• MudMan@fedia.io
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    2 days ago

    Well, I don’t know you personally. I’m saying anybody who has to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, and thus is an acting journalist is statistically very likely to be extremely unqualified for the job.

    Which explains a lot of how the 21st century is going, honestly.

    • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      is an acting journalist is statistically very likely to be extremely unqualified for the job

      Wait wait… are you saying I’m unqualified to be a journalist? Because yeah you are probably right.

      Also Bayes and stat pilled.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 days ago

      […] I’m saying anybody who has to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, and thus is an acting journalist is statistically very likely to be extremely unqualified for the job. […]

      What, in your opinion, would determine if someone is qualified to fact check a news article? Do you have criteria?

      • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I think you might have missed the subtle point @mudman was making about marginal probabilities. Its not about their thresholds; any reasonable threshold would exclude the vast majority of people, mostly because the vast majority of people aren’t journalists / don’t have that training.

        Do you own a dog house?

        • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 days ago

          […] any reasonable threshold would exclude the vast majority of people, mostly because the vast majority of people aren’t journalists […]

          Perhaps I should clarify that I don’t agree with @MudMan@fedia.io’s opinion, which was stated in my comment. By their use of the term “unqualified”, it made me think that they had qualifications in mind which would be required to be met, in their opinion, before someone could be a journalist — I was simply curious what those qualifications were.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        Like I said, we should get research methods taught in school from very early on. For one thing, understanding what even counts as a source is not a trivial problem, let alone an independent source, let alone a credible independent source.

        There’s the mechanics of sourcing things (from home and on a computer, I presume we don’t want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media), a basic understanding of archival and how to get access to it and either a light understanding of the subject matter or how to get access to somebody who has it.

        There’s a reason it’s supposed to be a full time job, but you can definitely teach kids enough of the basics to both assess the quality of what they come across and how to mitigate the worst of it. In all seriousness.

        • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 days ago

          […] There’s a reason it’s supposed to be a full time job […]

          For clarity, by “it” are you referring to journalism?

          • MudMan@fedia.io
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            2 days ago

            I’m assuming you’re in a microblogging flavor of federation and that’s why this is broken down into a bunch of posts?

            Yes, I’m referring to journalism.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              2 days ago

              Yes, I’m referring to journalism.

              Okay, well I don’t exactly follow the relevance of your claim that journalism can be practiced full-time. I also don’t exactly follow the usage of your language “supposed to”. Imo, one needn’t be a full-time journalist to practice journalism.

              • MudMan@fedia.io
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                1 day ago

                You can do journalism without working as a journalist, but there is a lot of work involved in doing good journalism, which I presume would be the goal.

                If you think the workload is trivial, consider the posibility you may not have a full view of everything that is involved. I’m saying everybody can and should have enough knowledge to sus out whether a piece of info they see online or in a news outlet is incorrect, misleading or opinionated, but it’s not reasonable, efficient or practical to expect everybody to access their news like a professional journalist does.

                • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  20 hours ago

                  […] everybody can and should have enough knowledge to sus out whether a piece of info they see online or in a news outlet is incorrect, misleading or opinionated […]

                  I agree.

                • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  20 hours ago

                  […] it’s not reasonable, efficient or practical to expect everybody to access their news like a professional journalist does.

                  I agree, but I don’t think that that’s a valid argument in defense of a journalist not citing their claims.

                  • MudMan@fedia.io
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                    14 hours ago

                    No, it’s an argument against some of the proposed remedies.

                    The step you’re skipping over is that citing a claim by itself doesn’t do much to guarantee its veracity if the reader of the citation isn’t willing to get in touch with the source of the citation and verify its content. Citations aren’t magical. As you’re using them in this conversation they are merely a tool for a peer review to be able to verify a bunch of precedent information without having to include it all in the same place every time.

                    The difference between journalistic information and peer review in science is that news are supposed to have gone through a journalistic verification process first, which the reader trusts based on the previous operation of the news outlet. A paper is presented to go through peer review and published after it has gone through that process.

                • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  20 hours ago

                  You can do journalism without working as a journalist […]

                  Err, could you clarify this? By definition doesn’t the action of doing journalism make one a journalist? For example, Merriam-Webster defines the noun “journalist” as “a person engaged in journalism” [1]. This would follow logically [2]: If one is engaged in journalism, then they are a journalist; one is engaged in journalism; therefore, they are a journalist.

                  References
                  1. “journalist”. Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2024-12-12T00:10Z. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/journalist.

