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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#401

Post by vkou »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #346
arkades wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand your comment correctly. Are you saying that black communities should be reasonably crime-free before they can expect institutions not to systematically discriminate them and enact retributionless, extralegal violence upon them?

What I'm saying is that when black people kill more than ten times more black people than cops kill black people, somebody is not wrong to ask why the focus should only be on the cops.

And 40% of police officers inflict domestic violence on their families, yet we give them weapons, a license to use violence to back up their authority, and release them into the streets, where they can do... Pretty much anything they want, without legal or social consequences.

Without consequences is the important bit here.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#402

Post by parsimo2010 »

ramphastidae wrote: post #380
js2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 48. My family had a newspaper subscription (in my case, the Miami Herald). I've been a consumer of news all my life, mostly print media. (My family rarely watched local news except for when a hurricane was headed our way, but would often watch programs like 60 minutes.) When was the news ever "Who, What, When, Where, Why?" It's always had a slant as long as I remember. Here's "the most trusted man in America" cal…

> What is that if not a partisan political opinion? What was partisan about what he said? He made no mention of US political parties. He simply said that the war was failing and it needed to end. May I suggest you are projecting your partisanship onto this? Objective journalism is not about giving both sides an equal voice. It is OK to use rationale and logic to support one side over the other. Should all journalism…

Saying that the USA should get out of Vietnam is an opinion. You do not have to explicitly mention a party to express a partisan position. “Real” journalism reports the facts of what’s going on and lets people make their own decisions. They can interview people and report the opinions that other people hold, but they should try to avoid inserting their own biases. Walter Cronkite leveraged his position to express his personal opinion to the nation- that’s political.

You don’t have to give time to things that are objectively untrue, but a fair journalist should acknowledge when other opinions exist.

Saying, “I think we should get out of Vietnam. People are dying, we’re spending too much money, and we’re probably going to lose” is bad journalism. Saying, “According to a recent poll, fewer than 40% of Americans support the war in Vietnam. Commonly cited reasons for the lack of support are the death toll, the economic cost, and that there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight. Most supporters of the war say we should continue fighting otherwise all the soldiers that have given their lives will have died in vain” is good journalism.

And yes, a journalist covering the creationism vs. evolution debate should research and interview people from both sides. If you don’t then you’re writing an opinion piece and not doing journalism.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#403

Post by Khaine »

nimvlaj30 wrote: post #279
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 contradictin…

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) has been rightly critical of our government, and has been hit with pay cut after pay cut.

The ABC are not neutral. They lean centre left. Our current government is conservative, of course they are critical of it.

This is the same ABC that reports on the BLM protests in Australia, is happy to parrot the 434 Aboriginals have died in custody since 1991, but fails to include the facts[1]:

58% of deaths were due to natural causes

32% of deaths were due to hanging

5% of deaths were due to drugs/alcohol

4% were due to external trauma

In total, 9 Aboriginals have died in custody from unlawful acts from custodial staff. 10s of thousands of people are violating social distancing orders, because 9 people have been killed unlawfully since 1991. The ABC AREN'T REPORTING THAT. Instead, they have activist after activist deriding the system that is killing black men.

It's all bullshit.

In 2019, the Australian Institute of Criminology did a study on deaths in custody, and its conclusion was:

Indigenous people are now less likely than non-Indigenous people to die in custody, largely due to a decrease in the death rate of Indigenous prisoners from 1999–2000 to 2005–06.[1]

So don't go around telling people the ABC isn't biased.

[1] https://aic.gov.au/publications/sb/sb17

EDIT: To be clear, this doesn't mean there aren't things we should be doing better, given that Aboriginals make up 28% of the prison population, its just that the current narrative openly being pushed by the ABC and others is pure, unadulterated bullshit.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#404

Post by Bud »

In addition to the lies I listed in my other comment, Taibbi also lies about what he calls the "now-discredited Steele dossier" in this piece.

Here are the facts: not a single significant conclusion in the Steele dossier has ever been discredited or proven false to date. Not one.

Anyone who read Taibbi during the W Administration, and who reads him again now, can readily discern that someone got to him. It's not the same guy. He's flown off the handle and spouts readily-falsifiable information at a truly alarming rate. You can Google for 30 seconds and find lie after lie. It's the same with Glenn Greenwald, who Taibbi is now allied with.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#405

Post by buzzkillington »

dang wrote: post #386
buzzkillington wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trans rights affect about 0.5% of the population. More people will die of covid than there are trans people in the US. It is literally a non-issue.

