A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves • Hacker News Board

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#131

Post by munk-a » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #112

idiotsecant wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when a child is raped (which definitely happened, by definition) we should avoid talking about it because it might hurt the case of the person accused of the crime? The justice system assumes innocence until proven guilty. The court of public opinion need hold no such lofty ideal. Nor should it.

Sorry I had the age wrong. There should be a presumption of innocence in the sense that the public should assume the accused is innocent until evidence is publicly shared that suggests their guilt. So far the only evidence shared with the public is a confession. Confessions are notoriously unreliability. There will be more evidence. DNA tests are being done as we speak.

They were 10, if the other party was the suspected 27 year old adult then...

That is rape.

If the other party was some other person - then that 27 year old shouldn't be wrongly convicted, but someone raped that 10 year old. I, btw, haven't seen anyone chomping at the bit at the specific suspected other party - the discussion I've seen has been focused on the health care and trauma treatment for the 10 year old.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#132

Post by renewiltord » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:29 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #124

hprotagonist wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

personalism shot/chaser: bonhoeffer’s “on folly”.

I said downthread that it might be hard to come up with a more inapposite quote for a story about skepticism of wrongdoing, and you'd've one-upped me here. :)

I believe the quote, with context excised and transported here, has value without its original subject. i.e. if someone had written it without being C.S.Lewis talking about Nazis, I would have upvoted them.

And there's lots of stuff like that. I suppose we have implied meaning to appending the original source we got it from: meaning transported from context of source, meaning transported from author, and meaning solely from text.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#133

Post by stefan_ » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:31 PM UTC

pyuser583 wrote: post #112

idiotsecant wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when a child is raped (which definitely happened, by definition) we should avoid talking about it because it might hurt the case of the person accused of the crime? The justice system assumes innocence until proven guilty. The court of public opinion need hold no such lofty ideal. Nor should it.

Sorry I had the age wrong. There should be a presumption of innocence in the sense that the public should assume the accused is innocent until evidence is publicly shared that suggests their guilt. So far the only evidence shared with the public is a confession. Confessions are notoriously unreliability. There will be more evidence. DNA tests are being done as we speak.

When the suspect is acquitted, does that mean the girl is no longer pregnant? This is an even more absurd point.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#134

Post by scarmig » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:33 PM UTC

muglug wrote: post #103

scarmig wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funnily enough, the "media bias fact checker" lists the NY Times as "High Credibility"[0] despite its sensationalized/false reporting about a "Mass Grave of Indigenous Children Reported in Canada."[1] [0] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/ [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/28/world/canada/kamloops-mas...

There’s not a huge gap between a mass grave and a mass of unmarked graves. Both show a disregard for human life. Quillette writers love to get on a high-horse about such discrepancies, while ignoring everything wrong with the right-wing media in America.

As far as this particular story goes, a population that read this Quillette article would have a better recall of verifiable, agreed upon facts than a paired population exposed just to the NYT article talking about mass graves being unearthed.

Disbelieving the NYT doesn't mean taking everything Quillette says at face value; it only means noting that the NYT has a history of fabrication and bias, and that anything sensationalistic reported in it should not be given the presumption of truth.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#135

Post by munk-a » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:36 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #87

pseudo0 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the vast majority of residential school deaths were due to endemic diseases. The primary accusation regarding deaths is that the residential schools had a higher death rate than comparable populations, and the state should have provided more resources and better medical care.

It’s hard to tell without knowing what disease we are talking about. If it was the spanish flu there isn’t much medicine could do then.

The deaths at residential schools were higher than similar institutions - I don't understand what's hard to comprehend here when we're comparing a basket of 8 apples to a basket of 10 apples - 10 apples is more apples.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#136

Post by jollybean » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:37 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #54

pyuser583 wrote: post #39

It’s funny because the narrative works just fine without the mass graves. A local paper (in the US) interviewed survivors/graduates on “Indian” schools. The administrators sent kids home as soon as they were sick. So there were no graveyards, even when lots of student were dying (Spanish flu).

Wait, the article is silent on the cause of death. Are you saying these deaths were just the result of some disease? Everything in the media treatment of these deaths implies mistreatment of the kids. If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air.

That's exactly the 'lie' being presented.

