"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. Once everybody has been given the true facts - which we can do in a totally objective, unbiased way - then we can freely debate how to interpret those facts."
He made (at least part of) his point in this piece. It isn't "the media never lies therefore you can totally trust them." His point is "honesty is a gradient such that it's possible to be partially dishonest but not outright lying. Dishonesty in the media is subtle and ambiguous. This makes it impossible to make unambiguous censorship rules which are both effective at handling misinformation and impossible to abuse".
The media is dishonest in subtle ways without lying, therefore preventing misinformation is much harder than simply censoring/punishing lies. But censoring/punishing editorializing probably goes too far and prohibits any meaningful discourse beyond bare bones fact reporting.
prohibits any meaningful discourse beyond bare bones fact reporting.
This would be a problem... if there were any meaningful discourse occuring in the mainstream media.
Do you see such discourse taking place? Where?
But yes, the point that you can't readily sort objective truth out of the current information environment and then force all media to conform to such truth is quite accurate.
My point is that Scott is being charitable in saying the media "almost never lies" whereas I would say "the media lies constantly but has evolved to lie in ways that they won't be punished for."
And because they aren't punished in the slightest for these lies, they continue to espouse them, in an incredibly systematic way.
I think this is just a disagreement of semantics: you and he are using slightly different definitions for the word "lie". You are using it to include any form of dishonesty, or at least the forms the media uses, while Scott is using it to mean literal false statements of fact which are objectively disprovable.
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Notes -
He made (at least part of) his point in this piece. It isn't "the media never lies therefore you can totally trust them." His point is "honesty is a gradient such that it's possible to be partially dishonest but not outright lying. Dishonesty in the media is subtle and ambiguous. This makes it impossible to make unambiguous censorship rules which are both effective at handling misinformation and impossible to abuse".
The media is dishonest in subtle ways without lying, therefore preventing misinformation is much harder than simply censoring/punishing lies. But censoring/punishing editorializing probably goes too far and prohibits any meaningful discourse beyond bare bones fact reporting.
This would be a problem... if there were any meaningful discourse occuring in the mainstream media.
Do you see such discourse taking place? Where?
But yes, the point that you can't readily sort objective truth out of the current information environment and then force all media to conform to such truth is quite accurate.
My point is that Scott is being charitable in saying the media "almost never lies" whereas I would say "the media lies constantly but has evolved to lie in ways that they won't be punished for."
And because they aren't punished in the slightest for these lies, they continue to espouse them, in an incredibly systematic way.
I think this is just a disagreement of semantics: you and he are using slightly different definitions for the word "lie". You are using it to include any form of dishonesty, or at least the forms the media uses, while Scott is using it to mean literal false statements of fact which are objectively disprovable.
Yes, and as per my initial comment, it'd be nice if he had explicitly laid out his definition of 'lie.'
That's the missing context I'd really like to be added in.
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