This is trolling. There's no view that requires that level of disrespect. If you continue to post flamebait to HN we will ban you. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Even the guy who started this site had something to say about shitting on orthodoxy:

>What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They're just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they're much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#406

Post by jeremyjh »

scruple wrote: post #392
jeremyjh wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the right's social initiatives? Can you name three?

What you're doing here is meme-tier, bottom text: THE RIGHT HAS NO CULTURE. I'm a lefist and I find it insulting.

I'm simply refuting GP. The left's social agenda isn't defined by opposition to the right - apart from abortion. For the most part, the right wants things to stay the way they are.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#407

Post by js2 »

ramphastidae wrote: post #380
js2 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm 48. My family had a newspaper subscription (in my case, the Miami Herald). I've been a consumer of news all my life, mostly print media. (My family rarely watched local news except for when a hurricane was headed our way, but would often watch programs like 60 minutes.) When was the news ever "Who, What, When, Where, Why?" It's always had a slant as long as I remember. Here's "the most trusted man in America" cal…

> What is that if not a partisan political opinion? What was partisan about what he said? He made no mention of US political parties. He simply said that the war was failing and it needed to end. May I suggest you are projecting your partisanship onto this? Objective journalism is not about giving both sides an equal voice. It is OK to use rationale and logic to support one side over the other. Should all journalism…

Okay, elide "partisan" from my comment.

My point is that there was never an "objective" news that didn't fall somewhere on the left/right spectrum and which colored how that source presented the news.

> Objective journalism is not about giving both sides an equal voice. It is OK to use rationale and logic to support one side over the other.

I agree. But don't you think that reporters at The Atlantic and at the National Review both think they are doing that? Or NPR vs Fox News? And yet they present very different views of the news.

> Should all journalism about evolution also include equal time for creationism?

You won't find me arguing for that.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#408

Post by imgabe »

Bud wrote: post #404

In addition to the lies I listed in my other comment, Taibbi also lies about what he calls the "now-discredited Steele dossier" in this piece. Here are the facts: not a single significant conclusion in the Steele dossier has ever been discredited or proven false to date. Not one. Anyone who read Taibbi during the W Administration, and who reads him again now, can readily discern that someone got to him. It's not the…

You can Google for 30 seconds and find a source that supports anything you want to believe.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but simply saying you can find contradictory information on Google isn't sufficient.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#409

Post by pm90 »

ReptileMan wrote: post #72
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think Klein is failing to engage with the core issue, that many of the positions now outside the bounds of acceptable discourse in newspapers are held by a majority of Americans and considered reasonable by a supermajority. If newspapers systematically refuse to represent views that most people hold, how can we trust their objectivity?

It gets even worse. If you ignore the problem by not talking about it and only fringes discuss it - people will go to the fringes to hear what they have to say. And you may get big surprises at the voting booth.

Well not all extremist views are the same. White nationalism and UBI may both be fringe views (maybe the latter isn’t but let’s assume so). I think it’s fine to not mainstream extremist views that call for extermination or discrimination of certain sections of society even if the views have a chance to affect the polls. These fringe views have existed throughout the life of the US and it’s only when they get mainstream attention that they get energized. Every so often they flare up into the mainstream but then get killed by the rottenness of the people that espouse them.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#410

Post by baddox »

js2 wrote: post #407
ramphastidae wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is that if not a partisan political opinion? What was partisan about what he said? He made no mention of US political parties. He simply said that the war was failing and it needed to end. May I suggest you are projecting your partisanship onto this? Objective journalism is not about giving both sides an equal voice. It is OK to use rationale and logic to support one side over the other. Should all journalism…

Okay, elide "partisan" from my comment. My point is that there was never an "objective" news that didn't fall somewhere on the left/right spectrum and which colored how that source presented the news. > Objective journalism is not about giving both sides an equal voice. It is OK to use rationale and logic to support one side over the other. I agree. But don't you think that reporters at The Atlantic and at the Nation…

It’s okay to take positions on factual matters even if a political party also happens to take that same position. If one party believes the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the other party disagrees, it’s not exactly “partisan” (at least not in the pejorative sense) to take a side on that matter.
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