The American Press Is Destroying Itself • Hacker News Board

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#231

Post by refurb » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #140

hedora wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newspapers in the 60’s didn’t pretend that 100% of the population was behind the civil rights movement. When racist politicians spoke, they got their platform. People could read, and decide for themselves. If an elected official wants to publish a racist diatribe, the press should circulate it as widely as possible. Informed voters make for a stronger democracy. Burying the editorial because it would offend their…

Ah yes, giving bigotry a prominent position and mass circulation is what protects and furthers democracy. History certainly agrees with your sentiment.

Yes, it absolutely does.

Think about LGBT rights. There was plenty of opposition to gay marriage, it was covered broadly and people had platforms. Slowly over time, opinions changed. Why? Because LGBT rights were publicly and transparently argued in the media. People heard opposing viewpoints.

Would it have been better if back in the 1950's gay marriage was verboten? No one can talk about it?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#232

Post by v64 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #164

wmeredith wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. And they definitely do not. The Democrats are not “left”. They’d barely pass for center across the pond. They are just another flavor of The Party of oligarchy and cronyism in control of this country. There are some significant differences in the platforms, but it’s mostly around wedge issues by design.

I share your opinion. My own theory (without any real evidence) is that the oligarchs use race to divide the white working class from the non-white working class. A specific example is the video on systemic racism going around. It correctly points out redlining (a truly horrific practice), but also talks about black students having to attend underfunded schools. I attended predominantly black, underfunded, public sch…

> My own theory (without any real evidence)

Many philosophers and others have written about how the powerful divide the lower classes in this way. I don't have any explicit citations offhand, but your observations have merit amongst those who study these issues.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#233

Post by alexashka » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

infogulch wrote: post #17

The US seems to have fallen into a game-theoretic local minimum where each party lets their crazy cousin go throw dumb rocks at the opposition because it seems to be the optimal way to drum up fanatic support for their side, all the while whistling as if in ignorance of what's going on. At least that's how it seemed to start, now it's just devolved to outright scat slinging that's co-opted our system of government in…

The naïveté here is assuming the people responsible for all this, don't know it.

Let me give you an example that's closer to home: you know how Facebook hires a bunch of people and pays them to collect more and more and more data on everyone? Do you think a single person within Facebook doesn't know it? They all know it and they all like their paycheque more than they like having a conscience. They buried that conscience long ago, in the name of 'providing for my family' or some other straw-man. Some never had much of a conscience to begin with.

That's most people, most of the time. They want what they want for them first, everybody else is everybody else's problem.

It's really that simple.

There are many ways this attitude is being enabled but really, being a selfish monkey comes natural to most people, it's overcoming that selfishness in the name of something bigger that takes a great deal of work. If that work goes unappreciated, what you get is a fake democracy or a real tyranny - all other options require citizens that aren't infantile, self-centered brats.

The way to see this most clearly is to ask 1000 educated, not random people, what critical theory [0] is. Maybe one will be familiar with it? We've had people thinking about the problem you're describing for nearly 100 years and hardly anyone knows about it. Now why would that be? Critical theory and philosophy more broadly has something to say about it :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_theory

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#234

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:17 PM UTC

claudeganon wrote: post #140

hedora wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newspapers in the 60’s didn’t pretend that 100% of the population was behind the civil rights movement. When racist politicians spoke, they got their platform. People could read, and decide for themselves. If an elected official wants to publish a racist diatribe, the press should circulate it as widely as possible. Informed voters make for a stronger democracy. Burying the editorial because it would offend their…

Ah yes, giving bigotry a prominent position and mass circulation is what protects and furthers democracy. History certainly agrees with your sentiment.

This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please re-read them and stop taking HN threads further into flamewar? We've had to ask you this many times already.

This thread is managing to stay barely on the ok side, with many comments from many sides of the issue, including your own side. These other users are managing to stay within the guidelines, and there's no reason why you can't also. Please do so.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#235

Post by the_af » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

remote_phone wrote: post #201

the_af wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, but I do read more than you, and in more languages. People who are smug like you and think people reading too little are "the problem with our country" read very little themselves. They tend to assume the world is as small as they are, and overplay their meager achievements like reading through a New Yorker article.

