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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#601

Post by titzer »

ls612 wrote: post #579
titzer wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And they all refused to resign? Which is why a system based on policing corruption through public outrage is doomed to fail. You need to have a system that has actual mechanisms--investigations, prosecutions, and convictions--to keep a lid on corruption. Public shaming doesn't work because the public has only so much attention span, and there is soooo much corruption.

In this case two of them hadn’t committed crimes and the third had a statute of limitations that had passed so there wasn’t really corruption involved, just a refusal to listen to protests.

Like I said, mechanisms, not animus. Get laws on the books (or into the constitution of your state if necessary) that provide avenues for removal. Spell out standards of behavior and consequences for violating them and enforce those standards. The mob is not the solution.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#602

Post by cmdshiftf4 »

dang wrote: post #599
cmdshiftf4 wrote: post #530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a couple breaches of the guidelines in that post there buddy. Would you care to try again?

Please don't respond to a bad comment by breaking the site guidelines yourself. That's explicitly in there also: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html .

Apologies Dan

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#603

Post by giardini »

xg15 wrote: post #586
giardini wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AnthonyMouse says >" when black people kill more than ten times more black people than cops kill black people " It is worse than that: black people murder more than ten times more black people than all white people murder black people: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...

Again, how is that relevant? Are you saying that black people somehow deserve no protection by police because "they should get their house in order" first? (Whatever that should mean)

You bring up a good point: far more black people are killed by other black people than are killed by cops (white or black). But we don't hear about it, demonstrations are rare and news is non-existent.

It would be a significant improvement if black people quit killing their own. And it would save far, far more lives than were all police to never kill another black person. But it is completely the responsibility of blacks to quit killing other blacks.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#604

Post by antepodius »

xg15 wrote: post #596
csallen wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The political system is always grappling with lots of things simultaneously. Some of those things will always be getting more publicity and arousing more anger than others at any point in time, but so what? That doesn't necessarily mean anyone's moving the needle on those issues to a higher degree than on other issues.

I'd put it like this: The insitutionalized legal and political system can address lots of things simultaneously. The public attention (news cycle etc) has strong limits how many topics it can consider simultaneously. The focus of public attention is also important because it influences the political system (democracy and all). Currently the focus is on systemic racism and police violence. Trying to move focus to viol…

What are the numbers? Ten times as many black people die from black-on-black homocide as police killings?

Even if it were just twice as many- I think it would be reasonable to wonder, if you were being utilitarian, what approach would save the most lives.

An uncharitable reading of your comment might interpret that fighting racism is so relatively important it's worth sacrifing some net black lives for it.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#605

Post by spiralx »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #345
maps7 wrote: post #277

On a side note, does anyone subscribe to any good news/information site? I would like to subscribe to something good and know I'm supporting it.

I've recently discovered The Hill ( https://thehill.com/ ). It's very refreshing. No sensationalized language in titles and I haven't been able to detect a bias for the left or right. They seem to present information pretty objectively.

The Hill is a right-wing site cosplaying as a left-wing media source.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#606

Post by dcx »

VLM wrote: post #110
remote_phone wrote: post #82

This is the most important story in the last 4 years. The press has gone wild. They think they have a moral duty to bring down Trump instead of reporting the news. Because of this they distort headlines and flat out lie in many instances. I no longer trust the media. I hate Trump as well, but you don’t do it through lies and distortion. You do it by presenting the truth. Reporters have crossed the line in the last se…

Trump is merely the momentary target of the process. The process is dying organizations always go hard left on the way out. Something to do with ease of entryism when no one else wants in, or if there's no monetary or social reward left in an industry there's always the left wing rewards of boastful humility and self congratulatory echo chambers.

This is a process I’ve never heard described before, but sounds interesting. Do you have any examples or further reading?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#607

Post by csallen »

antepodius wrote: post #604
xg15 wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd put it like this: The insitutionalized legal and political system can address lots of things simultaneously. The public attention (news cycle etc) has strong limits how many topics it can consider simultaneously. The focus of public attention is also important because it influences the political system (democracy and all). Currently the focus is on systemic racism and police violence. Trying to move focus to viol…

What are the numbers? Ten times as many black people die from black-on-black homocide as police killings? Even if it were just twice as many- I think it would be reasonable to wonder, if you were being utilitarian, what approach would save the most lives. An uncharitable reading of your comment might interpret that fighting racism is so relatively important it's worth sacrifing some net black lives for it.

Is there any evidence that reducing the public's focus on fighting racism will increase its focus on fighting black-on-black crime, reducing poverty, reforming prisons, etc.?

I doubt it. Some issues are great for publicity, and others are much more difficult to get into the hyper-competitive limelight. In fact, I'd bet that there are spillover effects where attention and donations to other pro-Black causes increases while BLM is in the spotlight.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#608

Post by csallen »

naveen99 wrote: post #496
arkades wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Always surprising to me how the basic structure of analogy is so commonly misunderstood. It's what happens when people don't have a rebuttal to the point being raised. It's generally a good sign that they're no longer engaging in good faith.

The analogy might be stronger if intra Jewish violence killed 10x more than nazis.

That's completely irrelevant to the analogy, and you are making the same exact mistake as flyinglizard: treating an analogy as a simple comparison instead of as… an analogy.

For example, let's try another analogy: If a plane crashes and kills a bunch of people, we investigate the cause of the accident and demand to know what happens. We don't decline to investigate, fail to assign blame, or neglect to comfort the families because "well, people kill people more than planes kill people."

Note that this analogy holds even though homicides account for 1600x as many deaths annually than plane crashes… because that's irrelevant to what's actually being compared in the analogy.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#609

Post by incangold »

A further discussion of some of the details. If true Taibbi's piece loses some of its sting: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/06/has-the-american-left...

I don't agree with all the opinions in this article. But it would be good to understand better what the actual facts are. Too tired to dig further myself, and that's the problem, isn't it? But maybe someone else can already set things straight?

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#610

Post by jlawson »

xnyan wrote: post #587
jlawson wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is North Korea? Cuba? Soviet Union? Doesn't sound like equality and dignity to me. What you're not getting is that equality and dignity aren't even compatible if you try to push equality to extremes. Dignity means giving people freedom to make their own choices and live as they wish; the opposite of dignity is enslaving them. But as soon as people can make different choices they'll start achieving different outc…

Let’s see, a state that no longer exists and two of the worst examples of left based ideology nation states. You sound like a rational person. If I give you three examples of current capitalist ideology authoritarian states (one more example than you gave), reason would dictate that you will of course instantly become a leftest because you are a rational person and by your own self-described logic, the correct ideolo…

Not a higher count of authoritatian states. A higher fraction.

Far-left: 100% Far-right: 100%

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