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I don't know if american journalists seriously need opsec anymore, as nobody in the legit press is writing anything that could threaten the institutions they'd
by motohagiography 7y ago
I don't know if american journalists seriously need opsec anymore, as nobody in the legit press is writing anything that could threaten the institutions they'd need to protect themselves from. Anyone doing anything dangerous today isn't going to depend on the protection of their newspaper. The only people with skin in the game are actual activists, short selling hedge funds, and maybe some edgy podcasters.
There is this odd dynamic where if you need the additional legitimacy of an old media organization to get your story out, there must be something fishy about it. Like it's a palace gossip leak, and nothing with real consequence or risk.
If your story is really worth your safety, there is the much greater risk that editors will spike it, the way they did with pretty much every major whistle blower story of the last decade. Hollywood was protected for years, intelligence leaks were regularly spiked, and often journalists themselves were complicit actors in the official retaliations. I'm sure the NYT will still have a security role of some sort, but the idea that it could actually equip reporters at a corporate level with the tools to do the kind of opsec you need to facilitate stories at the level of the Intercept, Wikileaks, and other insurgent media seems unlikely.
- marcoseliziario 7y agoOne of the most annoying things in hacker news is people downvoting any opinion that doesn't match their world view. I don't necessarily agree with the poster above, but it is obviously not an instance of trolling, also it is not offensive or damaging to anyone.
- robohoe 7y agoSame really goes for every social media/news site that allows comments and voting.
- danso 7y agoDeclaring that journalists today aren’t writing anything of importance is a pretty trolling assertion.
- marcoseliziario 7y agoMaybe it is a hyperbole. Maybe it is a radical opinion. In both cases, it is not clear it is a trolling assertion, because it fails the test of being clearly an opinion given with the intent of derailing a discussion. A troll is not someone with radical, out of average opinions, a troll is someone that wants to derail a discussion. It doesn't look like that for me. It is no even that much of a novel assertion, in one form or another, I've been hearing opinions like that from people from all sides of the political spectrum since I became interested on politic debates. It is not that far from what you've got reading books like Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" or from what you read on a lot of right-wing blogs. If you think this is an incorrect and unjust assertion, and I would be strongly attracted to agree with you, the best course of action is not silencing the speaker, but engaging in rational discussion with them. Then, and only then, if the poster refuses to address your arguments rationally, and starts things like personal attacks, fallacious arguments, and a general uncalled-for aggressiveness, we could justly label them as a troll and act accordingly, not before.
- marcoseliziario 7y agoIronically, someone downvoted you. Which is a shame. Even not agreeing with what you said about it, I really appreciated the opportunity to present my counter-points to you.
- danso 7y agoI appreciate your lengthy response.
- dillondoyle 7y agoI disagree (though I didn't down vote). I think the sentiment expressed is fairly dangerous without clear evidence. I had a similar reaction reading what the parent comment wrote as to when I hear people say my vote doesn't count; just by expressing that (wrong) opinion has dangerous consequences.
- kijin 7y agoSentiments are not dangerous. Textual expressions of sentiments are not dangerous. Real-life consequences are. But often those consequences are not a direct result of sentiments, but of an underlying socioeconomic problem of which poorly articulated sentiments are often mere symptoms. Suppressing the symptoms and pretending they don't exist won't make the root cause go away. If anything, it will only make the eventual consequences hit us more violently. People will say that the blow-up was sudden and unexpected, but in fact they've been ignoring the warning signs all along.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- croon 7y ago> Sentiments are not dangerous. Textual expressions of sentiments are not dangerous. This is stating fundamentally that manipulation, propaganda, brainwashing etc does not work. Which is patently false. So obviously there is a spectrum. Seeing as it's very possible to steer people through words, the remaining debate is regarding what is dangerous and not.
- kijin 7y ago> This is stating fundamentally that manipulation, propaganda, brainwashing etc does not work. Those things have the desired effect only when the manipulated sentiments result in concrete actions such as voting or not voting for someone, buying or not buying something, treating somebody in a certain way, etc. I want as much as anybody else to block the effects of these menaces. But the way to do it is to block the pathway from propaganda to sentiment to action (to use a pharmacological analogy), not to suppress the sentiment. The whole idea of the free press depends on supporting the free expression of ideas, sentiments, arguments, and testimonies and only suppressing actually detrimental actions. As Justice Louis Brandeis famously noted, the answer to bad speech is more speech, not less. Start trying to bury some people's ideas just because they might encourage others to behave in a certain way, and it's not a long way from there to book-burning territory.
- maximente 7y agoyep. once upon a time the sources of information for Greenwald's stories on a particular three letter agency may have sought out the grey lady, but those days are long gone. the hit piece on him afterwards removed all doubt that the NYT is no longer carrying its pentagon papers legacy. the US media serves at the pleasure of the King. only a fool would attempt to blow the whistle with the NYT (or NPR).
- dillondoyle 7y agoNYT continues to break important, 'government source/whistleblower' journalism. Pulitzer is an obvious reference of recent and consequential stories including a description of a 'deeply sourced' story right up top [1], amongst volumes and volumes more reporting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pulitzer_Prizes_awarded_to_The_New_York_Times#2010s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pulitzer_Prizes_awarde...
- motohagiography 7y agoMy response to the OP about eliminating this director of security role was in regard to the need of a newspaper for that senior security role. The stories in this page of listed Pulitzer Prizes would not necessitate the level of operational security that a few independent journalists require and use every day. The NYTimes still does journalism, and still has an important role, but the need for such a direct cybersecurity role seemed diminished (and management seemed to agree) - and would probably get in the way of less sensitive work if you had to put everything past them. To some others in this thread, "troll," seems to have come to just mean a provocative outsider view. What most journalists do does not require a higher degree security to achieve it, so yes, that is disappointing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]