[HN Gopher] "News is what somebody does not want you to print - ...
___________________________________________________________________
"News is what somebody does not want you to print - all the rest is
advertising"
Author : guerrilla
Score : 285 points
Date : 2022-12-24 16:21 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (quoteinvestigator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (quoteinvestigator.com)
| bjoli wrote:
| News is anything I might want to know. Sorted by someone trusted.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I'm reminded of the hypothetical conversation about what is news?
|
| Complainer: These editors can't judge the relative important of a
| bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization!
|
| Editor: Not true. We know exactly which one is the better story.
| cactus2093 wrote:
| Is the joke that the news would rather report on the bicycle
| accident in this case and not the collapse of civilization?
|
| I can barely tell what you're going for here, I feel like you
| couldn't have picked two worse examples. Road deaths are an
| everyday occurrence that we've all just accepted as normal so
| those barely make the news, and bicycles get even less
| attention than cars. And the "collapse of civilization" is the
| kind of thing people are shouting about literally every day and
| it's always an exaggeration and pure opinion.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| When you have to explain a joke, it's not funny anymore.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| You only have to explain it if it wasn't funny to begin
| with
| AlbertCory wrote:
| OK, why don't you and cactus2093 tell us a joke YOU think
| is funny?
| AlbertCory wrote:
| Or if the listener just didn't get it.
| [deleted]
| lubujackson wrote:
| ...leaving out the vast swath of information that is neither
| promotion nor expose, in other words, the original definition of
| "reporting".
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| Advertising has its place. I assert:
|
| "In a democracy, news is the information that people need to
| participate meaningfully in the growth and success of their
| democracy. Everything else is pandering and propaganda."
|
| At its best, advertising does not undermine democracy.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| Didn't know earthquakes don't want news printed... Had to type it
| because it sounded funny in my head.
|
| About news, we just lost that, there is a reason most of human
| history is full of dictatorships where the peasants/plebs/... get
| the fantasy version of what's happening, X declared himself king
| through violence and treachery? Well god put him there of course.
| etc.
|
| Some can say we had a nice period where newspapers cared about
| their reputation and you could just pay 50 cents to buy today's
| paper and know what was happening that day, is this true?
| probably not, why not? well this assumes everyone working in the
| press is some sort of angel devoid of greed, fear, etc. which is
| not the case, people are people: personaly if I had a news paper
| agency, and saw that some news could be dangerous, I don't think
| I'll stop it from being printed, but again I think tomorrow I'll
| wake up early and workout, and I think that I'll continue
| learning and working hard to build something, will I do it? well
| I think so, statistically will I do it? No, I'm human, we are
| failible, etc.
|
| Today on the other hand it's a total shitshow, the news today is
| just comedy to anyone who's not totally gullible, why? the
| internet happened, natural selection killed those who stuck to
| the truth and promoted those who went with clickbait, natural
| selection also killed those who ran out of money and promoted
| those who accepted investments from X and Y... For example, did
| you know the Gates foundation (not a tinfoil hat conspiracy
| theorist by the way you can verify this yourself) basically owns
| Kurzgesagt? Most research papers Kurzgesagt uses are published by
| subsidiaries of the Gates foundation and they donated to them
| many times so they basically own them, what if I was Kurzgesagt
| and I was married and had kids and I had a choice between
| accepting free money from a well respected foundation who does
| good research as far as I know, and my channel failing and my
| wife and kids suffering the consequences, would I refuse the
| money? of course not do you think I'm stupid?
|
| Whose fault is that? well it's the system's fault, the internet
| is just more stimulating, and as humans, we don't give a shit
| about the news, we used to watch it to feel empathy, sadness,
| happiness, etc. now you can feel a diluted version of most
| feelings by visiting a porn website, a gore website, a social
| media website, etc. We didn't care about the Israel - Palestine
| conflict, which is basically an Apartheid, and we didn't care
| about bombing a country for oil and killing a million people, why
| would we start caring now about the elections, politicians being
| corrupt, etc... ?
|
| If we can improve the system, aka build a protocol for the news,
| we can have something better, but how do you build a protocol for
| the news, Bitcoin was a protocol for cryptocurrencies, it needed
| people to spend computing power to get coins, how will a news
| protocol work? something that can't be controlled by X or Y,
| can't be faked, closest stories to reality get the most
| attention, etc.. is something like this even possible? who
| knows...
| AdamH12113 wrote:
| It's interesting that older variants of the quotation sound less
| like platitudes.
|
| "Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising;
| whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." -1918
|
| "There are but two classes of people in the world--those who have
| done something and want their names kept out of the paper, and
| those who haven't done anything worth printing and want their
| names put in." -1894
| gpm wrote:
| > "Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising;
| whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." -1918
|
| I like this version, it's not so much a definition of news as
| (arguably slightly immoral, arguably not) business advice. If
| someone wants something published, get them to pay you to
| publish it, even if you would prefer to publish it for free
| over it going unpublished.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Similar sentiments, from the 1880s:
|
| "There is no such thing in America as an independent press. I am
| paid for keeping honest opinions out of the paper I am connected
| with. If I should allow honest opinions to be printed in one
| issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation, like
| Othello's, would be gone. The business of a New York journalist
| is to distort the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify,
| to fawn at the foot of Mammon, and to sell his country and his
| race for his daily bread. We are the tools or vassals of the rich
| men behind the scenes. Our time, our talents, our lives, our
| possibilities, are all the property of other men. We are
| intellectual prostitutes."
