If *I* have to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, doesn't that make *me* the journalist?
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[…] I’m saying anybody who has to fact-check the uncited claims made in news articles, and thus is an acting journalist is statistically very likely to be extremely unqualified for the job. […]
What, in your opinion, would determine if someone is qualified to fact check a news article? Do you have criteria?
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Like I said, we should get research methods taught in school from very early on. For one thing, understanding what even counts as a source is not a trivial problem, let alone an independent source, let alone a credible independent source.
There's the mechanics of sourcing things (from home and on a computer, I presume we don't want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media), a basic understanding of archival and how to get access to it and either a light understanding of the subject matter or how to get access to somebody who has it.
There's a reason it's supposed to be a full time job, but you can definitely teach kids enough of the basics to both assess the quality of what they come across and how to mitigate the worst of it. In all seriousness.
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No? For a start, journalists write news, are you writing it down in an article afterwards?
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[…] There’s a reason it’s supposed to be a full time job […]
For clarity, by "it" are you referring to journalism?
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[…] journalists write news […].
If an article hasn't cited any sources, then, imo, it isn't news — it's just conjecture.
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Or maybe we require large newspapers and other single owner/large audience influencers to cite sources if they make claims and make them liable if it turns out to be false… because we‘re unable to read our medications instructions or the terms of the products we use.
I‘m not against education. But i would like to hold people who make claims accountable additionally to enabling the public to do research.
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....yes...but you do understand a journalist is someone who writes/reads news right? They're not just sat around with sources for no reason, those sources are specifically so they can report news...that's the point. What do you think a source is!?
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Or maybe we require large newspapers and other single owner/large audience influencers to cite sources if they make claims and make them liable if it turns out to be false… […]
Well, defamation laws do exist ^[1]^. Other than things like that, I think one should be very careful with such times of laws as, imo, they begin encroaching rather rapidly on freedom of speech.
::: spoiler References
- "Defamation". Wikipedia. Published: 2024-12-09T15:41Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T07:02Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Laws_by_jurisdiction.
- §"Laws by jurisdiction".
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- §"Laws by jurisdiction".
- "Defamation". Wikipedia. Published: 2024-12-09T15:41Z. Accessed: 2024-12-11T07:02Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defamation#Laws_by_jurisdiction.
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Yes, I’m referring to journalism.
Okay, well I don't exactly follow the relevance of your claim that journalism can be practiced full-time. I also don't exactly follow the usage of your language "supposed to". Imo, one needn't be a full-time journalist to practice journalism.
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I'm not sure I understand your point. Essentially the only point that I was making was that for what's written to not be considered conjecture, any claims that it makes must be cited ^[1]^.
::: spoiler References
- "conjecture". Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2024-12-11T08:47Z. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conjecture.
inference formed without proof or sufficient evidence
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- "conjecture". Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2024-12-11T08:47Z. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/conjecture.
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You can do journalism without working as a journalist, but there is a lot of work involved in doing good journalism, which I presume would be the goal.
If you think the workload is trivial, consider the posibility you may not have a full view of everything that is involved. I'm saying everybody can and should have enough knowledge to sus out whether a piece of info they see online or in a news outlet is incorrect, misleading or opinionated, but it's not reasonable, efficient or practical to expect everybody to access their news like a professional journalist does.
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Defamation is very far away from our current situation. Europe is on the correct path imo in holding those who profit from disinformation accountable.
There should be no right to abuse others verbally or spread disinformation. Of course you can always use this in bad faith as a government but that is what we have assasins for.
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Your original post asks if you're a journalist for fact checking articles, we got to these comments from that.
Where do you think sources end? If I mention that biden is currently president, do I need a source linked? If 1+1 is 2, do I need to provide a source? Do I need to source the definitions of every word? Do I need a source that vaccines don't cause autism? That 5g doesn't cause COVID?
It's hard to discuss this without knowing what text you're referring to, and if I go back to check if you mentioned it I'll lose my comment because I'm using an app. Some things don't need sourcing because they're accepted facts, like who the president is, basic science, simple maths, etc, but most important, the things that an article should always cite are the claims the article itself is making. I wouldn't cite sources for 5G not causing covid, for example, unless the article was specifically about that.
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[…] it’s not reasonable, efficient or practical to expect everybody to access their news like a professional journalist does.
I agree, but I don't think that that's a valid argument in defense of a journalist not citing their claims.
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[…] Europe is on the correct path imo in holding those who profit from disinformation accountable. […]
I'm unfamiliar with those specific laws. Could you cite what your referring to for my reference?
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[…] There should be no right to abuse others verbally or spread disinformation. Of course you can always use this in bad faith as a government […]
For clarity, are you referring to the government abusing the judicial system to silence someone with opinions they don't like?
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[…] I wouldn’t cite sources for 5G not causing covid, for example, unless the article was specifically about that.
How come? If one's knowledge of a topic derives from a location, I think one should cite that location when discussing that topic, otherwise it's just conjecture.
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No, it's an argument against some of the proposed remedies.
The step you're skipping over is that citing a claim by itself doesn't do much to guarantee its veracity if the reader of the citation isn't willing to get in touch with the source of the citation and verify its content. Citations aren't magical. As you're using them in this conversation they are merely a tool for a peer review to be able to verify a bunch of precedent information without having to include it all in the same place every time.
The difference between journalistic information and peer review in science is that news are supposed to have gone through a journalistic verification process first, which the reader trusts based on the previous operation of the news outlet. A paper is presented to go through peer review and published after it has gone through that process.
