At The Money: Filtering Noisy News

Summary

Masters in Business: At The Money

Episode Title: Filtering Noisy News
Host: Barry Ritholtz (Bloomberg)
Guest: Michael Hiltzik (Pulitzer Prize-winning business reporter, LA Times)
Date: September 17, 2025

---

Brief Overview

In this episode, Barry Ritholtz discusses with veteran journalist Michael Hiltzik the overwhelming amount of noisy, often unreliable information investors face daily—and how to filter through it. They tackle topics like identifying credible sources, recognizing bias, the pitfalls of anecdotes versus data, social media noise, and the growing challenge of AI-generated “news.” The conversation is a masterclass for anyone seeking to make smarter, more informed investment decisions in a world awash with dubious narratives.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Sea of Noisy Information

• The Modern Challenge:
  Investors now face relentless streams of information from TV, radio, print, and, increasingly, social media—much of it driven by algorithms and designed for outrage, not accuracy.
  • Barry Ritholtz [01:45]: “None of it is tailored to you in particular and much of it appears to be outrageous, algo driven clickbait.”
• Hiltzik’s Perspective:
  Readers and investors need to proactively evaluate the sources and motives behind the news.
  • Michael Hiltzik [02:31]: “You always have to assess the source…if we're talking about a trade organization. Well, a trade organization is basically a PR organization and it's going to put its own spin on whatever numbers it cooks up.”

2. Assessing News Sources: Integrity, History and Funding

• Due Diligence:
  • Check who is behind reports—whether studies were commissioned by third parties or are genuine independent research.
  • Look at the long-term reliability record of sources.
    • Michael Hiltzik [05:16]: "There are organizations that have shown…through the test of time to have integrity… And then there were some where you just want to factor in what you know about their ideology, their funders, their history…"
• Time Pressure:
  Both investors and journalists are pressed for time, making shortcuts tempting—but dangerous.
  • Barry Ritholtz [06:01]: “Reporters are pressed for time, so are investors.”
• Building a Trust List:
  Maintain your own “all-star list” of trustworthy sources.

3. The Dangers of Anecdotes and “n=1” Narratives

• Anecdotal Evidence:
  The temptation to rely on compelling individual stories should be recognized as a weakness.
  • Barry Ritholtz [07:42]: “Anecdotes and one off stories…just seem to be increasingly popular. How do you navigate through what is a compelling story?”
  • Michael Hiltzik [08:09]: “A man on the street or a woman on the street…that is an n equals 1… We saw a lot of interviews with families… and got it totally wrong.”
• Testing Stories:
  Good reporting means talking to sources who actually know the topic, not just grabbing “people on the street” or random anecdotes, especially when they don’t align with data or broader reality.

4. Social Media: Curating the Chaos

• Algorithmic Hype:
  Social media platforms amplify extreme or misleading stories, which often bleed into mainstream news.
  • Barry Ritholtz [10:35]: “How do we avoid the worst aspects of algorithmic hype that seems to work its way into mainstream media?”
  • Michael Hiltzik [10:47]: “Mainstream media stories that rely on social media sourcing, very suspect… I always liked X because I could curate my…timeline and rely on sources…that I had come to know.”
• Curation Strategies:
  Developing Twitter/X lists or topic-focused feeds can help, but it remains far from foolproof.
  • Barry Ritholtz [12:23]: “Curating your own lists on different topics… there are experts out there… at least there’s some filtering process…”

5. The AI Content Explosion

• AI Skepticism:
  Hiltzik is staunchly skeptical of AI-produced news, warning that much of it is marketing hype and not truly “intelligent.”
  • Michael Hiltzik [13:26]: “A lot of what is pitched as AI is not really AI and none of it is intelligence… I think, you know, relying on AI is going to be something that… when we look at it in the rearview mirror, we're going to say what were we thinking?”
• Spotting Fakes:
  While giveaway signs are currently detectable (unnatural language, odd images), the growing flood of plausible fakes poses a mounting challenge.