|
| -- John Swinton, ~1880
|
| Cited (anonymously) in Hamilton Holt's _Commercialism and
| Journalism_ , 1909
|
| <https://archive.org/details/commercialismjou00holtuoft/page/...>
|
| Befitting a QI discussion, the original form may have been
| different:
|
| <https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/LIE/lie.html>
| [deleted]
| pixel_tracing wrote:
| * Successful launch of a shuttle * Breakthrough in physics *
| Discovery of a unique occurrence of artifact in history *
| Election results?
|
| I mean title is fairly click-baity
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| Science journalism is where this quote is most important for
| practitioners to internalize.
|
| > Successful launch of a shuttle
|
| Investigative journalism on NASA ignoring problems prior to the
| Challenger and Columbia disasters could have prevented both
| disasters.
|
| > Breakthrough in physics
|
| Investigative reporting around, for example, BICEP2 instead of
| just spell checking the press releases would have easily
| exposed the fiasco.
|
| > Discovery of a unique occurrence of artifact in history
|
| So many artifacts were later turned out to be frauds, and even
| the ones that aren't outright fraud are often way over-
| interpreted.
| bumby wrote:
| > _Investigative journalism on NASA ignoring problems prior
| to the Challenger and Columbia disasters could have prevented
| both disasters._
|
| I think this suffers from hindsight bias. For every
| catastrophic o-ring or foam shedding there are hundreds or
| thousands of other low-probability events that people were
| "sure" would cause problems but never did.
|
| The difficulty isn't in identifying possible issues as much
| as assigning each a credible risk.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Oh, the irresponsibility of journalists with respect to the
| Shuttle runs far deeper than that. They largely acted as
| cheerleaders for a program that made very little sense. They
| largely didn't ask the hard questions about whether the
| Shuttle was worth doing at all (spoiler: it wasn't.)
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| > spoiler: it wasn't.
|
| Question is, could it reasonably have been guessed at the
| early stages that it wasn't. Decades of hindsight gives
| you, pfdietz, a very privileged position.
| oldgradstudent wrote:
| > Question is, could it reasonably have been guessed at
| the early stages that it wasn't. Decades of hindsight
| gives you, pfdietz, a very privileged position.
|
| It could, and it was.
|
| http://www.iasa-
| intl.com/folders/shuttle/GoodbyeColumbia.htm...
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Huh. Touche.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The question was being asked early. It came into public
| focus even before the Challenger loss, as the shuttle
| program struggled to come remotely close to promised
| flight rates (which of course it never did). The cover
| story of the November 1985 issue of Discover magazine had
| this cover blurb:
|
| "The shuttle is a superb technological achievement, and
| it's flown by brave, immensely competent men and women...
|
| But what's it good for?"
|
| https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/oFwAAOSwgDZjI0Av/s-l500.jp
| g
|
| The article was pointing out that going with cheaper
| expendable launchers would have been a much, MUCH better
| idea. And so it proved.
|
| (This article is one of the reasons I wrote "largely" in
| the comment above.)
|
| At any point after this article came out, cheerleading
| was irresponsible.
|
| Journalists might be forgiven for not predicting how
| uneconomic the Shuttle would be to operate, at least
| before this became painfully obvious a few years in. Even
| the critics on Capitol Hill like Mondale and Proxmire
| missed that; they focused more on development cost. But
| the Shuttle would have been a failure even if the
| development cost was zero.
| jagger27 wrote:
| The entire Shuttle program was worth it just for Hubble, in
| my opinion. It's hard to understate the effects on
| cosmology that piece of kit has had. Truly a Plato's Cave
| moment.
|
| If it were up to me, I'd launch seven Hubble replacements
| named after each of the astronauts lost in Columbia.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Hubble could have been done without the Shuttle, and for
| a small fraction of the > $200B cost of the entire
| Shuttle program. This is true even if multiple Hubbles
| would have had to have been launched in lieu of repair
| missions (and making a series of them would have accrued
| considerable economic benefit from economies of scale and
| experience.)
| corndoge wrote:
| You should read the article, it's pretty interesting!
| duxup wrote:
| Pretty much any local news.
|
| Construction proposed.
|
| Local events ongoing/ upcoming...
| notatoad wrote:
| i first heard this as "journalism is what somebody doesn't want
| you to print, the rest is PR" which rings a bit truer.
|
| somebody's success that they desperately want you to report on
| (like a shuttle launch or election win) can be news, but it's
| not actually journalism until you start reading beyond the
| press release and finding additional context.