                  2. “List of valid argument forms”. Wikipedia. Published: 2024-06-28T20:12Z. Accessed: 2024-12-12T00:11Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_valid_argument_forms#Modus_ponens.
                    • §“Valid propositional forms”. §“Modus ponens”.

                      If A, then B

                      A

                      Therefore B

                  • MudMan@fedia.io
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                    14 hours ago

                    Working as in “being paid to do the work”.

                    I’ll spare you the dictionary definition. As we’ve established, you can source that yourself.

                • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  20 hours ago

                  […] If you think the workload is trivial […]

                  I think you might be misunderstanding me — I’m not of the opinion that the workload for journalism is trivial. All I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s necessary to work full-time as a journalist (ie in a career capacity) to do the work of a journalist. I think there may be a miscommunication of definitions for things like “journalism”, “full-time”.

                  • MudMan@fedia.io
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                    14 hours ago

                    No, you can do those tasks at any point. I’m not concerned with who is doing the work, I’m concerned with the amount of work involved and how practical it is for every one of us to do it as a matter of course every time we access information online.

                    This is why this choice you made of quote-replying to individual statements is not a great way to have a conversation online, by the way. Now we’re breaking down the details behind individual words with no context on the arguments that contain them. This is all borderline illegible and quite far from the original argument, IMO.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              2 days ago

              I’m assuming you’re in a microblogging flavor of federation and that’s why this is broken down into a bunch of posts?

              No, I’m not on a microblogging platform. I personally prefer to post atomic comments. I believe that threads should be restricted in scope so that they are clearer and easier to follow. I think that it also helps prevent miscommunications.

        • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 days ago

          […] I presume we don’t want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media […]

          Can you clarify exactly what you are referring to here?

          • MudMan@fedia.io
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            2 days ago

            Well, a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.

            I’ll grant you, it very often doesn’t happen, but still.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              2 days ago

              Well, a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.

              Are you saying that journalism only deals in novel information?

                • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  2 days ago

                  Let me try to clarify my thinking:

                  You stated this:

                  […] I presume we don’t want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media […]

                  You, then, clarified that:

                  […] a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.

                  If you are referring to the original root source (assuming that it’s, for example, a conversation with someone), to me, that reads like you are saying that a journalist can’t cite the report by another journalist who first interviewed that source (ie novel information), and that each journalist needs to independently interview the source themselves in a novel way.

                  • MudMan@fedia.io
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                    1 day ago

                    No, but most original reports would be expected to in fact reach out to a primary source, and fact-checking them would often require the same thing.

                    That doesn’t need to be novel. Verifying a source or a piece of information often just requires reaching out to a primary source to have them confirm the second-hand report that is available elsewhere. Not all journalism is built by aggregating other reports, the process needs to start somewhere. And you can’t just take the fact that a source is mentioned as a guarantee of accuracy, you have to verify information.

                    This is, as I said, a full time job for a reason. Many corners are cut in the modern day of endless news cycles, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require work to do properly.

        • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          2 days ago

          […] understanding what even counts as a source is not a trivial problem, let alone an independent source, let alone a credible independent source. […]

          I agree.

    • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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      2 days ago

      Which explains a lot of how the 21st century is going, honestly.

      I agree with the conclusion, but not the premise, or at least not if used as an explicit argument — I think your premise is itself an example for your conclusion. I believe your premise is more an example of why there is, arguably, such a problem with misinformation and disinformation right now: I think it serves to increase the risk to appeals to authority; though, it’s a double edged sword as, imo, unchecked skepticism erodes one’s trust in reality.

      • MudMan@fedia.io
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        2 days ago

        I don’t think I know what you’re trying to say there. Can you rephrase that more straightforwardly for me?

        • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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          1 day ago

          I’m of the belief that anyone is capable of being a journalist regardless of their qualifications. I think that restricting that through elitism directly leads to appeals to authority (I’ve seen examples of that itt [1][2][3][4]) — appeals to authority, I think, is one of the root causes for why, anecdotally, news outlets have become so lazy in citing their sources — why cite sources if people will believe what you say regardless? Whether or not something is good journalism, by definition, imo, is self-evident — it doesn’t matter who did the work, so long as it is accurate.

          References
          1. @Hikermick@lemmy.world [To: “If I have to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, doesn’t that make me the journalist?”. Author: “Kalcifer” (@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works). “Showerthoughts” (!showerthoughts@lemmy.world). sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2024-12-10T07:34:34. https://sh.itjust.works/post/29275760.]. Published: 2024-12-11T05:03:33Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T08:01Z. https://lemmy.world/comment/13908617.