The problem isn’t people reading too little. It’s that people such as yourself only read a fraction of an informative article and stop because it’s “too long”. They read the headline and skim the article and get whatever their limited comprehension gets from it, and then proclaims they know what the article is saying when they don’t. Pretty much sums exactly what you were saying. I can only imagine the high level of…

Ok, you win. You read more than I do and my reading is "the problem" with your country. Here, have a cookie.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#236

Post by dodobirdlord » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:19 PM UTC

humanrebar wrote: post #95

CydeWeys wrote: post #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,…

Are you concerned about the increasing cultural divisions in the U.S.? Seems like the NYT giving up the pretense of being a general purpose news organization is a loss for those hoping for cultural reconciliation at some point.

I think it's fairly clear that there will not be a cultural reconciliation, at least not in the sense of an acceptance of mutual differences. What even is the "cultural right" anymore? It has devolved into a movement defined by opposition to the left's social initiatives.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#237

Post by chiefalchemist » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #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 hi…

> 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.

Accurate. Agreed. And a completely fair business decision. We all have bill to pay.

Unfortunately, they (wrongly) continue to sell this new version of their craft (?) as journalism. The masses buy in - confirmation bias is a powerful force - and we are today exactly where we should be: Truth is fluid. Editorial is journalism. Everyone - blue, red or orange - gets hammer their facts into their echo chamber. Etc.

It's important to realize that there is no democracy or democratic process without a health and proper Fouth Estate.

Btw, Tali Sharot's "The Influential Mind" is a great read on the subject on influence.

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

Edit: their to there. with to without.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#238

Post by robertoandred » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #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,…

Not sure a media outlet succumbing to popular opinion to suppress the publication of unpopular viewpoints is something to celebrate...

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#239

Post by thisiszilff » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

havelhovel wrote: post #177

Shivetya wrote: post #91

What I find most reprehensible about this whole situation is that more and more members of the left regulate political discourse, no make that any discourse, by defining any opposing view as illegitimate, bigoted, and now violence. As in, they are taking the position that their moral superiority is without question and anyone who does not ascribe to this has no rights and we are nearing the point of the same having n…

I’m not following this logic. People are expressing themselves and others are responding as they see fit: agreement, condemnation, silence, etc. It sounds like a marketplace of ideas in a free society. No one is having their basic human rights taken away from them because someone else called them a bigot. If you’re uncomfortable with someone’s ideas making them a pariah, you’re describing a basic social dilemma that…

My ideal view of the marketplace of ideas is that it engenders discussion about those ideas, responses to them, and ultimately deepens the view to a more nuanced, accurate place. One problem, undoubtedly, is that discussing anything through some means of communication is difficult, especially when we prefer short form communications to long form ones. So instead of discussing, we tend to think in terms dog whistles & a few short words are connected to an argument that we've heard from the other side and that is where things start to go downhill. People do not seem to be engaging the actual arguments in this marketplace of ideas, but rather with the people presenting the argument & what they think those arguments are.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#240

Post by Good_Karma » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:24 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #153

danaris wrote: 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…

Just want to point out: The media doesn't ever report the numbers on police violence. They report the emotion. Including both armed and unarmed people, just over 1000 people were killed by US police in 2019. What percentage of those were black? Approximately 24 percent. Did you know that? Did it surprise you? I assumed it was 75 percent. 24 percent is very bad, since black Americans are 13 percent of the population.…

I was also going through the numbers recently and it does appear that there is no place for contrast in the media, both within the phenomenon of police killings itself as you point out, as well as how it relates to other unfortunate and troubling causes of death.

For example ; ~ 250k people a year die from medical errors in the US [0]. From this one could argue that doctors are far more dangerous than cops, possibly on a per encounter basis as well. Certainly something should be done about this. I don't know if a mega riot will do it though.

Also, just what proportion of those police related deaths were actually justified by any standard ? Like how many of those people actually pointed a gun at the cops before ending up as a stat ? Regardless of race. That would be interesting to know. Obviously some heads have to roll when something like that happens, but maybe we should still keep the baby.

[0] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

I'm usually not quick to side with the cops on any given day, but I like to side with the actual facts on any given day. Policing is a hard, dangerous and ungrateful job. Certainly it has its ( grave ) problems, but just doing away with the whole thing based on relatively few ( albeit horrible ) incidents, is not a rational reaction to this real issue.