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That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

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Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#391

Post by theossuary »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #352
southernplaces7 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the very clear, repeatedly court-upheld, very specific wording of the 1st amendment protects free speech for anyone at all residing inside the United States (Yes, even including illegal immigrants, not to mention residents and visitors, though by voicing a politically disliked opinion they might risk becoming fast-track targets for deportation through other "formal" justifications) and also offers no legal clas…

Cancel culture won. Conservatives are not being hypocritical for having been against it and now for it. If your opponent is using an effective weapon and you don't also pick up that weapon, you will lose.

Republicans started cancel culture. It really gained steam in 2001 when they cancelled the Dixie Chicks for being anti-war (turns out they were right). So I guess you're right, the left adopted it after realizing they'd lose if they didn't use such an effective weapon against fascists.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#392

Post by 2THFairy »

chrononaut wrote: post #342
dragonwriter wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities a…

> No, [journalists] know what they are doing ... Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice. The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith, which makes me believe the arguments of the parent…

The problem is that it is essentially impossible for a journalist to exist in the western world and not have heard of the criticism about how cops' actions get reported.

The term 'past exonerative tense' is dated to 1991.'"Mistakes were made" was popularized by Nixon.

To continue pulling this nonsense is wilful ignorance on the journalists' part, and effectively equivalent to bad faith.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#393

Post by rithdmc »

lazyant wrote: post #266
whatsupdog wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BBC is one of the most impartial sources available. I really hope that is sarcasm. BBC is highly skewed to the left. No debate on that. Can you show me any story on BBC that is biased to the right?

their treatment of Israel-Palestine

or, both in modern times and during 'The Troubles', Ireland.

Biased does not mean it has to skew to a certain political leaning all of the time.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#394

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

Rover222 wrote: post #273
roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

I agree from a high level, but I think the major difference is that: - Chinese news is propoganda in the traditional sense - directed/approved by the central government - US news is not centrally controlled like that, but most sources lean heavily left or right, and distort narratives to fit their views. I feel like liberals believe that, while Fox News is clearly presenting things from a right-leaning perspective, m…

NYT is definitely not far left and is still the cream of the crop when it comes to fact-based reporting

According to this outfit the NYT "skews left": https://app.adfontesmedia.com/chart/interactive

Their opinion section is mostly center left but has pretty wide ideological diversity

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#395

Post by thomastjeffery »

roody15 wrote: post #98

Once a Chinese grad student explained to me a difference he noted between Chinese and American citizens. He said in China no really reads or watches 24/7 major news outlets in China. They are fully aware that all of it is propaganda and just go about their life. He said Americans seem to get really emotional over content in the press and seem to really struggle with the idea of propaganda / journalism in the news. I…

Propaganda gets too much credit.

The entire Republican platform (especially since ~2016) has switched focus to something less like propaganda, and more like engagement for engagement's sake. Conservative talking heads do tend to frame everything from a particular perspective (that's the propaganda part), but rather than try to convince everyone to agree with them, they do the opposite: try to get as many people as possible to disagree with them, so they can get themselves and their audience into eternal "arguments". These "arguments" are never intended to be logically defensible. Instead, they are intended to fail as spectacularly as possible. Naturally, most other media outlets love this, because they get to profit from their own participation. The only value left in this dynamic is engagement.

By leveraging the alleged "two sides" of American politics, both politicians and media corporations have managed to create an infinite feedback loop of engagement with their media; and at the same time have managed to direct that feedback into political support for their preferred policies. Knowing this, it's entirely unsurprising that many of the highest positions in government are now held by household TV personalities, like Dr. OZ and Donald Trump.

---

So what can we do about it? If engagement is the new currency, can we simply boycott this entire thing by disengaging? I doubt it will be possible to get enough people to actually participate, particularly those who are currently the most engaged. Disengagement only creates an implicit victory for whoever is speaking loudest.

