Discussion Main / WorstNewsJudgmentEver

That whole Real Life page does come across as very complain-y. I think this trope should be NRLEP.

Speaking as the person who added it, what I did was explain, from a scientific viewpoint, why Climategate is itself politically motivated and completely bogus. If an explanation of the "scandal" from the point of view of a Ph D scientist (meaning the person I got the information from, not myself) is considered politically motivated, then mention of the accusations themselves is as well, since the accusations are about as newsworthy as the accusations that the U.S. government is controlled by shapeshifting aliens.

Removing the Climategate entry.

Removed the Climategate entry again. Gaah, the thing is nothing but natter bait! And if I'm to understand correctly, neither story sounds particularly important.

• Climategate, a scandal that accused several prominent researchers of fraud regarding statistics dealing with climate change, occurred right around the same time as the infamous Tiger Woods incident (fleeing his house and crashing his SUV into a tree after being attacked with a golf club by his wife). Guess which one was mentioned in passing, and which one was analyzed from every angle and perspective in excruciating detail?

  CNN Reporter: President Obama is set to visit Copenhagen. In other news, Tiger Woods...*Switch*

  FOX Reporter: The effects of Climategate and Copenhagen happening so close together may have dire consequences. As for Tiger Woods...*switch*

  MSNBC Reporter: Tiger Woods...

  • Justified in that anyone with a basic understanding of climatology knew the accusations of fraud were laughable. To summarize: global warming denialists (illegally) hacked into a research group's servers and found out that in one researcher mentions in an e-mail that he used a "trick" to "hide the decline", which denialists (and FOX) immediately assumed was proof that the researchers had been lying to the public about increasing temperatures all along. If they'd bothered to read the rest of the e-mails, they'd have known that the researcher was referring not to an actual decline in temperature but to a measured decline in temperature when using tree rings as a meter. Tree rings tend to be larger in warmer years, which allows dendochronologists to estimate the average temperature of the year when the tree ring was formed. This method has broken down in recent years as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and a variety of other factors resulting from that shift. Tree rings are getting smaller (the "decline" referred to in the e-mail), while thermometers show that the planet is getting warmer. The "trick" referred to was incorporating data from other sources into the researcher's measurements, which was blown out of proportion in the media. Ignoring "Climategate" was not Worst News Judgement Ever, though focusing on Tiger Woods instead of any other news story was.
    • If the tree ring metric has broken down in recent years, it isn't valid. Therefore, all the tree ring data must be discarded. Attempting to conceal that fact to get research grants is fraud.
      • I wonder if this sums up sufficiently the conduct of the above troper.
      • Or, it's not valid in recent years, and is valid in other years. Furthermore, publishing a result in Nature, one of the world's most prestigious science journals, probably doesn't constitute concealment of that result.
    • More to the point, the climatologists are on record of staying the validity of the evidence isn't important, but getting the message out over the deniers is. That's the statement that's chilling, that they are so right and the deniers so wrong that there can not be legitimate scientific doubt or discussion because some people might not be convinced. That thus leads many people to doubt far more of the data when it shows what some climatologists think must be done with bad data.
      • Out of curiosity, who are the climatologists saying those things and is there reason to believe that the climatologists in general share such sentiment? Also, is the above troper sure that the climatologist(s) in question didn't mean that the challenge is not getting valid evidence but getting people to believe that man-made global warming is serious problem (In the sense that it is difficult to get people to believe despite there being notable amount of valid evidence)?  ^*
        ^{Besides, it can be yet another form of Double Standard to hold the behavior of some individual climatologists against climatologists in general while refusing to hold the behavior of people like Michael Crichton and Martin Durkin against climate sceptics in general.}
  • Over in sunny Australia, this troper was watching the news headlines on tv of an evening. The news for that day concerned a bombing, a serious and important event, another slightly less serious and important event, and Tiger's press conference about his return to golf. They ran in this order: Tiger, semi-serious & important event, serious and important event, bombing. You could almost say that they were doing a countdown to that day's most important news article!
  • The same happened with his return to golf, which was second or even first priority on the news. Wonderfully parodied by Private Eye, who ran the headline "Man Who Plays Golf Plays Golf".

I note the last two seem much more legitimate, though, if separated from the whole Climategate brouhaha. Feel free to place them back in.

Removed the Climategate entry again. Gaah, the thing is nothing but natter bait! And if I'm to understand correctly, neither story sounds particularly important.

• Climategate, a scandal that accused several prominent researchers of fraud regarding statistics dealing with climate change, occurred right around the same time as the infamous Tiger Woods incident (fleeing his house and crashing his SUV into a tree after being attacked with a golf club by his wife). Guess which one was mentioned in passing, and which one was analyzed from every angle and perspective in excruciating detail?

  CNN Reporter: President Obama is set to visit Copenhagen. In other news, Tiger Woods...*Switch*

  FOX Reporter: The effects of Climategate and Copenhagen happening so close together may have dire consequences. As for Tiger Woods...*switch*

  MSNBC Reporter: Tiger Woods...

