6 ms·

Don't expect everyone to feel sorry for media outlets who inflame our current divisions, destroy teenagers lives and publish gossip masquerading as journalism.

Don't expect everyone to feel sorry for media outlets who inflame our current divisions, destroy teenagers lives and publish gossip masquerading as journalism. And thats just this week alone!

rhegart 8y ago
It’s so weird that out of a group of black men calling children homophobic F word, n words, a bunch of racist stuff. A Native American telling kids without provocation to go back to Europe, this is our land we don’t want you, and a bunch of kids doing a school chant, the entire left and center media went after a kid smirking. They didn’t even cover the racist stuff said against the kids. Just some fluff about white supremacy, and MAGA hat being akin to KKK. All the headlines were inflamatory racial tensions inciting and all the corrections were STILL misleading and headlines seeming the kids were wrong. I’m talking about NYtimes, cnn, msnbc, not just the buzzfeed rags. And then they pull up a picture from 4 years ago that’s misleading and not at all related to the kids. Get called out for fake news, and then they push another fake narrative from an out of context video and that turns out that the kid isn’t even from the school. Then finally another fake narrative about some kid not allowed to speak because he’s gay, turned out fake. The journalists on twitter wishing for death to the kid based off a smirking clip and no rebuke for the actual racists are terrible human beings who themselves are racist. I unsubscribed from the NYTimes over this. Fox News during peak birther conspiracy wasn’t a 1/10th of this ridiculousness. Legit racists run these companies and legit racist are employed. Oh and get this, just saw on Facebook my High School History teacher posted a bunch of basketball players holding up the “3 point shot” sign arguing how the school is racist because apparently an “ok” sign is code for white supremacy when literally every nba player makes it after a shot. That post has 35 likes. It’s like our collective IQ dropped 30 points in 2016. There’s a certain rationality you expect when you have a discussion with someone that seems to have completely dissipated into emotional tribalism.
- dmode 8y ago
  Oh please !! The conservative media posts and have posted thousands of explicitly racist articles about Obama. Trump was the biggest birther conspiracy theory, the root of which was unbridled racism [1] He even said that he has investigators in Hawaii finding things about his birth certificate. Trump also said Mexican judges are incompetent, white supramacists are same as counter protestors, immigrants are criminal and commit crimes, set-up a hotline for people to complain about crimes committed by immigrants, constantly retweets famous white supramacists, dog whistles on every speech, trashes death of black folks on the hands of police, should I go on ? Pardon me if I don’t feel the same amount of sympathy for teenagers wearing MAGA hats. If you align with explicit racists, be ready if the world thinks of you in that terms. [1] https://youtu.be/OOA4ziGl5ZQ https://youtu.be/OOA4ziGl5ZQ
  - rhegart 8y ago
    This is the emotional response I was describing in my post. These people have this emotional outburst and have an urge to immediately demonize the other side almost as if their reputation and perhaps the world is at stake. They don’t try to understand or have any nuance. It’s done by the right and left, though more so the left lately. The main premise of your argument is that the birther situation is racist and a big deal. In my post that’s what I clearly stated. The most racist and stupidest thing I’d seen journalists do in my lifetime was the Obama birther BS supported by Fox News and I commented that even that was 1/10th of this Covington story. They were calls for doxing minors liked hundreds of thousands of times by popular celebrities and journalists based on an innocuous clip and 10,000 plus death threats. Likely hundreds of thousands of people like you feeling no sympathy for teenagers getting death threats wearing MAGA hats and completely ignoring the blatant racism against them. The difference between us 2 is that I condemn the racism against Obama and the racism against these kids and I do feel pity for the other side. You’re quite off the deep end if you don’t. I’m sure this individual was a very bright person pre 2016, but the collective 30 point iq drop seems to have had an unequal effect, harming some more than others as clearly demonstrated here.
    - Kephael 8y ago
      This type of behavior is going to cause civil war in Western countries. It is beginning to reach absurd levels, even when facts change there are too many who refuse to acknowledge the situation.
      - rhegart 8y ago
