I think the pushback is largely related to different definitions of "lie".
Media outlets generally have a very specific belief that they are trying to instill in their readers for any given article -- they know what they want the takeaway to be. Often, the takeaway they are trying to leave their readers with is false. One can reasonably claim that setting out to make someone believe a false claim in this way is "lying", even if the means by which you do it doesn't involve directly stating any false factual claims.
I think the claim you're making is correct, but characterizing this behavior -- intentional, often grievous deception by means of context distortion and selective presentation -- as "not lying" seems overly generous. I think the correct top-line representation of this phenomenon is "the media lies all the time (asterix, their particular method of lying doesn't involve directly stating false claims)".
My exact issue is that this whole line of analysis is being extremely charitable to media of all stripes.
I see 'lying' as entailing more than just fabricating a false fact, and more about the *intent* of presenting information so as to mislead or misinform, especially in a way that causes the target to form a false belief that the speaker wants them to form.
In the broadest sense this can come down solely to how one *frames* the facts.
But the more central example is simply removing any and all context that might lead the listener to a conclusion that the speaker wants them to avoid, whilst emphasizing facts that support the conclusion, *even though you possess all the relevant information and could easily convey it.*
I think it's an ironic case of Scott doing exactly what he's accusing the media of doing (probably accidentally?). It's kind of a motte and bailey game everyone is playing.
"Media don't lie."
"They say false things all the time! What about X, Y, and Z?"
"Not technically a false statement!"
"But they were absolutely misleading. Can you say they're not lying when they say a ton of stuff that's effectively no different? The intent is to communicate false ideas to their audience."
"Sure, but they didn't say things that were technically incorrect. They may even have uncritically convinced themselves into believing these things, so it doesn't count."
"That's a very narrow definition of lying. It's the same broad claim, backed down to a narrow definition that you're saying the media are doing."
"Exactly! You're starting to get my point."
"Sure, but I expect more from you. I come here for better, more critical analysis and a more thorough interrogation of the breadth of the subject. You're not just some idiot off the street, you have a reputation to maintain that shouldn't be trying to hide headline statements behind dubious narrower claims."
"Same with the news! You're starting to get it?"
"No. I stopped having those expectations of the news years ago."
I would maybe agree if his point was to prove this to defend the media. He however ends each section with "this is awful, but not technically a lie" and at the end provides why this is important ("censorship of dumb evil news" is something people imagine is possible but actually isn't). The logic is, AFAICT:
If [media can be sorted into truth and lies] => censorship can work.
First one is false.
Ergo, second one is false.
The argument does not fall apart if we redefine lie, as "lie is hard to define" still makes the first argument false, and this second one is false.
Couldn't we summarize the whole point here as saying that the media rarely lie in a direct way, but often mislead by omitting relevant context, or choosing which information to report/not report, or by framing the available facts in a way that pushes forward a desired narrative? Because this is what I took from Scott's initial post.
And this is a problem for policing misinformation, because omitted relevant context, or misleading framing, is subjective and very different from actually saying stuff that isn't true.
I'll admit I was mostly being facetious, but I re-read it and it could look like I'm trying to do a 'serious burn' on Scott. I'll defend the motte, but not claim the bailey.
1. Most people would not define "lie" in the narrow way Scott uses it. Thus, the headline really doesn't match the actual claims Scott wishes to defend. In this way, he's being misleading. I think he probably got most of his pushback because of this discrepancy. If his title were something like, "Media lies very rarely include overt factual errors" it would be more accurate and much less sensational.
2. I agree with his claims, and have often thought the same thing. Anyone can push just about any wild story they want, if they're allowed to string together any set of disparate facts without the burden of doing real journalism. Thus, much of what passes for 'news' is indistinguishable from propaganda and not identifiable as proper journalism. Propaganda does the same thing, in the same way. Journalism avoids this kind of error, usually by implementing specific standards/norms that are meant to help prevent it (though often don't).
Perhaps we should be more concerned with correctly identifying propaganda as opposed to censorship of news. Because the narrow idea that individual facts are wrong isn't as common as the propaganda machine insists it is. It would be better if we could tell the difference and know what to expect than to trust central authorities who are part of the propaganda game to also act as refs. Especially since they seem to be vying for the job.
