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'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

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Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#131

Post by macinjosh »

lawwantsin17 wrote: post #102
seibelj wrote: post #13

The libertarian non-profit Reason Foundation and it’s associated magazine (linked article) have become much more prominent and linked as a respected news source since the beginning of the year. They do fantastic reporting with a logical (although biased towards freedom and individual rights) and informative style, which has simply disappeared from mainstream sources like the NYT and WaPo. I trust Reason much more tha…

Bias towards Union busting you mean.

Busting a union could literally fix the policing problem in this country. Concentrated power is a problem whether it’s a union, a corporation, or a government. It’s not black and white.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#132

Post by save_ferris »

phkahler wrote: post #91
formercoder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It’s all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.

>> I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. My own speculation on that. Shades of gray take effort to understand, and may not have clean simple answers. People may be too lazy, or not confident in dealing with complexity, or not smart enough, or something else so they refuse to engage with it. What I find odd is that so many who avoid the subtlety and complexity…

I think a lot of it has to do with how we look at history and how we remember and tell stories, fictional and non-fictional.

Most people remember the winners and losers of history, but many don’t dig into the nuance of it for various reasons. It’s easier for those who support the winners to ignore the finer details because said winners aren’t perfect.

Abraham Lincoln is a perfect example of this. While he was instrumental in freeing the slaves, he also believed that they were not as intellectually capable as whites and made that pretty clear in some of his speeches. One could argue that his position was the more progressive of his time, but still falls very, very short of what we consider to be acceptable thinking today.

There’s always shades of gray in history. Every good president did things that many would find appalling. Most movies depict very clear good and evil, and we enjoy them because they’re easy to consume.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#133

Post by zaroth »

dalbasal wrote: post #94
zaroth wrote: post #19

The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM”…

"these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white." This is one of the main phenomenon of an issue becoming "political," or what Orwell called "nationalism" in a clunky-but-brilliant essay. It's a "with us or against us" dynamic. Every fact, opinion or take can only be an argument for or against a position. When it's at pea…

Is this the essay you were referring to?

https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#134

Post by matthewdgreen »

zaroth wrote: post #19

The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM”…

I don’t live in Portland so obviously none of this worries me all that much. My city has had bad riots but they passed and actually things are much better now. I expect even a lot of people in Portland are upset by it, but aren’t in immediate near-term danger. I don’t believe that these riots are going to spread nationwide and result in a breakdown of society, even if sensationalist news stories tell you that’s going to happen.

However what is new this time is that for the first time, the President of the most powerful national government on the planet is threatening to use Federal police powers against not only Portland, but cities all over the US that he sees as politically opposing him. And there’s a very decent chance that he will get away with this, even if it’s technically illegal. That scares the crap out of me.

The fact that commenters on HN are taking predictable sides in a “political debate” in the face of such massive stakes doesn’t surprise me. But I wish those people could think two moves ahead and see how vastly disproportional the two sets of problems are. We’re in a very dangerous place as a nation and you’re worrying about some idiots on a street in Oregon.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#135

Post by laurent92 »

formercoder wrote: post #40
zaroth wrote: post #19

The mainstream news reporting on Portland (and other regional rioting) got to the point where they were bald-faced lying about peaceful protests standing in front of burning buildings. The most charitable interpretation I can think of is that these professional journalists think that their readers can’t understand a nuanced world of gray and need everything reduced to black and white. There can be a concept of “BLM”…

I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It’s all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.

The problem is, marxism progresses extremely well in shades of gray, where everything they claim sounds logical (“Are you NOT against police violence?”). But when you wake up it’s too late, and they are shooting Trump supporters at point blank on the street without trial (I’m not projecting, it happened this week), which is all but shades of gray.

That’s why some people say “it’s all gray” and right wingers try to pull it into “there is crime and innocence with a clear line in between, there is male and female, there is good and bad.” Right wing also tries to show the end-game, which passes as complete nutcrack conspiracy theory (remember the supposed “grand remplacement” in Europe), until one day: “We (Muslims) are more numerous than Christians, leave the country if you don’t like it” (again, not fantasizing here, it’s a real speech from this week in Lyon) or more clearly: “Whites, this dirty race” (chapter president of a student union, Lille, France).

