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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#481

Post by akiselev »

md224 wrote: post #428
pm90 wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your confusion is warranted. Context is important. I wanted to cite more from Cottons op ed but was afraid it would be too much words. This is the beginning of his essay: > This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s. > New York City suffered the worst of the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown Manhattan desce…

He doesn’t even mention protests or protestors in those quotes, so why do you believe he’s equating rioters and protestors? It seems like you’re reading the words “riots” and “rioters” and assuming that they must be Cotton’s terms for “protests” and “protestors”, but why make that assumption?

The vast majority of politicians have been very careful to differentiate between peaceful protestors and rioters/looters specifically because they know people will have the same exact discussion we are having now. Competent politicians are very careful about their choice of language. They weren't born yesterday and neither was Tom Cotton.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#482

Post by readams »

ethagnawl wrote: post #433
Bud wrote: post #404

In addition to the lies I listed in my other comment, Taibbi also lies about what he calls the "now-discredited Steele dossier" in this piece. Here are the facts: not a single significant conclusion in the Steele dossier has ever been discredited or proven false to date. Not one. Anyone who read Taibbi during the W Administration, and who reads him again now, can readily discern that someone got to him. It's not the…

> It's the same with Glenn Greenwald, who Taibbi is now allied with. Greenwald equated Michael Flynn's plea deal with the plight of poor folks being forced into bad deals by disinterested public defenders/overextended court systems on a recent episode of The Intercepted podcast. I no longer recognize the person I used to look forward to seeing as a guest on Democracy Now.

Much has been made in the media that he plead guilty so therefore there could be no possibility that his prosecution was unfair, unreasonable or political. But we know that many people plead guilty for reasons other than guilt. Facing a biased judge and prosecutors out for blood is certainly one of them. Fighting in such a case, even if you're right, is very risky.

You may gain a sense of schadenfreude that even one of the formerly powerful could be forced into that same grim calculus faced by a poor person railroaded by the system. But this is not justice in either case.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#483

Post by aww_dang »

Woberto wrote: post #176
aww_dang wrote: post #108

>I always question, why does a Black life matter only when a white man takes it?... Like, if a white man takes my life tonight, it’s going to be national news, but if a Black man takes my life, it might not even be spoken of… It’s stuff just like that that I just want in the mix. Because the dominant media narrative has a fetishized view of violence, racism and victimhood. Combine this with their overarching savior c…

I don't think I see the logical consistency you're talking about. In one case, there is a black man killing another black man. To me it seems highly unlikely that race was a motivating factor. In the other case, there is a white man killing a black man. Without further knowledge if the situation, we can't say whether race was involved here either - but in so many recent cases we have seen that race is near the root o…

>In one case, there is a black man killing another black man. To me it seems highly unlikely that race was a motivating factor.

At the end of the day, you can't say that conclusively. However this kind of event is outside of the fetishsized view of racial oppression. In my view, this is a trope trotted out to wear compassion on a shirtsleeve. I see it as a reflection of their vanity.

If you want to throw in the institutional angle, perhaps you could conclude that perpetrators of these crimes are less likely to be prosecuted.

https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicagos-dismal-murder-solve-ra...

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3202470

>If they were genuinely concerned, they wouldn't silence this man.

I stand by this statement. It doesn't matter if race is a motivating factor in this context. There's no reason to silence this man's views.

Canceling the journalist who reported it with cries of 'racist', because it doesn't fit the preconceived narrative is prejudicial. First they fetishsize to better self-aggrandize. Next they dispose of observations which do not fit their hypothesis. This man's concerns, the murder statistics and how that will impact real people, none of that matters. They're eager to skip all of that and jump to the conclusion where they prove their hypothesis. Throw in a few extra leaps to conflate the whole thing with an imagined moral high ground and partisan politics.

Hope this helps to clarify the lack of logical consistency I see here. Thanks.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#484

Post by AnimalMuppet »

fzeroracer wrote: post #382
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that logic means that if I vote for a Democrat, I'm also taking the whole package deal. And, bluntly, there aren't very many people that actually support all of that package deal.