When he posted the first essay on this I wondered if he was doing a bit where he presented some accurate facts without context or with misleading context and then would put forth a longer writing actually analyzing the issue in great detail. It would have been a clever transition.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt but it's interesting that he's seemingly coming in defense of a conclusion that sort of absolves the media outlets of 'wrongdoing' if only because he doesn't even posit that they might be *intending* to make the signal/noise ratio worse in order to keep their audience misinformed.
When it really shouldn't be difficult to say "if they have all the facts of the story available to them and fail to *accurately* report *ALL* the facts to their audience, that's probably bad."
I think he's making allowance for the probability that many of them are fooling themselves with motivated reasoning, isolated demands for rigor, and a host of other failure modes rationalists work hard to avoid (but still aren't perfect themselves at eliminating).
I also think he's right to assume many/most biased reporting believes the underlying ideas they push, even if that one reporter failed to find enough evidence to prove their point. It's so easy to fool yourself that this should be considered the default probably. (Hanlon's razor)
It's a harder problem when you have a bunch of people who sincerely believe the crap they manufacture. It's easier if you're opposed by actively evil people who act like villains from Captain Planet ("I'm dumping sludge into the river because I hate nature!"), But that's rarely the case.
With honest actors, you have to insist on better norms of reporting, but it's hard to get thousands of reporters to study the Sequences.
I'm not saying it's never the case that you're dealing with a malicious actor. I'm sure there are editors and sources who know what they're doing, and use gullible reporters to signal boost a narrative they want pushed. But I think most reporters more likely have bad epistemic habits. Bias is a strong drug, and many people take that drug every day.
Whilst the individual reporters or talking heads could absolutely
It is somewhat harder to believe that the editors, or the ones who own, control, and potentially *profit* from the platform itself, or
I just think we can't completely absolve every actor responsibility and say "an egregore did it". Yes, Molochian incentives explain huge swaths of bad behavior, yet sometimes it is completely acceptable to say "I understand the motives, but these actors are a causal force behind a real problem and should not be ignored."
Of course if there were a silver bullet to this 'problem' we would use it, I think. My general assumption is that the epistemic environment falls to the level of some lowest common denominator regardless of most attempts to raise it, so it's not like there's a large group of humans who WANT to mislead the population at large. Just some who happen to profit from it and thus find strategic value in a low signal/noise ratio.
As far as I understand these two articles, Scott is using a narrow definition of "lie" and is upfront about it. I just don't see Scott making the broad claim anywhere, which in my reading invalidates your argument. It's not motte-and-bailey when you shout every other paragraph "I'm talking about this specific bailey, I know you all want to confuse it with this motte but I'm really purposely talking about the bailey right here and not this or that motte!"
You might simply disagree that this is an article worth writing, but I will counter that "the media is often misleading" wouldn't make for a better one. Also, "this is not the article I think you should've written" is a different critique than "this article is wrong".
Most importantly, you may have missed the purpose of Scott's argument about the media rarely lying explicitly, which is to support the argument that you can't just implement some "good kind of censorship", as many people are imagining it, by simply censoring outright false reporting.
Minor point: I think you've inverted the terms motte and bailey. The motte is the tower (the narrow point you retreat to when challenged) and the bailey is the open space (broader idea that's more difficult to defend).
I read both posts, and I understood the points he was making just fine. I thought they were good points. Indeed, it was interesting that he challenged his readers to find examples of factual inaccuracy in news stories and they didn't find any significant examples.
However, Scott also complains that people object to his statement that "the media rarely lies". Scott gets to choose his own titles, and he seems to know he's making an insurance claim. Indeed, he subtitled the first post saying, "with a title like that, obviously I'll be making a very nitpicky technical point".
Scott seems to implicitly understand people will object to his characterization of the media as "rarely lying", even as he complains about it. I'm just pointing out that he should not use an overbroad term to refer to a very specific phenomenon, then complain that people interpret him as making an overbroad claim.
