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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#441

Post by Animats »

js2 wrote: post #305
Animats wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. I suspect that's correct. It's hard now to find any news outlet now that sticks to "Who, What, When, Where, Why". This is a consequence of pay per click, probably. The left and the right now both have a checklist of mandatory positions required to avoid punishment. Those positions are in many cases contrary to fact. That's not good. Denial has become a cor…

I'm 48. My family had a newspaper subscription (in my case, the Miami Herald). I've been a consumer of news all my life, mostly print media. (My family rarely watched local news except for when a hurricane was headed our way, but would often watch programs like 60 minutes.) When was the news ever "Who, What, When, Where, Why?" It's always had a slant as long as I remember. Here's "the most trusted man in America" cal…

He's basically saying "We lost". Which was objectively true.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#442

Post by jtbayly »

dang wrote: post #257
jtbayly wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, or at least be honest that the reason this was removed is because it is flagged, not because it was a dupe.

83 points and dozens of comments is well over the threshold for considering a repost a dupe ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html ), whether or not it was flagged, and generally speaking that threshold should be tightened if an article was flagged, not loosened. Otherwise flagging doesn't mean very much. I made the call to turn the flags off on this one and merge the comments from the previous thread in here, b…

Thank you for doing so.

If you don’t mind some feedback for the way posts are marked, read on. :)

There is no doubt that the post is technically a dupe.

I realize now (from your comment) that a post can be flagged either for its content or the content of the conversation. I was only thinking of the former, and under that system it would make a lot more sense for things to get marked consistently (ie if a link is flagged, it is flagged if it gets reposted). That allows us to understand better what things are allowed here and what are not. A dupe flag tells me that there is nothing wrong with the link or the type of content it contains (or the conversation that took place under it, for that matter.) If somebody had not posted the link to the original, I would have never known that the article had been removed for its content (again or the conversation). I would have thought I simply missed the discussion.

In fact, that’s precisely what happened to me. Since I was enjoying it, I clicked through to the older post, only to get whiplash as I discovered that it was a conversation that was apparently not allowed here.

I hope that explains why I felt so frustrated and misled by the [dupe] flag, and that it t is a help to you in your moderation work.

Edited to add: To be clear, my point was not to allow the conversation to continue (though I’m glad you did). My point was that the second removal should get marked the same way so it’s clear what is going on.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#443

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.

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

What is "unadopted bias"? Searches with Bing and DuckDuckGo come up absolutely empty and I find the usage befuddling. I can find literally nobody and nothing on the Internet who/which speaks of "unadopted bias"?

[Is that better, Ycombinator mods?]

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#444

Post by dragonwriter »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #134

For those in the comments that haven't read the article, I highly recommend you check it out. While the comments are talking about the survival of news media and "tone-deaf" titles, the bulk of the article is about the Overton window[1] shifting to the point where rigerous journalism questioning outrages of the time is becoming untenable, weakening the news overall. It's a very good read. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org…

> the bulk of the article is about the Overton window[1] shifting to the point where rigerous journalism questioning outrages of the time is becoming untenable,

That’s not an Overton Window shift, even if it was happening (which it is not); an Overton Window shift would change what the outrages are; making questioning popular outrages less tenable would be a narrowing of the window rather than a shift. But there is widespread and viable news media coverage questioning the outrages of the day, more than any time previously I would venture. It's just that the media is more focussed on catering to various isolated demographic and ideological markets (some more for advertising sales reasons, some more for political propaganda reasons, but the net effect is the same), and so in any particular outlet there is probably less tolerance for stories questioning the outrages of that outlets target audience. But, while the Overton Window may have shifted and/or narrowed/widened over time, this isn't a sign of it so much as the increasingly narrow audience focus of much of the media.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#445

Post by klipt »

flyinglizard wrote: post #296
fragmede wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe because Trump lowered taxes on people in red states by raising taxes on New Yorkers.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#446

Post by chowderhead »

DenisM wrote: post #333
blickentwapft wrote: post #83

I’m getting to the point of just switching off. Whatever your opinion, there will be many others who deeply and vehemently disagree with you and do so with passionate, fiery, certain-to-be-correct righteous indignation. Carry your true opinions in your head and share them with no one.

It’s all well and good until your colleagues start shaming you on Twitter that you failed to denounce xyz. And that’s one of the better situation, too.

So, is this a real thing that happens? Just curious.

If someone shamed me for something like this, I would tell them to get a fucking life and to mind their own business. Maybe that's why I don't get pestered... I'm pretty blunt about not putting up with bullshit. I agree with the article, these left ideologies are absurd. Coming from an independent moderate. Obligatory wake up sheeple etc etc.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#447

Post by dragonwriter »

Animats wrote: post #261
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…

Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. I suspect that's correct. It's hard now to find any news outlet now that sticks to "Who, What, When, Where, Why". This is a consequence of pay per click, probably. The left and the right now both have a checklist of mandatory positions required to avoid punishment. Those positions are in many cases contrary to fact. That's not good. Denial has become a cor…

> It's hard now to find any news outlet now that sticks to "Who, What, When, Where, Why"

No news outlet has ever really done that (and why is usually a matter of subjective ascription, rather than fact, anyway.)

The illusion of unbiased news comes from a time when the major national media were a small set of corporations with largely similar institutional biases, and when advertising was less targeted so number of eyeballs was more important than a narrow, focussed audience, passionate, demographic, favoring a blander presentation and more effort to avoid offending any large group, rather than trying to appeal very strongly to a narrow, specific group.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#448

Post by chottocharaii »

krofoo9nn wrote: post #422

Former hero of mainstream journalism no longer fits in with mainstream journalism so of course it’s destroying itself. Perhaps Matt Taibbi is used to being a visibly elite journalist who isn’t on board with a new status quo that won’t benefit him the same. People are sick of yesterday’s politics and looking to remake things. The media is always going on about it’s important role in our political system. It needs a go…

Tying all reporting of facts to a need to push virtuous political narratives is braindead.

By the way, Taibbi is doing fine, financially. So I hardly think this is a grudge article.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#449

Post by ailun »

haram_masala wrote: post #106
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…

In Chinese, the name for this kind of person is baizuo: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baizuo It is a very derogatory term, though to be fair, it is also used as a foil against criticism of internal Chinese policies.

Yes, but it’s beyond overused at this point. It’s similar to SJW with some additional shades of meaning since it’s describing foreign politics.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#450

Post by sinker »

krofoo9nn wrote: post #422

Former hero of mainstream journalism no longer fits in with mainstream journalism so of course it’s destroying itself. Perhaps Matt Taibbi is used to being a visibly elite journalist who isn’t on board with a new status quo that won’t benefit him the same. People are sick of yesterday’s politics and looking to remake things. The media is always going on about it’s important role in our political system. It needs a go…

Who's "we" in this case? Not everyone is on board with the new left who condemn at whim well meaning people who don't follow the temperamental and shallow whims of "wokeness." Free speech and thought are oppressed and people who don't follow the line have their names plastered online and their jobs taken away. Taking offense has somehow become a form of coherent argument. Social media has become a tool to foremost ridicule and destroy people's reputation.

Not everyone on the "left" is on board with this. There's still a large number of us who respect reason, intelligence, civil discourse, liberty. We just don't appear to have a candidate who represents us, or a late night talk show that represents us, because our stances are not principally rooted as being in opposition to other entities. There are a few journalists and voices that still speak and write foremost with respect to reason and in accordance to reality, but the current social and political climate is so inflammatory that this becomes difficult.

People like us exist, our existence is just not expressed majorly in media or social media.

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