I have done this twice. One journalist was happy to accept responsibility and I gave them a quote, another wasn’t and I didn’t.
This makes it sound like it’s the decision of the journalist you are talking to whether or not they are responsible for their headlines. Some outlets have an editorial policy where the journalist has a say in the headline and other don’t. Historically, the person setting the page was supposed to choose the headline as they know how much space there’s for the headline on the page.
Wouldn’t it be better to use a standard that’s actually in control of the journalist you are speaking to when deciding whether to speak with them?
This bit that precedes that suggests that he holds them responsible for their choice of outlet to work for:
jobs in journalism are hard to come by, but many of you are clever, hard working, insightful individuals. You have other options. … No one forced you to do this. If you choose to, it’s on you.
And I agree with this. The headline is part of the article, much like an abstract is part of the paper.
There are many differences between outlets. I don’t think that control over the headline should be the primary concern of a journalist who cares about informing their readers. It’s just one factor of many.
I don’t think that’s the case, because the journalist you are speaking to is not the person who’s makes the decision.
At the moment you have some person who’s trained to write headlines so that the headlines get a maximum of clicks and who writes headlines for a lot of articles.
If the management of the New York Times has to decide whether they are willing to get 20% less clicks on social media when they let a journalists instead of their current headline writers write the headlines, just so that people on LessWrong are more willing to give the New York Times interviews, I don’t think that will change their management decisions.
Shaming the New York Times for misinformation might work better. You could write a bot for X and Threads, that uses an LLM for every New York Times article to judge whether the headline is misleading and then write a tweet for each misleading New York Times headline. Such a project could hurt the reputation of the New York Times among their audience, which is something they actually care about.
What makes you think that journalists have more latitude to influence headlines in a way where they could take responsibility for the headline if they work at an outlet where journalists generally don’t write headlines but headlines are written by people who are better trained at writing headlines that get clicked a lot?
If your goal is to influence journalists to write better headlines, then it matters whether the journalist has the ability to take responsibility over headlines.
If your goal is to stop journalists from misrepresenting you, then it doesn’t actually matter whether the journalist has the ability to take responsibility, all that matters is whether they do take responsibility.
If the journalist accurately represents my position in the text of the article I would already see that as a win in most of the media interviews (I have given a bunch but it was a decade ago).
This makes it sound like it’s the decision of the journalist you are talking to whether or not they are responsible for their headlines. Some outlets have an editorial policy where the journalist has a say in the headline and other don’t. Historically, the person setting the page was supposed to choose the headline as they know how much space there’s for the headline on the page.
Wouldn’t it be better to use a standard that’s actually in control of the journalist you are speaking to when deciding whether to speak with them?
This bit that precedes that suggests that he holds them responsible for their choice of outlet to work for:
And I agree with this. The headline is part of the article, much like an abstract is part of the paper.
There are many differences between outlets. I don’t think that control over the headline should be the primary concern of a journalist who cares about informing their readers. It’s just one factor of many.
I exert influence where I can. I think if all of LessWrong took up this norm we could shift the headline-content accuracy gap.
I don’t think that’s the case, because the journalist you are speaking to is not the person who’s makes the decision.
At the moment you have some person who’s trained to write headlines so that the headlines get a maximum of clicks and who writes headlines for a lot of articles.
If the management of the New York Times has to decide whether they are willing to get 20% less clicks on social media when they let a journalists instead of their current headline writers write the headlines, just so that people on LessWrong are more willing to give the New York Times interviews, I don’t think that will change their management decisions.
Shaming the New York Times for misinformation might work better. You could write a bot for X and Threads, that uses an LLM for every New York Times article to judge whether the headline is misleading and then write a tweet for each misleading New York Times headline. Such a project could hurt the reputation of the New York Times among their audience, which is something they actually care about.
I think this is incorrect. I imagine journalists have more latitude to influence headlines when they arelly care.
It’s a bit dated but https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/40251/196 gives you some overview over the state of affairs from 2017.
What makes you think that journalists have more latitude to influence headlines in a way where they could take responsibility for the headline if they work at an outlet where journalists generally don’t write headlines but headlines are written by people who are better trained at writing headlines that get clicked a lot?
If your goal is to influence journalists to write better headlines, then it matters whether the journalist has the ability to take responsibility over headlines.
If your goal is to stop journalists from misrepresenting you, then it doesn’t actually matter whether the journalist has the ability to take responsibility, all that matters is whether they do take responsibility.
If the journalist accurately represents my position in the text of the article I would already see that as a win in most of the media interviews (I have given a bunch but it was a decade ago).