        My response was fairly civil until my last paragraph but I felt that emotional need to attack because I felt attacked. I kept it in there on purpose and I clearly am part of the problem here. Today we had a white man kill a black man allegedly due to wanting to start a race war (I didn’t double check and media lies like crazy so might be misleading, but let’s assume it’s true). You have Breitbart and other far right rags basically baiting this. Inflaming racial tensions like crazy. Against blacks, Hispanics, and Asians via crime, illegal immigration, and h1b abuse. They take 3 legit problems and tie racial tensions to them to cause division and hatred. The left which went off the deep end after Trump are doing the same thing demonizing white people, men, and the wealthy from legitimate problems of race, violence, and income inequality. You take these already serious problems and tie race divisions to them and you get the fringes to grow larger and the extremists to increase in number. More and more will do extremist things. I mean you have a poster here that doesn’t care about kids getting death threats and tries to defend it by mentioning unrelated issues and HN is way critical thinking than the average person. There is no media or journalists, just propaganda and propagandaists. I think Twitter is a huge problem that has really inflamed this.
- kadendogthing 8y ago
  >They didn’t even cover the racist stuff said against the kids. Do you seriously not understand the point of that statement being made to people wearing MAGA hats? Notice I said understand, not agree with. Because labeling statements that are designed to use the absurdity of the MAGA's hatters position on various topics as a rhetorical tool against themselves as "racist" in order to fabricate some sort of "gotchya" talking point tells me you don't. >I unsubscribed from the NYTimes over this. Spare me.
- nailer 8y ago
  So sad a factual post is being flagged on HN. This isn't a matter of politics - Bari Weiss from th NYT has poured through all the footage and her conclusions are the same as your own.
bichiliad 8y ago
What you describe hardly speaks for the majority of journalists. There are always exceptions to every rule, but they are just that: exceptions. Most of them are passionate, thorough journalists and writers, and it's very hard to get paid decently for that. And to the journalists that _do_ write inflammatory pieces, I'd argue that you could just as easily point to software engineers that have compromised their own ethics in exchange for large salaries from tech companies.
- kristianc 8y ago
  > Software engineers that have compromised their own ethics in exchange for large salaries from tech companies. Software engineers are not in a profession that is explicitly designed around seeking the truth.
  - bichiliad 8y ago
    No, but like journalists, they (we) have a job that gives them influence over those who use their products. We facilitate the discourse and the dispersal of news that most journalism agencies must now use. Not even 20 years ago, news agencies held this same role.
- cotelletta 8y ago
  Depends if you include the current mob of professional bloggers in there, because they sure outnumber the real journalists. They're really just word laborers, as they constantly have to produce fresh content to draw in new clicks. Unlike real knowledge work, it's a blue collar job now, just one that requires literacy. Passion is also a poor substitute for knowledge. Gell-Mann Amnesia is still as true as ever too. The entire profession has an undeserved reputation of accuracy and impartiality, and now they're eagerly self-destructing what remains of it. Most of all, they always stay within the same broad lines. As I saw someone observe recently... If the French gilets jaunes were happening in a South American country, would the coverage be remotely the same? When it comes time to beat the American war drum, will the result be any different from the last couple of times? The envy of tech, and the associated aspersions are also highly misplaced. Nobody forced the press to embed five dozen trackers on every page and chase clickbait with informational junkfood. Nobody forced them to give up their autonomy to social media, instead of building their own infrastructure. The people whose self image put them several rungs above those icky nerds are still inappropriately bitter about that inversion of status, for sure. To me, the model for 21st century journalism seems obvious: wikipedia, except not written by the obsessed and the mentally ill. Give me an ever-updating impartial dossier on each major topic and conflict, sorting the wheat from the chaff, and providing a timeline of key events with deeper elaborations one click away. If the profession matched its self image, they'd have succeeded at doing something like that, instead of racing buzzfeed to the bottom. Personally I'm really waiting for the rest of that 85% to go.

