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The American Press Is Destroying Itself

taibbi.substack.com

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Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#611

Post by wherewillitlead »

zipwitch wrote: post #470
wherewillitlead wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the news show "Rising"? They have been staking out this space for about a year now. Taibbi and Greenwald appear there regularly. This show is probably the most interesting new development in American political media. The hosts have jokingly described their philosophy as "let's hate each other less and elites more", and present as a mostly-friendly pair of left and right populists. They were on Joe Rogan…

I can't take Taibbi and Greenwald's antagonism against "elites" seriously when they take every chance possible to defend the actions of a billionaire President and his billionaire-stuff Cabinet.

That's so far from accurate that I'm not sure how you got there. Both are squarely on the left and abhor Trump. Chomsky calls Greenwald his close friend, for example, and Taibbi wrote a book called "Insane Clown President" and was one of the strongest journalistic critics of the financial system.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#613

Post by antepodius »

csallen wrote: post #607
antepodius wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Maybe. I think one problem is the idea of racism itself, which has at least three meanings:

intent (i.e. if you want to genocide [race], you're a racist),

facts/beliefs (you could imagine someone with no hatred or ill-intent who believed things about e.g. population statistics- you might call those beliefs racist even if there was no 'racist intent' behind them)

And outcomes (something ends up disproportionately impacting one racial group, not necessarily with any racial animus involved at any point. You might call this structual racism).

If we had different words for these three things, I think it would make it a lot easier for people to agree to get stuff done. As it is, they all get mixed up- and an approach that assumes racism no.1 won't help 2 or 3, or might exarcerbate things. If I had to guess, I'd say a lot more of what's going on is 3 than 1, but I could be wrong.

(And calling 3 'structural racism' probably won't do the job, because it's that's too easily conflatable with 1, so a lot of people won't support it.)

I don't know. I'm personally interested to see what'll happen if more police precints get abandoned/burned down, and people set up more anarchist/warlord-controlled areas across the U.S.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#614

Post by ci5er »

pm90 wrote: post #566
parsimo2010 wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’ve ever read a journalist’s take on a subject that you’re an expert in, you’ll realize that they do not become experts after researching a story, nor are they any better at identifying BS than other people. Some journalists that specialize in a particular field become experts, but it takes time to learn. Journalists don’t have some secret way to learn faster than other people. Journalists do get training in in…

I think you may have a bias against journalists =p. It’s true that they may not be experts in everything that they report on, even if it’s their niche. Eg I think Kara Swisher does a reasonably good job of representing technology related things but there’s things she says that are not really true. However the one thing journalists do cover well and have good expertise in is current event and politics. They are closes…

> I think you may have a bias against journalists =p.

He may not, but having been through the grinder (on both sides), I do. I'm not even talking about the Ben Rhodes' quotes about them being young idiots.

> However the one thing journalists do cover well and have good expertise in is current event and politics. They are closest to the sources. And thus they become pretty good at identifying BS in those narrow fields at the very least. Given that, I certainly value their “take” on what the current events portray.

Funny. Meet Gell-Mann Amnesia:

  - https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#615

Post by jessaustin »

fzeroracer wrote: post #382
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that logic means that if I vote for a Democrat, I'm also taking the whole package deal. And, bluntly, there aren't very many people that actually support all of that package deal.

Yes, that's right. I don't agree with the full package deal, but I think it's far better than the alternative Again: You get what you vote for. Using 'I disagree with what my party is doing, but I'm voting for them anyways' as an attempt to avoid criticism doesn't work. That's the nature of US politics. If you vote for one party despite them doing some heinous things, then you tacitly support what they're doing. If y…

Instead, do as all thinking humans: vote for the third party that most appeals to you. I've been swapping between the Greens and the Libertarians... this year looks Green so far.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#616

Post by naveen99 »

csallen wrote: post #608
naveen99 wrote: post #496

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fam…

Yes, if planes were killing more people than people, we probably wouldn’t investigate them as thoroughly. But people would probably stop flying, so kind of an unstable reality.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#617

Post by mistermann »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #558
mistermann wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, they (wrongly) continue to sell this new version of their craft (?) as journalism. The masses buy in - confirmation bias is a powerful force - and we are today exactly where we should be: Truth is fluid. How is the general public supposed to learn what is happening though? If the entire MSM had adopted this new business model, and with the whole fake news thing that's been drilled into people's heads…

> How is the general public supposed to learn what is happening though? That's a good question. In theory I'd like to suggest they think. That is, develop critical thinking skills and some basic analysis skills. Yes, it's a big ask. But it would be useful across the board. Basics such as: confirmation bias, correlation vs cause, conflict of interest, and such. These skills are not as common as they should be. That as…

Agree with all your points...yours is a very rare stance around these parts, it's nice to see.

Re: The American Press Is Destroying Itself

#618

Post by mistermann »

jonhohle wrote: post #504
mistermann wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, they (wrongly) continue to sell this new version of their craft (?) as journalism. The masses buy in - confirmation bias is a powerful force - and we are today exactly where we should be: Truth is fluid. How is the general public supposed to learn what is happening though? If the entire MSM had adopted this new business model, and with the whole fake news thing that's been drilled into people's heads…

There are an increasing number of streaming independent journalists (at least that’s what they claim) that support themselves through patreon. These small ops can often go into excruciating detail on their pet subject matter and follow the story rather than construct a narrative. They often tend to go back and correct themselves when new information is discovered - something MSM is loathe to do (where’s the correctio…

True, it's good that these people exist and that they have a means (for now at least) of earning an income from it.

If you happen to see this late reply and have any recommendations of such people, I'd appreciate any suggestions you could make.

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