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

#461

Post by esyir » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 2:58 AM UTC

ultrarunner wrote: post #38

umvi wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I unfortunately think that the US is trending towards the likes of countries like Hungary, Turkey, and Russia and how they handle their press We just had 4 years of every major media outlet (besides Fox) raking the president of the country over the coals 24/7... I think we still have a long way to go before we are like Turkey or Russia (how often do you see criticism of Putin or Erdogan in their respective media?).

I could be wrong, but the wrinkle I see is that their raking him over the coals is perceived to be in pursuit of their own political goals, not in pursuit of the truth. Their criticisms were trivial (as an extreme example, Melania's performance redesigning the rose garden). Arguably, stories of substance such as police violence were actively suppressed by the state through intimidation. I largely agree, but this isn'…

Well, you're not wrong.

Going to OP's statement of >a free, professional, and trustworthy press is vital for any functioning democracy. through all the rightful and wrongful critiques people have given the press over the past 5 years, I wish more people would understand this

It's hard to consider the American press either professional or trustworthy now.

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

#462

Post by austincheney » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

centimeter wrote: post #458

austincheney wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Read the Wikipedia link. It answers your question.

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

#463

Post by sudosysgen » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:02 AM UTC

80386 wrote: post #457

sneak wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'r…

The majority of theft is done by wealthy owners (wage theft), or by the police (civil asset forfeiture).

As for murders, most of them are from people you know, there is a vanishingly small chance that you are killed by someone that you do not know unless you yourself are a criminal.

But murders and beatings yes are an exception. Outside of times of war, where you again are likely to die or get seriously injured to protect the interests of the owner class.

Also, criminals are generally not prosecuted very often because it's not that important to the system that you get justice, really. With police, it's different, because it's not a question of not caring, but instead of actual accountability.

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

#464

Post by slg » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:06 AM UTC

80386 wrote: post #446

slg wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which was exactly my point. They are limiting the title of "journalist" to exclusively people who have been anointed as journalists by some gatekeeping entity. This rules out hobbyist, freelancers, self employed people, people just breaking into the industry, and all sorts of other people. The software developing equivalents of those people are inarguably part of the software development community. Why wouldn't their…

If you don't rule out hobbyists, freelancers, and the self-employed, I can declare myself a journalist, start a blog or a Twitter, and start throwing Molotov cocktails, and if I get arrested for it, that's another arrest of a journalist. And as a Molotov-cocktail-throwing opponent of the regime, I want to raise the number of arrests of journalists, because that makes the regime look bad, as shown by this thread. Even…

Where is this trope of Molotov throwing journalists coming from? I have seen it multiple times in this thread and it is just bizarre. No one would consider someone throwing a Molotov a journalist, no one would count such an arrest as the arrest of a journalist, and no one would consider the arrest an attack on press freedom.

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

#465

Post by onecommentman » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:45 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #266

user764743 wrote: post #144

Reading the comments in this thread and I am amazed at the sudden pro-authoritarian shift seen on HN lately, what's going on?

This is the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... . Internet comments get provoked by seeing something one objects to. 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. Mos…

“Reflexive and shallow” seems to be a “talking point” on HN today.

The parent post to this was talking about a pro-authoritarian slant, not the quality of post. Pro-authoritarian =/= reflexive, shallow, generic, angry. Can be. So can anti-authoritarian. Just as much. Sometimes more. Much more.

I don’t know how the pro-authoritarian observation leads to the analysis above. Frankly, I don’t see the pro-authoritarian slant from the top posts.

The whole discussion I’m reading is about the changed/expanded definition of a “journalist” for gathering stats. A valid, almost instinctive observation because practically everyone has a high-quality video camera in their pocket nowadays. And has then wondered, “well, if I capture an event, am I a journalist?” Not a deep life-changing musing, but everybody who has recorded a video event on a smartphone has thought it. So the 2020 mind is primed with those thoughts.

