Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year • Hacker News Board

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#451

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:23 AM UTC

zug_zug wrote: post #398

SkyPuncher wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the thread is new, the only things to object to are the article and the title, so comments come from people objecting to those. Such posts tend to be reflexive and shallow because those are the fastest reactions to feel and the quickest to write. It'd be very interesting to see how a short delay of posting comments on new post would impact this. Compared to other vote-based sites, HN is very health - but to yo…

I was thinking about a similar scoring strategy for comments as is applied to articles. Articles which generate more comments than upvotes are deprioritized. Perhaps comments that garner more comments than upvotes could similarly be deprioritized (not unlike reddit penalizing controversial opinions [those with both upvotes & downvotes] ) I'm envisioning a use-case for this would be when say, an article briefly touchi…

We've seen the outcome of this. It's the turbo echo chamber that people here bemoan all the time.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#452

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:27 AM UTC

pc86 wrote: post #419

slg wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between defining a category of people and gatekeeping a category of people.

What's the difference?

A definition of journalists that excludes small scale bloggers, and such would create a different population from say, one that comprised "anyone who self identifies as a journalist", for instance.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#453

Post by austincheney » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #333

austincheney wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people don’t play on a team.

Sure, some don't, but most do (at least unconsciously), that's just how people behave. Some people consciously try to avoid "playing on a team" with various degrees of success, but it's a bit unnatural and actually quite hard to do.

I agree. Originality is a rare and measurable personality index.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#454

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:32 AM UTC

AshWolfy wrote: post #432

tristor wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see a pro-authoritarian bent in the comments in this thread. What I see a lot of is people pointing out that the definition of "journalist" is very very loose in 2020, and that has an effect on the arrest stats. Many many many people have watched with their own eyes, live on video, what's been going on through the course of this year. We've seen CNN and ABC reporters shot with rubber bullets and accosted on l…

> we've also seen a lot of "journalists" throwing rocks and molotov cocktails on live stream and doing other criminal acts Ive watched a lot of livestreams of the protest and never once saw a livestreamer throw a rock or molotov cocktail

The livestreamers with sufficient common sense aren't going to do that and leave the most blatant evidence in the world lying around for their inevitable conviction. It's a bit harder (though not impossible) to hide that on a stream where you don't get to selectively edit.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#455

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:39 AM UTC

paulmd wrote: post #289

dgritsko wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here's the dilemma I'm faced with. As someone who wishes to consume news that is as factual as reasonably possible, while also being aware that at least some bias is inevitable (no matter how well-intentioned the author may be)... how does one evaluate a news source for its trustworthiness, short of physically observing an event for yourself?

> As someone who wishes to consume news that is as factual as reasonably possible, There really isn't such a thing. What you report and how you report it is inherently editorial. For example Fox News simply isn't reporting on the conservative protesters that are rioting in DC right now (stabbings, property destruction, etc), or choosing to report it as specific, isolated incidents stripped away from the larger contex…

Man, this reads to me like "My side's media is an angel and the other side is untrustworthy".

Looking at The NYT's and the guardian's content on Portland/Seattle riots shows you the exact same phenomenon there.

I exclude all left aligned and right aligned media from credibility (CNN, Fox, et al.). Then I see even the closer to center but still unfortunately drifting away (NYT, economist, WSJ) as "take whatever they cover that's even the slightest culture war adjacent with a fistful of salt.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#456

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

ska wrote: post #340

smithza wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes it helps knowing a source is biased. Reading National Review, for example, allows you to assume the opinions held are relatively conservative. Reading the Bulwark, you know there is a progressive bent. Proceed with your own thoughtfulness therefore in comparing the two. We as consumers/readers never read an article without bias either.

Sure, but that hasn't changed in recent years.

What seems to have changed, to me at least, is that journalists have shed whatever veil of balance and impartiality they used to wear and have gone full fledged activist, even on the job. As such, their image is no longer of the semi-neutral third party, but just the foot soldier of the enemy's side of the culture war. Once you're there, there's no room for balance, or "tempering bias"; concession to the "enemy" is now disloyalty to your side.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#457

Post by 80386 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:47 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #296

outworlder wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We try to reason about the world. When the world appears to be unjust and we feel powerless to change, we (humans) tend to fabricate justifications for the actions of others. So that we feel better about themselves and we can move on thinking bad things won't happen to us. This is how you see someone getting beaten during an arrest and people are like "but this guy was once arrested for such and such". The assumption…

It's a tough reality check for a lot of people who grow up in the US, thinking it's a free country with equal protection of the law, when they realize that there are at least two tiers of protected overclasses (wealthy landowners, and the police) to which only subsets of the law applies in practice (to say nothing of the underclasses who are routinely beaten, robbed, and killed, with no consequences for the attackers…

> the underclasses who are routinely beaten, robbed, and killed, with no consequences for the attackers

Most of the people I know have been beaten or robbed at least once, or narrowly escaped being beaten or robbed. In almost all cases, the perpetrators were never caught. Are we the underclass?

The vast majority of cases of assault, robbery, and murder are not carried out by wealthy landowners or the police. If you're that concerned with people being beaten, robbed, and killed, your priorities should be different.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#458

Post by centimeter » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:50 AM UTC

austincheney wrote: post #444

centimeter wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not attuned enough to figure out why political alliances are worthwhile, your opinions probably aren't that original. It's not a matter of "reassurance" - it's about economies of scale. If the best explanation you can come up with for why a bunch of people exhibit a behavior you don't is "they have a personality flaw", this is very strong evidence that you don't actually have a good grasp of people's motiva…

Strength in numbers is a compensation for insecurity. > If the best explanation you can come up with for why a bunch of people exhibit a behavior you don't is "they have a personality flaw" Conformity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity

Why do you think people who are undoubtedly smarter and more original than you are also buy into political "teams"? If "conformity" is your best answer, then once again, this demonstrates you don't really grasp what's going on.

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#459

Post by 80386 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

smithza wrote: post #321

gameswithgo wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's pretty rare for a news organization of whatever political persuasion to report outright falsehoods Have you been not consuming news for the last 5 years?

Can you point to cases where this is common in mainstream news outlets? We are talking about exceptions, not norms. The 1619 Project and its revisionist perspective may have had misleading conclusions (or premises) but it was not committing errors of outright falsehood. This just an example of bias vs factual misinformation.

What's the merit in distinguishing between bias and factual misinformation?

The Westboro Baptist Church could start a news outlet and report on every single time a gay man did something wrong or immoral. They wouldn't need to make anything up - there are a lot of gay men in the world. But would this be morally acceptable?

Re: Record Breaking Number of Journalists Arrested in the U.S. This Year

#460

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:55 AM UTC

ceejayoz wrote: post #316

fallingknife wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The error is pretty trivial: >“Although we were clear about the quantity we estimated and provide justification for calculating Pr(race|shot, X) in our report (see also 2, 3), we want to correct a sentence in our significance statement that has been quoted by others stating ‘White officers are not more likely to shoot minority civilians than non-White officers.’ This sentence refers to estimating Pr(shot|race, X). As…

The retraction comes after the correction, and again, states explicitly: > our work does not speak to these issues and should not be used to support such statements

This sounds exactly like a common complaint about academic self-censorship, in which academics are terrified about saying anything that might contradict the politically correct consensus.

Barring any odd discrepancies with the data, it it seems clear to me here at least. White officers and non-white officers don't seem to shoot blacks and hispanics at different rates. Hiding behind "does not speak of these issues" seems like a cop out when the conclusion slaps you in the face.