            When reading hard news from an outlet that actually hires journalists I consider that to be the source. […]

          2. @OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml. [To: “If I have to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, doesn’t that make me the journalist?”. Author: “Kalcifer” (@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works). “Showerthoughts” (!showerthoughts@lemmy.world). sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2024-12-10T07:34:34. https://sh.itjust.works/post/29275760.]. Published: 2024-12-11T08:06:53Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T08:06Z. https://lemmy.ml/comment/15451608.

            News outlets are generally graded by their historical reputabilitiy. If you find yourself continuously fact checking it, maybe consider following a better news outlet […]

          3. @JubilantJaguar@lemmy.world [To: “If I have to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, doesn’t that make me the journalist?”. Author: “Kalcifer” (@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works). “Showerthoughts” (!showerthoughts@lemmy.world). sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2024-12-10T07:34:34. https://sh.itjust.works/post/29275760.]. Published: 2024-12-10T14:54:41Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T08:11Z. https://lemmy.world/comment/13896551.

            […] Professional journalists are like doctors in that they’ve committed themselves to a code of ethics. As citizens we are called on to trust them to not make sh*t up. […]

          4. @jeffw@lemmy.world [To: “If I have to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, doesn’t that make me the journalist?”. Author: “Kalcifer” (@Kalcifer@sh.itjust.works). “Showerthoughts” (!showerthoughts@lemmy.world). sh.itjust.works. Lemmy. Published: 2024-12-10T07:34:34. https://sh.itjust.works/post/29275760.]. Published: 2024-12-10T08:37:58Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T08:16Z. https://lemmy.world/comment/13892346.

            Legitimate news outlets do pretty thorough fact-checking, if only to avoid litigation

          • MudMan@fedia.io
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            1 day ago

            Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.

            Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.

            Which is to say, no, good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.

            Confirmation bias is universal, however, so it takes a lot of work to learn to bypass it.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              13 hours ago

              […] good journalism isn’t self-evident. If it was, we wouldn’t need to have this conversation because the free market would lift up good journalism, presumably.

              Hm, perhaps my usage of “self-evident” isn’t super accurate here — I agree that one needs to be taught/be in possession of the knowledge for how to determine if a sample of journalism is “good”. What I mean to say is that I think articles contain within themselves all that is required to determine if they are examples of good or bad journalism ­— all that’s required is for someone to know what to look for in the article to determine that for themself.

              • MudMan@fedia.io
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                14 hours ago

                That depends on what you mean, I suppose. If what you’re saying is a savvy reader can fact-check an article if they know how… probably yes, in most cases. There are also probably warning flags and markers in most pieces to tell a savvy reader whether they should be following up in the first place.

                If you’re saying that a savvy reader should be able to spot the quality of the information on the spot based entirely on the information within the article, then obviously not. That would mean the reader already has all the information in the piece and then some. The process of determining that is going to take some additional work to seek additional information, which is why it’s so hard to rely on crowdsourced fact-checking. Not everybody is going to have the time or availability to do that every time.

                I assume you mean the first option, though.

                • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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                  13 hours ago

                  […] If what you’re saying is a savvy reader can fact-check an article if they know how… probably yes, in most cases. There are also probably warning flags and markers in most pieces to tell a savvy reader whether they should be following up in the first place. […]

                  An example that I would add would be the mere presence, or lack thereof, of citations. If nothing is cited, then, imo, it’s not great journalism.

                  • MudMan@fedia.io
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                    12 hours ago

                    If you understand citations as you’ve been using them here (i.e. links to other media formatted as academic citations), we don’t agree.

                    Naming sources yes, sometimes, but many journalistic reports are based on personal interviews where citation is trivial, official sources (police reports, press statements from organizations), direct observation by the journalist or anonymous sourcing (government sources say…), so it’s not much of a marker of anything in many cases.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              21 hours ago

              Everybody is capable of being a journalist, but not everybody knows how. Qualifications are just some confirmation that someone has gone through some training. The training is to get the required skills. Capacity to get there doesn’t mean everybody is born with the right skillset or this would not be an issue in the first place.

              Hence the education angle. You train kids earlier while the subjects they study are universal and prevent a scenario where a lot of people can’t fact check their own information or aren’t aware of their own biases.

              I agree.

            • Kalcifer@sh.itjust.worksOP
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              21 hours ago

              […] We have specialized professions for a reason.

              What exactly are you inferring with this? Do you mean that journalists should be licensed?