| jfengel wrote:
| It's truer because it's tautological. Either somebody wants
| you to print it or someone does not.
|
| I suppose the middle case is "nobody cares one way or the
| other", and it's true that if nobody cares then it's not
| news. That is at least a definition rather than a tautology.
| pjkundert wrote:
| - why a successful shuttle launch doesn't mean it is a
| worthwhile expenditure
|
| - reasons why breakthroughs have become so rare vs. recent
| history
|
| - how discoveries invalidate accepted dogma written by victors
|
| - election results not matching validators/checks harvested
| from non-regime-controlled sources
|
| These are news. Reporting the obvious in a way agreeable to the
| regime isn't.
| mrkstu wrote:
| No, that is analysis and commentary of the news.
| pjkundert wrote:
| Providing evidence counter to the evidence presented by the
| regime isn't commentary - it is the necessary foundation to
| empower citizens to form opinions based on understanding
| more than the accepted dogma.
|
| Allowing one's audience to stew in a one-sided, vacuous
| environment devoid of the tools of analysis is the goal of
| regime-controlled media everywhere.
| danShumway wrote:
| I feel like on some level this is a more round-about way
| of saying, "real news is politically _useful_. " To me
| that seems like a fairly obvious reduction of the scope
| of news into a pure propaganda tool. It is true that a
| lot of even objective news is inherently political and
| has political implications, and it is true that which
| facts reporters choose to print and what context they
| choose to supply around those facts carries an editorial
| message regardless of whether the facts are true. What
| stories a reporter chooses to focus on is itself an
| editorial decision.
|
| But the quote itself is an oversimplification of that
| more nuanced truth.
|
| Some more specific objections:
|
| ---
|
| > Providing evidence counter to the evidence presently
| the regime isn't commentary - it is the necessary
| foundation to empower citizens to form opinions based on
| understanding more than the accepted dogma.
|
| _Commentary_ is a necessary foundation to empower
| citizens to form educated opinions and to combat dominant
| narratives. "Commentary" is not a dirty word, it is a
| legitimate thing that gets built on top of news reporting
| and on top of neutrally presented factual information.
|
| Separating reporting from commentary does not
| delegitimize commentary and it shouldn't be treated as an
| attempt to delegitimize commentary. Commentary is
| important, and forcing it to masquerade as news reduces
| the scope of how we can use it.
|
| And of course there isn't a binary distinction between
| commentary and reporting (see my first paragraph), but
| that doesn't mean there's no distinction at all or that
| different pieces don't stray more towards commentary than
| others.
|
| ---
|
| > Allowing one's audience to stew in a one-sided, vacuous
| environment devoid of the tools of analysis is the goal
| of regime-controlled media everywhere.
|
| The US is a country that is fairly evenly divided between
| (at least) two very different viewpoints about how the
| world works, and each side is convinced that the other is
| stewing in "a one-sided, vacuous environment." I find
| this argument pretty unconvincing because it's difficult
| for me to think of many news stories nowadays that don't
| fit into this category. It doesn't really eliminate much;
| pretty much all reporting is something that somebody
| doesn't want printed, and most reporting can be
| characterized as "establishment propaganda" from people
| who want to dismiss it.
|
| The hard part of reporting nowadays isn't writing
| headlines that will make people angry, it's writing
| headlines that won't be immediately interpreted as a
| direct political attack. And in pretty much all of those
| cases, you'll be able to find somebody that doesn't want
| that headline printed.
|
| And as a quality metric in general, it doesn't seem very
| useful or strongly correlated with quality. I can print
| some pretty nonsense, one-sided unfactual reporting that
| I promise will make Conservative establishments angry
| that it was published. I can also print some pretty
| nonsensical, one-sided unfactual reporting that I promise
| will make Liberals angry. That's trivial to do, on both
| sides of the isle. It's trivial to do outside of politics
| as well --- heck, I can come up with headlines that will
| make native developers and web developers respectively
| angry. But doing that doesn't mean that what I'm printing
| is more likely to be legitimate or newsworthy.
|
| What's worse is that the reduction of "news" to be things
| that make my out-group angry encourages me to lean into
| that kind of editorializing; and it encourages me to
| phrase pretty straightforward
| announcements/discoveries/research-projects as if they
| are combative towards my out-groups, even it I have to do
| worse reporting to make that happen. I would argue that
| "news has to make people angry" is a big part of how we
| get incredibly angry, polarized societies in the first
| place.
| pjkundert wrote:
| Perhaps my expectations are too high; but when I read any
| significant news article, it is extremely tiring --
| because my work is just beginning.
|
| My default belief is: "it doesn't appear they they are
| not telling the truth". And my next task is "now, what
| significant counterpoints are they avoiding exposing?"
|
| It is exceedingly rare that I (eventually) say: "wow; I
| couldn't find any evidence of high-probability events
| that significantly alter the probability of their stated
| facts".
|
| Usually, after a few hours of digging around the seedy
| edges of ... whatever they're claiming to be describing
| -- I find that, indeed, most of what they're writing is
| either BS, or much more tenuously supported than they
| imply.