Yes, that's right. I don't agree with the full package deal, but I think it's far better than the alternative Again: You get what you vote for. Using 'I disagree with what my party is doing, but I'm voting for them anyways' as an attempt to avoid criticism doesn't work. That's the nature of US politics. If you vote for one party despite them doing some heinous things, then you tacitly support what they're doing. If y…

And if I also disagree with some of what the other party is doing, then what? "Don't vote" seems to be the only option you have left. And I strongly disagree that that's the best option.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#485

Post by JPKab »

dang wrote: post #250
JPKab wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I didn't say any of that in my comment. Thank you for inferring that and downvoting it. You made the assumption that the people that dislike him are people I dislike. And I doubt you read the article. Basically if I don't write a full paragraph describing in essay like detail, I have to deal with people like you sitting there inferring way too much from a single statement. Awesome. I wouldn't support somebody wh…

Hey, please don't take the thread further into flamewar. ashtonkem's comment may have been a bit patronizing but it didn't deserve escalation into personal attack. We've had to ask you about this kind of thing before, unfortunately. Would you mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the spirit of this site more to heart? This thread, for example, is managing to stay barely on the ok…

Sorry dang. I'll try harder to do my part to keep HN civil instead of getting personal.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#487

Post by rootusrootus »

chowderhead wrote: post #446
DenisM wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

It's a reference to a FB employee who got fired recently for doing exactly that. Publicly shaming a colleague who had elected not to become politically involved.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#488

Post by thisiszilff »

pm90 wrote: post #400
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…

I would advise care when reading it. It’s not immediately clear but it uses very hand picked facts to paint a very different picture of what’s actually going on. I call these kinds of articles disinformation-lite; not outright lies but selectively picking events to portray a hypothetical scenario that doesn’t really hold true. I’ll cite a specific example to make this case. See this paragraph: > Cotton did not call f…

Here is a link to the op-ed for anyone following along who wants to read it: https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1375.

It is true that it does start of by talking about violence, rioters, and harm that's come to the police. But after that he explicitly says that these should not be confused by the protesters:

> Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn't be confused with bands of miscreants.

The majority of the op-ed is a fairly straightforward argument for deploying federal resources to help police, how that might be done, and why it needs to be done.

This is the most controversial paragraph it would appear (following the above paragraph).

> One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what's necessary to uphold the rule of law.

The op-ed doesn't seem particularly controversial to me. Whether or not a given city takes the action outlines in it -- yes, sure, that might be controversial. But this seems like the basic argument that is made by people in support of sending in troops to supplant police. I struggle to see why the views of a good chunk of the population should not have a public platform to be presented & discussed.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#489

Post by thisiszilff »

akiselev wrote: post #481
md224 wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn’t even mention protests or protestors in those quotes, so why do you believe he’s equating rioters and protestors? It seems like you’re reading the words “riots” and “rioters” and assuming that they must be Cotton’s terms for “protests” and “protestors”, but why make that assumption?

The vast majority of politicians have been very careful to differentiate between peaceful protestors and rioters/looters specifically because they know people will have the same exact discussion we are having now. Competent politicians are very careful about their choice of language. They weren't born yesterday and neither was Tom Cotton.

He does make it explicit that rioter =/= protestor:

> Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn't be confused with bands of miscreants.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#490

Post by brownbat »

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…

To echo your point, there was an Aspen festival panel a few years ago where a network news rep/owner was refreshingly honest.

He said everyone thinks they want the news to be deeply insightful and informative, but the people who would consume that product tend to go out nights and do interesting things like attend ballets or go to museums, or go to things like the aspen festival. Or at least they are just reading a few articles online.

They make news for the sort of people who just binge television news constantly. These people don't have a custom rss feed to make that efficient, and that is a special type of person.

"We run the market test against PBS every night."

If PBS started hitting numbers, every other station would jump to that model immediately.

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