alt Hacker NewsHow do you expect journalists to be able to figure out the truth? And how do you not see them as a single point of failure? Let's take an example from the past. The Vietnam War was started because of a false flag. [1] This was a time when there was a much more adversarial relationship between the media and the government/intelligence agencies than there is today. But even in that context, they mostly unquestioningly reported the lie. Because how else could they have known?
In modern times I'll again take the glass half full side here. The truth of things tends to come out over time, because it's the only 'narrative' that can hold up under scrutiny from any angle. And even in the anonymous internet age, there's still the issue of reputation. It's perhaps more important than ever now a days because you can look at some entity's predictions or statements from one time period, see how it played out over the next e.g. 6 months, and see whether they were onto something, or blowing smoke.
I think this is why it's so hard for the government to drum up support for war now a days. They have no ability to control the narrative and so framing invading some country half way around the world as being 'defensive' is a narrative that usually collapses in rapid order. Even during Vietnam it started becoming clear that the narrative around the Gulf of Tonkin was dodgy, but it's a process that took years. By Iraq we were down to lies starting to be exposed within months. Now a days it'd probably take about 24 hours, to the point that with Iran didn't even bother with trying to manufacture consent and we saw the result of that a few days ago.
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It's a superficially reasonable objection that elides the crucial detail: Modern journalism is a profession. It has standards of entry, an established mission (fact-finding, truth-seeking), and a code of ethics. We can choose to be cynical about those constraints, but the fact is that none of them apply to a random person on Youtube or Substack.
> The truth of things tends to come out over time, because it's the only 'narrative' that can hold up under scrutiny from any angle.
This is exactly why professional journalists, with employers who can restrict strong pressure, are important.
The truth about things which are widely observable tends to come out over time.
There are many, many things which are not widely observable.
You know the easiest way to do something secretly in government today?
Have an in-person meeting, gloss over it in online-posted minutes, then bury the evidence of it being done in the most detailed, voluminous reports.
Because finding that requires a butt in a seat through boring meetings and tracing / reconciling line items through reports.
And generally speaking, most people who aren't being paid aren't willing to do that for fun.
Like they used to?
Journalism had a pretty strong code of conduct and drive to publish the facts. They couldn’t get it right all the time, but they had a stake in doing the best they could and not losing their reputation.
The truth of things doesn’t tend to come out in time. We know the truth about many things now, but after the window in which a change could be made was obfuscated and stopped.
Facts coming out when it is convenient to the people withholding them is not a success. If they come out at all.
The old system of journalism did a surprisingly good job, until people gave up on playing by the rules and decided to play by the trappings of journalism.
Reputation matters to the center and the left of the information ecosystem today. The right has connected its media to its politics entirely, to create a propaganda machine. Part of its routine is to state that journalism and the left are biased, and don’t want to deal with the truth, and then shoehorning their narrative into it.
> How do you expect journalists to be able to figure out the truth?
And how are YOU expected to figure out the truth? Journalists should be akin to scientists and researchers: specialized in their field, with better connections and expertise and be able to follow a trail to reach ground truth. Now, can and will be they fooled? Absolutely, and there should be still some peer-review of what they publish.
Also this is an ideal scenario, and it's not what happening right now, or at least it happen only for a handful of media outlets all over the world. This model still support (and expect) having biased publications - I mean, it's just how we humans are - and you as a responsible citizen are still required to look at least at a couple of sources and form your own opinion.
I do agree with you that the truth tends to come out at some point because it follows the path of least resistance, but sometimes the lie can be so well written that it takes decades for the truth to come out.