This isn't the same as saying, "well I'd have used a different title because of stylistic reasons". This is saying, "Your title doesn't match your data." This is why these posts feel wrong to do many of us. We have personally experienced media misleading us, repeating things they should know are wrong, not challenging outrageous claims with obvious context, etc. It's the same as lying. It is lying. So the statement, "the media rarely lies" is not correct. The narrow, nitpicky point is fine - indeed it's an important point, that is unfortunately overshadowed by a bad title.
The media lies all the time. The way Scott framed this whole discussion undermined the point he was trying to make.
It looks like we are basically in complete agreement except about the definitions of words and readers' and writers' various responsibilities and entitlements in the face of ambiguous definitions. I won't labour the point.
I'm sorry, but I disagree that he is wrong or inconsistent to complain about it and I absolutely disagree that it is a bad title.
This is very much a toxoplasma of rage situation where the title makes the article reach a broader audience at the cost of people being less receptive to it. Scott understands this, which is why he filled the entire post with extremely heavy-handed "I am talking about this very specific situation" over and over again, in order to counter-act this.
This is the correct move, because the title will mean he reaches a broader audience, but the text is heavy-handed to avoid the knee-jerk rejection people would give it, putting it in an ideal spot for influencing people.
And I'm sorry but it is very heavy-handed, there's no way you'll miss it if you read the article. So people don't, and they can safely ignored, but some of these people have clearly read the article, and still managed to completely miss the point, and I think it is very fair for Scott to be frustrated by this. I would be frustrated too. But from a strategic perspective with a goal of "maximazing chances of this text having a significant effect against censorship" I think the decisions he made were very much the correct ones.
1. Write an intentionally misleading title, which you defend in the title to the follow-up post
2. Walk back the intentionally misleading titles HARD so you can get your true point across after having intentionally misled your readers
3. Get frustrated that a non-trivial number of your readers were actually misled
4. Declare that the reader is the problem
5. Prefer this method of communication as "more effective" than simple clarity?
I'm not sure this is a good long-term strategy. Scott is consistently clear in his communication, which is part of his style that I like. Even when he's being sarcastic, he's very clear he's being sarcastic.
I think using the phrase "the media rarely lies" was supposed to be clear and somewhat sarcastic, because we all know that's not true (outside the narrow point that they really make specific factual claims at all, preferring to just find someone to quote an untrue statement they want to push on readers - which is essentially the same thing). But he kept using that specific and wrong description outside just the title. It cost him clarity across two posts. I understand what he was trying to do, but I'm hoping it doesn't become a trend.
It seems like any analysis of a problem has to start with establishing some ground facts. If we can all agree that the media aren't actually lying, then that opens other avenues for exploring how the public are being misled by the media.
Yeah. The definition of "lie" that I grew up with was "any communication with the intent to deceive." You can lie while telling the truth, as long as your purpose was to inculcate a false impression among your audience.
From defamation law, there's the concept of *reckless disregard for the truth*. Webster defines it as
> disregard of the truth or falsity of a defamatory statement by a person who is highly aware of its probable falsity or entertains serious doubts about its truth or when there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity and accuracy of a source
In this case, the media (on all sides) is full of this--repeating statements that sound plausible if you ignore those obvious questions, not asking questions, closing your eyes to the obvious issues, all in service of pushing a message.
That's well over the line of what I would call a lie.
Remember that the oath a fact witness takes before testifying in Court is "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
I will freely admit that news outlets aren't testifying under oath, but it gets to the idea that when people have an *EXPECTATION* that the person is telling "the whole truth" and "nothing but the truth" then it is still, shall we say, *problematic* if the speaker omits truthful facts which were nonetheless relevant.
And since there's no cross-examining attorney available to push back and elicit the missing facts, the listener has little recourse other than doing their own research, which *defeats the point of listening to a news outlet in the first place.*
<3 to tomdhunt and Faceh. I made this point in another post, but you both did it better. "Deliberately misinforming" (for political purposes, for power, for money, etc.) might not be "making up stuff directly," but it is bad.
I get Scott's point, I just think the framing is ... off.
