The "authenticity" thing of podcasters is only meaningful if the podcaster was there. Sometimes that happens, and those are the good ones. There are good protest videos.
Not many war videos. Secondary sources are just pundits, of which we have too many.
It's easy to be an influencer who covers entertainment - entertainment wants to be watched. It's hard to be an influencer who covers, say, unemployment. It's possible, but you have to go and talk live to people who just got laid off. That's reporting.
It's not the delivery system. It's whether the source goes out and pulls in news. Most don't.
“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." - City Editor of a Chicago newspaper, 1918. Look at a news story and ask "did this begin with a press release or a speech?". If so, it's publicity. HN had an article from a few days ago about "CEO says" journalism. It's worse on the political front.
Democracy requires that a sizable fraction of voters know what's really happening. This is a big problem.
Influencers can be controlled. Dubai has cracked down on war reporting by the large number of influencers there.[1] Right now, Iran claims a missile hit on an Oracle data center in Dubai. The UAE denies this. Did anybody in Dubai drive over and take pictures? Call up Oracle and ask? Nah.
> Did anybody in Dubai drive over and take pictures? Call up Oracle and ask? Nah.
Why is any of that necessary? LLMs can just synthesize a story for the press de novo, without reference to prior developments or indeed any 20th century style on-the-ground reporting. Reporters should in fact be pleased that this meaningless drudgery has been automated out of the profession.
Besides, whatever "facts" are presented will be labelled as fake news by its detractors, who will not have their own internal narratives swayed in the slightest. The rest will rest easy in their confirmation bias, it now being confirmed once more.
There are multiple news articles repeating the IRGC claim of a successful attack. Some have pictures of missiles and Oracle buildings. Most of the same building stock shots, including some of Oracle HQ in San Mateo, CA.[1]
There are also denials from the UAE press office calling this "fake news".
Oracle doesn't seem to have said anything. It's not even clear that they have a major data center in Dubai. They have two in Saudi Arabia (Riydah and Jeddah), but the Oracle status page lists none in Dubai.[2] They have some offices in Dubai, all on upper floors of buildings and probably not large data centers. Do press reports indicate a call to the Dubai office? (Phone: 971(4)3909000) [3] Nah.
It's like intelligence analysis. You get various bits of intel. Some are true, some are false, some are biased, some are fake. Intel is evaluated in terms of source reliability and information credibility, which are separate.
Bracketing helps. If China Daily and Breitbart News agree on something, that's reasonably solid. But check to see if they're getting their info from the same place. Distinguish between two independent sources and two paths from the same source.
When both sides are too far apart, digging for more data is needed. It's often available, and best obtained from sources close to the situation. Not pundits.
Recognize that you're not going to be sure. Accept that and realize that the goal is to get good enough quality information to make a decision. Being too sure is an error of its own.
Here's a basic article on the subject from the CIA.[1] Much of this is about the problems of being too sure.
All of this is way too much work for most people.
(This is not something I've done professionally. I have worked with people who did.)
I would argue that reading discussion of "CEO says" "journalism" on HN will often better inform you than reading a mainstream journalist puff-piece interview of a CEO. Many journalists will not provide adversarial viewpoints, because to do so would stanch the flow of interview subjects.
A big problem is that the product of "access journalism" is untrustworthy.
In order to produce articles which generate large clickthrough rates for comparatively low cost, news organizations rely on interviews with people in power. But as a price of access, the people in power require a certain level of deference that compromises the news channel in the eyes of young audiences, when there are lots of other competing sources that don't observe the same deference.
Reuters is less guilty of this than the NY Times, but it's a problem that afflicts all traditional news organizations.
"Young people are consuming news less frequently than older people. Around two thirds (64%) of 18–24s consume news on a daily basis, compared with 87% of people 55 and over."
I used to watch the news quite a bit in my 20s--40s or so. Read a newspaper almost every day, watched the evening news. Now 20 years later? Not at all. Traditional news sites, most newspapers, and TV news shows are all rage bait and narrative spinning. None of what they talk about affects my day to day life in the slightest way. So I spend my time on things that are more enjoyable.
> Young people are consuming news less frequently than older people...
> Young people are also less interested in news...
Haven't the youth always consumed less news and been less interested? The question is if the current youth consume less and are less interested compared to when the current old people were young, no?
Anecdotally, that literally only one of my college age students knew about the Moon mission was wild.
I genuinely now believe that a real barrier to (the terrible idea of) reinstating the draft is that it would actually be difficult to find and inform the public about it, in a believable way.
It is not about sources choices. Young people must read books. Everybody should read books. Books on liberty, like "1984" or authors like Michael Ende. Also books on history (and prehistory). That is the thing that really matters and the only via to avoid echo chambers.
I feel like the best advice I could give to young news audiences is to stop. Just stop. What little value the news may offer to make you a more informed citizen is completely outweighed by all the negatives.
>> ... Meeting the needs of this segment is crucial, not just for the current stability of the journalism industry, but also for the future of democratic societies as young individuals transition through adulthood
“Most people across generations favour the idea of impartial news, but young people more often (32% compared with 19% of those 55+) think it ‘makes no sense for news outlets to be neutral on certain issues’, such as climate change or racism.”
