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Elon Musk has floated the idea of creating Pravda, a web site that would allow users to rate/review the credibility of media organizations and journalists. Pravda Corp. was formed in Delaware and incorporated in California, according to an October 19, 2017 filing. Jared Birchall, a director at Musk's Boring Company, is President of Pravda Corp., and the addresses are identical:
Musk's idea quickly raised concerns that the reputation of news organizations and reporters could be determined by what could be an easy to manipulate online popular vote.
"Elon's next company: Rate My Professor but for Journalists. What a great idea that won't be gamed immediately in extremely predictable ways," Rene DiResta, who researches computation propaganda and is a policy lead at Data For Democracy, wrote on Twitter.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, told CNN such a service might might make sense if it employed a careful methodology and was overseen by an independent journalism foundation.
"It's not a crackpot idea," he said. "The question is why should Elon Musk be the one running it and how trustworthy would it be if he ran it."
Musk has been criticized a lot lately.
Also at The Verge, New Statesman, and The Washington Post.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Monday May 28 2018, @05:10PM (2 children)
Assuming 'they' refers back to 'the Jews' in the prior sentence, that's overgeneralization at best. There's considerable tension and division, and you'll find that some of the sharpest critics of that state have been and are today Jews. On the other hand of course the state does have considerable institutional support by inertia and many positively enraptured supporters, and many of them are Jews of course, but the "evangelical Christians" actually seem to outshine even Jews here, assuming you are talking about the US. Jewish communities are traditionally liberal and current events are sapping support from that quarter, while evangelicals are much more numerous and instead of being turned off by current events they revel in them. Look at Nikki Haley. Certainly not a Jew, and I doubt she has any actual concern for Jews either, but many evangelicals believe in an interpretation of Revelations which has "the Jews" gathered together in the holy land, just before they're all slaughtered and Jesus returns, and you can see how this would motivate a sort of unreasoning and unconditional support.
"But, for most other stuff, they seem to do a pretty good job of covering things based on the facts."
I think you may be exposing a little naïveté there. How often do you fact check them on the other things?
In my experience, every time I've been 'on the ground' for an event and then watched mainstream coverage of it, the coverage has been inaccurate. Every single time.
It doesn't always appear to be bias - there's room for good old fashioned sloppiness, and incompetence, but the more cases I've been able to fact check the media on, the more convinced I am that traditional news sources almost never get anything right.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 28 2018, @05:17PM (1 child)
You're not literate if you don't think that the "they" refers to some sort of organization that engages in reporting. Last I checked, Jews are not known for reporting on various current events.
As far as their accuracy goes, I get my information from numerous sources and what they're covering is generally consistent with what other media outlets are covering. Especially ones that are also not taking corporate money. We don't have time to fact check absolutely everything, which is why critical thinking skills are so important. The news available from NPR is much better than what you see in many other outlets, even if it isn't perfect. For example, the coverage they gave of the great recession was one of the few places that took the time to actually explain what was going on and place appropriate blame on credit default swaps and the ability of corporations to take them out as a wager rather than as insurance on assets they actually owned.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday May 28 2018, @05:26PM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?