If someone writes about things they think will happen, but those things never materialize, they shouldn’t just get to brush it under the rug and act like they never said it. You’ve made millions of people worried over literally nothing. That should come with reputational consequences - not just for the journalist, but also for the platform that amplified their speculation.
Now obviously, there are things worth writing about even when many unknowns remain. But in those cases, acknowledge the uncertainty - lay out the improbable worst-case scenario, the more likely outcome, and the possibility that the whole issue might just fade away. Just don’t present speculation as certainty when you can’t possibly know, or if you do then own it.
Thinking about this from a technical standpoint, it would be interesting and useful if the platforms that host online articles provided some mechanisms to (1) explicitly recognize when an article is making predictions and (2) allow/remind the author or readers to follow-up and rate the accuracy of the predictions over time. This would allow all sorts of meta analysis on the accuracy of a particular author’s predictions, on particular types of predictions, on trends in positive or negative predictions, etc.
That should come with reputational consequences - not just for the journalist, but also for the platform that amplified their speculation
This is already true though? At least for respectable sources.
Anyway reputation is socially enforced. You can’t make a law about it
Assuming you mean laws (which is what you seem to be insinuating without daring to say it), this is an absolutely terrible take.
Laws to make journalism “accountable” are at the top of every authoritarian government’s wishlist. In Russia, you get 15 years for publishing “knowingly false information” about the armed forces (where the meaning of “false” is decided by the prosecutor). Since Trump debased this concept of “fake news”, authoritarian regimes around the world have used it as a pretext for new laws.
In China, meanwhile, journalists are not even allowed to “undermine national harmony” and similar nebulous ideals. Even in Britain, the libel laws are so tough that it can be very expensive to make even a small mistake when talking about individual rich people. The Trump administration is pushing for a British-style libel laws in the US.
The end result of making journalism “accountable” is to shut up all opposition to power. That is a very dangerous road to go down.
No, I’m not talking about a law. If I did I would’ve said so.
Your argument seems a bit redundant then. Journalists and news platforms are already “held accountable” when they get things wrong: their reputations suffer.
I’ve been saying this for years. News is news, but media is media. And just like the difference between an artistic nude and pornography, you know what it is when you see it.
I don’t think that news organizations should be allowed to broadcast Propaganda media without consequence, At the very least, they should be required to be transparent when they are not reporting what they believe to be factual truth.
Yeah, I just don’t know how society would go about enforcing this. I feel like there should be some kind of “This We Were Wrong About” tab or a way to look up individual journalists and see their track record. That way, if someone makes big claims, you could check whether they have a history of doing so and what their success rate has been.
It would work both ways too - if someone frequently makes bold predictions but has been right many times before, maybe their views should carry more weight.
I don’t know about this, but I’ll settle for accountability on facts. Seems like we have a long way to go still.