|
| After a few rounds of this, any trust in the veracity of
| the media organ evaporates.
|
| This shouldn't be _my_ job. Didn't "journalism" used to
| include this heavy lifting?
| FatActor wrote:
| Granted this isn't even a well-thought-out essay, it is someone
| trying to research a quote. I don't see that as click-bait.
|
| To counter your point: do you refer to "Popular Science" as
| news? or "Scientific American"? Scientific reporting isn't
| "news" in the context of the OPs query. The implications or
| context would be though (like how much it cost from a budget
| and if it was worth it).
|
| I'm sure you understand the point of the article because being
| on HN you are smarter than the average person, or are you
| mayyyybeee just trying to be click-baity yourself?
| version_five wrote:
| I'd argue all those (except elections) are at least potentially
| advertising. It's not just from public interest that these
| things would get promoted. A space launch is a great example,
| look at the history of the space program, it's largely an
| advertising campaign.
|
| Re elections, the real results are something that in many
| places lots of people will not want shared, and this is an
| important function of the press.
|
| Yes, news publications have lots of facts like your examples
| they think people will want to read, but the core of news (as
| opposed to books or magazines) and the idea that the press gets
| a special place on society is definitely aligned with the quote
|
| I'd actually further suspect that the quote rubs many people
| the wrong way now because of the whole "misinformation" thing
| where they actually want their "news" source to be a propaganda
| organ of their political alignment, rather than an actual
| unbiased reporter of facts
| danShumway wrote:
| > I'd actually further suspect that the quote rubs many
| people the wrong way now because of the whole
| "misinformation" thing where they actually want their "news"
| source to be a propaganda organ of their political alignment,
| rather than an actual unbiased reporter of facts
|
| I don't think I agree. In a divided society, it is very easy
| to find establishment players who will object to a propaganda
| headline being printed. News framed to suite either a
| Conservative or Liberal perspective will make the other side
| angry, regardless of its truth value.
|
| "I made someone angry that I printed this" doesn't really
| imply, "it's good that I printed it." Making people angry is
| incredibly easy to do, especially in a polarized society, and
| optimizing for outrage and the thinking that outrage makes
| news more "legitimate" is arguably one of the reasons we're
| in a polarized society.
|
| ----
|
| Aside: other commenters have already mentioned, but just
| quick reminder again that this article is not about whether
| the quote is true, it's trying to investigate its origins.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The article is investigating the history of the quote,
| something that is clear both while visiting their website or by
| looking at the source URL. All their articles are titled with
| the quote they are investigating.
| derefr wrote:
| Proper editorial technique would be to put the headline
| itself in quotation marks, then.
| tomrod wrote:
| In this instance, we can replace "Proper" with "My
| preferred" and as a result have improved fidelity as there
| is sufficient information in the article and the URL to
| adjudicate.
| derefr wrote:
| I'm not speaking of preferences, but of what you're
| taught to do in professsional journalism/editing
| programs.
|
| Headlines are read before article bodies / before other
| meta-information like URLs. Often -- especially when a
| headline is a link embedded elsewhere, but also when a
| headline is one among many on a multi-article layout --
| _only_ the headline is read (because the reader decides
| they're not interested and moves on.)
|
| In the inverted-pyramid style of news-article structure
| -- which is so commonplace that people intuitionally
| expect even non-news writing to also conform to it -- a
| reader is supposed to be able to stop at any point in
| reading and have received all the important info; and an
| editor is supposed to be able to cut any article from the
| bottom up for space reasons without damaging the
| article's meaning.
|
| Thus, readers expect a headline to be a most-condensed
| summary for an article; something they _can_ read without
| reading anything else, and still come away informed.
|
| This leads to guidance for writers of headlines, even in
| non-news traditions: write the headline such that a
| reader can read a headline, decide they now know enough,
| and stop reading/move onto something else, _without doing
| so having resulted in the reader being misled_.
|
| An article whose headline is a quotation, but which does
| not quote the quotation, is misleading to those readers
| who read nothing else. This is, from the headline-
| writer's perspective, bad praxis.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| While you can argue the person who posted it here should
| have included quotes, the author posted it on their site
| where anyone visiting would not find it misleading.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although magazine and newspaper feature writing is not
| necessarily inverted pyramid.
|
| Something resembling inverted pyramid is often a good
| style for news because a reader can stop at any point.
| But historically it was at least as much for editors as
| readers because it meant that in layout the could cut an
| article--especially wire service copy--at pretty much any
| arbitrary point.
|
| And as for headlines it varies. A magazine like The
| Economist for example, in their print edition, often goes
| for cleverness in headlines (although they also have a
| dek that summarizes the article in a more straightforward
| way).
| msrenee wrote:
| That might be a good argument if this was a news website.
| It's not a news site though, it's a website that
| investigates sayings. The saying is the title of the
| essay. You can feel however you want about quotations in
| the headlines of news articles, but it's irrelevant here.
