The American Press Is Destroying Itself • Hacker News Board

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#261

Post by Animats » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:42 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #62

I don't think they are. I think they are optimizing for survival. Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. Few people would consume it (or even be capable of doing so), even fewer are ready to pay the real price of it. So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the hi…

Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market.

I suspect that's correct. It's hard now to find any news outlet now that sticks to "Who, What, When, Where, Why". This is a consequence of pay per click, probably.

The left and the right now both have a checklist of mandatory positions required to avoid punishment. Those positions are in many cases contrary to fact. That's not good. Denial has become a core part of American politics.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#262

Post by bawolff » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:44 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #62

I don't think they are. I think they are optimizing for survival. Serious news is expensive, and at this point, a niche market. Few people would consume it (or even be capable of doing so), even fewer are ready to pay the real price of it. So they did the next best thing: they changed to please the market in a way that makes money. Grabbing a lot of attention, as cheaply as possible, so that you can sell it to the hi…

Seems like optimizing for short term gains over long term sustainability. A mistake lots of businesses make.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#263

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #260

maest wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most common way the free market fails to do the "right" thing is by ignoring externalities. By optimising for user engagement, media is ignoring the effect it has over society at large. This is actually an argument for government sponsored news outlets implemented in a politically neutral manner; i.e. the television shouldn't just be a mouthpiece for the state/the ruling party. For an example of state-financed bu…

You're always beholden to the paymaster.

Case in point, the BBC does a lot of good reporting in general, but they're rarely critical of the government.

It may not even be possible for them to cover politics in a "neutral" way, because anything but the party line on a political issue is heresy to the partisans. If you gave people the hard truths on partisan issues you'd have both sides trying to shut you down because everything you said would be contradicting one side or the other.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#264

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #113

Moderators, it is disingenuous to mark this as [dupe] when in fact what you’ve done is [flag] silence the article—something that ironically enough proves its point.

That was just standard moderation, which is a large part of what makes HN the way it is. If we did otherwise, HN would quickly become a completely different forum.

That said, it's also standard to turn off flags sometimes, for example if an article is particulary interesting and able to support a substantive HN thread. I did that in this case.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23512983, and if you still have a question that I haven't answered, let me know.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#265

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #135

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

Political flamewar and/or personal attack will get you banned on HN. This thread has mostly managed to stay on the ok side, and has plenty of commenters representing views that I presume you would be sympathetic to. Please be like them and stick to the site guidelines, and don't contribute to wrecking the container as you have here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#266

Post by thisiszilff » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:49 PM UTC

blickentwapft wrote: post #83

I’m getting to the point of just switching off. Whatever your opinion, there will be many others who deeply and vehemently disagree with you and do so with passionate, fiery, certain-to-be-correct righteous indignation. Carry your true opinions in your head and share them with no one.

Yet laying out your thoughts, your reasons for them, and your evidence and having someone else rummage through them is often the best way to deepen your views and come to a more accurate, nuanced understanding of the world. I'm afraid if our exteriors are not accurate reflections of the truths we believe in, our worldview may cease to develop and remain too simplistic.

Maybe a necessary defense, but still, saddening.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#267

Post by dang » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:50 PM UTC

JPKab wrote: post #16

ntsplnkv2 wrote: post #11

Might as well listen to Rush Limbaugh - you'll get the same arguments, and the same lack of substance, as this article, but with far more entertainment. In any case, the point he was trying to make is all well and good - the media should ask the tough questions and sometimes society impacts the flow of free thought. But it seems to Mr Taibbi only the left has this problem.

[flagged]

Crossing into personal attack is not ok in HN arguments. I had to warn you elsewhere in this thread also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23512934. Please stick to the rules when posting here from now on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#268

Post by iso947 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #249

refurb wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything looks "center-right to right" when you're on the extreme left.

So there's no such thing as the center-left?

Of course there is, you see it in many european countries

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#269

Post by noch » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #233

infogulch wrote: post #17

The US seems to have fallen into a game-theoretic local minimum where each party lets their crazy cousin go throw dumb rocks at the opposition because it seems to be the optimal way to drum up fanatic support for their side, all the while whistling as if in ignorance of what's going on. At least that's how it seemed to start, now it's just devolved to outright scat slinging that's co-opted our system of government in…

The naïveté here is assuming the people responsible for all this, don't know it. Let me give you an example that's closer to home: you know how Facebook hires a bunch of people and pays them to collect more and more and more data on everyone? Do you think a single person within Facebook doesn't know it? They all know it and they all like their paycheque more than they like having a conscience. They buried that consci…

> The way to see this most clearly is to ask 1000 educated, not random people, what critical theory [0] is. Maybe one will be familiar with it? We've had people thinking about the problem you're describing for nearly 100 years and hardly anyone knows about it. Now why would that be? Critical theory and philosophy more broadly has something to say about it :

If you have a social problem, then you employ postmodernism in the form of critical theory, then you now have two problems.

Critical theory does not employ the scientific method and therefore does not provide a reliable means for falsifying claims. We should dismiss the entire field and only retain the parts of it, if any, that can be subjected to rigorous hypothesis testing.

A theory is usually attended by a reproducible proof. As a "theory" what is the proof of "critical theory"?

No. Postmodernism got us into this mess. Consider, for instance, the ascendancy and prevalence of "Grievance Studies", grounded, as it is, in critical theory: https://medium.com/@heyingh/grievance-studies-goes-after-the...

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#270

Post by Consultant32452 » Sat, Jun 13, 2020, 9:51 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #63

I agree with some of this, but I just personally can't bring myself to care about the firings of the editors responsible for "Send in the troops" and "Buildings matter, too". A lot of my friends unsubscribed from the NY Times for publishing Tom Cotton's pro-fascism op-ed. The NY Times had to respond to this. They are a business and their income matters. It's not so much an issue of freedom of thought in the newsroom,…

The problem is that Tom Cotton represents a huge chunk of the American population. Those people don't just go away because NYT, FB, Twitter, etc. all collectively deny them a voice. Instead, they quietly vote in Donald Trump. To the extent that these people might be a problem, sweeping them under the rug doesn't help the problem.

If your goal is to reinforce the idea that you're right, and allow yourself to pretend that other people don't exist, then this is probably a good strategy. If you want to actually make a real change in the lives of people, you're going to need the help of the deplorables. Telling them to go fuck themselves is probably not a great strategy.