I tend to view ideologies as evolutionary: Those that survived today win by either being extremely complex and good at being insidious, others win by being simple and blunt. But what we’d all like is, no ideology. Which is difficult when 1/3 of the world would happily fund billions to destroy America.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#136

Post by the-dude »

microtonal wrote: post #115
the-dude wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience from the Dutch press, they are all very left leaning. Especially our public broadcasters. There is hardly any right leaning press in The Netherlands.

Wait, what? The largest newspaper (Telegraaf) is definitely right wing. The second largest newspaper (AD) is also anything but left wing. I agree with public broadcasting, but that’s in part because the right wing has changed. Traditionally, the right-wing stronghold was the conservative christian block. Which had their political party and broadcasting associations. But these broadcasters have changed their direction…

The relevance of newspapers has been greatly diminished. And I am not even a millenial.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#137

Post by Kednicma »

ppf wrote: post #62
Kednicma wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We favor legal immigration. Have your papers in order, be able to speak coherently and talk to people, and be useful to society. We aren't fond of random fascists coming in from across the Washington-Oregon border, let alone driving in from Idaho, just to have street fights and arguments. From our perspective, you're just some hateful outsider who has no experience living in a society. If you want our respect, then y…

>From our perspective, you're just some hateful outsider who has no experience living in a society. I'm glad we feel the same way about immigration ;)

Do we? I also think that police officers must live in their precinct. No Portland cop should live in Vancouver.

I also think that legislators are obligated to do their job. No Oregon legislator should live in Idaho.

I also think that you, being a non-Portlander, should not have any voice whatsoever in disputes between Portland's people and its elected leadership. Our problems are between us, and our city council and mayor and cops; you're not a party to it.

Edit: Downvoters, use your words. Show us why you think these points are bogus; explain clearly why you think that you should have a vote in a society which you don't live in.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#138

Post by ppf »

Anderkent wrote: post #92
ppf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course there is, except I'm sure a lot of the people on that subreddit are also heavily involved in "protesting". There certainly is a selection bias at play in the general population of Portland, too ;) Edit: I also find it fascinating that the users of the Portland subreddit will shun or ban you if you are not actually in Portland, as I am sure that a lot of those folks strongly favour all immigration in general…

>I also find it fascinating that the users of the Portland subreddit will shun or ban you if you are not actually in Portland, as I am sure that a lot of those folks strongly favour all immigration in general What's wrong with that? You can be in favour of immigration but still want to have a subreddit for people actually in the town. You're free to move to Portland and join.

>You're free to move to Portland and join.

Unless I'm a bigot, or Californian, right? ;)

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#139

Post by SergeAx »

phkahler wrote: post #91
formercoder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. It’s all our team or their team based on whatever news channel they subscribe to. No one takes time to dig below the surface and think for themselves.

>> I’ve found that most people I speak to can’t accept that most issues are complex shades of gray. My own speculation on that. Shades of gray take effort to understand, and may not have clean simple answers. People may be too lazy, or not confident in dealing with complexity, or not smart enough, or something else so they refuse to engage with it. What I find odd is that so many who avoid the subtlety and complexity…

To have more or less objective judgement one has to be well unaffected by the topic's outcome. Try to argue about future of some random company and then buy or short it's stock and argue again.

Re: 'You're Not Allowed to Film': The Fight to Control Who Reports from Portland

#140

Post by bananaface »

zaroth wrote: post #120
bananaface wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Egregious contradictions that enrage a significant segment of the population (especially those outside your normal readership) get your story shared approximately a gazillion times. E.g. the stories you saw were the ones that were egregious. A given story might be propaganda but a lot of this stuff is just a marketing strategy.

If the content is the marketing then it ceases to be journalism. Yes, this is probably stating the obvious. In this case then, we’ve lost something important. What we got to replace it seems to me like it’s actively hostile to a peaceful republic. I’s like to think that just as much as part of our brain turns on for the click bait, another part equally yearns for a source of truth, or as close to it as our meager ego…

Almost all commercial journalism is marketing. Journalism as an industry doesn't exist to inform you, it exists to make money.
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