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Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

tarahenley.substack.com

351–360 of 441 posts

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#351

Strange thread here ignoring the very important points about the media Tara is making. 'Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, f…

The main points of this article (roughly, that the supposedly-centrist-but-actually-left-wing media now cares more about wokeness than real news) have been made prominently and continuously since the days of Rush Limbaugh. The old joke about liberal media coverage of the apocalypse ("WORLD ENDS, WOMEN AND MINORITIES HIT HARDEST") dates from 1988.

I feel we have a (not accidental) misunderstanding about left/right in the US, which serves to misdirect everyone from acknowledging class. Focusing on identity serves only to split the lower and middle classes. Whereas the elites exhibit marvelous class solidarity.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#352
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Moreover, dang, look at the vibe you're managing. This is on you, boo: 1. A group of people repeatedly use a euphemism to attack a much smaller and less powerful group 2. When a member of that group points it out, the comment is literally faded, erased, by the editor responsible for managing the tone of that more powerful group And before you say it, this is me assuming good faith. I know you don't hear it. You're no…

I hear you, I'm sorry that you're having that experience, and I would like to find a better way to address it. I'm not sure what more we can do about it, short of imposing a single view on divisive topics—which would not be in the spirit of this community, nor something the community would support.

We try our best to moderate the cases when people break the site guidelines and cross into attacking either persons or classes of people—those things are definitely not ok here. I'm not saying we catch all such cases, but rather that when we miss them, it's usually because we didn't see them—we can't come close to reading everything that gets posted here, and rely on users to point out most of the worst stuff. When we do see it, we do moderate it. But there are questions of interpretation here (more on that below).

I don't see the community the way you describe it, in the following sense: yes, the comments that you're talking about exist, but so do a great many comments arguing the opposite (many more, in fact, from my perspective), and it's by no means the case that those comments get "literally faded/erased" either by users or by mods—quite the opposite (excepting the cases where such comments are breaking the site guidelines in their own right, and that's a different issue). On topics where much social change and churn are happening, I don't see how it's realistic for a large, pluralistic internet forum to avoid having a spectrum of views. It seems to me that it's probably in everyone's interest to tolerate that, because it's the way these things get hashed out in the long run. Winning people over happens by persuasion, not by punishment.

Unfortunately, there's no agreement at all about what an acceptable spectrum of views should look like. In other words, it's not always clear how to distinguish being wrong (which is not against the rules, and not an abuse) from being abusive. Different people want us to draw that line very differently. One person will read a comment as "using a euphemism to attack a group" while another person (often the commenter themselves) will insist that the very same comment is well-intentioned good-faith discussion, rooted not in hate but in a desire to understand. If the first interpretation is correct, then the comment is abusive and should be moderated. If the second is, then the comment may be wrong, but it is not abusive, and therefore it should be tolerated and reasoned with.

This disagreement means that not only can we not satisfy everyone, we can't even avoid plentiful accusations of being abusive in our own right, from every angle. From a moderator perspective, this is a lose-lose situation. All we can hope for is to lose more generously, and while I'm willing to do that better than we currently are, I'm not sure yet how.

Add to that the international dimension—a high portion of the most provocative and/or bitter fights about these things are happening across national (and cultural) lines. The baselines in different countries/regions are in very different places about this stuff, and most people don't take that into account—they just assume they're talking to extremists from their own region, rather than moderates from further away. Those distinctions are easier to perceive in person than they are on the internet. In person, we all automatically regulate our responses to each other to avoid feeling quite so angered and hurt. On the internet, unfortunately for us all, the dynamics work exactly the other way, so many people end up feeling angry and hurt, and also feeling like the forum is being managed in a way that is unfair to their views and their group. I wrote more about that here, if anyone cares: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#353
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enemies? Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society. Society is the sum of all Sams and Sams have a lot of power. Sam from around the block is the Sam that used to report or burn the witches in the 1500's. Now LGBTQ isn't necessarily the dearest topic to my heart, but freedom is and this is just one aspect of it. Racism and bigotry a…

If you believe in freedom of expression and of speech, it doesn't matter how much power Sam has, even if you disagree with what he says. I don't like or agree with white supremacists, but I consider the ACLU defense of their speech a monument to our civilization's respect of human rights.

In the US I think hate speech is protected under freedom of speech but I disagree with that. Hate speech leads to violence. This isn't about disagreeing with what Sam says. In a perfect world people decouple "speech" from their actions/beliefs but in the real world people act on what they believe and what they believe is influenced by "speech" (sometimes more so than by things like "facts", "reality", "science", "logic".) Now some of that is mostly harmless, like the flat earth. But if your speech results in harm then you should be held responsible and speech that we know results in harm should not be protected.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#354
I can't but agree with this column. I've come to think of CBC News as the "Women's Human Interest Review" except Hanomansing of course, but getting decent news two nights a week for billions of dollars a year isn't what the Canadian tax payers signed up for. It's time for this Emperor to get some decent clothes on tout suite.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc.