| javajosh wrote:
| All of your examples are news by the quotes definition. Plenty
| of people don't want any of that printed. Much of it comes down
| to fights over zero-sum pies.
|
| Successful launch of a shuttle? We're wasting money on space
| and the media is shilling for the industrial/military complex,
| as usual.
|
| Breakthrough in physics? That discovery is just careerist
| researchers making shit up to get more grants.
|
| Election results? The result is a complete fraud that steals my
| victory away from me and printing this only proves media's bias
| in favor of my opponent.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| In that case, can you give a single example of something you
| can publish that would upset no one?
| II2II wrote:
| I had a different reading of those examples. Most of the
| headlines sound like press releases, the sort of thing people
| want to see published and can be regarded as a form of
| advertising for the research groups or organizations
| involved.
| psychphysic wrote:
| To be fair most of that stuff is propaganda gold.
|
| Why state media loves tech it's advertising for government.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| I think we've reduced the headline to something that is not
| useful. For instance, I don't want advertising to be printed.
| So, I guess advertising is news?
| javajosh wrote:
| First, I just discovered Androids keyboards weird symbols
| mode. Y=degC/{x`/|p|[?][?]}PS][(tm)(r). Nice.
|
| Second, I feel like you're making the mistake of saying if
| you object to anything then the thing you object to is
| news. The original statement is pretty short, but I take it
| to mean that you object to the content of the item and not
| the genesis of the item or the motive of the author itself.
| Of course, this distinction leads to all kinds of
| uncomfortable situations. For example, you might be against
| propaganda itself, but you might be very much for the
| position espoused by certain propaganda. I think the
| narrower content oriented aspect of being against something
| is what we're talking about. Because otherwise it gets a
| bit silly. You could argue that the westboro Church thinks
| that gay people are news, for example.
| actionablefiber wrote:
| The point of my comment is to object to your
| characterization of things like a breakthrough in physics
| as "news" because there are people somewhere who find it
| objectionable for some reason. It is a semantically valid
| interpretation of the post title but incongruent with its
| spirit.
| habibur wrote:
| Some of the originals used the word "journalism".
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Successful launch of a shuttle
|
| the country launching it is advertising their result, their
| adversaries definitely would like to cancel it, making it
| newsworthy.
|
| example: Russian propaganda around Sputnik, seen from the US
| side.
|
| > Breakthrough in physics
|
| > Discovery of a unique occurrence of artifact in history
|
| the way the media treats these arguments resemble much more
| clickbait than news. see: nuclear fusion or the coverage on
| Musk's bs about anything remotely science related, but there
| are times when this can actually be news, even though it can be
| more often closely affiliated to advertising to attract
| tourists.
|
| For example the real archeological breakthrough discovery
| presented in _" The Dawn of Everything: A New History of
| Humanity"_ barely made the news. In this particular case, many
| archeologists would prefer it never happened.
|
| But mostly is reporting the progress of something that's been
| slowly going on for decades.
|
| > Election results
|
| there are definitely many people who would like to not see them
| published, every time an election is held.
|
| edit: anyway, that's not what the linked article is about, the
| poster simply tried to track the origin of the quote.
| srj wrote:
| While I admire the journalistic pieces that display integrity I
| think those are far too often the exception. Instead news media
| like all media is just after attention, and that doesn't so
| neatly align with this quote. The New York Times, the pinnacle of
| American newsrooms, is ultimately just competing with Netflix as
| an entertainment platform.
| eevilspock wrote:
| Theres also writing what its target audience wants to hear,
| much like how political parties work. Principle always loses
| when money and power are involved.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Be tech website. Do investigation on Musk. Tech bros get mad.
| Less eyeballs means less money from advertisers.
|
| Good journalism doesn't always pay the bills.
| 40amxn40 wrote:
| In what world are you living dude? There are hundreds of
| articles critizing Elon Musk every fucking week. Same as there
| are hundreds of articles criticising crypto every week. There
| are hundreds of articles about "online extremism" every week.
| In the NYT, The Atlantic, WaPo, etc. They are all cheered on
| here, in Twitter, etc. If anything, anthing "pro-Musk" is the
| minority today.
|
| But that doesn't even matter, because the REAL, the IMPORTANT
| stuff is not commented on. Such as the authoritarian creep in
| the West, the progression to cashless society and 24/7
| surveillance. I'm not going to list every point all but you get
| the idea.
|
| Deeply rethink things, and check if you can find the blind
| spots.
| CommieBobDole wrote:
| The enduring popularity of adblock apparently means ads are news
| too now.
| danShumway wrote:
| Might be helpful to change the title here to reflect that this is
| an article about the _origins_ of this quote, not about whether
| the quote is true. I think a lot of people are entering the
| comments thinking this is a debate about the quote itself.
| version_five wrote:
| I'd guess that every reader knows that. Unsurprisingly, there
| is a much more lively debate that laypeople can weigh in on re
| the validity of the quote, as opposed to discussing the origin,
| so that's what gets more comments
| dredmorbius wrote:
| The domain in this case provides that context.
