Spot Journalistic Bias and Manipulation (was Media Bias)

[Meythia]

If there's truly a marked increase in tire and brake wear in EVs, I think the world would have heard about it by now.

This is not as easy to really put into numbers.
Tyrewear is caused by mass. Yes, BEV are heavier than the same ICE car, but at the same time ever more people are buying ever more heavy ICE cars, so even without BEVs on the market it would go this direction.
Brakes not so much, BEVs use engine braking only (magnetic direction reversed), there is no wear as with metal on metal (or whatever fancy stuff some cars are fitted with) to make the rubber go slower.

My personal concern about BEVs is the trend of them looking like bricks (and opinion: ugly bricks!) instead of aiming at a lower wind resistance for efficiency AND that they are also getting ever more heavy or unncessarily powerful to a degree that it only is for show.
Is it really necessary to throw everything out of the windows that once was used to make cars go faster or further just because the juice now costs less or causes less damage?

 

[TheCracker]

My personal concern about BEVs is the trend of them looking like bricks (and opinion: ugly bricks!) instead of aiming at a lower wind resistance for efficiency AND that they are also getting ever more heavy or unncessarily powerful to a degree that it only is for show.
Is it really necessary to throw everything out of the windows that once was used to make cars go faster or further just because the juice now costs less or causes less damage?

There's a direct correlation between giving a BEV a longer range by putting a larger battery in it and seeing an increase in performance. The bigger the battery the longer it can go between charges. That's the metric that's selling BEVs right now whilst range is still seen as a stumbling block. The increase in performance is almost a byproduct of that rather than an aim.

The heavier the car the more wear and tear it places on not just tyres and brakes, but all the eliments of the suspension too. Arms, springs, dampers, uprights, bushings etc. These aren't something someone who buys a (bigger) BEV from new is going to worry about as the likely three years they own it for before trading in for something new is going to be covered by a warranty. But 2nd or 3rd owners are likely going to be facing some sizeable costs at some point during their ownership.

 

[Meythia]

The increase in performance is almost a byproduct of that rather than an aim.

Electric engines dont increase their power output because the battery has a bigger capacity (well, RC cars do rely a bit on how much "power" the battery can deliver).
This is by choice of those developing the car. "It has a bigger battery, so instead of purely making this for range, we want the target audience of petrolheads looking at the speedometer and go WOW" in where WOW is not enough of a word to describe the feeling.

This would be comparing an ICE car with a bigger tank thus a stronger engine, though I guess the main complaint of AMG drivers after all still isnt "this car sips too much fuel" but "the tank is too small".

 

[TheCracker]

Electric engines dont increase their power output because the battery has a bigger capacity (well, RC cars do rely a bit on how much "power" the battery can deliver).
This is by choice of those developing the car. "It has a bigger battery, so instead of purely making this for range, we want the target audience of petrolheads looking at the speedometer and go WOW" in where WOW is not enough of a word to describe the feeling.

This would be comparing an ICE car with a bigger tank thus a stronger engine, though I guess the main complaint of AMG drivers after all still isnt "this car sips too much fuel" but "the tank is too small".

Well it does. Take the Tesla Model 3. The only difference between the standard range (54kWh) and the long range (75kWh) is the battery capacity (and a weight increase of 110kgs) yet the 0-60 drops from 5.3 to 5.0. Its the same with the KIA EV6. The standard range 58kWh hits 60 in 8.5 but that drops to 7.3 in the long range 77kWh version.

 

[Meythia]

Well it does. Take the Tesla Model 3. The only difference between the standard range (54kWh) and the long range (75kWh) is the battery capacity (and a weight increase of 110kgs) yet the 0-60 drops from 5.3 to 5.0. Its the same with the KIA EV6. The standard range 58kWh hits 60 in 8.5 but that drops to 7.3 in the long range 77kWh version.

This is by design, not because the battery magically makes the engine more powerful.
It simply combines a more power engine with the larger capacity (because more affluent buyer doesnt care).
Tesla doesnt tell this on their website, but you can find it on KIA:

Germany listing 3 engine ranges

The small engine will have the small battery, the other 2 engines will have the bigger battery

A bigger capacity doesnt increase power because capacity, that is not the causality behind it.