The problem is on the policy side. It would probably be practical to have a law which bans media organizations from publishing things which are false. The court system is set up to handle all sorts of factual disputes. "Did CNN claim Greenland was in the Southern Hemisphere?" is the kind of thing a court can address.
But trying to determine whether "enough" context was provided is a much thing to adjudicate.
Yes, I basically endorse Scott's further conclusions about the impossibility of regulating this by any practical bright-line rule (whether that be in the courts, the regulatory agencies, social media platforms, or whatever).
In practice, any agency that tries to suppress "disinformation" will end up allowing information that is congenial to that agency's political aims, and suppressing information that is contrary to them, with no regard for truth on either end.
So, suppose I'm trying to be honest and accurate in explaining something to someone. I have an existing set of beliefs which may be wrong but which I've arrived at with some care and think are likely right. (For example, that covid is bad to get, worse as you get older/fatter/sicker, that vaccines decrease your risk of dying or getting very sick from covid by quite a bit, that some treatments like paxlovid do the same, that covid vaccines are overall pretty safe, etc.).
Now, we can probably agree that I must not lie in service of conveying an accurate understanding--if tomorrow there's a paper that indicates that covid vaccines are more dangerous than covid for people under 20, I must not lie about what the paper says. But I have a choice about how much emphasis to give the paper--I can say "yes, there was one paper that said the vaccine was more dangerous than covid for very low-risk people, and that's possible, but weighing all the evidence, I think it's unlikely." Or I can not mention that paper at all and just talk about the CDC guidance. Or I can trumpet that paper and write a headline that says "COVID VACCINE A DEADLY THREAT, ALL IS LOST" with an article that links to some n=30 study with a p-value of 0.04 showing that under-20 recipients reported longer symptoms with the vaccine than covid[1].
There are a lot of ways to be misleading there. But there's also this difference between reporting the latest news and trying to report an accurate understanding of what's going on. I think I want both of these, but I want people to be clear about which they're doing.
There's another issue where I might have an agenda other than conveying an accurate understanding to you. Like, do I see my role as conveying my best understanding about covid to you, or convincing you to do what I think you should do, or supporting the public health authorities, or what? Those are all different goals. Is your role telling me what's what as best you can, or "responsible journalism" that ends up meaning misleading me in a good cause?
[1] To be fair, my 17 year old has been vaccinated three times and has had covid twice; he's gotten about as sick from the vaccine as from covid each time (aka, several days of feeling lousy and not wanting to get out of bed), and so isn't real excited about getting vaccinated again.
I thought Scott was mostly pushing pack against the idea that Infowars and NYT (or whatever hero and villain you want to pick in the media) were doing something categorically different, when really they are doing the same thing to different degrees.
Whether you choose to call anything misleading “lying” or define a lie as strictly an intentional statement of an untrue fact, it doesn’t really matter - essentially all media does the former frequently and the latter rarely.
Well, there are media outlets that propagandize—but I think it boils down to if it bleeds it leads. Most corporate media outlets have the economic incentive to increase the readership by grabbing one's attention with scary headlines and articles. The perfect example of this phenomenon was in April 2020 when the LA Times interviewed Kim Prather an atmospheric chemist at Scripps. She made the claim in an interview in the LA Times that SARS2 virus particles in sewage were being carried back to land by sea spray. The reporters and editors uncritically relayed her comments as if she were an expert with the same credentialled expertise as a virologist or epidemiologist. There are numerous reasons why this would be very very low on the threat level even with what little we knew about the SARS2 virus at that time. This story was picked up by the media everywhere, and county health officials (either because there was public pressure to do so, or because they really believed her) shut down beaches up and down the coast of California. Did the LA Times and the news media really have any motivation to promote the closure of public beaches? I can't imagine they did. But they did have a scary headline that would promote readership and spread LA Times as a news source. Some weeks later the LA Times did a retraction, but by that time it had entered the popular imagination that beaches were a potential vector for COVID infection.
I think the pushback is largely related to different definitions of "lie".