Honest argument is incredibly important. There is no value in diversity of thought until differing positions meet each other and collaborate. Media corporations have found huge success by replacing argument with bickering. I think the first step in undoing that damage is to help people understand the difference between the two: argument is goal-oriented, whereas bickering is goal-avoidant. Knowing that difference, I think we should find ways to practice argument with each other, and redirect our engagement into collaborative progress.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#396

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #352
southernplaces7 wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the very clear, repeatedly court-upheld, very specific wording of the 1st amendment protects free speech for anyone at all residing inside the United States (Yes, even including illegal immigrants, not to mention residents and visitors, though by voicing a politically disliked opinion they might risk becoming fast-track targets for deportation through other "formal" justifications) and also offers no legal clas…

Cancel culture won. Conservatives are not being hypocritical for having been against it and now for it. If your opponent is using an effective weapon and you don't also pick up that weapon, you will lose.

Yep. Imagine I punch you. You say: "Don't punch me". I punch you again. Then you punch me back. I say: "Aren't you being hypocritical? I thought you were against punching."

The path forward at this point is for the left to admit they made a mistake, apologize, and work to negotiate a new set of ground rules.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#397

Post by rooftopzen »

I've spent about an hour a week on this since Jan. Traced a large % of bogus news stories this year back to Reuters (fwiw) before they are picked up by other outlets and spread.

I've found legitimate stories also sourced from Reuters, but haven't found illegitimate stories NOT sourced from Reuters (in other words, they seem to originate from the same source, not sure why)

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#398

Post by snickerbockers »

marcosdumay wrote: post #326
throwaway894345 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect to see conflicting narratives in any country with free press. Why would we expect different outlets with different biases to run consistent narratives?

There should not be conflicting narratives on the press about things like if the COVID vaccines work or not, or if the disease kills people or not. Or if the world is warming.

>like if the COVID vaccines work or not

Okay, if there is any such thing as objective truth then this (by which i mean your statement that there should not be conflicting narratives, not the statement about the vaccine itself) is objectively false.

The COVID vaccines were pressed into widespread public distribution on an emergency use authorization; any other newly-developed vaccine would have spent years mired in clinical trials and debate. The first COVID vaccines deployed would have taken even longer because they were also the first mRNA vaccines. There was not by any means a consensus that they were safe or effective, only that the risk was justifiable in light of a sudden global health crises.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#399

Post by nostrademons »

tracerbulletx wrote: post #373
nostrademons wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I can't tell you what is true or false (in media) objectively. The parenthetical is doing a lot of work. The only real truth is that which you experience with your own senses. For everything else, you are choosing to believe somebody else's truth. It's worth remembering that whenever you consume media.

You can't really believe your own senses either. Science is our only systematic way to arrive at reliable information, you really can't know anything, but you can construct reproduceable experiments that increase your confidence enough that those facts can be relied upon to construct more complex theories by linking experimental results together, and those links increase your confidence because their co-occurrences h…

Science relies on our senses too - that's all the data we get. But yes, science is a way of compensating for bias in our individual perception and building durable models that make useful predictions even for phenomena we can't directly perceive.

Be wary of overgeneralizing scientific conclusions, though. Science may say that the measles vaccine is 99.7% effective, but if your kid comes down with a rash 3 days after a high fever and a week after being exposed to a known measles case, it starts from head down, and they've got white spots in their mouth - congratulations, they're probably in the 0.3%. Likewise, science may say that men are on average better in spatial and mathematical reasoning than women, but if you meet a top-notch woman programmer in your job, believe your experience, not the science. That science makes a conclusion about the averages doesn't prevent you from having an outlier right in front of you.

Re: That Secret Service SIM farm story is bogus

#400

Post by dml2135 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #327
AdamN wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't read the book but I think it's more insidious than what you wrote. The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. In the end if a journalist can get their story out faster by leaning on a few 'trusted sources' and then move onto the…

> The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative (they think they're unbiased). They just don't have the judgement (or will?) to look beyond the initial narrative which is police-driven. No, they know what they are doing and you can tell they know what they are doing by the careful way language is used differently for similar facts when the police or other favored entities a…

I think your observations about tense and mood are very true, but you are undervaluing the extent to which someone can do something automatically and out of habit, especially when their paycheck depends on it.

I absolutely believe that a journalist can present two analogous sets of facts in two completely different ways without even consciously realizing it. These assumptions and biases are baked in deep, especially when you are writing day-in and day-out on short deadlines.

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