New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism • Hacker News Board

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#231

Post by jondubois » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 12:54 AM UTC

I had read the "It’s Silicon Valley 2, Ellen Pao 0..." article. I remember being surprised that misogyny was mentioned since this issue had nothing to do with gender.

And they even attacked Reddit users themselves - Essentially calling them sexist. It was obvious that this article was politically motivated - There is some corruption happening there.

Journalistic integrity is dead. There is a financial or political motive behind every article you read. I don't trust anything I read online anymore. Maybe Reddit itself is the only place which still has some degree of credibility left. Maybe it's only a matter of time though before moderators start using their powers for personal gain.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#232

Post by asanagi » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 12:54 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #119

toufka wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the revision between a quick-take and fleshed out article changes the emphasis of the narrative in the story. No, this is not okay if done without a note that it has been done IF you want to be called a document of record. This statement is irrespective of this particular piece. >The Pao NYT piece never changes the directionality of the concerns it raises. With respect to this particular piece, I was pointing ou…

Your best argument that the Times has "flip-flopped" is that they couldn't make up their minds between calling Silicon Valley "sexist" or "male-dominated"? I don't find that argument credible. That doesn't mean I'm right, but it does mean that this is not a profitable line of argument for us. I'll go ahead and assert that both of those constructions mean the same thing.

>"sexist" or "male-dominated"

>both of those constructions mean the same thing.

>"sexist"

>"male-dominated"

>the same thing

Am I reading this right?

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#233

Post by stefantalpalaru » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 12:54 AM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #223

tptacek wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to 'yzzxy, "TechRaptor" is a GamerGate spin-off site. So the subtextual nefariousness might be what you think it is: a bunch of people who don't like it when people write about gender discrimination making special pleading arguments about how the Internet should be covered by press outlets.

Seeing you, of all people, peddling this genetic fallacy claptrap is rather discouraging. Any such "subtextual nefariousness" is in the mind of the reader.

Don't be discouraged. Look at it this way: tptacek is the living proof that great things can be accomplished by people of average intelligence. It's quite uplifting.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#234

Post by stefantalpalaru » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 12:56 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #230

stefantalpalaru wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was not a simple update. This was a rewrite that changed the format and the content - from a factual report to an opinion piece chastising the evil white men of SV, all while managing to put a positive spin on a humiliating trial. This may not be new in the dishonorable world of journalism, but it's the first time many of us outsiders get to look behind the curtain. We kind of suspected how the sausage is made,…

This complaint and others in this thread all seem to be that you don't like the new content of the article and have nothing to do with the article being updated.

Is that really what you understood from what I wrote?

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#235

Post by rory096 » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 12:59 AM UTC

spot wrote: post #219

rory096 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, it didn't happen in the order you specified. It was more like 2-3-1-4 — Victoria fired, protest, subreddits shut down in protest, Ellen resigns (1 week later) — and it was moderators who took down the subreddits, not reddit admins (Victoria was pretty much uninvolved besides getting fired.)

that doesn't sound right. here's the announcement of 1, over a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/39bpam/remov...

Ah, you meant those subreddits. I thought you meant the ones on strike - I think of the /r/fatpeoplehate thing as a separate, prior incident. That's also not really at all Victoria's department; my understanding is that she really only did AMAs. It was just a recent time the community got pissed off at the reddit administration (and therefore Ellen personally, because CEO), so obviously it fed the flames some more once the Victoria trigger happened.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#236

Post by rory096 » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 1:02 AM UTC

magicalist wrote: post #228

rory096 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(assuming you're serious?) 1) Victoria, the admin who interfaces celebrities and /r/IAmA, was abruptly dismissed. No cause given, which grew a lot of conspiracy theories, but that's obviously standard practice when you fire an employee. 2) /r/IAmA mods find out when a PR rep reaches out to them after showing up at reddit offices and finding out their appointment with Victoria was canceled. Mods don't know how to get…

> Other subreddits start going private in solidarity. This spreads until over 100 have shut down, pledging a 24 hour blackout. I think the petition starts around this time. Just a small correction. The petition was made in response to the shut down of fatpeoplehate and others.

