Kalcifer @ Kalcifer @sh.itjust.works

All of this user's content is licensed under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativeco

---

Read more

Posts

161

Comments

1,710

Joined

2 yr. ago

And yes sources are required but that doesn’t mean that’s ALL that’s required or you wouldn’t have newspapers or organisations, just some people calling themselves journalists that have a bunch of sources.

I agree that the existence of sources aren't themselves examples of journalism.

[…] The idea used to be that you find a news source that is the most reliable. Now half the world just finds the one that confirms their biases the most […]

How are you determining/measuring reliability?

[…] how are you fact checking, are you finding people with expertise and contacting them or googling and using whatever shite websites come up as a source? […]

It depends on the context.

[…] However simply doing a bit of work does not earn you the title, just like replacing a light switch at your house does not make you an electrician […]

Hm, I'm not sure that that's a fair comparison. If it is assumed that an electrician must be licensed in order to practice as one (and assuming that they can only call themself an electrician if they practice as one), do journalists have similar requirements? I may simply be ignorant, but I've not found any examples that a journalist must be licensed in order to practice. Such licensing feels like it would start infringing on fundamental rights.

[…] What source could a reporter sitting on a street in a civil unrest cite? […]

Imo, footage, audio, etc.

[…] Scientific findings usually have published works as their primary source. […]

In that case, imo, the initial reporting would be the research paper, and the literal root source would be the data that they collected.

[…] Someone has to create the primary source at the point of something happening or existing. […]

Presumably the event was recorded, or the thing existing measured. Imo, these recordings and measurements would be what's cited and reported on as novel information in a news article. I could possibly be convinced otherwise, but I think that the mere action of recording, or measuring isn't news on its own — it must be published.

[…] over time you get a feel for who the serial liars are and who are generally reporting faithfully

Sure, but even then I would still like to see cited sources; without them, my trust would begin to erode.

[…] Fact check everything that doesn’t feel right (or anything that feels too reductive or simplified) […]

Ideally, imo, the news outlets could lift some of that burden by citing their own sources so that I don't have to do their investigative work for them.

Are you saying that any claims made by "legitimate news outlets" can be trusted without cited sources simply because they are deemed "legitimate"?

I'm of the belief that anyone is capable of being a journalist regardless of their qualifications. I think that restricting that through elitism directly leads to appeals to authority (I've seen examples of that itt ^[1][2][3][4]) — appeals to authority, I think, is one of the root causes for why, anecdotally, news outlets have become so lazy in citing their sources — why cite sources if people will believe what you say regardless? Whether or not something is good journalism, by definition, imo, is self-evident — it doesn't matter who did the work, so long as it is accurate.

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.

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.

Do you own a dog house?

Classic Norm MacDonald. Never gets old.

[…] any reasonable threshold would exclude the vast majority of people, mostly because the vast majority of people aren’t journalists […]

Perhaps I should clarify that I don't agree with @MudMan@fedia.io's opinion, which was stated in my comment. By their use of the term "unqualified", it made me think that they had qualifications in mind which would be required to be met, in their opinion, before someone could be a journalist — I was simply curious what those qualifications were.

[…] are you saying I’m unqualified to be a journalist? Because yeah you are probably right. […]

What makes you think that you are unqualified?

Well, that works if the only vector of misinformation is broadcast-based, but it’s not. […]

Could you elaborate on what you mean?

[…] anonymous sourcing and source protection still has a place […]

I agree. Though, anecdotally, I'm not exactly fond of how some news outlets that I've come across use such types of sources — they use some adulterated quote snipped buried within their article; I think it would be better if they, for example, post explicitly the entire unadulterated (within good reason) transcript of the anonymous source with all relevant metadata cited along with it, and then cite that in whatever article.

make them liable if it turns out to be false

A terrible no-good idea. Legislating for truth is a slippery slope that ends in authoritarian dystopia. The kind of law you are advocating exists in a ton of countries (“spreading dangerous falsehoods”, abuse of defamation laws when the subject involves an individual, etc). You would not want to live in any of these places.

Do you agree with the existence of defamation laws?