We don't need to send balloons over China to see what's going on.
This writer isn't all that bright either "New Jersey has laws that permit the commercial and recreational use of drones." No, NJ doesn't have those laws. The US has those laws regulated by the FAA.
Traditional media outlets are far more reliable than the useless swill swirling around on social media.
I would question that. Community notes in X regularly correct misinformation and bogus drone reports posted there. Also, here on TUG, people are quick to come along and provide correct information. In traditional media the headline story that is later proven wrong is on the front page, the correction is buried on page 10.
I wouldn't trust anything on X for all sorts of reasons, primarily because there's no expectation of any filter before something is posted. Institutional reporting usually tries to validate a story before running it to limit the need for corrections.
I certainly don't trust the photos and videos posted to X. That said, reading the followup replies that debunk them are mostly factual. The problem is that much of what the traditional media is posting is the same stuff I see on X. Also, much of what the traditional media posts is interviews with people who did not have direct sightings. All mostly hearsay. Another problem with traditional media is there is rarely anyone there to provide any additional context. You have to take it at face value. You get only their story.
IMNSHO, there’s zero reports because in the daylight, a) you can’t see the stars, b) you can’t see the navigation lights and anti-collision lights on an airliner thousands of feet up or anything else flying for that manner. c) you probably can’t see a drone more than a couple of 100 yards away and d) people can’t get a picture of anything they might see as a drone anyway.
That's just it. The same stuff is happening during daylight hours, people just aren't seeing it because of all the reasons you mention.
In this case, maybe you can determine that. In most cases, all I could reliably get from something like X is whatever the popular opinion is that the algorithm wants me to see.
This is one thing that I think really has hurt traditional media - the belief that X is newsworthy or that whatever is trending on X should be reported on. If you're a news org that's quoting X on anything other than "what randos think", you're failing. And this certainly shouldn't be a common part of your reporting.
This has always been a problem - I guess it sells papers, but I have no idea why the news orgs felt it made sense to run stories sourced as "My neighbors uncle's friends cousin saw the UFO, yup for reals". The thing is we're comparing it to the online equivalent of a person sitting at a random bar rambling at you.
I don't know what sort of context you'd expect - the entire point of the service is to source news and provide potential experts to give context. If you don't trust them to do that, that's why you watch a couple services to see the consensus or to find out there's actually no consensus. And at least some news stories on like WaPo have comments under them so you can see what others think, and there's entire sections of like reddit, mastadon, probably X etc of people posting news stories and then commenting.
You seem to be under the incorrect assumption that I am relying on X for news. Also realize that many news outlets post their stories to X. I don't know why you think that. My point is in regard only to these "sightings". X is doing a far better job at correcting the misinformation than traditional news.
That’s not the point of the post.
I still recall when we had a major snowstorm when I lived in Raleigh. The weather person kept saying 'little or no accumulation' when there were already 6+ in of snow on the ground. I guess they never looked out the window. The governor said that roads were in great condition and being plowed and showed videos of the area around the capital building. However, many major roads were impassable for days. We were fortunate to live in a new development so the builders used their construction equipment to plow the neighborhood streets.
lol
