(2022-12-22) Alexander The Media Very Rarely Lies

Scott Alexander: The Media Very Rarely Lies. When the media misinforms people, it does so by misinterpreting things, excluding context, or signal-boosting some events while ignoring others, not by participating in some bright-line category called “misinformation”.

if you disagree with this, it might be worth looking through the front page of www.infowars.com and calculating what percent of the articles seem technically-true-but-misleading vs. completely-made-up. I tried this and had trouble finding the latter, but your experience might differ

So Infowars often provides accurate data, but interprets it incorrectly, without necessary context. They’re not alone in this; it’s much like how the New York Times reports on real child EEG data but interprets it incorrectly, or how Scientific American reports real data on women in STEM but interprets it incorrectly, etc. This doesn’t mean these establishment papers are exactly as bad as Infowars; just that when they do err, it’s by committing a more venial version of the same sin Infowars commits

I criticized this story - repeated by Mic, New Republic, and the Washington Post - saying that only 0.01% of welfare users tested positive for drugs... None of the stories mentioned that the “test” was just asking the welfare recipients whether they were taking drugs

Or consider this New York Times article (which I’ve also criticized before): Free Market For Education: Economists Don’t Buy It. It said that only 36% of economists on a survey supported school vouchers - and if even economists don’t support a free market policy, surely that policy must be very stupid indeed. Not mentioned in the article: only 19% of economists in the same survey opposed school vouchers. The majority described themselves as uncertain

Why do I care if it misinforms them by lying, or by misinterpreting things and taking them out of context? I care because there’s a lazy argument for censorship which goes: don’t worry, we’re not going to censor honest disagreement. We just want to do you a favor by getting rid of misinformation, liars saying completely false things.

nobody will ever agree what context is necessary and which context is redundant.

this is honest disagreement - exactly the sort of disagreement that needs to be resolved by the marketplace of ideas, rather than by there being some easy objective definition of “enough context” which a censor can interpret mechanically in some fair, value-neutral way.

Sorry, I Still Think I Am Right About The Media Very Rarely Lying

Some commenters weren’t on board with this thesis, and proposed many counterexamples - articles where they thought the media really was just making things up. I was surprised to see that all their counterexamples seemed, to me, like the media signal-boosting true facts in a misleading way without making anything up at all.

1: 2020 Stolen Election

2: The COVID Vaccine Killing People

3: COVID Is Less Deadly Than The Flu

4: Alex Jones’ Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theory

this is a judgment call on my part (an obviously correct judgment call, but a judgment call nevertheless).

5: Obama Birth Certificate

The Infowars people are conspiracy theorists, so they think Adobe Illustrator artifacts and weird white borders are enough evidence to point to a plot. I think they’re dumb and paranoid. But they’re not lying!

6: Scalia And Secret Societies

7: Iraqi Chemical Weapons

This is yet another good example of how the media deceives people without making anything up.

8: Russians Running Out Of Missiles

9: …And So On

Censorship proponents imagine a world where “good sources” are doing something fundamentally different from “bad sources”; the good sources are going out in the world and reporting true facts, the bad sources are just making things up. In this world, you can censor mechanically, without needing to consult your own opinions. But this is a false hope.

I think a lot of people will interrupt at this point and say “No, those people are, not just failing honestly!” But Confirmation Bias Is Just A Misfire Of Normal Bayesian Reasoning, and Motivated Reasoning Is Just Mis-Applied Reinforcement Learning. It’s all just gears turning in the brain, sometimes smoothly, sometimes getting jammed up, but gears nonetheless

Most people are just trying to reason under uncertainty. And failing, terribly.