 

[MatskiMonk]

AND that they are also getting ever more heavy or unncessarily powerful to a degree that it only is for show.

For now.

Currently, at least in the European market, regulations have inadvertently incentivised the building of heavier cars. A manufacturers average vehicle weight being higher has given them higher target levels for emissions - in PHEVs and BEVs this doesn't come with the penalty of higher emissions (at least in regard to testing and targets). This helps them stay under the limits that would trigger hundreds of millions in fines.

 

[Pupik]

This is not as easy to really put into numbers.

I am certainly not dismissing your claim, but that of NY Post's weird claim of "...that brakes and tires on EVs release 1,850 times more particle pollution..." which isn't benchmarked against anything that actually exists. So it's essentially made up to side with the never-EV crowd.

25-30% brake and tire wear is more along lines of what I see in the field. Certainly much more of the overall composition of an EV vehicle could degrade to obsolescence and unusable scrap quicker than an ICE vehicle as well, but I would also admit there's not really enough hard data on that yet. After all, there's a lot more electronic/electrical scrap going on across the recent automotive spectrum.

 

[MIE1992]

Can someone remind me of why I should potentially avoid reading the NY Times? I was reading it lately and it seemed pretty reasonable to me. Granted, my go-to publications are Politico, The Atlantic, and ProPublica, but still.

 

[Danoff]

Can someone remind me of why I should potentially avoid reading the NY Times?

I'm not one to advocate that you avoid reading almost anything, including OAN garbage and whatever conspiracy is circulating on Truth/X right now. It's the right wingers that generally think reading is scary.

But doing so relies on your ability to maintain the context of what you're reading, and that can be challenging - especially when it plays to innate cognitive biases and fears.

My wife subscribes to NYT content, but it has its own bent - one that she herself became familiar with when they interviewed execs in her company about something she worked on. She was furious with them for the way they twisted the facts, selectively quoted from interviews, and left out anything that didn't support the pre-planned concept that they had in mind when they started that article. She still reads their content, as do I, but always knowing that the author's preferences are present and pervasive even in what appears to be a fact-based article. NYT is better at hiding this than, for example, the WSJ, whose readers seem to allow it to get away with a more open degree of bias and fact-twisting.

There is no unbiased source. In order to keep that in mind, it's a good idea to expose yourself to other opinions. It's part of the reason I come here.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I'm not one to advocate that you avoid reading almost anything, including OAN garbage and whatever conspiracy is circulating on Truth/X right now. It's the right wingers that generally think reading is scary.

But doing so relies on your ability to maintain the context of what you're reading, and that can be challenging - especially when it plays to innate cognitive biases and fears.

My wife subscribes to NYT content, but it has its own bent - one that she herself became familiar with when they interviewed execs in her company about something she worked on. She was furious with them for the way they twisted the facts, selectively quoted from interviews, and left out anything that didn't support the pre-planned concept that they had in mind when they started that article. She still reads their content, as do I, but always knowing that the author's preferences are present and pervasive even in what appears to be a fact-based article. NYT is better at hiding this than, for example, the WSJ, whose readers seem to allow it to get away with a more open degree of bias and fact-twisting.

There is no unbiased source. In order to keep that in mind, it's a good idea to expose yourself to other opinions. It's part of the reason I come here.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that journalists try to simplify complex problems into easily digested bits that non-experts can understand. But the inherent problem with that is that complex problems are...complex...and require often a nuanced understanding in order to make meaningful progress on. Sometimes they'll reference the opinion/perspective of an expert in that field...but experts often disagree within their own field.

I remember watching this video a while back about cement in construction:


Its well meaning, but they bring out a guy from a think tank to talk about concrete, rather than a structural engineer or an architect. He basically and dismissively insinuates that architects/engineers use concrete casually or that it's used wastefully. This is a pretty poor understanding of how construction works. Concrete is a material that can do things no other material can and you can use it in such ways to eliminate many other construction materials. You can do an all concrete building in a way you cannot do an all steel or all wood building. I'm all for CLT construction, but the onus is going to be on developers to take the risk and spend the money to do it...it won't be on the architects and engineers. Concrete also ain't cheap, so the suggestion that its a bottom line consideration is also bogus. But this is the only perspective we get in the piece, and I'm sure many Vox readers/listeners will take it at face value, internalize it, and come away with "concrete bad".