  • Justified in that anyone with a basic understanding of climatology knew the accusations of fraud were laughable. To summarize: global warming denialists (illegally) hacked into a research group's servers and found out that in one researcher mentions in an e-mail that he used a "trick" to "hide the decline", which denialists (and FOX) immediately assumed was proof that the researchers had been lying to the public about increasing temperatures all along. If they'd bothered to read the rest of the e-mails, they'd have known that the researcher was referring not to an actual decline in temperature but to a measured decline in temperature when using tree rings as a meter. Tree rings tend to be larger in warmer years, which allows dendochronologists to estimate the average temperature of the year when the tree ring was formed. This method has broken down in recent years as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere and a variety of other factors resulting from that shift. Tree rings are getting smaller (the "decline" referred to in the e-mail), while thermometers show that the planet is getting warmer. The "trick" referred to was incorporating data from other sources into the researcher's measurements, which was blown out of proportion in the media. Ignoring "Climategate" was not Worst News Judgement Ever, though focusing on Tiger Woods instead of any other news story was.
    • If the tree ring metric has broken down in recent years, it isn't valid. Therefore, all the tree ring data must be discarded. Attempting to conceal that fact to get research grants is fraud.
      • I wonder if this sums up sufficiently the conduct of the above troper.
      • Or, it's not valid in recent years, and is valid in other years. Furthermore, publishing a result in Nature, one of the world's most prestigious science journals, probably doesn't constitute concealment of that result.
    • More to the point, the climatologists are on record of staying the validity of the evidence isn't important, but getting the message out over the deniers is. That's the statement that's chilling, that they are so right and the deniers so wrong that there can not be legitimate scientific doubt or discussion because some people might not be convinced. That thus leads many people to doubt far more of the data when it shows what some climatologists think must be done with bad data.
      • Out of curiosity, who are the climatologists saying those things and is there reason to believe that the climatologists in general share such sentiment? Also, is the above troper sure that the climatologist(s) in question didn't mean that the challenge is not getting valid evidence but getting people to believe that man-made global warming is serious problem (In the sense that it is difficult to get people to believe despite there being notable amount of valid evidence)?  ^*
        ^{Besides, it can be yet another form of Double Standard to hold the behavior of some individual climatologists against climatologists in general while refusing to hold the behavior of people like Michael Crichton and Martin Durkin against climate sceptics in general.}
  • Over in sunny Australia, this troper was watching the news headlines on tv of an evening. The news for that day concerned a bombing, a serious and important event, another slightly less serious and important event, and Tiger's press conference about his return to golf. They ran in this order: Tiger, semi-serious & important event, serious and important event, bombing. You could almost say that they were doing a countdown to that day's most important news article!
  • The same happened with his return to golf, which was second or even first priority on the news. Wonderfully parodied by Private Eye, who ran the headline "Man Who Plays Golf Plays Golf".

I note the last two seem much more legitimate, though, if separated from the whole Climategate brouhaha. Feel free to place them back in.

Alright, LET'S INCLUDE IT AS AN ALLEGATION. NO MORE.

This is not a climate science board. Nor is it a political board. It is an example of celebrity news overshadowing allegations of trillion-dollar fraud. The details and guilt are best left elsewhere.

Ignoring Climategate above, I wouldn't say it's all that subjective. It's a well-known situation where who some celebrity has been sleeping with tends to get better billing than disasters killing hundreds on the other side of the globe.

Still, could use a pruning, and I wouldn't be completely set against removing all Real Life examples. Perhaps with a single blurb how celebrity news tends to overshadow real news.

Ignoring Climategate above, I wouldn't say it's all that subjective. It's a well-known situation where who some celebrity has been sleeping with tends to get better billing than disasters killing hundreds on the other side of the globe.

Still, could use a pruning, and I wouldn't be completely set against removing all Real Life examples. Perhaps with a single blurb how celebrity news tends to overshadow real news.

I could be for this. Perhaps adding something to the end of the article such as "This is Truth in Telivision, as people seem to be more interested in celebrity gossip and juicy scandals than world news and serious political coverage" or "Truth in Television, as public interest doesn't always line up with the most serious stories of the day."

A Real Life section could work, but if it is to be kept, then I think we need to set some definite boundaries for what would be acceptable for people to add. The reason I originally deleted the section was because it was degenerating into Complaining About News Outlets/Anchors You Don't Like and because it was attracting natter.

The first three examples in the Real Life folder at the moment are alright, but the one about Yahoo is uncomfortably close to Complaining. I'd remove it, but I'd like some input on whether it and similar additions could be usable examples if tweaked properly, to keep from deleting valid edits.

We definitely need the "Cautious judgement" tag, especially on controversial issues.

For example, when mentioning Climategate being overshadowed by Tiger Woods, state that it was an allegation, but don't talk about whether or not the allegations were true or not because there are still arguments and allegations of whitewash "investigations". This isn't the place for that sort of nonsense.

Found it.

http://www.nypost.com/archives/covers/?dateChosen=12312011

Compounding things is the blurb on the bottom. Yes, Derek Jeter's new girlfriend warrants a blurb on the front page. I know he's worshiped like a god in New York, but seriously.

If that isn't the Most Triumphant Example of this trope in Real Life, I don't know what is.

The Real Life examples on this page are touchy enough without making the page image at the top an actual Real Life example. Keeping a humorous fictional example there is less likely to piss people off.

Do my recent additions concerning Anna Chapman, the Russian spy count as this, or are they actually newsworthy?