Earlier quoted context omitted.
10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high. Would be interesting to see what the death rates for journalists, medics, soldiers, etc was in afghan war, iraq war, vietnam war, etc. I highly doubt any reaches 10%.
Whats the confidence in the underlying data giving 10%?
Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
131–140 of 968 posts
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
HN's standard about this question has been stable for many years: some stories with political overlap are both inevitable and in keeping with the mandate of the site. The question, when it comes to the biggest political topics, is which stories clear that bar. I've posted about this many times, including quite a few explanations specific to the current topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324 (Feb 2024) h…
Hey Dang, huge fan of HN. How do you reconcile HN's political neutrality and the fact that almost every overtly political story that hits the front page about certain subjects[1] are blatantly biased on one side? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435324
We can only go by the articles that users submit, and then only the subset we see, which is a function of (a) randomness and (b) users bringing specific cases to our attention. If there's a bias in the stories that have made HN's front page, that bias is present in the underlying data (I mean this stream of articles) to begin with. Why might that be? Well, there are a lot of possible reasons and people would most likely dispute about those as much as they do about the underlying topic.
For what it's worth (which may not be much), all I can tell you is that we want deeply, and are trying hard, to be even-handed. At the same time, we're not going to apply some sort of mechanical both-sides balancing because, although it might make things superficially easier in the short term, I don't think it would be in the spirit of the site, and we don't do that about anything else.
The even-handedness I'm talking about is probably easier to notice in our moderation of comments, so far, than of the articles. I feel pretty confident that we've done a good job of that [1], more than I am about the articles. Perhaps that's because there have been thousands of comments, but only a handful of frontpage articles, on the topic. One consistent lesson of HN is that you can't draw general conclusions from a handful of datapoints. It takes a lot more than that before reliable patterns show up.
What matters to me is that there be principles underlying the moderation and that these get applied equally. This isn't fully achievable because there's always interpretation involved—we don't get every call right. But I think the principles are the right ones for HN (I've explained what these are in the links mentioned above), and I'm always open to hearing arguments about how to apply them more even-handedly. When people make a fair point, such as xyzelement did about the submitted URL of the OP (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39621225), we're happy to change something. Another example that sticks in my mind is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146630 from a few weeks ago. That was about title, not URL, but the principle is the same.
I don't know how satisfactory this answer can possibly be but I hope it's at least clear that I hear you and care about the question.
[1] That is, when people break HN's rules in the comments, such as by posting flamebait or snark or personal attack, we flag and/or reply and/or ban irrespective of what the commenter is for or against. It might not appear that way to many readers who have strong passions on a topic, but it's not as hard to do as one might assume, especially after 10 years of practice.
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#133[flagged]
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genocide:The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. Explain how the country that does roof-knocks[1], phone calls[2], and has literally driven its own people out of Gaza[3] in an attempt for peace is attempting to exterminate Palestinians. Learn what words mean before using them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking [2] https://…
Thank you for the definition. Isn’t this precisely what’s happening in Gaza? Even the ICJ ordered Israel to take steps to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza. Do they also don’t know the definition of the word?
Do you not know what "preventing" or "committing" mean either?
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a bad explanation because it relies on an assumption about how the press in Palestine are operating on the ground and I'm guessing no one on hackernews actually has that info. We don't know that reporters are rushing into danger or hanging out where the danger is going to be. In fact, a lot of the "reporters" who we've been watching were never war reporters to begin with. Motaz, for instance was an aspiring tr…
This has also been one of the deadliest wars for civilians in general. Also when you’re using such a loose definition of journalist obviously the deaths would be greater.
That's not actually true. The ratio is similar to other wars. Civilians die in war, they die a lot. War sucks. But Gaza is not unusually deadly compared to other wars.
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is. How many journalists did the US kill in 20 years of OEF/OIF?
I'm not condoning the death of anyone. I am however pointing out the very significant differences between what the original comment is referring to and what is happening and what might be driving the largest (if true) difference in numbers.
I am also pointing out that “this war is extra hard to prosecute” is not actually justification for certain actions. The difficulty of fighting the war falls on the people fighting the war, including the difficulty of protecting civilians during that war. What else would any standards or laws mean if that weren’t the case? The whole premise of these standards is to set a ceiling on what sort of awful conditions can be allowed during warfare.
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Though given its success, I expect it to be emulated. I'm wondering by what metric do you define success.
A lot of civilians being killed by the enemy driving global condemnation.
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#138[flagged]
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Totally different war structure.
The onus of protecting journalists (and medical workers) falls on the military regardless of how difficult the war they’re trying to prosecute is. How many journalists did the US kill in 20 years of OEF/OIF?
Essentially base rate fallacy.
Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well maybe people believe that Genocide = Bad and the rest is just logic
Genocide:The systematic and widespread extermination or attempted extermination of a national, racial, religious, or ethnic group. Explain how the country that does roof-knocks[1], phone calls[2], and has literally driven its own people out of Gaza[3] in an attempt for peace is attempting to exterminate Palestinians. Learn what words mean before using them. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof_knocking [2] https://…