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For what it's worth, the word "dangerous" never appears in the report, unless my Find feature isn't working well in the PDF. "Dangerous" is a value judgment; t

For what it's worth, the word "dangerous" never appears in the report, unless my Find feature isn't working well in the PDF. "Dangerous" is a value judgment; the PDF is a report on journalists who were "killed, detained, held hostage, or missing." Note that this doesn't include harassment, another metric that could be possibly quantified and used to inform a theoretical "danger" ranking. I guess what I'm leaning towards is that NBC News has a lot of spin in this piece. The headline makes you think it's about the US. The lede cites Khashoggi and tries to conflate it with general hostility towards the media in the United States, but his death was a very different situation (and different country!). Then it cites the global figure without saying "worldwide" in the paragraph, while never explicitly saying that the total death count in the US is 6. The report also shows that zero journalists were jailed in the US and zero were taken hostage. I don't wish to minimize anyone's death. But the piece gives off a feeling that the US is becoming Saudi Arabia, yet the reason it's in this list at all is because of two events that don't really feel systemic: Capital Gazette, and hurricanes. (Could argue that mass shootings feel systemic in the US, but not mass shootings targeting journalists. No, I don't feel great trying to make that distinction.) ADDENDUM: How many people are working in the US as journalists? A quick search was tough to nail down. And, even with the mass shooting that hopefully proves to be a statistical anomaly, how does the deaths per 100,000 in the US compare to the 3.6 per 100,000 in the US's workplace at large?[0] Also, edited this to remove my confusion about where Khashoggi died. ---------- [0]: https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/01/02/25-most-dangerous-jobs-in-america/ https://247wallst.com/special-report/2018/01/02/25-most-dang...

simion314 8y ago
Still, if you compare with other countries it is still dangerous to write something bad about some person because in US even known people with mental or behavior issues can get their hands on powerful guns. So relative to other US professions maybe is as dangerous but relative to other countries it is on the top of the list.
- bitrrrate 8y ago
  Also a president with mental issues uses his powerful position to call the press “the enemy of the people”. Then his mentally unstable followers send bombs or get their hands on assault weapons.
  - magduf 8y ago
    What's extremely worrying is that his election and subsequent events have shown a very sizable portion of the electorate to have problems with mental stability.
benwerd 8y ago
Did you read the report? The 6 journalists were the 4 slain in Annapolis and the 2 killed by a falling tree. Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul, not the US.
- yorwba 8y ago
  > Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - weberc2 8y ago
    He referred to the report referenced in the article, not the article itself. Seems like a fair question; I don’t chase down citations often.
    - Brendinooo 8y ago
      Yeah, I might have deserved that one.
- Brendinooo 8y ago
  Massive brain fart on my end; edited my comment to remove that confusion. Although, maybe the framing of the article contributed to my error. Another top-level comment in this thread seems to have the impression that Khashoggi was part of the American tally, though he wasn't.
goldfeld 8y ago
Dangerous is not a "value judgement." A country where journalists may feel intimidated to death because crazy men with guns are angry about their duty of reporting (with one incident in 2015 also) is a pretty dangerous place to do responsible, non-corruptible reporting, period. The feeling left hanging in the air is that the situation can worsen with the years as wackos multiply themselves.
- Brendinooo 8y ago
  Two events caused 6 deaths in the US (one event is a non-factor if you don't do hurricane reporting). Zero deaths in China, but 60 journalists were detained. If you were a journalist, in which country would you feel safer and more capable of doing your work with integrity? What about Egypt? Still no deaths, fewer detainees. "Death count" is a fact, "dangerous" is more up for interpretation. NBC used the latter word that the report did not use, and "dangerous" and "deadly" are not interchangeable.
  - simion314 8y ago
    Why is China the base line? So if X is worse in China then all is great, let's point at China.
    - Brendinooo 8y ago
      China doesn't have to be the baseline. I'm trying to say that NBC News was dishonest in its use of the word "dangerous." Don't want to use China? What about Egypt? Or what about Russia? zero deaths, zero jailed, zero hostages. Think that Russia is a less dangerous place to do journalism than the United States? I have my answer, but I could see you having a different answer based on how you view the populaces and governments and the US as well as the kind of journalism that you want to do. Thus, "dangerous" is a value judgment, compared to "deadly", which is the term the original report used.
      - simion314 8y ago
        Why not have the baseline to be zero deaths, then if you prefer you can add more dimensions like journalists arrested etc, then we can create a metric and maybe you can find one where you can rank China and Russia over US but you still have US rank over the countries with no kills and no arrests. Your point seems to be a "what about" China/Russia or other extreme country.
magduf 8y ago
>Could argue that mass shootings feel systemic in the US, but not mass shootings targeting journalists. I would argue that mass shootings in the US are a very good reason not to raise any kids here or send them to school here, considering many of those shootings were in schools, and many schoolchildren (or college students) have died in those shootings. In fact, I'd say students are the one group that should be most worried about mass shootings, just judging by evidence.
- Brendinooo 8y ago
  This comment takes us off-track a bit, but: ~130,000 K-12 schools in the US, public and private[0] 94 "gun violence" incidents in schools in 2018[1]. This is "each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week" - so far more broad than mass shootings alone. Let's say each incident happened at a different school: that's a 0.072% chance that something happens with a gun at your school in a year. If those numbers are the same each year (and that hasn't been the case; 2018 is higher than normal), it's a ~1% chance that something happens at your school over 13 years of schooling. Without doing a ton of research, I'm sure the odds would be much more or less depending on the school you pick. Is that enough for you to keep your kid out of school? That's for you to decide. But bringing it back to my point - evaluating the risk isn't as simple as giving a body count, making "dangerous" a subjective term. [0]: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 [1]: https://www.vox.com/2018/12/10/18134232/gun-violence-schools-mass-shootings https://www.vox.com/2018/12/10/18134232/gun-violence-schools...
  - weberc2 8y ago
    Further, what is the variance across schools? If you don’t send your child to a school in a dodgy neighborhood, can you expect a significant drop in risk? If so, how much?
    - dagw 8y ago
      While living i a "nicer" neighborhood does greatly reduce the chance of your child being the victim of violent crime in general, especially outside of school, the majority of deadly school shootings didn't happen in particularly "dodgy neighborhoods".