Media outlets generally have a very specific belief that they are trying to instill in their readers for any given article -- they know what they want the takeaway to be. Often, the takeaway they are trying to leave their readers with is false. One can reasonably claim that setting out to make someone believe a false claim in this way is "lying", even if the means by which you do it doesn't involve directly stating any false factual claims.
I think the claim you're making is correct, but characterizing this behavior -- intentional, often grievous deception by means of context distortion and selective presentation -- as "not lying" seems overly generous. I think the correct top-line representation of this phenomenon is "the media lies all the time (asterix, their particular method of lying doesn't involve directly stating false claims)".
My exact issue is that this whole line of analysis is being extremely charitable to media of all stripes.
I see 'lying' as entailing more than just fabricating a false fact, and more about the *intent* of presenting information so as to mislead or misinform, especially in a way that causes the target to form a false belief that the speaker wants them to form.
In the broadest sense this can come down solely to how one *frames* the facts.
But the more central example is simply removing any and all context that might lead the listener to a conclusion that the speaker wants them to avoid, whilst emphasizing facts that support the conclusion, *even though you possess all the relevant information and could easily convey it.*
Still seems like 'lying' to me.
I think it's an ironic case of Scott doing exactly what he's accusing the media of doing (probably accidentally?). It's kind of a motte and bailey game everyone is playing.
"Media don't lie."
"They say false things all the time! What about X, Y, and Z?"
"Not technically a false statement!"
"But they were absolutely misleading. Can you say they're not lying when they say a ton of stuff that's effectively no different? The intent is to communicate false ideas to their audience."
"Sure, but they didn't say things that were technically incorrect. They may even have uncritically convinced themselves into believing these things, so it doesn't count."
"That's a very narrow definition of lying. It's the same broad claim, backed down to a narrow definition that you're saying the media are doing."
"Exactly! You're starting to get my point."
"Sure, but I expect more from you. I come here for better, more critical analysis and a more thorough interrogation of the breadth of the subject. You're not just some idiot off the street, you have a reputation to maintain that shouldn't be trying to hide headline statements behind dubious narrower claims."
"Same with the news! You're starting to get it?"
"No. I stopped having those expectations of the news years ago."
I would maybe agree if his point was to prove this to defend the media. He however ends each section with "this is awful, but not technically a lie" and at the end provides why this is important ("censorship of dumb evil news" is something people imagine is possible but actually isn't). The logic is, AFAICT:
If [media can be sorted into truth and lies] => censorship can work.
First one is false.
Ergo, second one is false.
The argument does not fall apart if we redefine lie, as "lie is hard to define" still makes the first argument false, and this second one is false.
Couldn't we summarize the whole point here as saying that the media rarely lie in a direct way, but often mislead by omitting relevant context, or choosing which information to report/not report, or by framing the available facts in a way that pushes forward a desired narrative? Because this is what I took from Scott's initial post.
And this is a problem for policing misinformation, because omitted relevant context, or misleading framing, is subjective and very different from actually saying stuff that isn't true.
I agree. The poster was saying that "lie" was used in a "Motte and Bailey" way but I like your distinction between direct lie and misleading
I'll admit I was mostly being facetious, but I re-read it and it could look like I'm trying to do a 'serious burn' on Scott. I'll defend the motte, but not claim the bailey.
1. Most people would not define "lie" in the narrow way Scott uses it. Thus, the headline really doesn't match the actual claims Scott wishes to defend. In this way, he's being misleading. I think he probably got most of his pushback because of this discrepancy. If his title were something like, "Media lies very rarely include overt factual errors" it would be more accurate and much less sensational.
2. I agree with his claims, and have often thought the same thing. Anyone can push just about any wild story they want, if they're allowed to string together any set of disparate facts without the burden of doing real journalism. Thus, much of what passes for 'news' is indistinguishable from propaganda and not identifiable as proper journalism. Propaganda does the same thing, in the same way. Journalism avoids this kind of error, usually by implementing specific standards/norms that are meant to help prevent it (though often don't).
Perhaps we should be more concerned with correctly identifying propaganda as opposed to censorship of news. Because the narrow idea that individual facts are wrong isn't as common as the propaganda machine insists it is. It would be better if we could tell the difference and know what to expect than to trust central authorities who are part of the propaganda game to also act as refs. Especially since they seem to be vying for the job.
