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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#591

Post by eli_gottlieb »

parsimo2010 wrote: post #402
ramphastidae wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is that if not a partisan political opinion? What was partisan about what he said? He made no mention of US political parties. He simply said that the war was failing and it needed to end. May I suggest you are projecting your partisanship onto this? Objective journalism is not about giving both sides an equal voice. It is OK to use rationale and logic to support one side over the other. Should all journalism…

Saying that the USA should get out of Vietnam is an opinion. You do not have to explicitly mention a party to express a partisan position. “Real” journalism reports the facts of what’s going on and lets people make their own decisions. They can interview people and report the opinions that other people hold, but they should try to avoid inserting their own biases. Walter Cronkite leveraged his position to express his…

>Saying that the USA should get out of Vietnam is an opinion. You do not have to explicitly mention a party to express a partisan position.

The Vietnam War was started by a Democratic administration and continued by a Republican one, through several Congressional midterm elections. It was a bipartisan effort, so I don't see how having an opinion on it, for or against, can count as partisan in the sense of advocating for one political party over the other.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#592

Post by eli_gottlieb »

ashtonkem wrote: post #452
Khaine wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Journalists of the past basically started the Spanish–American War

For sure. I wouldn’t want to go back to that specific period of journalism.

And journalism has exacerbated every single Middle Eastern or African war/armed-conflict in my lifetime.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#593

Post by oxfeed65261 »

goatinaboat wrote: post #572
parsimo2010 wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying that the USA should get out of Vietnam is an opinion. You do not have to explicitly mention a party to express a partisan position. “Real” journalism reports the facts of what’s going on and lets people make their own decisions. They can interview people and report the opinions that other people hold, but they should try to avoid inserting their own biases. Walter Cronkite leveraged his position to express his…

And yes, a journalist covering the creationism vs. evolution debate should research and interview people from both sides. Well this is Hacker News, if you phrase it as a question about are we living in a simulation they will take it seriously, but of course a simulation would imply someone or something running it...

Wait, there are people who think we are probably not living in a simulation? Next thing you know, someone will try to claim that free will is real.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#594

Post by ashtonkem »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #592
ashtonkem wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For sure. I wouldn’t want to go back to that specific period of journalism.

And journalism has exacerbated every single Middle Eastern or African war/armed-conflict in my lifetime.

Hence point #1; I think that the press has done a better job at pretend objectivity during my lifetime than it has at actually being objective.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#595

Post by oxfeed65261 »

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.

You may find The Economist to be, if not less skewed, at least skewed in a manner which doesn’t line up as much with USA concepts of partisanship.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#596

Post by xg15 »

csallen wrote: post #467
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that whether or not something makes front page news or gets people riled up is a fair measure of how much they care That seems like a pretty good metric for whether the political system is grappling with something. What metric are you proposing as an alternative? Does it show a different result?

The political system is always grappling with lots of things simultaneously. Some of those things will always be getting more publicity and arousing more anger than others at any point in time, but so what? That doesn't necessarily mean anyone's moving the needle on those issues to a higher degree than on other issues.

I'd put it like this: The insitutionalized legal and political system can address lots of things simultaneously. The public attention (news cycle etc) has strong limits how many topics it can consider simultaneously. The focus of public attention is also important because it influences the political system (democracy and all).

Currently the focus is on systemic racism and police violence. Trying to move focus to violence between blacks would absolutely take resources away from fighting racism (which is often the intention of those bringing up the topic).

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#597

Post by pm90 »

thu2111 wrote: post #590
pm90 wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only you spent the amount of effort analyzing his essay rather than my comments. > Words in isolation mean absolutely nothing? Context matters sure, but not to the extent that actual words mean nothing at all. Your position here is that what people say they believe doesn't actually matter in the slightest, and should be ignored in favour of vaguely defined "context". Who defines this context? I guess you do. In fa…

Now you're mis-representing what I wrote too! I have never claimed I “fail to see why his essay was controversial”. Nobody has, that phrase appears nowhere in this thread except your post, yet you actually put it in quotes as if it's a direct repetition of a claim I made. It's obvious why his essay was controversial: it's about a controversial topic that many people feel strongly about. "the amount of length that peo…

> Your position is that once you decided someone is a racist they're a racist. It doesn't matter if they never said any "racist stuff". In fact it doesn't matter how carefully they choose their words: you won't even read them whilst claiming you did, and even whilst telling other people to read more carefully. Because "it's fine to be wrong".

Lol how little self reflection. You accuse me of “stuffing words in others mouth” when it is you who keep doing it.

Good luck with that. It’s clear that you’re not interested in a good faith argument so I’m going to leave this conversation.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#598

Post by dodobirdlord »

humanrebar wrote: post #371
adt2bt wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t agree. The defining difference between the left and right to me is the propensity to advocate for change. The cultural left is a hodgepodge if smaller issues under one larger umbrella. You’ve got people who care about racism, climate change, money in politics, access to abortion, etc. All of whom are trying to change society in some way to deal with big problems we have. As a result, it’s incredibly messy. Th…

The right is the ones advocating for changes with respect to immigration, access to abortion, affirmative action, the tax code, the power of public service unions, and a whole host of other issues. The left is defending the status quo more than many seem to appreciate. More, the left seems to be more picky about morality issues, even, though the set of morals aren't sexual or religious (for instance), they are enviro…

The GP is a response to a comment about social/cultural issues. For the two cultural issues you mention, immigration and access to abortion, the stance of the right wing is specifically to roll back what the left wing regards as progress. The right wing's stance on other social/cultural issues tends to follow this trend, such as with LGBT and healthcare topics. The stance holds that recently decided social questions were decided wrongly and should be reversed, and that recent legislation is defective and should be repealed. The modern cultural right can't even manage to be tech-optimistic, because technology companies are regarded as being on the wrong side of the culture war and must therefore be opposed and degraded.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#599

Post by dang »

cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #530
gameswithgo wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are you fucking retarded?

There's a couple breaches of the guidelines in that post there buddy. Would you care to try again?

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That's explicitly in there also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#600

Post by dang »

gameswithgo wrote: post #502
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #459

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, his so called mob has done... nothing here. Which, I know, is very frustrating to those who are salivating at the thought of seeing them provoked. The unanswered cries of "where's the 2FA crowd now?!" have, admittedly, been very satisfying to watch.

are you fucking retarded?

You can't do this here, regardless of how strongly you disagree. Perhaps you don't owe the other side better (perhaps you do), but you definitely owe this community better if you're posting here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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