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The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

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Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#131

Post by ianschenck »

dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

> Nuance is not permitted in 2019

Also, screwing up, learning that, changing your ways, admitting you were wrong, adapting is not permitted either. It will follow you forever, regardless.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#132

Post by mevile »

roenxi wrote: post #123
mevile wrote: post #23

Political cartoons are, in my opinion, reductionist garbage that fail to take into consideration nuance and complexity and context. The caricature that inflate the size of ears and chins and lips and noses is not dignifying and doesn't add any value to whatever argument is being made, and can sometimes even be racist. There's no rebuttal to a political cartoon, there's no dialogue. They're cheap and easy to make and…

Standing up for free speech is a great thing to do; to reframe what you are saying we are dealing with one of the mildest outlets for anger that a demographic could possibly express. We want people to do that rather than escalating to, eg, yelling at people in person. People get angry all the time and a lot of them don't know how to deal with it. A political cartoon may not be a shining example of debate but it is a…

A newspaper not publishing political cartoons is not a free speech issue. If the government were banning political cartoons, then it would be. A newspaper can print or not print whatever it wants.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#133

Post by Rebelgecko »

icebraining wrote: post #109
Rebelgecko wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Showing a non-Jewish world leader in a yarmulke put it a bit over the top for me. I think the star of David was fair game because it's a symbol of Israel as a country, but depicting Trump as some sort of crypto-Jew felt like imagery you'd see in Nazi propaganda or an illustrated version of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Trump did wear one, when he became the first US president to visit the Western Wall: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-becomes-the-first-s...

Obama and Clinton both wore yarmulkes when they visited the Western Wall— Obama actually complained about how he felt that Arab media used pictures of him in a yarmulke for propaganda purposes.

I personally doubt that the reason that the cartoonist put a yarmulke on Trump is because he wore a yarmulke one time back in 2017.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#134

Post by dosy »

dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

I really want to read the perspective of some great contemporary thinkers on this. Who were the thinkers writing about this in a compelling way and who it's likely that in 20 years or 50 years we'll be able to look back on and say their essays really understood the zeitgeist?

What shocks me is how companies and organizations have reacted to this. Every time a significant decision is deferred to mob rule I feel a little bit of power departs civil and ordered society and is transferred to the mob. Which seems to me to validate the notion that we ought to be afraid of mobs. That's a pretty scary society to live in and doesn't really mesh with the principle of rule of law.

The only reference point I have for this is historically the utilisation of and empowerment of angry mobs has coincided with times of great political turmoil such as a revolution. And that historically at least you could say that these mobs are created by breaking down the existing structures of authority. I think you can find a reference for that in Western society where the power of traditional moral authority or institutional symbols of authority have declined or been dismantled.

Probably the least controversial idea I have as to a cause of all this is that there must be a huge amount of potential emotional energy present in the population that is being directed towards are tapped by these expressions of outrage and mob outburst. I think it's reasonable to say that this potential emotional energy was not created by these topics it was created elsewhere by foundational issues such as economics but it's being directed towards these topics perhaps as cathartic outlet.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#135

Post by mistermann »

mratzloff wrote: post #56
dlivingston wrote: post #7

"We are in a world where moralistic mobs gather on social media and rise like a storm, falling upon newsrooms in an overwhelming blow. This requires immediate counter-measures by publishers, leaving no room for ponderation or meaningful discussions. Twitter is a place for furor, not debate. The most outraged voices tend to define the conversation, and the angry crowd follows in." This is a significant problem, not ju…

I wonder how different humanity would be if anger and the fight-or-flight response could be disconnected, or the dopamine response from self-righteousness could be severed.

Psilocybin may provide somewhat of a reasonable approximation of this at appropriate dosages.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#136

Post by headsoup »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #110
sonnyblarney wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be the worst trick used by media outlets to portend there's a 'movement afoot' or 'what most people' think when neither are true. "People are saying XYZ" - because some random person on Twitter said it. "People believe this" - again, some random Tweet in support. They're creating narrative, which is definitely the opposite of news, and it's way beyond 'Editorial' i.e. 'the opinion of the author'. Politicia…

> I'm tired of having to read everything with a huge dose of cynicism, and of having to look up references and facts because I don't quite trust ostensibly trustworthy people. And yet, that's what you must do. If you rely on spoon-fed cruft, you will be at the mercy of those who hold the end of your nose ring rope, and not even know it.

Not sure why you've been down voted, but it's true.

We are either a) no longer close to the journalism sources to determine their trustworthiness or b) we were being fed the narrative through print and were ignorant to the manipulation through blind trust.

This is not saying don't trust anyone and put on our conspiracy hats, it is saying that we must honest in admitting we should be reviewing, comparing and challenging our news sources until they build sufficient quality to allow trust. (incidentally, I also think part of the reason people hate media sites pay-walling content is because it's asking the question before demonstrating trustworthiness)

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#137

Post by satellitec4t »

vlozc wrote: post #46
cm2187 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Charlie Hebdo the intention was clearly to mock Islam indeed. But I am mystified that we are questioning in 2019 the right to blasphemy in a modern, western, free, secular society.

We don't have that. October 2018: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/its-not-fr... >On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) upheld her 2011 conviction for “disparagement of religious precepts,” a crime in Austria. The facts of what E.S. did are not in dispute. She held “seminars” in which she presented her view that Muhammad was indeed a child molester. Dominant Islamic traditions hold t…

As a counter example.. Ireland is in the process of removing their laws against blasphemy (there was a referendum late last year. the country is now going through the process of carrying out the removal).

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#138

Post by fitnesshealth »

The New York Times announced on Monday that it would no longer publish daily political cartoons in its international edition and ended its relationship with two contract cartoonists. In a statement, James Bennet, editorial page editor, said The Times was “very grateful for and proud of” the work that the cartoonists, Patrick Chappatte and Heng Kim Song, had done for the international edition over the years.

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#139

Post by meruru »

mevile wrote: post #132
roenxi wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standing up for free speech is a great thing to do; to reframe what you are saying we are dealing with one of the mildest outlets for anger that a demographic could possibly express. We want people to do that rather than escalating to, eg, yelling at people in person. People get angry all the time and a lot of them don't know how to deal with it. A political cartoon may not be a shining example of debate but it is a…

A newspaper not publishing political cartoons is not a free speech issue. If the government were banning political cartoons, then it would be. A newspaper can print or not print whatever it wants.

It may not be an issue of Free Speech (however you define it), but it's still an issue of freedom to speak.

(My point is that you're trying to dismiss an issue by claiming to not fit an arbitrary category, but you haven't argued why not being into that category makes it a non-issue.)

Re: The End of Political Cartoons at The New York Times

#140

Post by phs318u »

Nadya wrote: post #65
Chazprime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, media outlets like the NYT did this to themselves really. At some point they decided that a story could be manufactured from a few outraged individuals, even if those sources were random or completely unknown users. Bam...there's your instant moral outrage. It didn't matter that their story might be a grossly inaccurate sampling of readers or have little factual basis, the only thing that mattered was that sudde…

Humans are bad at figuring out the popularity of hats [0]. Couple this with the nasty trick of manufacturing the popularity of certain opinions [1] and I wager that it is pretty trivial to get most people to believe in anything and especially easy to make people think fringe opinions are actually widespread and commonplace. Coupled with the emotive fallacious reasoning of "If everyone believes/says it then it must be…

Thanks for the insightful post and especially the first link. Hadn't come across that before. I will definitely be sharing that (to my kids first of all).
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