<story><title>It could cost $21B to clean up California’s oil sites, study finds</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/cost-of-california-oil-cleanup-exceeds-industry-profits</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>readams</author><text>The secret here is they only investigate the things that support their narrative. In this article they actually explicitly stated they&amp;#x27;re looking to cover a specific list of negative things associated with the industry. They would not, for example, publish an article about how much lower our standard of living would be without the industry. Or to attempt to weigh the positives adjust the negatives of the industry.&lt;p&gt;So you can always publish &amp;quot;gold standard&amp;quot; journalism and yet still present a distorted version of the truth.</text></item><item><author>kieselguhr_kid</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no such thing as neutral and you shouldn&amp;#x27;t treat any journalists as such. I don&amp;#x27;t know if their viewpoint is relevant here though; the question is about their ability to verify a factual assertion.</text></item><item><author>readams</author><text>ProPublica definitely has a viewpoint though and I would not recommend treating them as neutral.</text></item><item><author>hedora</author><text>As journalists go, Propublica (and their data science team) is the gold standard for verifying such things before going to press.</text></item><item><author>kortilla</author><text>How accurate are these costs? This was commissioned by an anti-fossil fuel policy organization and despite taking some feedback from industry, they have a huge bias that perfectly aligns the incentives for them to grossly exaggerate the figures.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>viraptor</author><text>So you can get information from multiple well researched sources. This is one of them. Don&amp;#x27;t expect anyone to do all the work.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;re not publishing full investigative journalism articles on absolutely everything.&amp;quot; is not a valid criticism of your article, or a reasonable criticism of the publisher.</text></comment>
<story><title>It could cost $21B to clean up California’s oil sites, study finds</title><url>https://www.propublica.org/article/cost-of-california-oil-cleanup-exceeds-industry-profits</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>readams</author><text>The secret here is they only investigate the things that support their narrative. In this article they actually explicitly stated they&amp;#x27;re looking to cover a specific list of negative things associated with the industry. They would not, for example, publish an article about how much lower our standard of living would be without the industry. Or to attempt to weigh the positives adjust the negatives of the industry.&lt;p&gt;So you can always publish &amp;quot;gold standard&amp;quot; journalism and yet still present a distorted version of the truth.</text></item><item><author>kieselguhr_kid</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s no such thing as neutral and you shouldn&amp;#x27;t treat any journalists as such. I don&amp;#x27;t know if their viewpoint is relevant here though; the question is about their ability to verify a factual assertion.</text></item><item><author>readams</author><text>ProPublica definitely has a viewpoint though and I would not recommend treating them as neutral.</text></item><item><author>hedora</author><text>As journalists go, Propublica (and their data science team) is the gold standard for verifying such things before going to press.</text></item><item><author>kortilla</author><text>How accurate are these costs? This was commissioned by an anti-fossil fuel policy organization and despite taking some feedback from industry, they have a huge bias that perfectly aligns the incentives for them to grossly exaggerate the figures.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>emodendroket</author><text>I feel that the &amp;quot;pro-&amp;quot;extractive industry side of things has so much obvious monetary incentive behind it that it isn&amp;#x27;t really necessary to worry about independent reporters not adequately presenting it.</text></comment>