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CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

nytimes.com

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Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#131

Post by IX-103 »

CharlesColeman wrote: post #90
GalacticDomin8r wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's totally possible for a capitalist society to prioritize things like human rights, etc. over profits through political and social means. I believe that is what most people would call socialism. When taken at its root idea anyway.

> I believe that is what most people would call socialism. When taken at its root idea anyway. No, it could also be the society's moral system. For instance, take a hypothetical capitalist society where the shame and stigma of violating human rights is very strong. A business owner there would likely refuse to violate them even if it's very profitable, because doing so would make him a pariah, no "socialism" required…

> A business owner there would likely refuse to violate them even if it's very profitable, because doing so would make him a pariah, no "socialism" required.

So in other words it would not be profitable, no?

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#132

Post by swebs »

all2 wrote: post #120
swebs wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I believe that is what most people would call socialism. Like China?

Do you mean China is socialist? Or that the Communist party is calling the US socialist? Or something else?

The first one, obviously.

https://i.imgur.com/g3hv45O.png

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#133

Post by kuzehanka »

vertline3 wrote: post #129
kuzehanka wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like the kind of whataboutism you'd encounter on any thread negatively countering China, but it isn't. This is an uncontroversial fact about capitalism that Adam Smith covered before capitalism even emerged as a concept. The goal of capitalism is to maximize production output. Everything else is peripheral. Maybe it's a hard truth to come to grips with, but that is what we need to do in order to move forw…

This whole thread derails from the topic of American CBS censorship, so it sort of did fall into a whataboutism type of distraction cycle. Theoretically capitalist companies that are censoring important content can be pressured with boycotts over censorship, though I'm not sure how feasible that is here.

> This whole thread derails from the topic of censorship

Or highlights the relationship between capitalism and censorship when the capital is held by a totalitarian state?

China has quietly sat and waited for the last 50 years while they accrued capital. Now they have it, and they're using it to take control of the same incentive systems that created the developed world. Ignoring the threat that's posed, or ignoring the weakness of those incentive systems is going to be fatal to the ideologies that China has targeted.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#134

Post by fucking_tragedy »

mikequinlan wrote: post #116
scohesc wrote: post #18

It's a bit telling when a media giant like CBS can't strike a happy medium by you know - both not censoring it in the US and censoring it in china - instead, choosing to censor the whole thing outright on the entire platform. It's almost like all these American companies are moving en masse to do business in China with the sole purpose of increasing profits every single quarter, irrespective of (and arguably, now enc…

CBS said "This is the creative solution that we agreed upon with the producers". I have been wondering if the producers insisted that the segment be censored in all regions so that everyone would know about it. Otherwise Americans would never know about the censorship.

You don't fight censorship by doubling down on censorship. It's entirely possible to show the uncensored version in America and raise awareness that the segment was censored in other regions.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#135

Post by gambler »

save_ferris wrote: post #56
swebs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"

OP posted an article on why an American company chose to accommodate said authoritarian communist regime, against the principles of our domestic media culture. What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism?

>What motivates a company to do such a thing, if not capitalism?

You're just proving grand parent commenter's point.

Saying that capitalism motivates censorship is like saying that money is what causes theft and robbery. It's a meaningless statement based on conflating motivation in one specific case with motivation for a class of actions in general. Not to mention that you're also conflating an economic system with what most people would simply call greed.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#136

Post by mduerksen »

krapp wrote: post #105
mduerksen wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A journalist is a person who collects, writes, or distributes news or other current information to the public. [1] Check. You can argue about whether his style is commendable or not (for codes of conduct see [2]), but that does not change the fact that he is a journalist . [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalist [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standard...

Assange doesn't write news, and classified documents are not, themselves, the product of journalism merely for being leaked. Writing a story about the Pentagon papers is journalism, printing them verbatim without context or comment is not journalism. If running a website which publishes third party content makes one a journalist then I guess Reddit makes spez a journalist too.

So an editor-in-chief is not a journalist to you?

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#137

Post by swebs »

hedora wrote: post #48
lancesells wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It won't let you read it because you're not signed in correct? I haven't had an issue with private browsing and reading the 5 or so free articles a month that they offer.

http://tinypic.com/r/2u5dgyv/9 Ironically, I had to turn off ad block to view it. Does anyone know of a better service like this? [edit: the screenshot is for a different article, but I get the same spy-wall on the one linked above]

I just use uMatrix to disable anything except CSS and images. Articles work fine for me that way.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#138

Post by dmix »

lostgame wrote: post #73
swebs wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also strange how quick people in this very thread are to brush it off and shift the blame. "An authoritarian communist regime is engaging in human rights violations? This is capitalism's fault :^)"

Um, no, this is about American censorship, not the actual issues in China.

This is a large American media company bowing to pressure from a totalitarian regime. Even Google bowed down after initially taking a stand. So many other's have as well.

Same with the silly apology tour multiple companies did over merely including Taiwan and Hong Kong as separate countries from China...in a dropdown menu on their websites: https://www.businessinsider.com/zara-marriott-qantas-apologi...

It's almost becoming a new-normal, which is concerning.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#139

Post by Forbo »

convivialdingo wrote: post #100
zouhair wrote: post #62

I don't get why you are acting so surprised. In Capitalism the only point is to make money, that's all there is. If siding with human rights helps make money they will side with human rights, if genocide helps make even more money they will side with genocide. As long as Capitalism is the main economic system this will always be only about the profits.

Capitalism doesn’t work without choice of consumption. If you have a bad or misleading product, eventually people won’t use it. I’m less worried about typical profit-mongering than I am about the corporate owned media however - media has a powerful ability to skew and censor truthful news.

> ...eventually people won't use it.

But until then, the bad and misleading products are quite profitable for those engaging in the bad practices, thereby ensuring the behavior will continue to happen. Once they're "found out", they'll just re-brand or move to some other garbage to manufacture.

Re: CBS censors a ‘Good Fight’ segment whose topic was Chinese censorship

#140

Post by mgbmtl »

fucking_tragedy wrote: post #134
mikequinlan wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CBS said "This is the creative solution that we agreed upon with the producers". I have been wondering if the producers insisted that the segment be censored in all regions so that everyone would know about it. Otherwise Americans would never know about the censorship.

You don't fight censorship by doubling down on censorship. It's entirely possible to show the uncensored version in America and raise awareness that the segment was censored in other regions.

But then it wouldn't be on the front page of HN or a NY Times article. I hope it's still available if you access some obscure torrent site using a VPN.
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