I had read many examples of media lies, but it took one specific instance to really sink it in. A minor crime story had a map of the SF Bay Area and located "Concord" just east of the southern tip of the Bay, while it is actually 50+ miles north. Printed errors I could at least accept various dubious excuses for. But a map? It was clearly a copy of some real map, full of lots of detail unnecessary to the story, not a hand-drawn cartoon or sketch. How does one move a city 50 miles?
That old saying is true, that you only notice errors when you have personal knowledge of the matter, and assume everything else from the same source must be true, couldn't possibly have errors, they wouldn't do that.
That's an interesting distinction. Reminds me of the difference between negligence, recklessness, and intentional as described by a lawyer once.
To a news consumer like me, it's a distinction without a difference.
This was a copied commercial map, and someone deliberately moved the city. Concord's a big city, not some unincorporated town of three trailers; it even has an airport. There might be a perfectly plausible explanation for mistakenly moving the city, but I can't think of any that fit the circumstances.
Boy, been a while. 15 years ago? My memory is it was just a short story about some purse snatcher on BART. Don't even remember if they caught the guys or cops chased him. I can't remember the map well enough, but it might have been shrunk vertically to fit the space available, and come to think of it, maybe that explains inadvertently moving it; maybe whoever shrank it saw the name disappear and added it back in. East Bay gets a lot of cultural flack for being a backwater, except for that weird Berserkeley, and if it was the San Jose newspaper, maybe whoever did it didn't know anything about Concord except "East Bay" and slapped the name down where it fit.
Your "Scientists Discover explanation..." reminds me of the phrases, a study proves or even a study shows that cause me to cuss a little under my breath every time I see such.
A study, even many studies may suggest but the number of cases where such show or prove are infinitesimally few and far between. Such are also usually trivial such as, "We counted the pennies in that jar seven times and each time our count came to 736, hence our study proved there were 736 pennies in that jar."
Even in that case if the owner of the jar offered to bet me that there were less than 736 pennies in the jar, I'd think twice or maybe thrice before taking it, depending on the size of the bet. ;-)
My guess is that most of the authors of such things don't see themselves as writing partisan propaganda, are reporting what they believe is true. Their bias is in what they believe and what they notice.
And I take my experience with the author as evidence.
The evidence of this is that a lot of people who work at "woke" news agencies like MSNBC move to Fox when offered a higher salary and vice versa. It happens all the time. Also depending on where they work, they get accused of being insanely partisan. In reality a lot of them are just folks struggling to pay bills.
Exceptions appear to be niche media like Reason or BreitBart where folks often even write for free.
I agree they don't think they are writing propaganda.
I agree many - including this one - are writing what they believe is "true". I put the word true here in quotes because I agree that they don't consider themselves to be writing falsehoods - but as you've clearly seen, they have zero problem "spinning" the truth in favor of Dems/the left and against GOP / the right. In particular, leaving out things that are unhelpful to the left as a matter of course, not simply out of lack of awareness.
But most "reporters" now - especially younger ones - believe they are social justice activists (whether all would call themselves that or not) fighting the good fight for what they believe in. Which in this case if not explicitly always pro- the Democrat Party *is* most definitely always anti- the Republican Party, doubly/triply so anti-Trump - he is a fascist and the greatest threat to democracy, after all - and anything else explicitly right of center.
And I say this about Politifact even more than the average MSM outlet. It is a politically-oriented so-called "fact checking" mission not to call balls and strikes "fairly", but to help with "the mission."
I'm pretty sure there have even been surveys confirming this fairly substantial change in self-perception of the role of reporters. I will see if I can find any for you.
But at minimum you are of course aware of the 2016 Jim Rutenberg NYC piece about the nature of Trump and the responsibilities of the press to counter him that opened the floodgates for even previously "respectable" journalists signaling that it was not just ok but even a "requirement" to change how they covered all things Trump:
"Higher proportion of migrants does not mean more crime, German institute says" [1]
This news was spread throughout the German and English speaking world.
The original report however said this:
-
Foreigners are overrepresented in the police crime statistics (PKS).1 In 2023, there were 57 foreign suspects for crimes (excluding residence violations) per 1,000 foreign residents. For Germans, however, there were only 19 (see Figure 1). Even after deducting suspects without German residence, the rate of foreign suspects remains almost three times higher. The discrepancy has existed for over a decade - despite declining crime.
The reason for totally misleading headlines is AdTech. Publishers often rely on online ads revenue and it depends on how much impressions each page gets. So there are specialized teams who do experiments with different types of headlines that can fetch more clicks rather than being factual.
This sort of BS news writing might soon be thing of past as we will have AI that can tell us what the news is actually about.
Almost all "news" is written by people who don't understand whatever it is they are writing about.
I had read many examples of media lies, but it took one specific instance to really sink it in. A minor crime story had a map of the SF Bay Area and located "Concord" just east of the southern tip of the Bay, while it is actually 50+ miles north. Printed errors I could at least accept various dubious excuses for. But a map? It was clearly a copy of some real map, full of lots of detail unnecessary to the story, not a hand-drawn cartoon or sketch. How does one move a city 50 miles?
