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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

#171

Post by jariel »

jariel wrote: post #101
rayiner wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect the answer will be that nothing will replace it, at least for awhile, and that will cause society a great deal of pain in the short term. That there is a lesson in it doesn’t make it easier to stomach, but people should at least get the lesson out of it. Media isn’t alone here, though they are the cannery in the coal mine. In the legal field, there has been growing pressure to harass and blacklist attorneys…

Trump is different. He tried to stop the results of what was an overwhelmingly and systematically declared loss, by extra judicial measures. He had every right to try the courts but he lost there as well. 1) Making public declarations using the authority of the office of the president, which were inconsistent with the authoritative results. Moreover, the claims he made were fabrications. 2) Pressured the DoJ to attac…

Responding to my own comment: I think he does deserve a lawyer. But he's obviously different.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#172

Post by pochamago »

gumby wrote: post #169
nxmnxm99 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it's a cute story but it's off the mark because more often than not nowadays the mainstream journalists ARE the rich and powerful. If you want to see journalists actually performing the role of being checks on power, go to the third world. Bankrolled journalism isn't true journalism.

> more often than not nowadays the mainstream journalists ARE the rich and powerful. Really? Very few, if any. People like Tucker Carlson have wealthy contracts but they don’t even consider themselves journalists, but entertainers (in his case he’s not part of the news division, for example).

Twenty percent of NYT writers attended an Ivy League school, which seems significant to me. https://www.journalofexpertise.org/articles/volume1_issue1/J...

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#173

Post by pochamago »

ardy42 wrote: post #149
haberman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" Is there any accusation -- outside of actual crimes -- more likely to cause a person to lose opportunities, social connections, or standing in their community? I can't speak to this reporter's motivations, but if a reporter wanted to metaphorically put someone's head on a pike, I can't think of any more effective way to do…

> Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" The actual article did not in fact label him as racist, and I don't think you could read it that way without being sloppy.

It certainly tried to imply it with things like mentioning that he's cited Charles Murray, and then mentioning Murray's completely unrelated writing on race.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#174

Post by jansan »

dinero_rojo wrote: post #170
jansan wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true for science. Just recently there was an article that claimed that global warming is responsible for the corona pandemic. What a load of bullshit, and the "scientists" probably knew it very well. Virologists are getting sponsored by the pharma industry, climate researchers are green warriors (while at the same time being funded by insurance companies), social scientists going completely off the rails…

Have you got a link to that article? And I wonder how much “good” scientists lend their support to not-so-great scientific claims out of fear that refuting them might damage the public’s trust in “science” as a whole.

Only found this article, but it is directly from the PIK, which is considered the highest authority on climate research in Germany:

https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/climate-chang...

If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything suddenly starts looking like a nail.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#175

Post by phkahler »

Barrin92 wrote: post #14
phkahler wrote: post #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 t…

I'd suggest to read Hunter S. Thompson's obituary on Nixon https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1994/07/he-was-... "It was all gibberish, of course. Nixon was no more a Saint than he was a Great President. He was more like Sammy Glick than Winston Churchill. He was a cheap crook and a merciless war criminal who bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II, an…

>> Journalism should not just stick 'to facts'. Journalism's objective is to speak truth to power by whatever means necessary and to bring truth to light.

That's fine, but there is a time and place for it. As someone else said, doing it in that particular situation may have made the reporter a real bro among his own side but he looked like an ass to others. It's not ones own side that needs convincing, so it's ineffective in addition to making one look biased and like a child.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#176

Post by jay_kyburz »

pelliphant wrote: post #112
nl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While publicly funded news works well in some places, there is an inherent conflict of interest when the publicly funded journalists start investigating the source of their funding. This is especially the case when a proto-strongman is attempting to consolidate power. Publicly funded journalism cannot be the only way it works. (I say this as a left-learning person generally supportive of public funding). (Also, "ente…

I think the solutiion is that both are needed. corporate funded news can investigate the government, and government funded news can investigate corporations.

