The Chinese media model

The bigger problem is the fact this submission was censored from the front page as soon as it started to gain traction. Sam Altman's China strategy would appear to include censorship of Hacker News.

The two highest-quality (in terms of professionalism and level of detail) English news sources reporting on China are https://scmp.com and http://sixthtone.com . The South China Morning Post has somewhat retained their independence, but Sixth Tone is a government-backed propaganda outlet, existing only to counter negative reporting on Chinese politics with news in other domains. Someone reading a lifestyle article on Sixth Tone isn't easily going to realize that they're reading propaganda unless it's pointed out to them.

In other words, nobody is doing it here, in this context.

> And I remember times when they weren't doing so, where coverage was not so one sided, and where people (e.g. 60s and 70s media, influenced by people looking for wider truths, and looking into alternative media and counter-culture) would be critical of all sides, and offer more perspective.

You call it "more perspective", I call it dilution and spam. It could be attached to any discussion, and it doesn't tell us anything new. All the hallmarks of comments that end up flagged and admonished by people piling on, if the context is different. That's the only interesting data here.

> I don't care for all, I care for what most do.

As I said, "You use the people who do that as fig leaf to ignore the people who don't."

> It's of little comfort if most of the people do X and some conscientious minority doesn't.

That doesn't change what you and the comment you found so spot on are doing, which is not responding to the actual article, or any actual comment.

Does "but the US is doing it too" provide comfort to anyone? Nope. So the argument that X doesn't provide comfort falls flat in light of nothing else providing said "comfort" either, whatever that would even mean in concrete terms.

It wouldn't tell someone "anything new" presumed they already knew their side was doing the same shit. Most don't. And being predominantly told about the evil others doing it (in accordance with whatever the current enemy/ally du jour is, and which agenda is to be pushed at any time), doesn't make them any favors. That's the actual noise.

>As I said, "You use the people who do that as fig leaf to ignore the people who don't."

No, I'm interested in actual outcomes, and those have to do with frequency of something being done. You can find some people doing the right thing at every point in history and on every matter. Their existence doesn't make it less of a problem -- as long as the majority (or a big enough segment, or those with more power) are not doing the right thing.

I'm not sure what the "fig leaf" accusation is supposed to settle. If someone speaks about e.g. tourist's polluting a national park, would you go and tell them "there are some people who don't throw garbage when they visit there", as if that somehow makes the problem go away? And you'd be mad at them when insisting the problem exists, because they "use those that do as a fig leaf to hide those that don't"?

>That doesn't change what you and the comment you found so spot on are doing, which is not responding to the actual article

That's called "agency". As an individual, I don't have to respond to the way something is phrased and stick to that like an automaton.

Nor is it always to the detriment of the discussion not sticking to the narrow scope something was presented in. Especially in politics (this is not a technical matter).