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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#291

Post by flyinglizard »

xg15 wrote: post #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…

Do you feel like there are many parallels between being a Jew in 1939 Germany and being a black person in 2020 USA?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#292

Post by mistermann »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #199
phaus wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly what I was talking about. You make a bunch of assumptions about peoples' political opinions that are incorrectly portraying them as centrists and supporters of nazis if they don't adopt your world view. "Us or them" is killing America. Lack of nuance and intelligent discourse is destroying us. There's more to the extreme left than "Everyone deserves to be treated equally and with dignity." Politics in…

[flagged]

> Doesn't it make them a Nazi enabler, though?

Calling Trump a nazi seems incredibly disrespectful to people and their family who actually lost their lives to real nazis.

Are you aware that you don't actually know what Trump supporters think? That your opinion is based on heuristics running on top of the absolutely tiny sample of the real world that you've been exposed to, much of it likely incredibly biased if not outright untrue?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#293

Post by alexashka »

noch wrote: post #269
alexashka wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 consci…

> 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 : If you have a social problem, then you employ postmodernism…

Scientific method is employed to solve particular problems.

Which problems should we be solving? You cannot use the scientific method to answer that question. The best you can try and do is use empirical evidence and science to strengthen your position, in an attempt to convince others and/or yourself.

This is not an original thought - it's a shame that it isn't more well known.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#294

Post by maps7 »

desertrider12 wrote: post #287
maps7 wrote: 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.

Thanks! I actually already donate to Wikipedia but I don't use it as news. Do you specifically mean Wikinews [1]?

[1] https://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#295

Post by wherewillitlead »

xg15 wrote: post #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…

Max from Oakland didn't think it was irrelevant to the topic at hand. Shouldn't he be heard? He belongs to the population being discriminated against. To me that makes his perspective relevant, and I can't see by what logic it wouldn't be, except conformity enforcement, which is scary and not likely to end well.

Bringing up concentration camps in that way is just a way of assuming your conclusion.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#296

Post by flyinglizard »

fragmede wrote: post #246
gopi wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, subscription is the main revenue source, not ads in this new media environment. So the way to optimize is to find a most passionate tribe and serve their point of view. This is why NYT is going to stop growing if Trump loses in November. With no need to resist there is no need to subscribe

Are they? Centrists aren't a particularly passionate tribe, and the NYT's is about as mainstream media as it gets. They're going to have an absolute field day leading up to and including November, no matter who wins or loses, playing up, well, everything. NYT's most passionate tribe is not the Left, they're not left enough for them. But they're not playing to a tribe, but the passion itself. Seattle is no longer fron…

I’m a NYT subscriber - NYT is downright obsessed with Trump, and the all consuming anguish from the Democrats. I’m not saying right or wrong, I’m just saying that reading their opinion section - where editorial bias can _really_ come into play - you may find most opinions revolve around Trump and his policies. It is so ingrained into the newspaper that they cover Trump negatively even when he does something agreeable just because what he stands for.

I’m not an American, so no horse in the game - but this is obsessive.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#297

Post by tomp »

hcayless wrote: post #90
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,…

I’m interested that this is getting downvoted. It seems perfectly fair comment to me. Newspapers can not afford to massively alienate their readership, and both of these cases clearly did just that. That calls into question the editors’ fitness for their jobs.

I downvoted because of the absurd allegation of a democratically-elected US politician as "pro-fascism". He was merely advocating for enforcing law.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#298

Post by giardini »

watwut wrote: post #216
giardini wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand your point: any writer has a point of view and it may ooze out in his choice of words. But a reporter should resist the desire to editorialize and instead emphasize the 5W's: who, what, where, when, why (and how): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws If reporters did so, much contention would disssipate and we'd get more information (news) and less opinion - IMO a good thing.

We would still get bias. Pretending it does not exist is worst then actually visibly admitting it. In particular, who, what, why is extremely sensitive to unadopted bias.

Don't put words in my mouth: I'm not pretending bias doesn't exist.

And WTF is "unadopted bias"? Searches with Bing and DuckDuckGo come up absolutely empty and an analysis of the language is befuddling. Did you just make it up, b/c literally nobody and nothing on the Innertubes speaks of "unadopted bias" except you?

From that I presume you not a native English speaker and I've possibly been trolled by a bot or an "idibot". That's a word I made up: it's a portmanteau of "idiot" and "robot" and means a robot with a low IQ. Two can play this game.

[+10 for use of term "portmanteau"]

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#299

Post by closeparen »

aPALKbaq wrote: post #81
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…

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…

Or they got as far as they could with sex appeal and moved on to the next best rationality bypass mechanism, tribalism.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#300

Post by orsenthil »

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,…

> 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.

Do you have a million friends to support this data point?

I agree with everything you said. The point that my friends unsubscribed, and they took an action because they were losing business due to people leaving them for that article comes across a little naive to me, in an otherwise well thought out response.

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