Resignation Letter • Hacker News Board

Re: Resignation Letter

#231

Post by enraged_camel » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

0x8BADF00D wrote: post #198

jrumbut wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have 1,600 journalists last year that were sent to 150 countries [1]. What other organization is doing anything like that effort to gather facts around the world? Who is doing more collective discovery (and making it accessible to the public at a price an average person can afford)? I can only think of a handful of organizations that are serious candidates (Reuters? The BBC? Wikipedia?). Weird puff pieces, drama…

> I can't take them too seriously until I see an alternative that does the work of collective discovery. There is an alternative. It is you and I. The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow. And that arbitration will be decided on rationality. There will be no more credentialism and gatekeeping. That is why the traditional media companies are scared shitless.

>> The citizen journalist will become the arbiter of truth tomorrow.

Ah yes, citizen journalists such as Michael Tracey, who will enlighten us with their insanely dishonest, disingenuous and bad takes on every single issue. Really looking forward to it.

Re: Resignation Letter

#232

Post by strictnein » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

herbstein wrote: post #202

ngngngng wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely disagree. And I think Joe Rogan's podcast is the perfect example of how the market is suggesting exactly what you replied to. "Normal Americans" don't read the NYT anymore, or WSJ, or the Post, they listen to Joe Rogan on Spotify and Youtube. There's virtually no limit to who Joe will have on his show, and while he's not a remarkable interviewer, he brings the often vital opinions of his guests on all side…

Ah yes. The valuable viewpoints and opinions of literally white supremacists like Gavin McInnes. There's being open to dialog, and then there's that . It'd be one thing if he was able to critically oppose and examine what his guests claim. It's quite another when he seemingly adopts the opinions of whatever person that can speak three or four grammatically coherent sentences to him.

Congrats, you've named one bad guest. They're currently on episode #1505.

Re: Resignation Letter

#233

Post by Udik » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #213

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #102

People here are debating whether Weiss is a good person or not and whether they like her opinions or not. I think we're missing the key point in this letter, which is that she's saying that she experienced workplace harassment at the Times. That's unacceptable. My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist;…

Calling a racist a racist isn't harassment. Neither is firing a racist. This is all stuff that I would expect my employer to be doing to be responsible.

And who gets to decide if someone is a racist?

Re: Resignation Letter

#234

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #213

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #102

People here are debating whether Weiss is a good person or not and whether they like her opinions or not. I think we're missing the key point in this letter, which is that she's saying that she experienced workplace harassment at the Times. That's unacceptable. My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist;…

Calling a racist a racist isn't harassment. Neither is firing a racist. This is all stuff that I would expect my employer to be doing to be responsible.

[deleted]

Re: Resignation Letter

#235

Post by joshuamorton » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

asdf21 wrote: post #212

joshuamorton wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're citing an openly right wing media watchdog whose goal is to perpetuate the narrative that right wing ideas are suppressed. It calls CNN "hacks" in it's headlines. That's not a reliable source.

Exactly who else is going to cover the % of negative media coverage on Trump, in your mind, other than a "right wing" source?

An academic source that can describe a pre-propoosed methodology and doesn't have the appearance of being explicitly anti-CNN.

You can't seriously think that "the only people we can believe are people who openly call CNN hacks". That's just an admission that you only believe people who agree with you.

Put another way: there was a recent article on HN about using sources who you had uncertainty about, because those sources give you the most information (in a bayesian sense, they cause you to update your priors the most). The source listed gives me no reason to update my priors, because I could predict the result from the source.

Re: Resignation Letter

#236

Post by mturmon » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #40

I hesitated before upvoting the OP, and even considered flagging it, given its controversial author (with whom I disagree) and its potential to fuel ideologically driven, opinionated arguments (in which no one wins and everyone loses). However, I decided to upvote the OP because I feel it is, in the end, about a topic that is of utmost interest of -- and widely considered important by -- most people on HN: free speec…

I think your first impulse was the right one ... ;-) In general, HN threads fail on pure politics topics. (Sorry, friends, for the scold, but it's true.) We don't have enough people who have expertise on politics and media. Add this to a fact-free piece like OP, and you get blech.