When he posted the first essay on this I wondered if he was doing a bit where he presented some accurate facts without context or with misleading context and then would put forth a longer writing actually analyzing the issue in great detail. It would have been a clever transition.
I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt but it's interesting that he's seemingly coming in defense of a conclusion that sort of absolves the media outlets of 'wrongdoing' if only because he doesn't even posit that they might be *intending* to make the signal/noise ratio worse in order to keep their audience misinformed.
When it really shouldn't be difficult to say "if they have all the facts of the story available to them and fail to *accurately* report *ALL* the facts to their audience, that's probably bad."
I think he's making allowance for the probability that many of them are fooling themselves with motivated reasoning, isolated demands for rigor, and a host of other failure modes rationalists work hard to avoid (but still aren't perfect themselves at eliminating).
I also think he's right to assume many/most biased reporting believes the underlying ideas they push, even if that one reporter failed to find enough evidence to prove their point. It's so easy to fool yourself that this should be considered the default probably. (Hanlon's razor)
It's a harder problem when you have a bunch of people who sincerely believe the crap they manufacture. It's easier if you're opposed by actively evil people who act like villains from Captain Planet ("I'm dumping sludge into the river because I hate nature!"), But that's rarely the case.
With honest actors, you have to insist on better norms of reporting, but it's hard to get thousands of reporters to study the Sequences.
I'm not saying it's never the case that you're dealing with a malicious actor. I'm sure there are editors and sources who know what they're doing, and use gullible reporters to signal boost a narrative they want pushed. But I think most reporters more likely have bad epistemic habits. Bias is a strong drug, and many people take that drug every day.
Whilst the individual reporters or talking heads could absolutely
It is somewhat harder to believe that the editors, or the ones who own, control, and potentially *profit* from the platform itself, or
I just think we can't completely absolve every actor responsibility and say "an egregore did it". Yes, Molochian incentives explain huge swaths of bad behavior, yet sometimes it is completely acceptable to say "I understand the motives, but these actors are a causal force behind a real problem and should not be ignored."
Of course if there were a silver bullet to this 'problem' we would use it, I think. My general assumption is that the epistemic environment falls to the level of some lowest common denominator regardless of most attempts to raise it, so it's not like there's a large group of humans who WANT to mislead the population at large. Just some who happen to profit from it and thus find strategic value in a low signal/noise ratio.
As far as I understand these two articles, Scott is using a narrow definition of "lie" and is upfront about it. I just don't see Scott making the broad claim anywhere, which in my reading invalidates your argument. It's not motte-and-bailey when you shout every other paragraph "I'm talking about this specific bailey, I know you all want to confuse it with this motte but I'm really purposely talking about the bailey right here and not this or that motte!"
You might simply disagree that this is an article worth writing, but I will counter that "the media is often misleading" wouldn't make for a better one. Also, "this is not the article I think you should've written" is a different critique than "this article is wrong".
Most importantly, you may have missed the purpose of Scott's argument about the media rarely lying explicitly, which is to support the argument that you can't just implement some "good kind of censorship", as many people are imagining it, by simply censoring outright false reporting.
Minor point: I think you've inverted the terms motte and bailey. The motte is the tower (the narrow point you retreat to when challenged) and the bailey is the open space (broader idea that's more difficult to defend).
I read both posts, and I understood the points he was making just fine. I thought they were good points. Indeed, it was interesting that he challenged his readers to find examples of factual inaccuracy in news stories and they didn't find any significant examples.
However, Scott also complains that people object to his statement that "the media rarely lies". Scott gets to choose his own titles, and he seems to know he's making an insurance claim. Indeed, he subtitled the first post saying, "with a title like that, obviously I'll be making a very nitpicky technical point".
Scott seems to implicitly understand people will object to his characterization of the media as "rarely lying", even as he complains about it. I'm just pointing out that he should not use an overbroad term to refer to a very specific phenomenon, then complain that people interpret him as making an overbroad claim.