A result like this is posted, and the definitional issue is immediately brought to mind, because it isn’t that far away from lived current experience. The only issue I have with the discussion is nobody answered the basic question in the top responses...so was the definition of journalist responsible for the effect?

The name-calling against “pro-authoritarian” suggests that, in fact, it was. But just a guess.

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

#466

Post by hilbertseries » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:47 AM UTC

jimmygrapes wrote: post #302

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?

Others have given great responses, but one thing not emphasized enough is recognizing the type of language used. It failed for various reasons, but The Knife used to do a textual analysis of articles and point out the manipulative language used. A quick example off the top of my head is recent reporting on the US election (all paraphrased, but I bet you can find real examples easily): "... baseless claims" "... witho…

For clarification, how do you say Trump has claimed without evidence the election was rigged, without it being manipulative? This is precisely what Trump did and has done for the last three election. He has made claims without evidence, baseless and any “evidence” that backs it up is debunked.

This is actually exactly what I’m talking about, these news agencies are reporting accurately the events. And you don’t like it.

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

#467

Post by abacadaba » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:59 AM UTC

AshWolfy wrote: post #433

abacadaba wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo he has hundreds(?) of examples if you scroll, but to save some time here's one from portland police https://twitter.com/PortlandPolice/status/128725192442150502... Edit: ok searching "press" on the feed maybe like more like tens rather than hundreds with actual video evidence, but im sure i missed some

Andy Ngo is known to use selective editing and openly lies about facts, and is not a valid source on anything\ A single instance of a protestor who falsely claimed to be press, and did not commit any crimes does not prove that people who claim to be journalists are throwing rocks or molotov cocktails.

hmm, well sure seems like he's struck a nerve with those types nevertheless

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

#468

Post by true_religion » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:35 AM UTC

onecommentman wrote: post #465

dang wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the contrarian dynamic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... . Internet comments get provoked by seeing something one objects to. 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. Mos…

“Reflexive and shallow” seems to be a “talking point” on HN today. The parent post to this was talking about a pro-authoritarian slant, not the quality of post. Pro-authoritarian =/= reflexive, shallow, generic, angry. Can be. So can anti-authoritarian. Just as much. Sometimes more. Much more. I don’t know how the pro-authoritarian observation leads to the analysis above. Frankly, I don’t see the pro-authoritarian sl…

The guy above was arguing the pro-authoritarian slant would emerge first simple because HN is so big, that some people must have that slant, and those are the people who will react first.

After that, will be a wave of complaints about the first responders (e.g. in this case he pro-authoritarians). This wave gets upvoted heavily to sit at the top.

So when you and I arrive 9 hours after the drama, we'll see the top X comments either complaining about a slant that is now down-voted, or up-voted comments being reflective of the true biases of HN.

That's basically what happened here.... it's not that the pro-authoritarian comments are naturally shallow, is that they were merely the first comments posted in the first seconds after the article was posted, and are just reflexive since no one reads an article in seconds. If we post an article with a pro-authoritarian title, we'll get a wave of reflexive anti-authoritarian comments too.

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

#469

Post by webmaven » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 5:57 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #401

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…

> 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. This itself is an authoritarian tendency that is increasingly alarming me lately (a feeling that started after 9/11.) I think we're going to see "journalist" becoming a licensed profession within th…

> identifying ideological opponents as not journalists

The trend that I'm more worried about is identifying journalists as ideological opponents. Or even as "enemies of the people".

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

#470

Post by webmaven » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 6:05 AM UTC

thegrim33 wrote: post #361

sneak wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

These are pretty outrageous claims you're making, and you'll notice that the people making such claims never have evidence to back it up. Your viewpoints are grounded in thousands of other people in the same echo chamber as you repeating the same claims as a cultural weapon to gain political power, but there's never anything backing it up. I don't care how many people you've convinced to hold these beliefs, it doesn'…

You're attacking a straw man. The claim isn't that police (or the rich) are evil, but that they are immune, or at least relatively so.

Of course immunity leads to more bad behavior. How could it not?