeetleB]

> The assumption is we need the information.

And my mission is to let people know they don't need 95% of the information they think they do.

But if they really need information about a particular topic/domain, they should put in the hours to find ways to verify what they read, and start ranking journalists by accuracy and integrity.

> Also, this attitude allows suffering to occur as long as it doesn't affect the majority of the people.

You're not wrong.

The flip side is that casual news reading allows quite a bit of suffering because people have a flawed model of the world due to their news perusals.

In fact, that's what this submission and many comments are pointing out. How much money is spent to fight terrorism (including invading countries to protect us from terrorists) vs heart disease prevention? Why do people believe the former is more worthy of spending money? If the news provided proportional coverage, we'd likely have spent a lot less money on the former.

There is no perfect middle ground.