With so much content being created on so many topics at basically all times, there is a definite lack of care that go into pieces I believe. If this was a 60 minute piece from the 1990s, for example, it would have been heavily researched and provided a much more balanced/nuanced view of the subject. But there are basically no standards anymore so that kind of dedication only gets put in electively, which I doubt very many do.

 

[Danoff]

I'm sure many Vox readers/listeners will take it at face value, internalize it, and come away with "concrete bad".

Yup. And if you go in with an ulterior motive to show concrete is bad, how hard is it to selectively use details to convince people that it's bad?

I have to say, it's really helpful to get a piece like this on an area that you're an expert in to show you what journalists and content creators will do to it. Because it can be surprising. Likewise, the opposite can be true. You can puff up something terrible by selectively ignoring bits. That's how I felt about space shuttle coverage throughout its years. The space shuttle was seriously wasteful and just a bad idea. But the media was so pro-NASA and pro-science, that they didn't often cover the fact that it was so wasteful. I happened to be working on a space mission to an asteroid that had about a ~$400M budget (that's the whole budget across years) at a time when a shuttle was launched and landed just to check out the heat shielding. That lunch, which accomplished essentially nothing, was $400M. The asteroid mission returned amazing science and imagery. The shuttle mission just returned. This was not covered or discussed (to my memory) in the critical way that it should have been.

Anyway, NYT did a hit piece on my wife's company so bad that we were seeing some pretty nasty stuff on social media, even directed at employees (like her). It was a lot of hate over a charged issue, but one that the public was mislead into. I wish I could go more into it than that, because it was stressful for a moment, until everyone forgot when the next headline came out. I'll always associate NYT with that piece, but they're a useful source of information so I don't cut them off by any stretch.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

I have to say, it's really helpful to get a piece like this on an area that you're an expert in to show you what journalists and content creators will do to it. Because it can be surprising. Likewise, the opposite can be true.

Helpful and...alarming. There is plenty enough stuff that I'm not an expert in that I tend to rely on some forms of journalism to stay somewhat educated on. So who knows what I'm missing.

 

[Pupik]

But the media was so pro-NASA and pro-science, that they didn't often cover the fact that it was so wasteful. I happened to be working on a space mission to an asteroid that had about a ~$400M budget (that's the whole budget across years) at a time when a shuttle was launched and landed just to check out the heat shielding. That lunch, which accomplished essentially nothing, was $400M. The asteroid mission returned amazing science and imagery. The shuttle mission just returned. This was not covered or discussed (to my memory) in the critical way that it should have been.

I know you're much more the expert about this, but I get the idea that the shielding test was so that more astronauts didn't die upon re-entry. Follow that back to the way media and public felt about the Challenger disaster 17 years earlier, and I guess that major media has been generally very pro-NASA; likely because the original 1960's space race drew immediate attention of the public. That kind of attention is great for media companies, but with the types of media we consume today, it probably doesn't have the same impact unless it's a passion, deep interest, or part of a career.

Compare what the public knows about rocket propulsion versus the actual experts, and there's going to be huge knowledge gap.

Part of the problem, I believe, is that journalists try to simplify complex problems into easily digested bits that non-experts can understand. But the inherent problem with that is that complex problems are...complex...and require often a nuanced understanding in order to make meaningful progress on. Sometimes they'll reference the opinion/perspective of an expert in that field...but experts often disagree within their own field.

^ Very much this. It's also tougher for media and sponsors to vet multiple sides of an issue, so I suppose they find the "experts" by relying on other agents to find them and make sure they toe the line.

 

[Danoff]

I know you're much more the expert about this, but I get the idea that the shielding test was so that more astronauts didn't die upon re-entry.