simion314 8y ago

Still, if you compare with other countries it is still dangerous to write something bad about some person because in US even known people with mental or behavior issues can get their hands on powerful guns. So relative to other US professions maybe is as dangerous but relative to other countries it is on the top of the list.

bitrrrate 8y ago
Also a president with mental issues uses his powerful position to call the press “the enemy of the people”. Then his mentally unstable followers send bombs or get their hands on assault weapons.
- magduf 8y ago
  What's extremely worrying is that his election and subsequent events have shown a very sizable portion of the electorate to have problems with mental stability.

benwerd 8y ago

Did you read the report? The 6 journalists were the 4 slain in Annapolis and the 2 killed by a falling tree. Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul, not the US.

yorwba 8y ago
> Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- weberc2 8y ago
  He referred to the report referenced in the article, not the article itself. Seems like a fair question; I don’t chase down citations often.
  - Brendinooo 8y ago
    Yeah, I might have deserved that one.
Brendinooo 8y ago
Massive brain fart on my end; edited my comment to remove that confusion. Although, maybe the framing of the article contributed to my error. Another top-level comment in this thread seems to have the impression that Khashoggi was part of the American tally, though he wasn't.

goldfeld 8y ago

Dangerous is not a "value judgement." A country where journalists may feel intimidated to death because crazy men with guns are angry about their duty of reporting (with one incident in 2015 also) is a pretty dangerous place to do responsible, non-corruptible reporting, period. The feeling left hanging in the air is that the situation can worsen with the years as wackos multiply themselves.

Brendinooo 8y ago
Two events caused 6 deaths in the US (one event is a non-factor if you don't do hurricane reporting). Zero deaths in China, but 60 journalists were detained. If you were a journalist, in which country would you feel safer and more capable of doing your work with integrity? What about Egypt? Still no deaths, fewer detainees. "Death count" is a fact, "dangerous" is more up for interpretation. NBC used the latter word that the report did not use, and "dangerous" and "deadly" are not interchangeable.
- simion314 8y ago
  Why is China the base line? So if X is worse in China then all is great, let's point at China.
  - Brendinooo 8y ago
    China doesn't have to be the baseline. I'm trying to say that NBC News was dishonest in its use of the word "dangerous." Don't want to use China? What about Egypt? Or what about Russia? zero deaths, zero jailed, zero hostages. Think that Russia is a less dangerous place to do journalism than the United States? I have my answer, but I could see you having a different answer based on how you view the populaces and governments and the US as well as the kind of journalism that you want to do. Thus, "dangerous" is a value judgment, compared to "deadly", which is the term the original report used.
    - simion314 8y ago
      Why not have the baseline to be zero deaths, then if you prefer you can add more dimensions like journalists arrested etc, then we can create a metric and maybe you can find one where you can rank China and Russia over US but you still have US rank over the countries with no kills and no arrests. Your point seems to be a "what about" China/Russia or other extreme country.

magduf 8y ago

>Could argue that mass shootings feel systemic in the US, but not mass shootings targeting journalists. I would argue that mass shootings in the US are a very good reason not to raise any kids here or send them to school here, considering many of those shootings were in schools, and many schoolchildren (or college students) have died in those shootings. In fact, I'd say students are the one group that should be most worried about mass shootings, just judging by evidence.

Brendinooo 8y ago
This comment takes us off-track a bit, but: ~130,000 K-12 schools in the US, public and private[0] 94 "gun violence" incidents in schools in 2018[1]. This is "each and every instance a gun is brandished, is fired, or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time of day, or day of week" - so far more broad than mass shootings alone. Let's say each incident happened at a different school: that's a 0.072% chance that something happens with a gun at your school in a year. If those numbers are the same each year (and that hasn't been the case; 2018 is higher than normal), it's a ~1% chance that something happens at your school over 13 years of schooling. Without doing a ton of research, I'm sure the odds would be much more or less depending on the school you pick. Is that enough for you to keep your kid out of school? That's for you to decide. But bringing it back to my point - evaluating the risk isn't as simple as giving a body count, making "dangerous" a subjective term. [0]: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=84 [1]: https://www.vox.com/2018/12/10/18134232/gun-violence-schools-mass-shootings https://www.vox.com/2018/12/10/18134232/gun-violence-schools...
- weberc2 8y ago
  Further, what is the variance across schools? If you don’t send your child to a school in a dodgy neighborhood, can you expect a significant drop in risk? If so, how much?
  - dagw 8y ago
    While living i a "nicer" neighborhood does greatly reduce the chance of your child being the victim of violent crime in general, especially outside of school, the majority of deadly school shootings didn't happen in particularly "dodgy neighborhoods".