We have government funded police and judiciary sending government officials to jail when they break the law, I think we could set up an independent journalism arm as well to publicly report what is going on in the halls of parliament.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#177

Post by ardy42 »

imgabe wrote: post #90
nexthash wrote: post #57

A lot of people here are arguing that mainstream media had it coming for them because of bias, arrogance, pushing an agenda, etc. But I want to ask all of you: what replaces it as arbiter of truth? For all of the media's problems and imperfections, they have acted as a quasi-independent institution holding other powerful institutions and individuals in society in check. They have focused popular attention where it wa…

The Sinking of the USS Maine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8... That's over 100 years ago. We can stop pretending that the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden. There is nothing to replace it in that role because it was never in that role. It has always been a tool for one group of powerful people to spar with other groups of powerful people…

> The Sinking of the USS Maine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_of_the_Spanish%E2%8...

> That's over 100 years ago. We can stop pretending that the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden. There is nothing to replace it in that role because it was never in that role. It has always been a tool for one group of powerful people to spar with other groups of powerful people and the truth rarely enters into it.

Oh come on. That's like condemning democracy on account of all those people guillotined during the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, or the whole field of software engineering on account of the Therac-25. Maybe a few changes have happened in the intervening generations?

The idea that "the media has ever been some selfless arbiter of truth and protector of the downtrodden" is an ideal to be strived for, but like any ideal, there will always people examples of people who fail to achieve it.

Also, there's another ideal that the media there cast a skeptical eye on things, to peel back the paint and expose what's really there underneath it, which is probably more pertinent here. That kind of journalism usually pisses of the fans of whatever the journalist is examining. Fans usually want fluffy puff pieces.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#178

Post by haberman »

ardy42 wrote: post #149
haberman wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" Is there any accusation -- outside of actual crimes -- more likely to cause a person to lose opportunities, social connections, or standing in their community? I can't speak to this reporter's motivations, but if a reporter wanted to metaphorically put someone's head on a pike, I can't think of any more effective way to do…

> Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" The actual article did not in fact label him as racist, and I don't think you could read it that way without being sloppy.

If you read my comment carefully, I didn't actually say that the article labeled him, I merely asked some questions and posed a hypothetical. And yet you drew an inference about my meaning beyond what my literal words were.

You could call this sloppy reading, but I think the truth is that a writer can clearly communicate their intended conclusion without stating it directly. Which is just what Metz did.

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#179

Post by hesarenu »

rayiner wrote: post #167
hesarenu wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what if East India Company did not come to India, what if Turks did not invade India it would go on. Anyway Churchill's polices led to famine, which could have been avoided. His attitude towards India can be considered as racist.

> Well what if East India Company did not come to India, what if Turks did not invade India it would go on. The East India company came to India 262 years before Churchill was born. But if we want to talk about that, why not also talk about the Mughals, Muslims who invaded India and are the source for many aspects of Indian culture. (I have an Arabic last name because of the Mughals.) Like other Muslim empires, the M…

> If we start wiping out parts of our history that are unpleasant we won’t have anything left.

Then why are you trying to defend Churchill. You are trying to paint everyone was racist, Hitler would have come to power, we would have been doomed. Churchill was racist that is that.

> It doesn’t make any sense to judge people by the standards of society decades later. If we did that we would have nobody left to admire.

Depends on who judges whom. As they say terrorist is another martyr. For British people he is great savior for us he was responsible to death of millions. As someone said "If we start wiping out parts of our history that are unpleasant we won’t have anything left"

Re: Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

#180

Post by hesarenu »

forgingahead wrote: post #163
hesarenu wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well what if East India Company did not come to India, what if Turks did not invade India it would go on. Anyway Churchill's polices led to famine, which could have been avoided. His attitude towards India can be considered as racist.

Most things in life are not simplistic black/white decisions, whereby bad outcomes occurred because the people themselves were bad. Doing anything results in trade-offs. Some trade-offs are worse than others, and some have horrible consequences, like deaths of many, but writing off the decision as a racist one implies malicious intent, which ignores the potentially real decisions that were being made. For others read…

This happens whenever Churchill is mentioned. Since he was fought against Nazis seems people don't want to judge his actions not related to it. Since it might picture him not as great man. Most of his opinions are the westerners. What we needed was more articles from Indians since they are the one who were affected.
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