This isn't the same as saying, "well I'd have used a different title because of stylistic reasons". This is saying, "Your title doesn't match your data." This is why these posts feel wrong to do many of us. We have personally experienced media misleading us, repeating things they should know are wrong, not challenging outrageous claims with obvious context, etc. It's the same as lying. It is lying. So the statement, "the media rarely lies" is not correct. The narrow, nitpicky point is fine - indeed it's an important point, that is unfortunately overshadowed by a bad title.
The media lies all the time. The way Scott framed this whole discussion undermined the point he was trying to make.
Thanks, I mix those up all the time :)
It looks like we are basically in complete agreement except about the definitions of words and readers' and writers' various responsibilities and entitlements in the face of ambiguous definitions. I won't labour the point.
I'm sorry, but I disagree that he is wrong or inconsistent to complain about it and I absolutely disagree that it is a bad title.
This is very much a toxoplasma of rage situation where the title makes the article reach a broader audience at the cost of people being less receptive to it. Scott understands this, which is why he filled the entire post with extremely heavy-handed "I am talking about this very specific situation" over and over again, in order to counter-act this.
This is the correct move, because the title will mean he reaches a broader audience, but the text is heavy-handed to avoid the knee-jerk rejection people would give it, putting it in an ideal spot for influencing people.
And I'm sorry but it is very heavy-handed, there's no way you'll miss it if you read the article. So people don't, and they can safely ignored, but some of these people have clearly read the article, and still managed to completely miss the point, and I think it is very fair for Scott to be frustrated by this. I would be frustrated too. But from a strategic perspective with a goal of "maximazing chances of this text having a significant effect against censorship" I think the decisions he made were very much the correct ones.
So the thinking goes:
1. Write an intentionally misleading title, which you defend in the title to the follow-up post
2. Walk back the intentionally misleading titles HARD so you can get your true point across after having intentionally misled your readers
3. Get frustrated that a non-trivial number of your readers were actually misled
4. Declare that the reader is the problem
5. Prefer this method of communication as "more effective" than simple clarity?
I'm not sure this is a good long-term strategy. Scott is consistently clear in his communication, which is part of his style that I like. Even when he's being sarcastic, he's very clear he's being sarcastic.
I think using the phrase "the media rarely lies" was supposed to be clear and somewhat sarcastic, because we all know that's not true (outside the narrow point that they really make specific factual claims at all, preferring to just find someone to quote an untrue statement they want to push on readers - which is essentially the same thing). But he kept using that specific and wrong description outside just the title. It cost him clarity across two posts. I understand what he was trying to do, but I'm hoping it doesn't become a trend.
It seems like any analysis of a problem has to start with establishing some ground facts. If we can all agree that the media aren't actually lying, then that opens other avenues for exploring how the public are being misled by the media.
Yeah. The definition of "lie" that I grew up with was "any communication with the intent to deceive." You can lie while telling the truth, as long as your purpose was to inculcate a false impression among your audience.
From defamation law, there's the concept of *reckless disregard for the truth*. Webster defines it as
> disregard of the truth or falsity of a defamatory statement by a person who is highly aware of its probable falsity or entertains serious doubts about its truth or when there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity and accuracy of a source
In this case, the media (on all sides) is full of this--repeating statements that sound plausible if you ignore those obvious questions, not asking questions, closing your eyes to the obvious issues, all in service of pushing a message.
That's well over the line of what I would call a lie.
Remember that the oath a fact witness takes before testifying in Court is "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."
I will freely admit that news outlets aren't testifying under oath, but it gets to the idea that when people have an *EXPECTATION* that the person is telling "the whole truth" and "nothing but the truth" then it is still, shall we say, *problematic* if the speaker omits truthful facts which were nonetheless relevant.
And since there's no cross-examining attorney available to push back and elicit the missing facts, the listener has little recourse other than doing their own research, which *defeats the point of listening to a news outlet in the first place.*
<3 to tomdhunt and Faceh. I made this point in another post, but you both did it better. "Deliberately misinforming" (for political purposes, for power, for money, etc.) might not be "making up stuff directly," but it is bad.