It was. But the mission (I think this was STS-114) was about checking the shuttle to see if the shielding survived launch. The mission cost $400M or so, did essentially zero science, and was just to see if we could bring astronauts back. Meanwhile you can do real actual space missions for $400M.

Shuttle was used to conduct some low earth orbit experiments, some EVAs, some repairs, deliver some supplies. But it did all of it at an exceptionally high price, especially for what it accomplished. Not only was it heavy and inherently unstable on re-entry, it also required lots of labor to re-work heat shielding after each landing. Shielding which ultimately proved too fragile. Basically every shuttle launch was very wasteful and dangerous compared to the lower-tech alternatives.

It was a big spectacle though and looked futuristic.

 

[TheCracker]

To the general public, those that were ultimately funding NASA through their taxes, the shuttle was the future, it was Star Trek the early years. Unmanned missile-shaped rockets that just did their job efficiently were old hat, like something from the 60's, not the altruistic future they were hoping for. It's easier to get public approval for something that's more identifiable as progress then something that's boring but cost-effective.

 

[UKMikey]

A fairly reliable way to spot journalistic bias is to examine the banner and see if it contains the words "daily" and "mail". How it started:

How it's going:

Scripps News retraction regarding Tyson Foods

Scripps News has retracted a story headlined “Tyson Foods wants to hire 52,000 asylum seekers for factory jobs” because it contains serious factual inaccuracies.

scrippsnews.com

Scripps News has retracted a story headlined “Tyson Foods wants to hire 52,000 asylum seekers for factory jobs” because it contains serious factual inaccuracies.

The original, retracted story claimed that the food processing company “wants to hire 52,000 asylum seekers for factory jobs,” but we are unable to verify that number.

In a statement, Tyson Foods says its employees are all “required to be legally authorized to work in this country.”

The company is working with the non-profit group Tent Partnership for Refugees, which seeks to help refugees and migrants integrate into the economy. In 2022, Tyson committed to hiring 2,500 refugees over three years through its partnership with Tent.

Equating a small number of refugees with a flood of illegal immigrants is stock in trade for nativists.

 

[Danoff]

To the general public, those that were ultimately funding NASA through their taxes, the shuttle was the future, it was Star Trek the early years. Unmanned missile-shaped rockets that just did their job efficiently were old hat, like something from the 60's, not the altruistic future they were hoping for. It's easier to get public approval for something that's more identifiable as progress then something that's boring but cost-effective.

That's precisely what happened. I still feel like it should have been reported on (more).

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

That's precisely what happened. I still feel like it should have been reported on (more).

People love a story and the space shuttle was a pretty compelling one. Elon Musk's greatest attribute is his ability to tell stories via engineering and technology. This is not a natural trait for most science & engineering types, IMO.

 

[MatskiMonk]

engineering and technology

That's an unusual way of spelling 'lying his ******* tits off about everything'

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

That's an unusual way of spelling 'lying his ******* tits off about everything'

I blame Cervantes and his god damn captivating Don Quixote.

 

[Pupik]

People love a story and the space shuttle was a pretty compelling one. Elon Musk's greatest attribute is his ability to tell stories via engineering and technology. This is not a natural trait for most science & engineering types, IMO.

Usually there's a pretty good split between "experts" and "storytellers", and the rare ones can blend it together. And that's how I have to look at ways to improve my work: explain the technical side without over-explaining it, and also understanding what the end user needs without being ignorant. Movies have you think experts are the combination of Obi-Wan and the personality of George Clooney, but we're really more like the broken members of The Office.

The problem is he says outrageous crap every so often and I just occasionally mumble out something unintelligible.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

Usually there's a pretty good split between "experts" and "storytellers", and the rare ones can blend it together. And that's how I have to look at ways to improve my work: explain the technical side without over-explaining it, and also understanding what the end user needs without being ignorant. Movies have you think experts are the combination of Obi-Wan and the personality of George Clooney, but we're really more like the broken members of The Office.

The problem is he says outrageous crap every so often and I just occasionally mumble out something unintelligible.

