Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 618 posts

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#561

Post by pm90 »

Udik wrote: post #555
ssalazar wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If members of my community are being killed with abandon across the country by the police and it provokes largely peaceful protests against that, then an action which seeks to misrepresent the situation and argue for the use of militarized forces against such protests is de facto calling for an increase in killing of the more people from my community.

Nobody is misrepresenting what Cotton wrote. Everyone who is following the situation closely rather than just reading the words knows what consequences could be to the proposed actions and are justifiably horrified by it.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#563

Post by pm90 »

leereeves wrote: post #547
pm90 wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cotton isn’t some rando posting a comment on Facebook. This is a US Senator whose essay was reviewed by his editorial staff before being sent to the times. He is saying exactly what he meant to say. If he meant something different there were other ways to express it.

"No quarter" wasn't in the essay. It was a tweet. Does "his editorial staff" review everything he tweets? And should everything anyone says be given the worst possible interpretation, or should we, as in the Hacker News guidelines, "respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

> Does "his editorial staff" review everything he tweets?

Most Senior Government officials do, yes.

And Occam’s razor applies: I would argue that using an alternate interpretation of what he said rather than the well known one is going absolutely against the spirit of that hacker news guideline.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#564

Post by pm90 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #548
pm90 wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He did not take significant pains to separate them, that is the whole point. Please cite sections of his essay that support your hypothesis.

He couches all of his points in a painful separation/distinction. It's one of the main points of his op ed. Is your brand of rhetoric here the reason why everyone feels like they have to belabor their points by "refreshing" a distinction every two paragraphs lest you forget? It's a weird amnesia, and I want to you consider the possibility that you want him to equate rioting with peaceful protesting because without th…

It’s fine to be wrong. I missed that paragraph in his essay.

But there is a reason why that paragraph was missed, and Ive tried to portray the reason why that might be in my other comments.

I’m not trying to change your mind. I’m trying to address the reasons why his op ed was deemed to be so revolting. A lot of the comments seem to confess a kind of willful blindness to the awfulness involved in that essay and I’m trying to make a good faith argument to explain why that perspective is justified.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#565

Post by Udik »

pm90 wrote: post #561
Udik wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If members of my community are being killed with abandon across the country by the police and it provokes largely peaceful protests against that, then an action which seeks to misrepresent the situation and argue for the use of militarized forces against such protests is de facto calling for an increase in killing of the more people from my community. Nobody is misrepresenting what Cotton wrote. Everyone who is follo…

> If members of my community are being killed with abandon across the country by the police

Frankly, I don't even think that this is true. I think the US police is just hyper-violent, mostly for cultural reasons (both on the side of the police and on the side of the criminals). The 2.3 million inmates in US prisons are the demonstration of a deeply flawed culture in that respect. And the fact that blacks are disproportionately engaging in criminal behaviour (for whatever reason) makes them more vulnerable to police violence. But just framing this as a racism issue is misguided. There, I said it.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#566

Post by pm90 »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #539
ghettoimp wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I of course agree completely that a journalist should be open minded, aware of their own bias, conduct thorough research, interview knowledgeable people, and all of that. At the end of this process they are ideally quite an expert in whatever they are writing about. But I'm not sure I see why journalists should try to be strictly objective. A journalist is in a unique position to identify the BS, provide analysis and…

If you’ve ever read a journalist’s take on a subject that you’re an expert in, you’ll realize that they do not become experts after researching a story, nor are they any better at identifying BS than other people. Some journalists that specialize in a particular field become experts, but it takes time to learn. Journalists don’t have some secret way to learn faster than other people. Journalists do get training in in…

I think you may have a bias against journalists =p.

It’s true that they may not be experts in everything that they report on, even if it’s their niche. Eg I think Kara Swisher does a reasonably good job of representing technology related things but there’s things she says that are not really true.

However the one thing journalists do cover well and have good expertise in is current event and politics. They are closest to the sources. And thus they become pretty good at identifying BS in those narrow fields at the very least. Given that, I certainly value their “take” on what the current events portray.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#567

Post by FillardMillmore »

xtracto wrote: post #377
js2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm a Mexican living in mexico. When I was a kid? My dad was subscribed to Time Magazine. In my opinion it was quite informative and nin-skewed. Nowadays I follow American news channels for entertainment (both CNN and Fox Bews are soooooo skewed). I usually go to CBSN or AlJazeera for 'boring' unskewed news.

For what it's worth Al-Jazeera is owned by Qatar and this has been known to color their reporting. One site I use to check myself on the bias of news outlets is below - the example in this case being Al-Jazeera.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/al-jazeera/

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#568

Post by ithkuil »

roenxi wrote: post #421
baddox wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s okay to take positions on factual matters even if a political party also happens to take that same position. If one party believes the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the other party disagrees, it’s not exactly “partisan” (at least not in the pejorative sense) to take a side on that matter.

If that is the standard, political parties will just start claiming that all their opinions are factual (as happens in practice, coincidentally). If we had an algorithm to sort fact from fiction then that would be fine, but we don't. Our method for sorting fact and fiction is to ask an expert. Experts are not reliable in political situations because there are experts who are willing to believe anything for money. Par…

It's not only money. People are ready to believe (or to claim they believe) in things they think will make the world a better place (for some definition of better). This where the real partisanship lies. Tell a white lie, turn a blind eye, jump to conclusion, ... are all easy things to do if they justify moving the needle towards a world you truly think it's better.

People of course have wildly different standards w.r.t what "better" means.

And once shaped, the goal is hard to change. It takes more than facts or logical arguments to change one's idea if what the ideal world looks like. It's part of your identity, it's intertwined with your community.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#569

Post by remote_phone »

wozniacki wrote: post #540
remote_phone wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you even read any of the other articles he has written? He really is one of the best journalists of this current era, he is truth-seeking instead of motivated by dogma.

You just proved my point. You expect people to somehow know and lionize these left-wing hacks as if their eminence should be self-evident and known to all, despite their bent (which is revealed in the 2nd paragraph where the author calls a sitting President a 'clown'). That's the problem with unself-aware people like you, who expect everyone to read the same people you do. Left-leaning people have been accused of liv…

Lol your response is utterly nonsensical.

This “left-wing hack” just excoriated the entire media and left-wing movement for essentially being fascists. Did you even bother reading the article?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#570

Post by 7532yahoogmail »

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…

>So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market

Slow down. This is the hackernews equivalent to "yada yada yadaing" over the real stuff. You say points big and silly you can't backup. I work at a business news organization, and know someone who just left WSJ. Now, think again how you'd tell them face to face they're niche? You're gonna tell them how the media business works? Like what are you going to say?Are you claiming FB is a new organization? In fact, are you really saying anything at all?

Those issues are important, but what I find most concerning about your reply is "the way our economical system work".

You're either not in management, are an incredibly crappy manager, or don't know anything about it. You do it for the money like some lame reach for that Tesla R&R refrain to argue for lower intellectual (ethics/morals) standards ... that's the beginning of the end for organizations ... what you fail to get is that other organizations who are not so easily sold your sale of good will be still doing the news and fighting the good fight.

Those who understand money the best and make the most over the long term know best money is NOT the measure of all things.

Post reply on HN