Gotcha, more of a resurfacing then. I'll change it to this, which I sort of left out:

Lots of pure speculation that Victoria was fired because Jesse Jackson's AMA the previous day went poorly, or maybe because the reddit administration wanted to ruin IAmA somehow. No hard facts.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#237

Post by imroot » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

danso wrote: post #30

I've believed since newsdiffs.org (mentioned in the OP) was launched that an in-house diff-tracker/displayer for the New York Times would be both a win in transparency, accuracy, and the company's bottom-line. The first two are mostly self-evident...in terms of improving the bottom-line...well, I often go to the NYT for breaking news. For a given event, they'll often have a main story which they update throughout the…

I worked for a major newspaper company (before they sold their assets off and focused on TV/Radio). Every change that was made on our CMS was logged...and stored on the backend. She might not be able to see the changes, but...the changes are probably still there. Editors didn't always focus on the technology side of the house -- they just wanted to make sure that the newspaper was presented in the best image available.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#238

Post by Ralfp » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 1:09 AM UTC

ender7 wrote: post #214

If you, like me, or tptacek [1], were confused why this is a big deal, that's because it's not. It's common practice for online articles to be changed after they are published, especially as new information comes in. If the article originally contained factually incorrect information that was later corrected that would be one thing, but that's not the case with this article; new information and context was added. Tec…

> Standing up for "ethical journalism" was and continues to be one of GamerGate's most popular smoke screens.

This is very unfair and uninformed statement to make about GG.

Most important thing to know about GG is that there are many images of GG circulating around. For some people GG is internet hate campaign. For others its political movement. For others its protest of trends on game scene. For others its outrage about reporting on poor releases or cliques in gaming media. Finally there are people who are just exploiting whole thing for internet fame they can capitalise from down the lane.

So quite obviously everybody finds the thing he/she seeks in GG, and so we have number of people attacking other people in different ways under different pretenses, like "IGN sold out!" or "GooberGaters chased girl out of her house!" naturally followed by "they didn't, they display game ads because they are gaming site" or "girl didn't run anywere, reporting her escape off her house's sofa all the time" retorts.

The greatest tragedy here is that there's whole lot of people with binary perception amounting to "with us or against us" who can't tolerate the tought that there may be valid points raised by other side, and thus dismissing (or more often flaming) either Adrian Chmielarz or Anita Sarkesian voices simply because they are on wrong side.

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#239

Post by RickHull » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 1:20 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #119

toufka wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the revision between a quick-take and fleshed out article changes the emphasis of the narrative in the story. No, this is not okay if done without a note that it has been done IF you want to be called a document of record. This statement is irrespective of this particular piece. >The Pao NYT piece never changes the directionality of the concerns it raises. With respect to this particular piece, I was pointing ou…

Your best argument that the Times has "flip-flopped" is that they couldn't make up their minds between calling Silicon Valley "sexist" or "male-dominated"? I don't find that argument credible. That doesn't mean I'm right, but it does mean that this is not a profitable line of argument for us. I'll go ahead and assert that both of those constructions mean the same thing.

And I suppose you'd call the NBA racist for being black-dominated?

Re: New York Times' Reddit Piece Shows Dangers of Internet Journalism

#240

Post by istvan__ » Sun, Jul 12, 2015, 1:53 AM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #143

yzzxy wrote: post #62

NOTE: Techraptor is a site set up by Gamergaters to talk about games and tech news without reprecussions from people who find their views exclusive of progressives, minorities, feminists, and LGBTQ folks. They call this "ethical journalism" because they claim to not receive kickbacks or have special relationships with their journalistic subjects, as they perceive their ideological enemies do. The quality of journalis…

What I'm seeing is a news piece citing sources I can independently verify. This is really damning: http://newsdiffs.org/diff/934341/934454/www.nytimes.com/2015... Did "gamergaters" (whatever that means...) set up newsdiffs too? Oh wait, googling it brings me to a git repository created in 2012, years before "gamergate" was a word on the internet. So, I click that link, and I see exactly what the article talks about.…

"Edit: Yep. Downvoted without discussion. Brilliant. We're really encouraging debates here..."

Common practice here nowadays. You have to be ready to take a hit in your karma if you bring up a viewpoint that is not widely accepted here. Kind of makes me sad.

Anyways back to your points, this is exactly right. Ellen Pao fired Victoria for no good reason and NYT conclusion -> she is hated because she is a female. I can't find words to describe this level of hypocrisy. I am pretty sure that there are people who disliked her due to sheer misogyny but 200.000 people signed that petition. You don't need to be extremely good with math to understand that those people cannot just all be like that.

Anyways, I agree with you that fabricating things like this article is extremely bad, btw. this is what Chomsky calls manufacturing consent, and he is damn right about it.