331–340 of 344 posts
There's no such thing as straight news. It's all spin, one way or the other.
Here's Politico's take on the Trump speech lockstep reaction: https://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/trump-convention-spee...
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> He was in a position where he was able to go to Congress with a position supporting a path to citizenship for dreamers in exchange for increased funding for border control and some stupid wall funding. And there was hardly any push back from the far right. Giving them a tongue lashing might have made you feel better, but it likely would not have helped the country in any way. This "Trump is playing 4d hyperchess an…
>This "Trump is playing 4d hyperchess and can see externalities Whether or not Trump's behavior is intentional or accidental, the outcome is the same. >And yet you're seemingly unwilling to quote, engage, or even acknowledge that side of the conversation? As I acknowledged multiple times in this thread, I'm not even arguing my own position. I'm pointing out that there are other ways of seeing the world, other axioms…
I'm uninterested in continuing with you in any capacity. Thank you for your time, but we won't speak again while you use this name. Goodbye.
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what are you trying to say? That given he is comedian, his reporting is less credible or audience should receive his stories less seriously or what? Given that he throws a joke from time to time, does it mean that it's less reporting and more comedy?
> That given he is comedian, his reporting is less credible or audience should receive his stories less seriously or what? As he is primarily known as a comedian, there is no way to confuse him as a journalist doing "news reporting". This calibrates the critical thinking dial in my brain. > Given that he throws a joke from time to time, does it mean that it's less reporting and more comedy? Have you watched the show?…
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>or if the merger with Tribune Media goes through? That's the whole reason this is a story. The viral clip was assembled by far-left think tank ThinkProgress to attempt to torpedo the merger by stirring up public outcry. And of course, the mainstream media, who indirectly compete against these local stations, is happy to support these efforts.
Er, "mainstream media" includes local news organizations... When I grew up, local news was (surprise!) somewhat independent. Each television show had their own particular style of reporting or emphasis on what they tended to cover. I never considered local TV news to be terribly great in quality compared to the newspapers, but at least it wasn't monotone in nature. So, there's nothing really wrong with the spiel per…
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- people trust local media - a single corporation owns a fuckton of those local stations - the same corporation writes a script to broadcast on every station - media hosts or journalists can't say "no". Do the job or lose your job. They're not free to report news without bias - you don't know everything about everything, so you're inclined to trust the news because they're supposed to be neutral and report facts - ul…
Not the person you're replying to, but I also have a hard time seeing the problem. Or rather, I can see the problem, but this is how I would've expected news to have been done for decades. I grew up when there was only 4 TV channels and no internet. I would have assumed CBS (or its parent) would have controlled all the CBS affiliates in this way in the 80s. NBC would do the same, etc.
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I would say that hacker news is actually a fairly objective aggregator. It's also participatory, which hopefully checks bias at some level. But, as this isn't television... it's not a valid example, in response to your question. Also, hacker news isn't ad-supported, which is nice.
But there is still bias here. Bias in the stories submitted, in that they're skewed toward the I interests of white male 20-30 somethings. Not a lot of diversity of opinion and point of view here, which is another way of saying prevailing bias.
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"They're not free to report news without bias... they're supposed to be neutral and report facts" I know I sound cynical, but does any thinking person actually believe that? That strikes me as incredibly naive.
It is cynical, but it's also very common now to believe that, and that is very dangerous to democracy. The level of distrust of anything and everything seems to be at an all time high. The idea that one large corporation is using their power to further that distrust should cause pause, or at least some questioning about motives.
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>This "Trump is playing 4d hyperchess and can see externalities Whether or not Trump's behavior is intentional or accidental, the outcome is the same. >And yet you're seemingly unwilling to quote, engage, or even acknowledge that side of the conversation? As I acknowledged multiple times in this thread, I'm not even arguing my own position. I'm pointing out that there are other ways of seeing the world, other axioms…
All you're doing is deflecting and avoiding meaningful conversation about very serious issues involving data privacy and information manipulation in an effort to equivocate. I can read your other comments, and I can see how you play this game. I'm uninterested in continuing with you in any capacity. Thank you for your time, but we won't speak again while you use this name. Goodbye.
>It's easy if you just blindly accept the axioms of one of the groups. You accept the axioms of left wingers, so it doesn't seem scary to you. I'm not a right winger but they could just as easily say: murdering millions of unborn children, robbing us of our right to defend ourselves, denying the right to freedom of association, infringing on our freedom of speech, infringing on our freedom of religion, etc. Those are all pretty scary.
The whole point of the discussion is to point out that the world looks differently if you accept different axioms. I'm sorry if it bothered you that I wasn't willing to debate the merits of your views vs the views of the imaginary third party I described, but I think my intentions were clear here.
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I'm with you on this, but don't count your chickens. Young people are historically crap at voting and there are also structural barriers placed in the way of their doing so in many places (eg not accepting college ID as a valid form of voter ID).
> and there are also structural barriers placed in the way of their doing so in many places Thanks to the powers of social media, though, this won't be as much an issue as in previous elections - people can share workarounds and actually document stuff happening and spreading the word - worldwide, for free and not (easily) censorable. The "old generation" simply has accepted being more or less denied their right to v…
Suppose I am a political bad actor and want o manipulate an election. I study precinct records (and have a small army of motivated assistants) and identify key places where a small change can make a big difference. Of course, my opponents have poll watchers out looking for such shenanigans, and I suspect they may try to disrupt my shenanigans by rallying people to protest them. So I just implement shenanigans at more locations than I need, and ideally im places that are easy for my opponents to get to but where I don't actually have any hope of affecting the outcome. With luck they'll declare victory on my false target while never noticing what's going on at my real one.
The basic weakness of swarm tactics is that whoever has the best information operation can easily divide and conquer over a short timeframe.
So yeah people are more motivated and more aware than in previous elections, which is definitely a good thing, but stay alive to the fact that a political opponent is equally capable of iteration and has motivated activists of their own.