https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21406260
Comment from a HN thread.
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The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative.
If I were to say:
"2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018."
This a true fact.
If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say
"A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police."
This is also a true fact.
So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more complicated once you start introducing conclusions.
If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when killing civilians."
This is a fact and a conclusion, and most news consists of facts and conclusions. Both the fact and the conclusion serve a particular narrative, and that's an issue. The problem is that a news organization with a different set of objectives, or simply operating under a different framework, would be entirely capable of coming to an entirely different conclusion, or introduce entirely different facts alongside it.
"A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. However, despite making up only 13% of the population, black Americans committed 36% of homicides, with an overall much higher representation in violent crime across the board. Only 5% of police shootings are with an unarmed victim, with the rest resulting from an armed altercation."
Different narrative.
In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that.
Comment from a HN thread.
---
The lowest level of truth telling is stating facts, but even stating facts can be extremely manipulative.
If I were to say:
"2x as many white Americans were killed by police as black Americans in 2018."
This a true fact.
If I take note of the fact that black Americans only constitute 13% of the population, then I can say
"A black American is 2.3x as likely as a white American to be killed by police."
This is also a true fact.
So not only are facts capable of telling a narrative, but it gets much more complicated once you start introducing conclusions.
If you say "A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. American police are being racially discriminatory when killing civilians."
This is a fact and a conclusion, and most news consists of facts and conclusions. Both the fact and the conclusion serve a particular narrative, and that's an issue. The problem is that a news organization with a different set of objectives, or simply operating under a different framework, would be entirely capable of coming to an entirely different conclusion, or introduce entirely different facts alongside it.
"A black person is 2.3x as likely as a white person to be killed by police in America. However, despite making up only 13% of the population, black Americans committed 36% of homicides, with an overall much higher representation in violent crime across the board. Only 5% of police shootings are with an unarmed victim, with the rest resulting from an armed altercation."
Different narrative.
In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that.
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