No shit. The American right showed the way. The left is finally optimizing to match the working model.
The American Press Is Destroying Itself
551–560 of 618 posts
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#552Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seriously? Kids in the US would get in all kinds of trouble for not respecting the Pledge of Allegiance back in the... 90s, not the 70s. It's only been in the past decade that anything that's not complete and vehement agreement with the "support the troops" mantra has been tolerated by the mainstream. It's things like these that make me very skeptical of the intentions of the article. The idea of the American public…
Did they purge Tankies, Maoists, Trotskyist etc from universities? Because when O went to Uni half of social science department was some sort of -ist in the 90s See how fast you get fired if you don’t take a knee when department head tells you to for BLM.
McCarthy certainly did, I don't know if you're being facetious but that's exactly what happened. These sectors of the left didn't come to dominate some sectors of academia; they were driven out of everywhere else and that's the only area where their radical ideas were tolerated.
Meanwhile the rest of society has been tolerating everything else in mainstream public institutions: the racist and regressive corporate bosses, the Evangelicals who considered anything that's not in agreement with their doctrine to be an affront to God, the gun nuts who consider walking around in public with an assault weapon to be a perfectly valid expression, and on it goes.
American society is dramatically more tolerant of these extremist right wing positions, and that Overton window shift has always existed in the US.
It is only because of the inflammatory discourse of Trump and his allies that people have decided that the fringe left is dramatically less dangerous and tolerant than these literal fascists.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#553I 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…
How can we make serious news less expensive (to produce)? Reducing the cost could be one way to compete with "non-serious news".
You can’t reduce the cost of “real journalism” by much. It takes lots of time and manual effort to find and vet sources, dual-source all facts, piece together the puzzle from sets of verified facts without making non-factual leaps.
Then you have to actually write in such a way that the reader/viewer gets only a series of facts, and any inferences or opinion they draw should be their own.
That ain’t cheap.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#554Earlier quoted context omitted.
He can say whatever he wants, of course, but should not be surprised when he takes comparatively more flak for venturing forth on issues involving race. New York Magazine is a business, and can make their own decisions about whether that flak is worth absorbing. Certainly, his ideas on these topics don't seem to be worth much on their own merits.
It's always amazing how you (and all others parroting this line) can freely switch back and forth between "he who has the gold makes the rules and that's okay" and "corporations need to support this cause I support", depending on exactly who is getting hurt in each situation. Come on - you must realize that you don't actually believe your argument as a principle, you're just using it as an excuse because you want Sul…
If you'll forgive me from going meta, and this is not related to Thomas's comment at all, I was interested in all of the controversial opinions that have appeared in op-eds over the years, so I did some online searching. I had remembered that the NYT gave space to Castro, to Putin, to Mao (I think), even to some asshole who wanted pederastry to be legal.
Good luck finding that. It's as if controversial opinion columns didn't exist before 2018. I couldn't even find an article with a list.
Our panopticon falters. Help me Landru! (Obligatory ST TOS reference, The Return Of The Archons)
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#555Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a bit confused, since the section you emphasized appears to prove Taibbi’s point: Cotton called for force against “lawbreakers”, not “protestors”. You can argue that the troops would in practice end up attacking both groups, but that’s a separate question from “did Cotton suggest deploying troops to attack protestors?” If Cotton explicitly stated that all protestors were in violation of the law, then I stand corr…
> Cotton called for force against “lawbreakers”, not “protestors” I don't care. I live in one of these so-called riot zones and my company's office was looted. I do not want active duty soldiers pointing weapons of war around my neighborhood for any reason. Especially with how municipal police forces have dealt with (and escalated) these situations. I'll not have my home treated like a failed state or enemy war zone.…
> I do not want active duty soldiers pointing weapons of war around my neighborhood for any reason... I'll not have my home treated like a failed state or enemy war zone.
These are excellent concerns, and I fully agree with you on those. But we can debate about them (at what point is it necessary to intervene to stop violent protests? With which means, what would be an acceptable use of force?). You can express your disagreement in full and mark your distance from Cotton's opinion.
Instead misrepresenting what Cotton wrote, accusing him of inciting murder and forcing the editor to resign are not legitimate objections. Seems simple enough?
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#556Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Using selective words to further his argument is Taibbi’s shtick as that’s “old journalism “. He’s railing against, ultimately, the evolution of information distribution. He’s calling the media industry recent exclusion of one journalist the end times? Go start a YouTube channel. Someone THAT good shouldn’t need a day job. A hundred years ago most people were self employed. This weird bubble of human history where we…
It's been a lot more than one journalist.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#557Earlier quoted context omitted.
Have you seen the news show "Rising"? They have been staking out this space for about a year now. Taibbi and Greenwald appear there regularly. This show is probably the most interesting new development in American political media. The hosts have jokingly described their philosophy as "let's hate each other less and elites more", and present as a mostly-friendly pair of left and right populists. They were on Joe Rogan…
I can't take Taibbi and Greenwald's antagonism against "elites" seriously when they take every chance possible to defend the actions of a billionaire President and his billionaire-stuff Cabinet.
"Elitism" isn't really about material wealth but a set of viewpoints and loyalties.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#558Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> How is the general public supposed to learn what is happening though?
That's a good question. In theory I'd like to suggest they think. That is, develop critical thinking skills and some basic analysis skills. Yes, it's a big ask. But it would be useful across the board. Basics such as: confirmation bias, correlation vs cause, conflict of interest, and such. These skills are not as common as they should be.
That aside, broadcasters and publishers should be required to label news as news and editorial as editorial. Anecdotally, many people don't understand the difference, or why it matters. It's difficult to have discussions when "the facts" most people cite are based on editorial opinion. Sadly, hammer that option often enough and loud enough and it becomes "true."
Even so, it's a massive problem. There's still too much wiggle room for senders to "baffle them with bullshit." (See below.)
Editorial: My definition of news is: facts that are not only true but are also relevant and important. Anything - true or not - that doesn't meet this standard - again, to me - is fake news. In other words, when important and relevant stories are buried with trite fodder, the fodder is fake news. Just because something happened, just because some is true doesn't make it news. The sun coming up again is not news.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#559Earlier 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…
You're right. The problem are the number of people who have post modernism at the core of their thinking - the idea that there is no objective truth.
Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself
#560Earlier 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…
You: It’s immediately clear that it’s not a nuanced argument he seeks to make, in his view protestors and rioters are one and the same. Tom Cotton: 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. You're doing exactly what Cotton warns against just a paragraph l…
I stand by exactly what I said. Context is important and words in isolation mean nothing, and that paragraph was explicitly designed to protect the outcome of what he’s really calling for.
Consider another example. Tough on crime laws were not explicitly designed to incarcerate large number of POCs by the the letter. But the difference in how different communities are policed meant that POCs communities often ended up being targeted more anyways. Lawmakers who created such laws would say “ Its meant to target hardened drug criminals, just the bad apples” but in practice it doesn’t really matter.
In this case, the op ed explicitly paints an incredibly biased picture of the situation on the ground and uses that to justify a heavy handed response. There is absolutely no way for a militarized response to differentiate between peaceful and non peaceful responses and Cotton knows that. When the military is involved, it means one thing only: curfews, rigidly enforced. All protests shut down regardless of their nature. One line saying “ please not the peaceful protestors” means absolutely nothing.
> If we can't agree on things said in a single straight forward op ed, how are we (humanity) ever going to have any real conversation? Is this the Great Filter of Fermi's Paradox?
I’m not sure what that is so I can’t address that directly. It’s not a black and white argument as you seem to imply though. Context is extremely important and words in isolation mean absolutely nothing.