In the late 19th century up to about 1910, there were much higher rates of Aboriginal kids dying than normal, and it was mostly due to tuberculosis. It would 'set loose' at a residential school and mortality rates were high.

There were investigations and it was a 'big social issue' even 100 years ago.

Since about WW2, the rates of death at res schools have been fairly consistent with those in the general population.

The term 'genocide' may apply in the context of the government wishing to 'educate' Aboriginals purely in the Western sense and to suppress their culture, but the world folds all to nicely into 'killing' the children etc which is how the word is used in popular imagination.

The 'narrative managers' in the press are keenly aware of the power of their words, and that they will be misinterpreted, to great effect.

The factual reality of Residential Schools is absolutely worth of consideration, it's a serious issue, but it's also deeply misrepresented in the press.

"If it was just a virus, particularly in the early days of medicine, this would be a scandal created out of thin air."

I wouldn't entirely want to make the claim that 'because it's tuberculosis' fully exonerates the schools, but I'll bet $100 that tuberculosis at other remote boarding schools (non-aboriginal kids) would have somewhere near the same effect in most places during that era, where as you hint 'medicine was a mess'.

But either way, you're hinting at 'the distortion of information' begin presented by the narrative driven press, which is sad, because it's a serious issue.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#137

Post by munk-a » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:38 PM UTC

StanislavPetrov wrote: post #82

The herd mentality and evidence-free nature of this "scandal" is a microcosm of 90% of the beliefs of US citizens and corporate "news" in general.

This is a story about Canada - please familiarize yourself with the topic before repeating your talking point.

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#138

Post by scarmig » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

int_19h wrote: post #115

jagger27 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it’s wrong and you fell for it. https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-residential-schools-...

The article you've linked to claims: "some journalists — in Canada and abroad — mistakenly called the unmarked graves being located "mass graves," inadvertently invoking the horrors of the Holocaust. But the vast majority, following the lead of Indigenous spokespeople, got it right" The problem with this is that it's impossible to verify - who are "some journalists", and who is the "vast majority"? But anyway, if you…

[flagged]

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#139

Post by tptacek » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:39 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #132

tptacek wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said downthread that it might be hard to come up with a more inapposite quote for a story about skepticism of wrongdoing, and you'd've one-upped me here. :)

I believe the quote, with context excised and transported here, has value without its original subject. i.e. if someone had written it without being C.S.Lewis talking about Nazis, I would have upvoted them. And there's lots of stuff like that. I suppose we have implied meaning to appending the original source we got it from: meaning transported from context of source, meaning transported from author, and meaning sole…

If the quote hadn't been italicized and followed with "(C.S. Lewis)" I wouldn't have responded. And, if I'm misreading the intent of the quote --- that it isn't being used as a sort of generic "be skeptical of claims of wrongdoing and generous with mitigating claims", well, then, I'm just wrong. But if the quote was intended the way I think it was (see previous sentence): it's being used to say almost literally the opposite of what Lewis was saying.

More generally, on any thread owing to a Quillette article, I think we can do much worse than to have a curious conversation about C.S. Lewis (and, for that matter, Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

Re: A media-fueled social panic over unmarked graves

#140

Post by munk-a » Fri, Jul 29, 2022, 10:43 PM UTC

adamrezich wrote: post #91

rizoma_dev wrote: post #27

[flagged]

what issues have you found with the text of the article that makes it unsuitable to be posted here? I've never heard of this publication, but found the article to be an excellent read. I only had vaguely heard about the "mass graves" situation months and months ago and was completely unaware that no bodies have actually been found. this article does a great job of presenting this information, contrasting it with the…

If you are coming at this from a neutral angle - please be aware that no bodies have been physically found but also that no bodies have not been physically found. There is radar evidence of bodies buried near the school that remains un-refuted, there was a decision not to exhume the graves out of respect.

By the same line of reasoning used in this article my grandmother might still be alive - sure we all went to a funeral but it was closed casket and very few attendees saw the body... but I can take you to the grave stone and probably dig up a few pictures of the service.

These techniques are not 100% reliable but they are very strong indicators - especially when seen en-masse as they were observed at this site - it is extremely unlikely the ground soil composition is due to any sort of a natural cause, but it is possible that something else is buried in the ground... in human shaped holes, at regular intervals.