6. Actionable Takeaways for Investors and Readers

• Common Sense and Skepticism:
  • Apply skepticism, “do your homework.”
  • Confirm sources’ credibility and track record.
  • Be wary of social media amplifications and anecdotes.
  • Approach AI-generated content with caution.
  • Favor bylined reporting and follow trusted individuals over faceless platforms.
    • Barry Ritholtz [15:01]: “Apply common sense to your consumption of news. Figure out who's trustworthy, what sources are accurate. Put the time and effort in to identifying who's worthy of your time and trust. Beware of social media, be wary of AI and don't be afraid to follow people who have bylines that you trust…”

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Understanding Sources:
  • Michael Hiltzik [02:31]: “Reporters are…overworked. They don't have the time to do their homework. So they will basically take a press release from some data source and parrot it, regurgitate it.”
• On the Reliability Track Record:
  • Michael Hiltzik [06:24]: “…some reports will be refuted or debunked…some of these sources will compile a record of inaccuracy or dishonesty and some will compile a record of reliability. And it takes time, it takes attention."
• On AI Hype:
  • Michael Hiltzik [13:26]: “…Some large percentage of AI claims by developers and by clients is marketing… none of it is intelligence.”

---

Key Timestamps

• 01:45 – Opening problem: Information overload for investors
• 02:31 – Evaluating the motives and credibility of sources
• 05:16 – How to decide which outlets to trust
• 07:42 – The trouble with anecdotes and “n=1” reporting
• 10:35 – Managing social media’s influence on news
• 13:26 – AI in journalism: hype, hallucinations, and future risks
• 15:01 – Wrap-up: Principles for filtering news effectively

---

Summary Tone

The episode strikes a tone that’s both practical and skeptical, encouraging personal responsibility, critical thinking, and a healthy wariness of both digital and traditional news. Hiltzik’s seasoned, slightly wary outlook offers actionable wisdom, while Ritholtz grounds the discussion in the real-world time crunch faced by investors and news consumers alike.

---

Useful for:
Anyone who wants to improve their ability to spot reliable financial/investment news, anyone worried about social media or AI “fake news,” and readers looking to sharpen their skeptical instincts in an increasingly noisy media world.

Transcript

[Nuveen Announcer]

This message is brought to you by nuveen. How would you invest if you knew the future was watching at nuveen? This isn't a theoretical question, it's a perspective that comes from navigating 125 years of market cycles and the changing needs of investors around the world. Visit Nuveen.com future to learn more. Investing involves risk Principal loss is possible.

[Amazon Business Announcer]

Every business starts with an idea. How can you go from daydreamer to industry leader? Amazon Business accelerates your journey with smart business buying. Get everything you need to grow in one familiar place. From office supplies to IT essentials and maintenance tools. Amazon Business takes the buying experience you know and love from Amazon plus tools that help you save costs and make insights based decisions ready to bring your visions to life. Learn [e-mail] promotional products aren't just giveaways.

[Four Imprint Announcer]

They'Re strategic brand tools.

That's why so many businesses turn to four Imprint. With thousands of customizable options from premium apparel, drinkware, tech, totes and more, 4imprint offers the variety to fit your goals and budget. Many items come with no setup charge to help you maximize value. Even more, with expert support, fast Turnaround and a 360 degree guarantee, you can be four imprint certain your order will be done right on time. Explore [e-mail] 4imprint for certain.

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.

[Music Performer]

Come on, feel the noise girls. Rock your voice. We'll get wild, wild, wild, wild, wild, wild.

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

Investors face a flood of noisy news, social media, tv, tv, radio and more. None of it is tailored to you in particular and much of it appears to be outrageous, algo driven clickbait. What's an investor supposed to do? To help us navigate this, let's bring in Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Michael Hiltzik. He covers business for the Los Angeles Times. He's a two time winner of the Gerald Loeb Award as well as the author of numerous books on finance. So Michael, let's start with this endless sea of noise. How do you navigate this? How do you prioritize what's important and what's not?