| blowski wrote:
| If the article and discussion here show anything, it's that it's
| impossible to come up with a universally accepted definition of
| news.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Imagine trying to properly attribute that quote around 1925. You
| remember you heard it or read it somewhere, but you're not
| entirely sure where you heard it and the only option is to dig
| through years of multiple papers hoping to find the right one.
|
| And even if you pulled off that headache inducing task, you have
| no real way of knowing if the source you found did the same work
| to properly attribute the quote. It's really easy to see how it'd
| be misattributed/altered over time, and reminds me how great grep
| truly is.
| uvesten wrote:
| Didn't see that plot twist coming!
| version_five wrote:
| Personally I'd like to see more parables that end with a
| lesson (however tenuously connected) about the value of a
| particular gnu/linux tool and that's how I
| came to truly appreciate nl
| dotancohen wrote:
| Thank you, I've been piping to cat -n for line numbering.
| This is really flexible!
|
| ... and that is how I came to appreciate curl.
| braingenious wrote:
| Imagine trying to properly attribute that quote in 1000 BC.
| English hasn't yet been invented. You're stranded; a time
| traveler with one pointless mandate from an internet poster's
| imagination. How do you subsist?
| ghaff wrote:
| William Safire had a column "On Language" in The New York Times
| for many years which, as I recall, would sometimes get into the
| etymology of words (which dictionaries like the OED often
| document to some degree) and phrases--and maybe quotations. I
| think some of the research was what we would now call
| crowdsourcing.
|
| Of course, the flip side of this for many people is that if
| something isn't on the Web it doesn't really exist.
| redtexture wrote:
| Lexicographic Irregulars was his name for the crowd.
|
| https://www.visualthesaurus.com/cm/wordroutes/remembering-
| th...
| ghaff wrote:
| I also love the reference to "word nerd" in that piece.
| (It's what we call the internal style guide group that I'm
| in at my company.)
| neilv wrote:
| > _if something isn 't on the Web it doesn't really exist._
|
| Speaking of etymologies, while I'd guess that phrase itself
| has been reinvented many times, I think the first time I
| heard it was in 2000, from Tim Berners-Lee.
|
| It was the one time I was meeting with him, and he'd just
| pulled a third person into the meeting, and I'd probably just
| mentioned to them that a document was under patent embargo.
|
| TBL laughingly asked the other, something like, "What's that,
| [someone?] just said, 'If it's not on the Web, it doesn't
| exist.'?"
| fullshark wrote:
| Seems likely a saying that was uttered in many newsrooms and
| misattributed multiple times as it spread for years.
| jawns wrote:
| The sentiment expressed by this quote is why First Amendment
| auditors do such a valuable public service.
|
| There would be no need for the First Amendment's protection of
| speech if the things that we said never offended anyone, never
| made anyone uncomfortable, never was targeted for suppression.
| There would be no need for its protection of the press if the
| press were always welcome to report on matters of public
| interest. There would be no need for its protection of religion
| if no one ever experienced interference with their religious
| beliefs or practices. There would be no need for its protection
| of the right of assembly if protestors never experienced attempts
| to quash their activities.
|
| The First Amendment exists precisely because there is speech that
| others would prefer we not say, there are religious activities
| that others would prefer we not practice, and there are matters
| of public interest that others would prefer journalists not
| report on.
| password1 wrote:
| Very very very shallow statement in the title. Doesn't make me
| really want to click and read the article.
| raymondh wrote:
| The title is THE most accurate summary of the content.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Too many google ads and bad navigation. I tried to read it but
| gave up. So ironic that it is guilty of the very thing it accuses
| the media of.
| [deleted]
| ralmidani wrote:
| I saw zero ads on iOS Firefox. Weird.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Doesn't that also cover propaganda?
| [deleted]
| tomalaci wrote:
| News as a term is rather abstract and can be interpreted in
| infinite ways. I mean, if you want literal translation you can
| easily find it in dictionaries. If anything, I feel like post is
| quite sensationalist.
|
| From my personal experience, I don't find general news helpful at
| all (doom and gloom happening on other side of the world most of
| the time), you usually want to find various specialized news
| sites that focus on specific areas.
|
| Also, one thing I noticed quite often is that you rarely get to
| comment or see other people's comments on many news sites. I am
| quite thankful sites like Ars Technica and HN exist because you
| can usually find some extra info related to the original article
| from those comments.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| > From my personal experience, I don't find general news
| helpful at all
|
| The issue here is that's not actually news. Something happening
| - because LOTS of things happen - is not news. Content focused
| on "increasing engagement" (to increase ad views) is not news.
|
| News has relevance. News has importance. News' priority is to
| inform and clarify.
|
| All too often, most news is not news (at best it's current
| events). It doesn't help that parroting press releases and
| narratives that force feed "conventional wisdom" is passed off
| as journalism.
|
| Collectively, we need to stop giving credit where credit is not
| due. A barking pet is not a cat.