Don't expect everyone to feel sorry for media outlets who inflame our current divisions, destroy teenagers lives and publish gossip masquerading as journalism. And thats just this week alone!

rhegart 8y ago

It’s so weird that out of a group of black men calling children homophobic F word, n words, a bunch of racist stuff. A Native American telling kids without provocation to go back to Europe, this is our land we don’t want you, and a bunch of kids doing a school chant, the entire left and center media went after a kid smirking. They didn’t even cover the racist stuff said against the kids. Just some fluff about white supremacy, and MAGA hat being akin to KKK. All the headlines were inflamatory racial tensions inciting and all the corrections were STILL misleading and headlines seeming the kids were wrong. I’m talking about NYtimes, cnn, msnbc, not just the buzzfeed rags. And then they pull up a picture from 4 years ago that’s misleading and not at all related to the kids. Get called out for fake news, and then they push another fake narrative from an out of context video and that turns out that the kid isn’t even from the school. Then finally another fake narrative about some kid not allowed to speak because he’s gay, turned out fake. The journalists on twitter wishing for death to the kid based off a smirking clip and no rebuke for the actual racists are terrible human beings who themselves are racist. I unsubscribed from the NYTimes over this. Fox News during peak birther conspiracy wasn’t a 1/10th of this ridiculousness. Legit racists run these companies and legit racist are employed. Oh and get this, just saw on Facebook my High School History teacher posted a bunch of basketball players holding up the “3 point shot” sign arguing how the school is racist because apparently an “ok” sign is code for white supremacy when literally every nba player makes it after a shot. That post has 35 likes. It’s like our collective IQ dropped 30 points in 2016. There’s a certain rationality you expect when you have a discussion with someone that seems to have completely dissipated into emotional tribalism.

dmode 8y ago
Oh please !! The conservative media posts and have posted thousands of explicitly racist articles about Obama. Trump was the biggest birther conspiracy theory, the root of which was unbridled racism [1] He even said that he has investigators in Hawaii finding things about his birth certificate. Trump also said Mexican judges are incompetent, white supramacists are same as counter protestors, immigrants are criminal and commit crimes, set-up a hotline for people to complain about crimes committed by immigrants, constantly retweets famous white supramacists, dog whistles on every speech, trashes death of black folks on the hands of police, should I go on ? Pardon me if I don’t feel the same amount of sympathy for teenagers wearing MAGA hats. If you align with explicit racists, be ready if the world thinks of you in that terms. [1] https://youtu.be/OOA4ziGl5ZQ https://youtu.be/OOA4ziGl5ZQ
- rhegart 8y ago
  This is the emotional response I was describing in my post. These people have this emotional outburst and have an urge to immediately demonize the other side almost as if their reputation and perhaps the world is at stake. They don’t try to understand or have any nuance. It’s done by the right and left, though more so the left lately. The main premise of your argument is that the birther situation is racist and a big deal. In my post that’s what I clearly stated. The most racist and stupidest thing I’d seen journalists do in my lifetime was the Obama birther BS supported by Fox News and I commented that even that was 1/10th of this Covington story. They were calls for doxing minors liked hundreds of thousands of times by popular celebrities and journalists based on an innocuous clip and 10,000 plus death threats. Likely hundreds of thousands of people like you feeling no sympathy for teenagers getting death threats wearing MAGA hats and completely ignoring the blatant racism against them. The difference between us 2 is that I condemn the racism against Obama and the racism against these kids and I do feel pity for the other side. You’re quite off the deep end if you don’t. I’m sure this individual was a very bright person pre 2016, but the collective 30 point iq drop seems to have had an unequal effect, harming some more than others as clearly demonstrated here.
  - Kephael 8y ago
    This type of behavior is going to cause civil war in Western countries. It is beginning to reach absurd levels, even when facts change there are too many who refuse to acknowledge the situation.
    - rhegart 8y ago
      My response was fairly civil until my last paragraph but I felt that emotional need to attack because I felt attacked. I kept it in there on purpose and I clearly am part of the problem here. Today we had a white man kill a black man allegedly due to wanting to start a race war (I didn’t double check and media lies like crazy so might be misleading, but let’s assume it’s true). You have Breitbart and other far right rags basically baiting this. Inflaming racial tensions like crazy. Against blacks, Hispanics, and Asians via crime, illegal immigration, and h1b abuse. They take 3 legit problems and tie racial tensions to them to cause division and hatred. The left which went off the deep end after Trump are doing the same thing demonizing white people, men, and the wealthy from legitimate problems of race, violence, and income inequality. You take these already serious problems and tie race divisions to them and you get the fringes to grow larger and the extremists to increase in number. More and more will do extremist things. I mean you have a poster here that doesn’t care about kids getting death threats and tries to defend it by mentioning unrelated issues and HN is way critical thinking than the average person. There is no media or journalists, just propaganda and propagandaists. I think Twitter is a huge problem that has really inflamed this.
kadendogthing 8y ago
>They didn’t even cover the racist stuff said against the kids. Do you seriously not understand the point of that statement being made to people wearing MAGA hats? Notice I said understand, not agree with. Because labeling statements that are designed to use the absurdity of the MAGA's hatters position on various topics as a rhetorical tool against themselves as "racist" in order to fabricate some sort of "gotchya" talking point tells me you don't. >I unsubscribed from the NYTimes over this. Spare me.
nailer 8y ago
So sad a factual post is being flagged on HN. This isn't a matter of politics - Bari Weiss from th NYT has poured through all the footage and her conclusions are the same as your own.