[Michael Hiltzik]

Well, you know, it used to be said that newspaper readers know how to read their newspaper. You know, they sort of, you know, assess what they see there. You know, how it conforms to their own worldviews, how it conforms to what they see in in the outside wide world of reality. And I think that's probably more important now than it ever has been before. Newspaper reports of data are always second order reports. As reporter who's looked at the data, or an editor has dropped a page or sent an email and said, you know, do something on this report from this, that or the other. And I think you always have to assess the source as we've talked about, you know, if we're talking about a trade organization. Well, a trade organization is basically a PR organization and it's going to put its own spin on whatever numbers it cooks up. And sometimes it puts spin on numbers even before they're cooked up. If a trade organization is citing a study from a supposedly independent group, I want to know if they commissioned this study or who commissioned it. And that's a mixture part of my assessment. And I always ask, you know, if I'm calling lobbyists and saying, you know, you just cited this, you know, supposedly third party analysis, you know, is it yours? Did you commission this? And you know, if they're honest, they'll, they'll tell me. I just, just one fell, you know, into my email box, I think, just the other day. And, and I've asked but haven't gotten a reply. So, so that's, that's very important. And, and I think readers have to understand that more than ever before. Certainly, you know, more than in my long career. Reporters are over overworked. They don't have the time to do their homework. So they will basically take a press release from some data source and parrot it, regurgitate it. So I think it's important for readers to do what I do, which is to check the source and if they can go to the raw material and make a judgment for themselves, and intelligent investors should be able to do that.

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

So that raises an obvious question. How do you tell which sources are trustworthy? Who do you put on your all star list? Who do you eliminate?

[Michael Hiltzik]

Well, there are a few sources, economic sources were on my all star list. You know, you and, and your folks, you know, because I quote you with some frequency, there are other organizations that have shown, you know, through the test of time to have been, to have integrity in how they interpret data. And then there were some where you just want to factor in what you know about their ideology, their funders, their history, and that just, you know, those simple inquiries will tell you a lot about how you want to assess information that comes at you from all these sources you mentioned.

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

Reporters are pressed for time, so are investors. You're kind of hinting at, hey, this requires some time, effort and work in order to figure out what is a credible source of reliable news and what is. A little more, let's just call it unreliable.

[Michael Hiltzik]

Well, you know, I think I remember, you know, reading Andy Tobias's book, you know, probably one of its earliest incarnations, where he said, you know, what do you do if a broker comes to you cold call or someone, you know, and pitches an investment for you? And what his advice was to say, well, you know, don't invest in that investment, but see how it does. And if it's done well, then maybe you want to listen to this guy or cow a little bit more closely the next time. And I think that that's sort of a good idea. More generally, you know, some reports will be refuted or debunked fairly quickly and some of these sources will compile a record of inaccuracy or dishonesty and some will compile a record of reliability. And it takes time, it takes attention. And I think investors, like readers and reporters need to do their homework. And we just see that being more and more difficult or just happening a lot less than it used to.

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

I've been noticing what, at least to me it seems like more than ever, anecdotes and one off stories and narrative tales, they just seem to be increasingly popular. How do you navigate through what is a compelling story? My, my mathy friends always say n equals 1. All right, so you have not a data series, but that's one anecdote. How do you, how do you manage that?

[Michael Hiltzik]

That's right. And sometimes the, the N one is, is oneself. So yeah, well, look, basically I've always been sort of averse to man on the street stories because, you know, a man on the street or a woman on the street, that's, that is, that is an n equals 1 and you really have no idea what, you can't really always tell. What questions have been asked. What this person knows, we've certainly seen, you know, certainly during the inflation era of the last few years, we saw a lot of interviews with families in which they talked about how much they're spending on this or that commodity or, or, or produce and, and got it totally wrong. And so I, I think that people can sort of compare what they're reading to their own experience. And if it's really at odds that that's important to keep in mind. So I, I think, I mean I've gone, you know, I've been assigned to do man on the street stories, but you know, when they work it's because you have a narrow subject and you are dealing with people who are in a position to know the answers to the questions you are talking about. But sort of Throwing in, you know, somebody who's standing online or. You know, I used to say I was always suspicious of stories that quoted the. The driver who brought the reporter from the airport to the first class hotel in town. And we used to see that when I was in Africa, you know, I could tell, you know, you know, the chauffeur, you know, sometimes, you know, was labeled to, to hide. But. Yeah, so you want to make sure that, you know, if there's, if there are interviews with individuals or families or couples, that there's more than one and that they seem to actually know what they're talking about and they're talking about their own experiences and that they sound plausible. So these are all sort of tests that we have to conduct in our daily lives.

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

What about social media? How do we avoid the worst aspects of algorithmic hype that seems to work its way into mainstream media as well?

