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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

61–70 of 618 posts

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#61

The New Yorker depiction of this very site (or was it the Atlantic) was particularly egregious.

The New Yorker article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

Is it wrong though? I've been reading HN for years and a lot of that New Yorker article rings true to me. There are some exaggerations, and I didn't read all of it because it's too damn long, but from what I see it's mostly accurate.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#62
I don't think they are.

I think they are optimizing for survival.

Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. Few people would consume it (or even be capable of doing so), even fewer are ready to pay the real price of it.

So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the highest bidder.

You think it is self destroying, but only if you see it as from the point of view of a body that should inform people. But as a group that needs to survive, it's a working strategy. Certainly easier to implement than finding a novel way to survive doing the right thing.

Infortunaly, this will lead to suffering for the entire society. But that's the way our economical system work. It assumes that the markets balances things out. Unfortunatly, the common good is not something most individuals prioritize, or even conceptualize, when buying things. Often, they actually can't, because their survival depend on more pressing day-to-day matters.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#63
I agree with some of this, but I just personally can't bring myself to care about the firings of the editors responsible for "Send in the troops" and "Buildings matter, too".

A lot of my friends unsubscribed from the NY Times for publishing Tom Cotton's pro-fascism op-ed. The NY Times had to respond to this. They are a business and their income matters. It's not so much an issue of freedom of thought in the newsroom, it's that they literally can't afford to continue publishing such pieces as it's causing them to massively bleed revenue. In other words, blame their customers. And frankly I'm perfectly happy if the NY Times never publishes a pro-fascism op-ed ever again. I'm glad the pressure worked.

As for "Buildings matter, too", what a colossal fuck-up that was. If you're that tone-deaf, you legitimately are a liability, and shouldn't be in charge. The same issues were seen here too with revolts from the customer base, not just the newsroom.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#64
post #51

The New Yorker depiction of this very site (or was it the Atlantic) was particularly egregious.

To restate a popular maxim, the lesson to take from this is that the media depiction on almost everything is egregiously bad, not just those things where you personally know better. The question then is why do we expend so much time and money engaging with and propagating discourse which we know is so fundamentally misrepresenting reality?

That article doesn't seem to me particularly wrong, and in fact many parts of it ring true...

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#65

I don't think they are. I think they are optimizing for survival. Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. Few people would consume it (or even be capable of doing so), even fewer are ready to pay the real price of it. So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the hi…

> But as a group that needs to survive, it's a working strategy.

It's not working though. A lot of people canceled their NY Times subscriptions after the "Send in the troops" op-ed. Massively pissing off your customer base like that is not a winning move.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#66
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If anyone questions the insane dogma that has taken over the newsrooms pushed by the far left So...out of curiosity, just what do you see as being this "insane dogma" "pushed by the far left"? Because so far as I can tell, America still doesn't have anything that could reasonably be called a "far left" that's being taken seriously by any mainstream media. The most extreme positions I've heard recently that have gai…

That only European American racism matters (or even exists). That African Americans cannot be racist.

African Americans can be racist. What they lack is the might and power of the US justice system, politicians, and the media behind them. That power turns white racism into a much more powerful force than African Americans that hate white people.

Racism without an overwhelming power differential is just angst. Typically people that feel oppressed hate the group they’re being oppressed by. I’m sure you would too.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#67
post #42

Taibbi at this point should start a new news co. He, and to some degree, Glenn Greenwald, have been the only two members of the press who seem to be unable to see the emperor’s new clothes in the parades of the last several years.

Why not Tucker Carlson? Just for the record, I subscribe to The Intercept and am a fan of Glenn Greenwald.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/list/?speaker=tucker-c...

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#68
post #40

Great article but it's so depressing that it starts with disinformation by claiming Trump said it is a great day for Floyd due to unemployment numbers (actually discussed completely separately in that speech). He said it's a great day due to increasing equality. [0] Twisting someone's words to make them look worse in a piece that rightly blames others for doing so is just sad. So I am asking again - Why do even the s…

The article does have an ambiguous "and" in the relevant sentence but it's a bit of a far stretch to get from that to the paraphrase you provide. Here is the literal quote from the article: "Calls to “dominate” marchers and ad-libbed speculations about Floyd’s “great day” looking down from heaven at Trump’s crisis management and new unemployment numbers (“only” 21 million out of work!) were pure gasoline at a tinderb…

I'd believe it if there weren't so many inaccurate reports claiming exactly that. His wording:

>"..ad-libbed speculations about Floyd’s “great day” looking down from heaven at Trump’s crisis management and new unemployment numbers.."

very much sounds like he thinks the same, and a majority of the readership familiar with the story are going to read it that way even if you can be extremely charitable and say that this isn't what he meant.

I know he is familiar with the reporting on this, so if he didn't mean it I doubt he'd be so ambigous in that statement.

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