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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

281–290 of 618 posts

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is deeper than just the press. These identity flame wars are sponsored by almost all big (non-news) corporations. The reason is clear. While there is distraction, the real issues are unaddressed and they can keep putting their hands in your pocket when you aren't looking. Also, excessive pseudo-socialism is a great tool to drive down wages and have the whole world compete against each other. Locus…

What is "excessive pseudo socialism" and "Locust capitalism?" Also, I see your account was created an hour ago.

> pseudo socialism

Example: The US healthcare system. The financing is through socialist policies (Medicare, state assistance, regulatory requirements/incentives for employer-provided insurance), but the system itself if thoroughly corrupt and inefficient.

Example: "Affordable housing" subsidies/requirements. Instead of actually addressing high housing costs in general, set aside an inadequate amount of substandard housing with burdensome hoops to jump through to get it and call that a solution when it isn't.

Example: Environmental rules that apply to where a product is manufactured but not where it's sold, so that instead of eliminating pollution, manufacturing jobs move to countries that allow pollution.

The half measures are the worst of both worlds. You get the inefficiency, incompetence and unaccountability of central planning and the externalities, corruption and high prices of market failures.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#282
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Lol this sentiment is exactly the problem being discussed and you've inadvertently provided a great example for the thread to examine. Thanks!

Please don't be a jerk in HN threads, no matter how wrong another commenter is or you feel they are. Nothing good is going to come of it.

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

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#283
> I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?...

I mean, Lacy does have a point that this kind of question in the context of the protests is nothing more than distracting.

The protests are about systematic discrimination of black people. No one questioned that black people can also be perpetrators - it's just irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Would nazis running concentration camps be absolved by finding that "well but some inmates commit violence too"?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overestimate how powerful American political parties are. The leadership ride waves. They don't make them.

That’s a fairly new phenomenon; parties used to be extremely powerful.

The internet has killed that notion, I think.

It's not possible to maintain a farce anymore like they could in the days when the only media that needed influencing was TV, radio, and newspapers.

Since the internet is a great equalizer in terms of reaching a large audience for relatively little money, political parties in the US have gotten more much factional internally in my lifetime.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#285

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,…

So I don’t really disagree with the content of your comment, but I still take some sort of issue with the use of fascism lately. I see where the connection is made, but I still think that is a long way off from what was advocated. Even by definition of fascism and what it actually stands for. Having had family members “forcibly disappeared” during Franco’s dictatorship I feel this word is being used ... I’m not even…

[deleted]

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#286

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…

> 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.

How is the general public supposed to learn what is happening though? If the entire MSM had adopted this new business model, and with the whole fake news thing that's been drilled into people's heads for so long, along with the narrative that anyone that disagrees with trustworthy organizations is a conspiracy theorist...is there a path out that consists of anything other than a major player committing financial suicide by breaking ranks, or them all deciding to come clean simultaneously?

Bloggers might be the one bright spot, but what percentage of the population reads blogs, and if they started to get too popular they may be framed as conspiracy theorists before long too. Not a good situation, unless you're China or Russia.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#287
post #277

On a side note, does anyone subscribe to any good news/information site? I would like to subscribe to something good and know I'm supporting it.

The Economist has high quality news. It has a slight free market/neoliberal bias on economic issues, but for politics it's just the facts.

Wikipedia is actually a decent free news source too, since articles about current events get updated and reviewed frequently.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like uncritical support for manufacturing consent, to me. I mean it's not like taibbi is speaking up for child molesters. He turned out to be factually right about a lot of this stuff, but it was completely unacceptable to say so.

I mean it's not like taibbi is speaking up for child molesters Unlike, say, the NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/06/opinion/pedophilia-a-diso...

Your characterization of the linked article could not be more wrong. They write about acknowledging the disorder of sexual attraction to prepubescents (=pedophilia) to prevent child abuse.

Last sentence:

> Acknowledging that pedophiles have a mental disorder, and removing the obstacles to their coming forward and seeking help, is not only the right thing to do, but it would also advance efforts to protect children from harm.

They even explicitly recognized your mistake in the article, which is the tendency to conflate the disorder and the crime.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#290
As humans, we love to create and live in a humanistic world. The newspaper stances, which this article criticizes were trying to be human (for well-being of human in their best judgement, and with open motivation) at different points in time.

This article has serve as great whataboutism if you don't the humanistic philosophy, while you are pursuing the truth.

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