You're exactly right. Elon Musk is not an expert (except at storytelling maybe), but he really really doesn't want people to know that. So what does he do? He never equivocates. Equivocating is, IMO, a natural tendency of true experts because they know enough to know that there are few absolutes. When somebody is pretending to be an expert they lean on absolutes to make themselves sound authoritative which is obviously ******** to actual experts in that field, but sounds really good to the masses.

*Equivocate is maybe not the best word. Somewhere between Equivocate or hedge meaning to give any kind of response that isn't 100% committed.

 

[Pupik]

You're exactly right. Elon Musk is not an expert (except at storytelling maybe), but he really really doesn't want people to know that. So what does he do? He never equivocates. Equivocating is, IMO, a natural tendency of true experts because they know enough to know that there are few absolutes. When somebody is pretending to be an expert they lean on absolutes to make themselves sound authoritative which is obviously ******** to actual experts in that field, but sounds really good to the masses.

*Equivocate is maybe not the best word. Somewhere between Equivocate or hedge meaning to give any kind of response that isn't 100% committed.

That's about right; I have the tendency to say something like:

"It's perfect except if you do this...it will cause an error."

"...is your software faulty?"​

"No, but you can't use a VIN with exactly sixteen digits."

"What if the car is from before 1981?"​

"Then it works...but you might have to manually enter the make and model."

"What was the point of using your software again?"​

"Fact: 99.99% of your customers most assuredly are not bringing in forty-year-old cars to dealerships."

...which would probably make sales facepalm but it's their job to dazzle them, and my job to remove their rose-tinted glasses and instantly improve their vision.

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

That's about right; I have the tendency to say something like:

"It's perfect except if you do this...it will cause an error."

"...is your software faulty?"​

"No, but you can't use a VIN with exactly sixteen digits."

"What if the car is from before 1981?"​

"Then it works...but you might have to manually enter the make and model."

"What was the point of using your software again?"​

"Fact: 99.99% of your customers most assuredly are not bringing in forty-year-old cars to dealerships."

...which would probably make sales facepalm but it's their job to dazzle them, and my job to remove their rose-tinted glasses and instantly improve their vision.

Client: Give me a perfect building
Me: Not likely

 

[Eunos_Cosmo]

NYP feeding the mouth breathers again

Planet Fitness stock plummets after woman’s membership canceled for taking picture of ‘man in women’s locker room shaving’

Planet Fitness saw the valuation of the company’s stock drop this week after an Alaska gym canceled a woman’s membership when she photographed a male using the women’s locker room.

The company’s stock price, which traded at a monthly high of $66.92 on March 7, plummeted to a low of $56.46 on Tuesday.

The price drop followed an incident in which Patricia Silva encountered a “man in women’s locker room shaving.”

I read this first section and thought...this doesn't sound remotely plausible or even logical based on it's own premise. Luckily it's not hard to see stock price trends. Here's Planet Fitnesses:

So if we look at the actual trend, the stock price has been declining since January. It would be very strange to suggest something that happened this week (as in starting March 18th, the day before the highlighted price point) would be the cause of a trend that, as noted in the article itself, started on March 7th, before the event happened. If anything, the stock price has actually gone up this week if you were trying to pry any sort of causality out of this event that honestly nobody cares about.

 

[UKMikey]

Right wing newspaper the Daily Torygraph bears false witness against the UK's state broadcaster, per GB News's political editor:

 

[TexRex]

No charges against LAPD officer whose bullet fatally struck teen in Burlington store, officials say

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was killed by a stray bullet inside a North Hollywood Burlington store while shopping with her mother in December 2021.

www.foxla.com

Officer. Whose. Bullet.

 

[Danoff]

No charges against LAPD officer whose bullet fatally struck teen in Burlington store, officials say

Valentina Orellana-Peralta was killed by a stray bullet inside a North Hollywood Burlington store while shopping with her mother in December 2021.

www.foxla.com

Officer. Whose. Bullet.

I kinda see what they were trying to do - avoid implying that the officer shot the person on purpose. But it's super ambiguous to say "officer whose bullet". "Accidentally shot" is far more clear. "Office whose bullet" almost feels like clickbait. Make sure you click the story to figure out whether it was on purpose! You won't believe what happened!