Talking to Media
https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/hidden-open-thread-2615/comment/12535832
No, the Time article doesn’t shift my priors at all. And that’s an intentional stance and I think a fairly defensible one. Basically, it’s rationally ignorant to ignore news stories because it’s not that they’re always wrong, it’s that they’re always this mismash of truth and falsity, mixed together with far more regard to making a good story than accurately communicating what occurred, and it’s not worth the time and effort to learn the skills to accurately glean useful information from news reporting, both in the general skills and in the specific followup investigation you need for each story. It’s way, way easier and more sensible to just ignore the news in general.
So, allow me to be incredibly generous to journalists. Imagine for a second that a Time’s news reporter had reached out to…let’s say the California Board of Accountancy. Their readers are concerned about improper or criminal behavior by accountants and the Time’s reporter reaches out to find out how many accountants are doing illegal stuff in California. This is just intrinsically a difficult question and the reason good media people get paid money is they recognize and maneuver around that. I guarantee that department has tons of enforcement actions which are just slaps on the wrist because nobody can comply with every single regulation but they basically just messed up some paperwork, there’s a chunk where the accountant behaved badly but still has a suspended or limited license, a chunk where their license was revoked but they weren’t criminally charged, and a subset so egregious that their investigators forwarded the matter to a local DA for criminal prosecutions. It kinda doesn’t matter what number you give the reporter, the reporter doesn’t even know for sure which number they want because it’s not clear which of those definitions is of most interest/relevance for their audience. This relatively simple question requires a serious conversation. And it’s very, very easy to give the wrong number, or for the reporter to misunderstand what the number represents (for example, license revocations do not always lead to criminal prosecutions but may lead to a trial before an administrative law judge, but it’s very easy to assume that trials before judges mean someone was accused of a crime) or…any of a dozen problems. Like, accurate communication of complex information is hard.
And that’s without any of the complications of young women, frightened and excited, discussing very complex situations over multiple years in a very “unique” community with a lot of confusing context. Frankly, given what I’ve seen of reporters in situations like the one above, with all the help various groups provide, I cannot possibly imagine a reporter getting this story right, with all the complexity and ambiguity and context, for 30 different people.
Especially when, again to be generous, when the business and professional structures of journalism are so difficult. A Time’s reporter makes $50-$60k/year (1) in an incredibly competitive market, defending their spot at the top of their profession, in an industry that demands clicks. Even if every journalist was firmly committed to the truth, they need to navigate the demands of a frankly, very demanding and difficult profession and maneuver their personal commitment to truth and accuracy against a host of competing business and financial demands. Every hour spent confirming the accuracy of information is an hour not writing another story or making this one “catchier”. People do the best they can within the constraints around them.
So, to be fanatically charitable, even if you love every journalist, the financial demands of their profession, the difficulties of accurately communicating very complex topics, and their overall poor record of accuracy lead to a situation where you should approach all their reporting with profound skepticism. And, frankly, I can count on one hand the number of reporters who got Iraq and Russiagate right. That’s not a personal problem, that’s a structural problem. And, structurally, there’s just too many way news reporting can and does go wrong for me to trust it.
Yes, I’m reasonably certain that the news media maliciously hates me and everyone like me, your suspicions are valid, but there’s nothing magical about the news. At the end of the day, you just have one underpaid reporter doing their best to summarize incredibly complex situations where they’d like to get it right but it must get clicks or they’ll be working at the McDonalds.
This is also why, if you’re contacted by the media, even if you really like them, I strongly encourage you to seek professional advice and set aside significant time to prepare. Even with the best of intentions, I think you dramatically underestimate how hard it is to communicate these things and how much work you will have to do. I suspect, but don’t know, that a lot of “civilian” interviewees just show up to interviews expecting the reporter to run the whole thing while I suspect, with only limited knowledge, that most professionals spend more time preparing and prepping for an interview than the media reporter. It is really, really easy for a reporter to hear something you didn’t say, in the sense that “I don’t know what you said and what I heard was X”. (2)
(1) https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/TIME-Staff-Writer-Salaries-E1983476_D_KO5,17.htm
(2) For the record, I have never worked for the CA Board of Accountancy in any capacity.