Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
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Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#2"All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes."
this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#3Journalism is dead. Learn to code.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#4I can't help but feel this article is saying the quiet part out loud.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#5Before Glenn Greenwald met Snowden and before he seems to have lost the plot about Russian collusion (maybe I'm wrong, but it seems lately he's been less willing to challenge his own conclusions), he wrote this (in 2010) about Washington journalists: https://www.salon.com/2010/06/07/washington_3/ .
In another article he wrote about how a lot of news people are just desperate to be considered buddies by the people in power, so they can join the "elite"...
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#6>> They felt that way because papers like the Post could offer the carrot of great exposure to those who needed it, but also, always, the stick of negative coverage to those who spurned them. There is nothing devious or ignoble about this; a powerful press, for all its flaws, is good for democracy
No, doing hit pieces on anyone is a flagrant exercise of power that deserves no respect and destroys the credibility of the press. Stick to reporting facts and not exercising power and you'll fare much better.
A recent example that was fascinating to me: during an emerging global crisis (covid19) the president of the USA held a press briefing to discuss the situation. A reporter was called on to ask a question by the president himself. That reporter decided to insinuate that the president was racist in addition to asking a question. The president's response included "you're a terrible reporter" in addition to answering the question. I'm sure that guy and his organisation were not welcome back, and rightly so. Keep your editorial shit on the page it belongs, or in another story. There is a place for that, but it's not during a press conference with "the leader of the free world" during a global crisis. And yet the MSM went wild over how bad the president was for calling out a reporter's bullshit.
Stick to the facts and the story or you will be rightly identified as something other than a source of information.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#7I don't know if it's just me and my bias against the current state of the mainstream press but this article read like a pile of unacknowledged contradictions.
The author advocates for the people's "right to know", but complains that social media has made it possible for people to reach a mass audience without relying on the press' megaphone. Surely social media increases people's right (or at least opportunity) to know, unless you consider that only what the press publishes is worth knowing.
It goes on to complain about the influence that social media has given powerful people yet acknowledges that the press itself is owned by the same powerful people.
And then we have the complaints about "tabloids" against respectable journalism at a time when the New York Post was the only paper with the guts to publish an election scandal while the Times is peddling public shaming campaigns that do little but lower the level of public debate.
The title, at least, sounds right and if journalism want to have any power, they'll need to find wat to be indepedent. the recent case of Glenn Greenwald has shown that this seems to be the only road left.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#8The post has never been able to say what it wants. It's only when it's safe to put a head on a pike that it does it.
Nixon wasn't crucified for the genocide in Cambodia (I don't have another word for a bombing campaign that was projected to kill 20% of the countries population by the CIA) he was crucified for having fucked with the other powerful people in the US. Watergate wasn't even a blip compared to what Hoover did to the anti-war left, organized labor and organized anti-racism [0]. What was so bad about it is that it targeted people with power who could fight back.
Journalists are being told that there is a new set of powerful people they need to be careful around and they haven't gotten the message yet. The current generation without the instinct to walk softly around big tech will be run out of journalism the same way that those who didn't understand they needed to walk softly around robber barons and not just land owners in the gilded age were.
Trump, like Nixon, seems like an aberration to these people because he, again like Nixon, did not treat their sacred cows with the respect they expect. He treated them like he treated everyone. Interestingly enough Trump was a lot more successful at it, which means that they have lost a lot of power since Nixon was in power.
[0] https://twitter.com/propagandopolis/status/11816410786524487... that this is now thought of as racist in progressive America should tell you all you need to know about how successful cointelpro was.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#9This piece makes the case that the only way traditional media can hold powerful people accountable is by being the arbiters of their distribution, by controlling who gets published and how their story is told. The way things used to be before the internet.
It’s a good thing this is not the case anymore. Big media is essential for democracy, but controlling distribution is not democratic.
Big media has two options now. Either:
1. They can learn to use social media better, so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump.
2. They can ask social media companies to artificially boost distribution for Big News.
The other option that the article seems to imply — going back to a world where Big media is the arbiter of distribution — isn’t going to happen. Social media (and the internet) are here to stay.
Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power
#10>> They felt that way because papers like the Post could offer the carrot of great exposure to those who needed it, but also, always, the stick of negative coverage to those who spurned them. There is nothing devious or ignoble about this; a powerful press, for all its flaws, is good for democracy No, doing hit pieces on anyone is a flagrant exercise of power that deserves no respect and destroys the credibility of t…
Fact: You are conflating two separate instances where Trump bullied reporters to make your point.
Instance from 2018 (with what you termed “racist” insinuations): https://youtu.be/OXp5GJjuOvQ
Instance from 2020 actually relating to COVID-19: https://youtu.be/N5NQdmHzBTY
I’m going to take this as a reminder that we should all carefully consider sources of information, even when those sources are our own recollections and experiences.