|
| Sure, the abnormal has been normalized. But that doesn't make
| it right.
| ghaff wrote:
| What's relevant and important?
|
| If the political situation in, say, Nepal is reported on in
| The Economist that's certainly relevant and important to--not
| only the residents of Nepal and perhaps nearby countries--but
| those who do business with or travel to the country. However,
| many people in the West and elsewhere would perhaps be
| forgiven for giving the article a cursory skim or skipping it
| entirely because it's not relevant or important to them.
| ArjenM wrote:
| >you can usually find some extra info related to the original
| article from those comments
|
| The real values of being lazy to a fault, reading the comments
| that come floating above with an experience.
|
| These relatively small and fractured communities are what
| contains most of the uncluttered sources of outside
| information, organically getting reprinted for judgement by
| it's observers once more.
|
| "News" sites are once more the old 1999 closed boxes asking for
| coin to enter.
| gretch wrote:
| Okay I know the article is about the origin, not the accuracy.
| But I just can't help pointing out all the hilarious holes in it.
|
| "But the new Ford 150 today!" -> Chevy truck team: "curse those
| foul journalists!"
|
| The criteria that you just need someone to not want you to print
| it is an amazingly low bar
| beambot wrote:
| I don't want them to print the advertising, so I guess that makes
| all of it news?
| shyn3 wrote:
| The story is the advertisement.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| Unlike most quotes, I think the antecedents are better!
| dredmorbius wrote:
| I'd argue that's often the case.
|
| First expressions tend to be less clear, concise, or pointed.
| Polishing frequently improves.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The third case is the weather report, let's not forget that.
| kmoser wrote:
| Even printing the weather is subject to opinion. Good weather?
| You're promoting the fallacy that things are good. Bad weather?
| You're promoting the fallacy that things are bad. Neutral?
| You're wasting precious space for something as useless as news.
| [deleted]
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't think that changes anything. The important thing is
| it's not _advertising_ for anything.
| shapefrog wrote:
| "The News" is what somebody wants you to print - all the rest is
| advertising
| pnf wrote:
| This is largely correct. All major news outlets are information
| distribution platforms to reach particular demographic segments.
| The principal customer is not the reader but the advertiser or
| interest that controls the publication. It isn't necessary to be
| an advertiser in the traditional sense to control the news.
| Mostly, control is exercised by hiring the right people who are
| ideologically aligned with the target readership. Only management
| needs to receive marching orders and truly understand who they
| really work for. It's more accurate to think of newspapers as
| political party organs. This is their original function and
| remains so. They signal to their readership the acceptable bounds
| of opinion, beliefs, and facts. Even publishing the results of an
| election is an attempt to control discourse and to dominate the
| minds of the population. Gumshoe investigators aside, corporate
| journalists are mostly discourse police and propagandists. They
| are some of the lowest forms of human life. If you know one, the
| only reasonable feelings are contempt and pity, never admiration.
| Science journals are completely co-opted by interest groups and
| cannot be taken at face value. The only true news is sports
| scores.
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Even publishing the results of an election is an attempt to
| control discourse and to dominate the minds of the population
|
| and
|
| > The only true news is sports scores.
|
| I fail to see the difference between these two examples. Both
| report on an actual outcome. Same with things like stock price
| movement, etc. If your point is that choosing _what_ to report
| on is a means to control discourse, then I would assert that
| even reporting on sports scores falls in that category.
| 93po wrote:
| The difference is that election coverage includes tons of
| bias, including "calling" it for regions or states before
| final results are in, sometimes incorrectly, and with bias
| towards the preferences of whoever owns the
| channel/publication. This style of coverage is full of
| conversation and discourse and all it takes it recalling the
| night Trump won in 2015 where every single news channel
| except Fox was expressing disappointment and shock and
| surprise.
| wanderingstan wrote:
| The above poster was making a different and stronger claim:
| that publishing even the _results_ of an election is a form
| of control and not truly "News."
|
| As others have pointed out, this doesn't hold water.
| Publishing the result of some fact that people care to know
| about is arguably even the purest form of "news": election
| results, sports scores, stock prices, etc
| pnf wrote:
| There are simple facts like sports scores, and complex,
| ambiguous, controversial, contentious facts, like
| election results.
| privong wrote:
| > recalling the night Trump won in 2015
|
| This doesn't really impact the point you're trying to make,
| but the election was in 2016, not 2015.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidenti
| a...
| pnf wrote:
| You'd have to be pretty simple to think that election results
| report on accurate outcomes. Most people in the world don't
| believe that at all. Taking the past two US presidential
| elections, most people thought either 2016 or 2020 was
| fraudulent. Election results are information wars like
| campaigns. The fight is over control of the narrative and the
| power legitimated by the accepted narrative. Hence the
| exceptional brouhaha over questioning the legitimacy of
| elections. Such talk must be brutally suppressed by the
| victor, if able. If the winner is not able to suppress
| challenges to its legitimacy then you have a real problem of
| how to justify your authority. Even explicit autocracies hold
| elections for this purpose.
