• MudMan
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    52 days ago

    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.

    • KalciferOP
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      -12 days ago

      […] There’s a reason it’s supposed to be a full time job […]

      For clarity, by “it” are you referring to journalism?

      • MudMan
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        12 days ago

        I’m assuming you’re in a microblogging flavor of federation and that’s why this is broken down into a bunch of posts?

        Yes, I’m referring to journalism.

        • KalciferOP
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          121 hours ago

          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.

          • MudMan
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            118 hours ago

            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.

            • KalciferOP
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              14 hours ago

              […] 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 […]

              I agree.

            • KalciferOP
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              14 hours ago

              […] 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.

            • KalciferOP
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              4 hours ago

              You can do journalism without working as a journalist […]

              Err, could you clarify this? By definition doesn’t the action of doing journalism make one a journalist? For example, Merriam-Webster defines the noun “journalist” as “a person engaged in journalism” [1]. This would follow logically [2]: If one is engaged in journalism, then they are a journalist; one is engaged in journalism; therefore, they are a journalist.

              References
              1. “journalist”. Merriam-Webster. Accessed: 2024-12-12T00:10Z. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/journalist.

              2. “List of valid argument forms”. Wikipedia. Published: 2024-06-28T20:12Z. Accessed: 2024-12-12T00:11Z. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_valid_argument_forms#Modus_ponens.
                • §“Valid propositional forms”. §“Modus ponens”.

                  If A, then B

                  A

                  Therefore B

            • KalciferOP
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              15 hours ago

              […] If you think the workload is trivial […]

              I think you might be misunderstanding me — I’m not of the opinion that the workload for journalism is trivial. All I’m saying is that I don’t think it’s necessary to work full-time as a journalist (ie in a career capacity) to do the work of a journalist. I think there may be a miscommunication of definitions for things like “journalism”, “full-time”.

        • KalciferOP
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          2 days ago

          I’m assuming you’re in a microblogging flavor of federation and that’s why this is broken down into a bunch of posts?

          No, I’m not on a microblogging platform. I personally prefer to post atomic comments. I believe that threads should be restricted in scope so that they are clearer and easier to follow. I think that it also helps prevent miscommunications.

    • KalciferOP
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      -12 days ago

      […] I presume we don’t want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media […]

      Can you clarify exactly what you are referring to here?

      • MudMan
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        12 days ago

        Well, a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.

        I’ll grant you, it very often doesn’t happen, but still.

        • KalciferOP
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          12 days ago

          Well, a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.

          Are you saying that journalism only deals in novel information?

          • MudMan
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            12 days ago

            No. Not sure how you get that from the quote.

            • KalciferOP
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              121 hours ago

              Let me try to clarify my thinking:

              You stated this:

              […] I presume we don’t want every private citizen to be making phone calls to verify every claim they come across in social media […]

              You, then, clarified that:

              […] a journalist would often be expected to get in touch with a source directly, which is not feasible if we’re all doing it.

              If you are referring to the original root source (assuming that it’s, for example, a conversation with someone), to me, that reads like you are saying that a journalist can’t cite the report by another journalist who first interviewed that source (ie novel information), and that each journalist needs to independently interview the source themselves in a novel way.

              • MudMan
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                118 hours ago

                No, but most original reports would be expected to in fact reach out to a primary source, and fact-checking them would often require the same thing.

                That doesn’t need to be novel. Verifying a source or a piece of information often just requires reaching out to a primary source to have them confirm the second-hand report that is available elsewhere. Not all journalism is built by aggregating other reports, the process needs to start somewhere. And you can’t just take the fact that a source is mentioned as a guarantee of accuracy, you have to verify information.

                This is, as I said, a full time job for a reason. Many corners are cut in the modern day of endless news cycles, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require work to do properly.

                • KalciferOP
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                  15 hours ago

                  […] This is, as I said, a full time job for a reason. […]

                  I mean, I would say only if one wants to do it continuously — I suppose it depends on how you are defining “full time job” in this context.

                • KalciferOP
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                  15 hours ago

                  […] Many corners are cut in the modern day of endless news cycles, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t require work to do properly.

                  I agree.

                • KalciferOP
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                  15 hours ago

                  […] That doesn’t need to be novel. Verifying a source or a piece of information often just requires reaching out to a primary source to have them confirm the second-hand report that is available elsewhere. Not all journalism is built by aggregating other reports, the process needs to start somewhere. And you can’t just take the fact that a source is mentioned as a guarantee of accuracy, you have to verify information. […]

                  I feel like this could be self-limiting — once enough independent verifications have been completed and released, the collection of them should reach a point where its deemed unnecessary to further prove its veracity. I think it would be akin to meta-analysis.

    • KalciferOP
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      02 days ago

      […] understanding what even counts as a source is not a trivial problem, let alone an independent source, let alone a credible independent source. […]

      I agree.

    • KalciferOP
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      02 days ago

      […] we should get research methods taught in school from very early on. […]

      I agree.