That old saying is true, that you only notice errors when you have personal knowledge of the matter, and assume everything else from the same source must be true, couldn't possibly have errors, they wouldn't do that.
I would describe that as a falsehood but not a lie, since it was not a deliberate attempt to mislead, just a careless error.
That's an interesting distinction. Reminds me of the difference between negligence, recklessness, and intentional as described by a lawyer once.
To a news consumer like me, it's a distinction without a difference.
This was a copied commercial map, and someone deliberately moved the city. Concord's a big city, not some unincorporated town of three trailers; it even has an airport. There might be a perfectly plausible explanation for mistakenly moving the city, but I can't think of any that fit the circumstances.
Is there any reason they would want to move the city? Did it in some way improve the story?
Boy, been a while. 15 years ago? My memory is it was just a short story about some purse snatcher on BART. Don't even remember if they caught the guys or cops chased him. I can't remember the map well enough, but it might have been shrunk vertically to fit the space available, and come to think of it, maybe that explains inadvertently moving it; maybe whoever shrank it saw the name disappear and added it back in. East Bay gets a lot of cultural flack for being a backwater, except for that weird Berserkeley, and if it was the San Jose newspaper, maybe whoever did it didn't know anything about Concord except "East Bay" and slapped the name down where it fit.
They were just adding "geographic diversity" is one explanation. Bad image editing could be another.
Your "Scientists Discover explanation..." reminds me of the phrases, a study proves or even a study shows that cause me to cuss a little under my breath every time I see such.
A study, even many studies may suggest but the number of cases where such show or prove are infinitesimally few and far between. Such are also usually trivial such as, "We counted the pennies in that jar seven times and each time our count came to 736, hence our study proved there were 736 pennies in that jar."
Even in that case if the owner of the jar offered to bet me that there were less than 736 pennies in the jar, I'd think twice or maybe thrice before taking it, depending on the size of the bet. ;-)
Better watch out - you might be turning into me ;-)
This is the sort of stuff I notice and complain about all the time.
That in 2024-2025 you take The Guardian or Politifact remotely seriously as anything other than openly leftist partisans is the bigger surprise.
Though I grant you that the Politifact “reporter” editing her story to dial it back from a -8 on the dishonesty scale to a -6 is mildly interesting.
My guess is that most of the authors of such things don't see themselves as writing partisan propaganda, are reporting what they believe is true. Their bias is in what they believe and what they notice.
And I take my experience with the author as evidence.
The evidence of this is that a lot of people who work at "woke" news agencies like MSNBC move to Fox when offered a higher salary and vice versa. It happens all the time. Also depending on where they work, they get accused of being insanely partisan. In reality a lot of them are just folks struggling to pay bills.
Exceptions appear to be niche media like Reason or BreitBart where folks often even write for free.
I will split the difference with you perhaps.
I agree they don't think they are writing propaganda.
I agree many - including this one - are writing what they believe is "true". I put the word true here in quotes because I agree that they don't consider themselves to be writing falsehoods - but as you've clearly seen, they have zero problem "spinning" the truth in favor of Dems/the left and against GOP / the right. In particular, leaving out things that are unhelpful to the left as a matter of course, not simply out of lack of awareness.
But most "reporters" now - especially younger ones - believe they are social justice activists (whether all would call themselves that or not) fighting the good fight for what they believe in. Which in this case if not explicitly always pro- the Democrat Party *is* most definitely always anti- the Republican Party, doubly/triply so anti-Trump - he is a fascist and the greatest threat to democracy, after all - and anything else explicitly right of center.
And I say this about Politifact even more than the average MSM outlet. It is a politically-oriented so-called "fact checking" mission not to call balls and strikes "fairly", but to help with "the mission."
I'm pretty sure there have even been surveys confirming this fairly substantial change in self-perception of the role of reporters. I will see if I can find any for you.
But at minimum you are of course aware of the 2016 Jim Rutenberg NYC piece about the nature of Trump and the responsibilities of the press to counter him that opened the floodgates for even previously "respectable" journalists signaling that it was not just ok but even a "requirement" to change how they covered all things Trump:
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/08/business/balance-fairness-and-a-proudly-provocative-presidential-candidate.html
Here is an example:
"Higher proportion of migrants does not mean more crime, German institute says" [1]
This news was spread throughout the German and English speaking world.
The original report however said this:
-
Foreigners are overrepresented in the police crime statistics (PKS).1 In 2023, there were 57 foreign suspects for crimes (excluding residence violations) per 1,000 foreign residents. For Germans, however, there were only 19 (see Figure 1). Even after deducting suspects without German residence, the rate of foreign suspects remains almost three times higher. The discrepancy has existed for over a decade - despite declining crime.
- [2]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/higher-proportion-migrants-does-not-mean-more-crime-german-institute-says-2025-02-18/
[2] https://www.emilkirkegaard.com/p/migrant-crime-in-germany-redux
The reason for totally misleading headlines is AdTech. Publishers often rely on online ads revenue and it depends on how much impressions each page gets. So there are specialized teams who do experiments with different types of headlines that can fetch more clicks rather than being factual.
This sort of BS news writing might soon be thing of past as we will have AI that can tell us what the news is actually about.