[Michael Hiltzik]

Yeah, well, certainly mainstream media stories that rely on social media sourcing, very suspect social media. Look, you know, I was always a fan of Twitter. I would. I still do. You know, I still am a fan. I think Twitter, you know, for all its faults, still has a critical mass that alternatives like Blue sky just haven't quite reached. So, you know, with. With X, as we call it, I think you can sort of wean out the, the wild nonsense. I always liked X because I could curate my, my tweet timeline and rely on sources on that platform that, that I had come to know. It's more and more difficult now, and it's harder to sort of, you know, get rid of, you know, some of the straws. But, you know, there are websites that, that I go back to over and over again. They're not all economic websites. Sometimes they're writers who think the way I do. So I, you know, I get reinforcement where, Where I need it. And then there are some that I just ignore. You know, I'm, you know, I have more time to myself because I'm not paying any attention to a lot of this stuff.

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

Yeah, I found on Twitter curating your own lists on different topics. For me, it's the economy, it's data and analytics, it's behavioral finance. There are experts out there talking about subjects that I like, and at least there's some filtering process by creating a list. It's not going to stop spam and other junk stuff from coming through. All right, so we're talking about social media. I guess if we're talking about news and problems, we have to discuss AI, not just the hallucination, but the risk that that news story you're reading is literally fake news, just something created by AI cheaply. How do we navigate a world where AI is cranking out a lot of artificial intelligence is cranking out a lot of news that isn't exactly following the rules of journalism?

[Michael Hiltzik]

Yeah, I should tell you that I am an AI skeptic. I think, you know, some large percentage of AI claims by, by developers and by clients is, is marketing in the same way that, you know.com used to be the big marketing troupe. Sure, 25 years ago now. And so a lot of what is pitched as AI is not really AI and none of it is intelligence. I'm not sure I'm of two minds about whether people are going to become better at detecting AI creation or worse. I think at the moment there are giveaways that anyone can see. Sometimes in the language that's used, sometimes in the images that are created. We see this over and over again just, you know, clearly AI hallucinations. So you know, right now there's an AI craze in an industry and including in the news industry. And I think that's going to be a problem. I think it's going to go bad. And I think, you know, relying on AI is going to be something that, you know, when we look at it in the rearview mirror, we're going to say what were we thinking? You know, why did we spend any money on this?

[Host Barry Ritholtz]

So to wrap up, apply common sense to your consumption of news. Figure out who's trustworthy, what sources are accurate. Put the time and effort in to identifying who's worthy of your time and trust. Beware of social media, be wary of AI and don't be afraid to follow people who have bylines that you trust rather than just blindly paying attention to any particular media source. It's worth understanding what you're consuming and why and staying on the right side of accuracy. I'm Barry Ritholtz, you're listening to Bloomberg's at the Money.

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

Mint is still $15 a month for premium wireless. And if you haven't made the switch yet, here are 15 reasons why you should. One, it's $15 a month. Two, seriously, it's $15 a month. Three, no big contracts. Four, I use it. Five, my mom uses.

[Amazon Business Announcer]

Are you.

[Mint Mobile Announcer]

Are you playing me off? That's what's happening, right? Okay, give it a try.

@Mintmobile.Com Switch upfront payment of $45 per three month plan. $15 per month equivalent required. New customer offer first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra.

[Four Imprint Announcer]

See mintmobile.com Every business has an ambition. PayPal Open is the platform designed to help you grow into yours with business loans so you can expand and access to hundreds of millions of PayPal customers worldwide. And your customers can pay all the ways they want with PayPal, Venmo, pay later and all major cards so you can focus on scaling up when it's time to get growing. There's one platform for all business PayPal open grow today at paypalopen.com loans subject to approval in available locations there's nothing.

[Washable Sofas Announcer]

Like sinking into luxury. At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anabe sofa which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price. And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom. Starting at only $699, the stain resistant performance fabric slipcovers and cloud like frame duvet can go straight into your wash. Perfect for anyone with kids, pets or anyone who loves an easy to clean spotless sofa. With a modular design and changeable slipcovers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style. Whether you need a single chair, loveseat or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered. Visit washablesofas.com to upgrade your home. Right now you can shop up to 60% off store wide with a 30 day money back guarantee. Shop [e-mail] Add a little to your life. Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.