> Well of course, blacks in the US are over 12% of the population and are 12% of the L5s in FAANG companies. Which of course is not the case - less than 2% of Facebook's technical workers in the US are black, 3% of Google overall is black etc. It's clear that diversity is not prevalent at all in Google, Facebook etc. Is it? Keep in mind that the target hires for these companies are grads from serious CS programs. Are…

Puerto Rico identified at 70% white in the 2010 census, which might add some unnecessary complexity to your example.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#356

Strange thread here ignoring the very important points about the media Tara is making. 'Those of us on the inside know just how swiftly — and how dramatically — the politics of the public broadcaster have shifted. It used to be that I was the one furthest to the left in any newsroom, occasionally causing strain in story meetings with my views on issues like the housing crisis. I am now easily the most conservative, f…

This is the Overton window at work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window In the US, it goes far beyond broadcasting. Note how lin manuel miranda's Hamilton has gone from Obama era cultural gold to "cringe-worthy" - https://www.vox.com/22641501/hamilton-parks-rec-harry-potter... Or how JKR on Harry Potter went from being vilified by conservative voices to the modern "She who will not be named" of Lefty HBO.

> Or how JKR on Harry Potter went from being vilified by conservative voices to the modern "She who will not be named" of Lefty HBO.

well, that's for one very specific and notable reason alone, not because of some shifting moral landscape.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(response to post that was just deleted) 'critical to note that she is just recounting of her own perception of herself.' Tara is outlining why she quit a job she couldn't do anymore because the CBC were ignoring important local stories to focus on CRT, identity politics and racialization of everything, biased reporting and click bait. 'People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack…

I always considered the idea of CBC to be... extremely weird. Having government approved journalists on government payroll sure sounds like something out of China, Russia or Cuba. Not a western democracy. From the article: > To work at the CBC now is to accept the idea that race is the most significant thing about a person, and that some races are more relevant to the public conversation than others. It is, in my new…

Calling the CBC “Government approved journalists on the government payroll” is an extremely misleading description of what is an overwhelmingly common situation in English speaking democracies.

Canada has the CBC, the UK the BBC, Australia the ABC and NZ TVNZ and associated entities. None of these are Pravda, they’re all arms-length, independently run organisations.

I’m sure they’re all far from perfect (I’m happy to share my opinions on the non-CBC ones in an appropriate thread) but what media organisation is?

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The strong opposition to diversity efforts has been a pretty common trait associated with the tech community/silicon valley. I'm surprised to hear that. My impression was that D&I initiatives are far more prevalent in tech/SV companies than elsewhere. I probably got that from personal experience + news about Google (Damore), Facebook, etc. But maybe in reality D&I has become commonplace in many U.S. companies, and…

D&I is definitely commonplace across the corporate world, and similar opposition is too. My brother and sister once worked at the same company for a while - my brother complained that everyone wanted to promote women and he was disadvantaged, while my sister got groped in a taxi by a colleague and was told by her male manager that if she wanted to get promoted she should make sure senior managers knew that she didn't…

[deleted]

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#359
post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enemies? Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society. Society is the sum of all Sams and Sams have a lot of power. Sam from around the block is the Sam that used to report or burn the witches in the 1500's. Now LGBTQ isn't necessarily the dearest topic to my heart, but freedom is and this is just one aspect of it. Racism and bigotry a…

> Sam has a lot of power. We've seen over the last few decades how speech influences a lot of Sams and completely changes society. You've said this, but you haven't argued it. Sam didn't make America racist.

Sure. The roots of racism and what makes/made America racist are a lot more complicated. For an individual racist that is a result of the "speech" they have been exposed to over their life time. Assuming you believe people aren't born racist.

Re: Speaking Freely: Why I resigned from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

#360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Neilsen demonstrates that the legacy media are dying fast, fewer and fewer people are tuned in as the broadcasting becomes more and more toxic. This is a good thing imo. But is it a good thing? A free press can be thought of as the sensory organs of the polity. If the sensory organs are faulty, or worse are deliberately lying, then alternative sensory organs may fill in the blanks with less robust information. These…

By 'free press' here I think you mean state sponsored and/or corporate 'news' outlets. The internet has transcended these last century print and broadcast foundationed constructs long ago, but their owners prop up their mastheads as though they are still the top tier of 'fact checked' integrity, despite the fact they are now in some cases sloppier than the Drudge Report ever was. Tara presumably left a salaried job w…

>> CDA230 where are you?

Right where it has always been, ensuring that online services are not held liable for third party content regardless of moderation choices.

If you’re referring to being banned from twitter or not appearing on the first page of google as “censorship”, then your beef is with the first amendment, not 230.

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