Unfortunately it’s documentarians such as David Attenborough that carefully curate a picture of nature as some playful, curious thing. It would behoove schools that prepare students for post-secondary education to put on actual video recordings of how animals go at it and how the strong kill the weak (and their offspring) in the most savage and cruel of ways with complete disregard. And then ask them if they would rather not know this is how the world really is. Because that’s what taking a side means here, is being wilfully ignorant.
53 comments
The "authenticity" thing of podcasters is only meaningful if the podcaster was there. Sometimes that happens, and those are the good ones. There are good protest videos. Not many war videos. Secondary sources are just pundits, of which we have too many. It's easy to be an influencer who covers entertainment - entertainment wants to be watched. It's hard to be an influencer who covers, say, unemployment. It's possible, but you have to go and talk live to people who just got laid off. That's reporting.
It's not the delivery system. It's whether the source goes out and pulls in news. Most don't.
“Whatever a patron desires to get published is advertising; whatever he wants to keep out of the paper is news." - City Editor of a Chicago newspaper, 1918. Look at a news story and ask "did this begin with a press release or a speech?". If so, it's publicity. HN had an article from a few days ago about "CEO says" journalism. It's worse on the political front.
Democracy requires that a sizable fraction of voters know what's really happening. This is a big problem.
Influencers can be controlled. Dubai has cracked down on war reporting by the large number of influencers there.[1] Right now, Iran claims a missile hit on an Oracle data center in Dubai. The UAE denies this. Did anybody in Dubai drive over and take pictures? Call up Oracle and ask? Nah.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/03/dubai-...
> Did anybody in Dubai drive over and take pictures? Call up Oracle and ask? Nah.
Why is any of that necessary? LLMs can just synthesize a story for the press de novo, without reference to prior developments or indeed any 20th century style on-the-ground reporting. Reporters should in fact be pleased that this meaningless drudgery has been automated out of the profession.
Besides, whatever "facts" are presented will be labelled as fake news by its detractors, who will not have their own internal narratives swayed in the slightest. The rest will rest easy in their confirmation bias, it now being confirmed once more.
There are multiple news articles repeating the IRGC claim of a successful attack. Some have pictures of missiles and Oracle buildings. Most of the same building stock shots, including some of Oracle HQ in San Mateo, CA.[1]
There are also denials from the UAE press office calling this "fake news".
Oracle doesn't seem to have said anything. It's not even clear that they have a major data center in Dubai. They have two in Saudi Arabia (Riydah and Jeddah), but the Oracle status page lists none in Dubai.[2] They have some offices in Dubai, all on upper floors of buildings and probably not large data centers. Do press reports indicate a call to the Dubai office? (Phone: 971(4)3909000) [3] Nah.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPo4vJjq-3M&t=17718s
[2] https://ocistatus.oraclecloud.com/#/
[3] https://ae.bizdirlib.com/node/924412
Bracketing helps. If China Daily and Breitbart News agree on something, that's reasonably solid. But check to see if they're getting their info from the same place. Distinguish between two independent sources and two paths from the same source.
When both sides are too far apart, digging for more data is needed. It's often available, and best obtained from sources close to the situation. Not pundits.
Recognize that you're not going to be sure. Accept that and realize that the goal is to get good enough quality information to make a decision. Being too sure is an error of its own.
Here's a basic article on the subject from the CIA.[1] Much of this is about the problems of being too sure.
All of this is way too much work for most people.
(This is not something I've done professionally. I have worked with people who did.)
[1] https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/Article-Principles-...
In order to produce articles which generate large clickthrough rates for comparatively low cost, news organizations rely on interviews with people in power. But as a price of access, the people in power require a certain level of deference that compromises the news channel in the eyes of young audiences, when there are lots of other competing sources that don't observe the same deference.
Reuters is less guilty of this than the NY Times, but it's a problem that afflicts all traditional news organizations.
I used to watch the news quite a bit in my 20s--40s or so. Read a newspaper almost every day, watched the evening news. Now 20 years later? Not at all. Traditional news sites, most newspapers, and TV news shows are all rage bait and narrative spinning. None of what they talk about affects my day to day life in the slightest way. So I spend my time on things that are more enjoyable.
> Young people are consuming news less frequently than older people...
> Young people are also less interested in news...
Haven't the youth always consumed less news and been less interested? The question is if the current youth consume less and are less interested compared to when the current old people were young, no?
I genuinely now believe that a real barrier to (the terrible idea of) reinstating the draft is that it would actually be difficult to find and inform the public about it, in a believable way.
Or if you must watch the news, local only.
>> ... Meeting the needs of this segment is crucial, not just for the current stability of the journalism industry, but also for the future of democratic societies as young individuals transition through adulthood
Sure buddy. Keep telling yourself that.
Mainstream media can't die quick enough.
Unfortunately it’s documentarians such as David Attenborough that carefully curate a picture of nature as some playful, curious thing. It would behoove schools that prepare students for post-secondary education to put on actual video recordings of how animals go at it and how the strong kill the weak (and their offspring) in the most savage and cruel of ways with complete disregard. And then ask them if they would rather not know this is how the world really is. Because that’s what taking a side means here, is being wilfully ignorant.