The current administration and its cheerleaders have figured out how to turn trolling into a weapon, leaving the NYT befuddled as its model of well-intentioned fact-based debate (on the oped page), and "above-it-all" stenographic reporting (on the news pages), has broken down publicly. For earlier failures, see the boxes marked "Hillary's e-mails", and "Iraq, Invasion of" -- but it has gotten worse recently.

The NYT still does great info-graphics, non-politics reporting, and deep investigative scoops. Under Baquet (who I don't like as editor - I've been a regular reader since the mid-90s), it did successfully transition to a pay model for subscriptions -- and it has a lot of subscribers. This is more than most papers can say!

But, as noted, there are real problems with NYT reporting. They have not adapted in some key areas. This will require fundamental change that Baquet seems unable to do. Jay Rosen of NYU is my go-to source for analysis here (blog and twitter). See in particular: https://pressthink.org/2020/06/battleship-newspaper/

Re: Resignation Letter

#237

Post by jkingsbery » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

Benjammer wrote: post #170

mikece wrote: post #3

"Instead, a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at [the New York Times]: that truth isn't a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else." This is a very key point, and what are the consequences of "informing everyone of a truth" that doesn't accurately reflect -- of even contradicts! -- reality? Harm to the reput…

That just sounds like bluster and emotion to me though. Why is truth not a process of collective discovery? Is this implying that truth used to be this and now is not? What exactly does "collective discovery" mean in the context of a newspaper? What evidence is there that this used to be the case and now is not? What is the new "orthodoxy"? Are you able to describe this orthodoxy in specific terms and not just labels…

> What exactly does "collective discovery" mean in the context of a newspaper?

National Review will often have a chain of columns between two of its writers going back and forth debating the merits of a particular position. That is what collective discovery should look like - a publication should encourage views that the editors might disagree with in order to understand the different perspectives on a topic.

Now, it's all about people "canceling" each other.

> What is the new "orthodoxy"?

I thought this was made pretty clear - the new orthodoxy is the Progressive Left way of thinking. Given that a term is a label, I'm not sure what would clear it up, but she does give examples of things that went against the orthodoxy (Tom Cotton's op-ed), and what it consists of (in the paragraph starting "All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers...").

>

Re: Resignation Letter

#238

Post by jimbokun » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

kup0 wrote: post #26

alecb wrote: post #4

There's several layers of irony here, chief of which Bari Weiss headed a very vocal campaign to fire anyone at Colombia who didn't exist on the far-right on Israel/Palestine - and of course, falsely painted several professors as racist and anti-Semitic: https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...

Yeah hard to take seriously someone who was "masquerading as an opponent of viewpoint intolerance" while simultaneously being intolerant of any viewpoints that aren't pro-Israel

Can you give me a direct quote of her intolerance?

I scanned the Greenwald article, but just saw quotes of other people saying she is bad, but not direct quotes of the bad things she said.

Re: Resignation Letter

#239

Post by some-guy » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

jimbokun wrote: post #221

some-guy wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet, if I'm reading Weiss's resignation letter correctly, you would think that Massad should not be fired for that characterization.

Was he fired? Tried scanning Greenwald’s article, but didn’t see that mentioned.

Meant to say *should, edited for clarity.

Re: Resignation Letter

#240

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Tue, Jul 14, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

ebg13 wrote: post #220

seibelj wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

58% of Americans supported sending in the military to stop looting and property destruction, including 37% of African Americans (a sizable minority). I would assume they wanted to prevent the city being burnt down rather than stop non-violent protests. https://www.newsweek.com/majority-americans-support-calling-... https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2020/06/02/58-o... When the protests are peaceful, you don…

> When the protests are peaceful, you don't need to send in military. When the city is burning, it could be a solution. What about the many reports that the protests started peaceful until the police started shooting? You may disagree about whether it's racist to decide in that circumstance to send the military against the group that isn't the police, but it does seem to be willfully blind to the relationship between…

When entire city blocks in Minneapolis were burning to the ground, I think there was a reasonable case to be made that cause and effect didn't matter anymore.