I get Scott's point, I just think the framing is ... off.
The problem is on the policy side. It would probably be practical to have a law which bans media organizations from publishing things which are false. The court system is set up to handle all sorts of factual disputes. "Did CNN claim Greenland was in the Southern Hemisphere?" is the kind of thing a court can address.
But trying to determine whether "enough" context was provided is a much thing to adjudicate.
Yes, I basically endorse Scott's further conclusions about the impossibility of regulating this by any practical bright-line rule (whether that be in the courts, the regulatory agencies, social media platforms, or whatever).
In practice, any agency that tries to suppress "disinformation" will end up allowing information that is congenial to that agency's political aims, and suppressing information that is contrary to them, with no regard for truth on either end.
So, suppose I'm trying to be honest and accurate in explaining something to someone. I have an existing set of beliefs which may be wrong but which I've arrived at with some care and think are likely right. (For example, that covid is bad to get, worse as you get older/fatter/sicker, that vaccines decrease your risk of dying or getting very sick from covid by quite a bit, that some treatments like paxlovid do the same, that covid vaccines are overall pretty safe, etc.).
Now, we can probably agree that I must not lie in service of conveying an accurate understanding--if tomorrow there's a paper that indicates that covid vaccines are more dangerous than covid for people under 20, I must not lie about what the paper says. But I have a choice about how much emphasis to give the paper--I can say "yes, there was one paper that said the vaccine was more dangerous than covid for very low-risk people, and that's possible, but weighing all the evidence, I think it's unlikely." Or I can not mention that paper at all and just talk about the CDC guidance. Or I can trumpet that paper and write a headline that says "COVID VACCINE A DEADLY THREAT, ALL IS LOST" with an article that links to some n=30 study with a p-value of 0.04 showing that under-20 recipients reported longer symptoms with the vaccine than covid[1].
There are a lot of ways to be misleading there. But there's also this difference between reporting the latest news and trying to report an accurate understanding of what's going on. I think I want both of these, but I want people to be clear about which they're doing.
There's another issue where I might have an agenda other than conveying an accurate understanding to you. Like, do I see my role as conveying my best understanding about covid to you, or convincing you to do what I think you should do, or supporting the public health authorities, or what? Those are all different goals. Is your role telling me what's what as best you can, or "responsible journalism" that ends up meaning misleading me in a good cause?
[1] To be fair, my 17 year old has been vaccinated three times and has had covid twice; he's gotten about as sick from the vaccine as from covid each time (aka, several days of feeling lousy and not wanting to get out of bed), and so isn't real excited about getting vaccinated again.
I thought Scott was mostly pushing pack against the idea that Infowars and NYT (or whatever hero and villain you want to pick in the media) were doing something categorically different, when really they are doing the same thing to different degrees.
Whether you choose to call anything misleading “lying” or define a lie as strictly an intentional statement of an untrue fact, it doesn’t really matter - essentially all media does the former frequently and the latter rarely.
Well, there are media outlets that propagandize—but I think it boils down to if it bleeds it leads. Most corporate media outlets have the economic incentive to increase the readership by grabbing one's attention with scary headlines and articles. The perfect example of this phenomenon was in April 2020 when the LA Times interviewed Kim Prather an atmospheric chemist at Scripps. She made the claim in an interview in the LA Times that SARS2 virus particles in sewage were being carried back to land by sea spray. The reporters and editors uncritically relayed her comments as if she were an expert with the same credentialled expertise as a virologist or epidemiologist. There are numerous reasons why this would be very very low on the threat level even with what little we knew about the SARS2 virus at that time. This story was picked up by the media everywhere, and county health officials (either because there was public pressure to do so, or because they really believed her) shut down beaches up and down the coast of California. Did the LA Times and the news media really have any motivation to promote the closure of public beaches? I can't imagine they did. But they did have a scary headline that would promote readership and spread LA Times as a news source. Some weeks later the LA Times did a retraction, but by that time it had entered the popular imagination that beaches were a potential vector for COVID infection.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-02/coronavirus-ocean-swimming-surfing-safe-beaches-los-angeles