> "These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had access to so much knowledge, and yet been so resistant to learning anything."

- Tom Nichols, The Death of Expertise

Worth pointing out that Tom Nichols himself supported the Iraq War (and the Republican party and all of its warmongering until just a few years ago)

A lot of people supported the Iraq War, in the belief that experts supported it. It took something that was effectively a top-level government conspiracy to cover up the fact that the actual experts disagreed.

It wasn't a complete suppression of the facts, but an awful lot of genuine experts were manipulated into saying things that were misleading.

So I could pardon that particular mistake, at least a little. But I hold it against him for not recognizing where this manipulation was coming from, for well over a decade after it was blindingly obvious.

Demanding the conflation of opinion with expert instruction is one reason why Media is in terminal decline.

A large part of credibility in expertise is the ability to naturally lead. People tend to follow who reads as credible. If someone doesn't read as such, it isn't the fault their missing audience.

If they are credible and yet lack the ability to communicate that, I'd suggest that's both rare in-practice but would be a dire skill issue. Examining what is wrong with them and why better people aren't employed would be the logical next step.

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

To your context, it simply means you havent seen bias in the facts, but dont evaluate the completeness thereof.

Pretending that facts cannot be manipulated is fundamental to propaganda, regardless of color. A big discussion of facts, experts and opinions is a way to escape addressing the ubiquitous propaganda problem.

Not the point. Which facts you report is a bias. One can be completely factual yet only publish limited info.

This specifically is what wikileaks did in 2016 against the DNC.

So unless you scour the internet for each topic, the full bias isnt obvious.

> One can be completely factual yet only publish limited info.

This is part of what I had in mind, selective reporting of facts is a method of fact manipulation, statistical gaming is another.

> So unless you scour the internet for each topic, the full bias isnt obvious.

Bias on a mass scale is a tool of propaganda, and it cannot be dealt with, if it isn't understood as such.

That’s very dismissive of the person you’re replying to.

Sure, its an opinion with no facts about fact based assessment. Assuming this person is an unbiased observer and a well prescient one would be a mistake.

Journalists should have realised a long time ago that their opinions are a commodity, and they will destroy their entire industry by focusing on opinions and not on on-the-ground reporting. But they doubled down, and decided to be as opinionated as possible. Of course this was tempting, because emotional propaganda gets more clicks.

But I think there would still be a market for a 1990s BBC style on the ground, completely opinion free reporting, and someone could fill this niche because a lot of people WOULD actually pay for this. But it would take a big investment and it's a big risk.

If no-one cared about opinions you would be fine with having just one newspaper that writes down the bare facts. The whole appeal of people paying for media is because they value the opinions on top of the facts that should ideally come from relevant experience/knowledge.

News publishers saw that they needed to differentiate to retain market share. If theyre just reporting news why wouldn't everyone just switch to the AP or reuters?

> But I think there would still be a market for a 1990s BBC style on the ground, completely opinion free reporting, and someone could fill this niche because a lot of people WOULD actually pay for this. But it would take a big investment and it's a big risk.

AP and reuters are still doing this today

"They"? Assuming you mean shareholders, publishers, editors. Not the rank & file journalists, right?

(I have no idea how to describe, categorize most (opinion) columnists. Vishy? Quislings? Judas goats? Gossip columnists?)

The problem is that opinions are way cheaper.

Look at the article currently promoted at the top of Post opinion page: "Trump is off to a good start with an AI action plan" https://archive.is/ERCme

Regardless of what you think of the quality of that opinion, it took very little effort to make.

Compare the sources they used to the work it would take go out on the ground and do novel research:

- Their own news article about it (itself based on press releases and an off-the-record comment that obviously would have come from someone in the White House press office assigned to promote the press release)

- Their own past opinion pieces

- Reuters.com

- WhiteHouse.gov

- Online govt statistics

- CNN.com

- NeurIPS' blog

- Columbia Business School blog

- Matthew Yglesias' blog

- Greg Lukanioff's blog

I could have found those sources based on vague memories of tweets I've seen by following journalists on Bluesky and a few hours of googling. I suspect they did the same, except they used X instead.

Opinions are like assholes, except that opinion sections of major newspapers don't include toilet paper unless you count their own sandpaper-like periodical.