| [deleted]
| plusminusplus wrote:
| "fake news!" is the same cliched take but much more concise
| guerrilla wrote:
| > The only true news is sports scores.
|
| Nice twist :) but I have to add that the weather section can be
| quite useful too.
| taormina wrote:
| I mean, the NFL & co wants you checking on those sport
| scores. The weather is actual news.
| pnf wrote:
| Weather is hardly accurate news anymore. Witness the
| current cold snap in the US and the political hay made from
| it, not to mention the inaccurate "facts" and alarm used to
| frighten people and push them to support unrelated
| political projects. Hurricane coverage is another example.
| Hot and cold weather, etc...
|
| Sports is hardly non-political if you wanna be that guy at
| Thanksgiving but there's a reason it's generally considered
| a "safe" topic for disagreement. I was making a joke but if
| you want to take it literally the scores themselves are
| actual facts that can be reported straight, and hence
| "news" in the sense most people use that word.
| pksebben wrote:
| forget the politics, by the articles take (which I feel I
| miss agree with) sports scores are something I'm sure the
| NFL would like published, and can be seen as a form of
| advertising. Just kinda seems like it fits, you know?
| Phenomenit wrote:
| Maybe past weather but the forecasts are mostly qualified
| guesses.
| notart666 wrote:
| Not just that many sports have their own backings and
| beliefs which tend to skew towards whats popular at the
| time but also some questionable stuff at times. Fun fact
| the lighting of the bonfire at the Olympics was first done
| by Nazi Germany
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Tell that to the guy who attempted to alter the projected map
| of a hurricane with a Sharpie and pretended that it was the
| meteorologists who got it wrong.
| reaperducer wrote:
| The whole "journalist is bad" thing has really evolved over
| time.
|
| It used to be just whackjobs with tinfoil hats on ham radio in
| the desert.
|
| Then it became a meme. But it was still a joke.
|
| In the last few years it seems to have been weaponized, and
| there are now dozens, if not hundreds, of people on HN who
| actually believe this; if for no other reason than they've seen
| it written on the internet so many times. Often, like the
| person above, the idea is spouted with irrationally hyperbolic
| levels of venom and hatred.
|
| It feels like yet another coordinated attack on the
| fundamentals of Western society, just like the "all elections
| are rigged!" crowd that, at its root turns out to be funded by
| governments and organizations that profit from chaos, and hope
| to benefit from the elimination of democracy.
|
| The continuing attacks on journalism and journalists erode our
| society. If you don't understand that, then you must have slept
| through your civics classes.
|
| Anyone who thinks that journalists are "some of the lowest
| forms of human life" just sounds unhinged, and unable to think
| or understand how the world works. The real world, not the
| imaginary dystopia of the people on the internet barking at one
| another.
|
| I can't help but think that this person works on behalf of one
| of those groups that is trying to destroy democracy. Whether
| they know it, or not.
| pnf wrote:
| Honestly this is a really boneheaded take. Ignorant people
| maybe don't realize that, historically, journalists were
| widely considered to be low status scribblers and political
| hacks. The hagiographic efforts of the profession
| notwithstanding, many people still see them that way (for
| good reasons). Got news for you, mate, the real world IS
| journalists barking at each other on the internet, defining
| discourse, eroding civic society. Folks like you will
| eventually see it, too, when the journalists say it's safe
| and acceptable to see it.
| reaperducer wrote:
| Considering that I spent 20 years of my life working as a
| journalist at news organizations large and small, I hope
| you'll allow that I might just know a little more about how
| journalism works than you do, mate.
| pnf wrote:
| That might explain why you are so touchy but it doesn't
| explain why you failed to disclose that salient fact in
| your silly argument. Maybe you have a false conscience
| and knew it would immediately discredit you? But those
| instincts combined with general ignorance is what makes
| good journalists, I'm sorry to say.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _it doesn 't explain why you failed to disclose that
| salient fact in your silly argument._
|
| Am I obligated to disclose that I held a particular job
| years ago? I didn't know that was a requirement on HN. I
| see that you also haven't disclosed your resume and that
| your profile is blank. Is there a reason for that? Maybe
| you have a false conscience and knew it would immediately
| discredit you?
|
| So far, all you've contributed to the discussion is
| hyperbole and name calling:
|
| "Touchy... silly... general ignorance... boneheaded...
| ignorant... discourse police... propagandists... some of
| the lowest forms of human life... the only reasonable
| feelings are contempt and pity"
|
| How is anyone supposed to take you seriously when you
| present no facts, no cogent argument, just attacks and
| vitriol?
|
| I don't think there's any point in continuing this
| conversation any further. You are convinced of your
| position beyond the ability to reason and listen. I hope
| that some day you find peace within yourself and the
| ability to imagine that other human beings are not your
| enemy.
|
| You should probably also switch to decaf.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I've long wanted to interfere in the publication of ads. I think
| they're harmful to society.
|
| Turns out that by not wanting them to be printed, I've converted
| them to news. I did it guys, I killed advertising.
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