bichiliad 8y ago

What you describe hardly speaks for the majority of journalists. There are always exceptions to every rule, but they are just that: exceptions. Most of them are passionate, thorough journalists and writers, and it's very hard to get paid decently for that. And to the journalists that _do_ write inflammatory pieces, I'd argue that you could just as easily point to software engineers that have compromised their own ethics in exchange for large salaries from tech companies.

kristianc 8y ago
> Software engineers that have compromised their own ethics in exchange for large salaries from tech companies. Software engineers are not in a profession that is explicitly designed around seeking the truth.
- bichiliad 8y ago
  No, but like journalists, they (we) have a job that gives them influence over those who use their products. We facilitate the discourse and the dispersal of news that most journalism agencies must now use. Not even 20 years ago, news agencies held this same role.
cotelletta 8y ago
Depends if you include the current mob of professional bloggers in there, because they sure outnumber the real journalists. They're really just word laborers, as they constantly have to produce fresh content to draw in new clicks. Unlike real knowledge work, it's a blue collar job now, just one that requires literacy. Passion is also a poor substitute for knowledge. Gell-Mann Amnesia is still as true as ever too. The entire profession has an undeserved reputation of accuracy and impartiality, and now they're eagerly self-destructing what remains of it. Most of all, they always stay within the same broad lines. As I saw someone observe recently... If the French gilets jaunes were happening in a South American country, would the coverage be remotely the same? When it comes time to beat the American war drum, will the result be any different from the last couple of times? The envy of tech, and the associated aspersions are also highly misplaced. Nobody forced the press to embed five dozen trackers on every page and chase clickbait with informational junkfood. Nobody forced them to give up their autonomy to social media, instead of building their own infrastructure. The people whose self image put them several rungs above those icky nerds are still inappropriately bitter about that inversion of status, for sure. To me, the model for 21st century journalism seems obvious: wikipedia, except not written by the obsessed and the mentally ill. Give me an ever-updating impartial dossier on each major topic and conflict, sorting the wheat from the chaff, and providing a timeline of key events with deeper elaborations one click away. If the profession matched its self image, they'd have succeeded at doing something like that, instead of racing buzzfeed to the bottom. Personally I'm really waiting for the rest of that 85% to go.