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I truly don't understand why "expel Chinese journalists" was even considered as a reasonable course of action by the US. It may not explicitly violate the lett
by koboll 7y ago
I truly don't understand why "expel Chinese journalists" was even considered as a reasonable course of action by the US.
It may not explicitly violate the letter of the 1st Amendment, but it certainly violates its spirit, not to mention invites reciprocal action like this that only deepens the fog of war over our most dangerous adversary power.
There are many, many legitimate ways to punish foreign governments, but the expulsion of reporters should never be among them, unless we are at war with that government.
"But China did it first!" Well, then we should highlight how outrageous and unacceptable that behavior is, and sanction them some other way. Not reciprocate.
- spectramax 7y agoYou’re diverting the conversation from “China has expelled legitimate reputable journalists from many Pulitzer Prize winning newspapers” to “Hey, look at US, who expelled CCP propagandists”. I find this infuriating. Edit: folks are again responding with “its not US gov business” which I agree. But we should have that as a separate conversation. We criticize the US gov all the time - just go to NYTimes front page. But criticism of CCP is being suppressed and no one seems to care. This isn’t about US/China, but it’s about suppression of truth and freedom of press. I’m just disappointed in HN, this is always the case. Finger pointing, whataboutism, diversion and digression of the real issue. Edit2: China’s press score is at a whopping 177th place: https://rsf.org/en/china https://rsf.org/en/china @dang - can you please look at the downvotes in this thread? This is unreal.
- koboll 7y agoA liberal democracy's federal government should not be in the business of deciding which journalists are "propagandists".
- spectramax 7y agoTotally agree.
- ericmay 7y agoKind of depends doesn't it? If those propagandists are, say, promoting the disuse of vaccines or that drinking garlic water is a cure for COVID-19 to intentionally harm Americans or the government? What if "journalists" convince a country to do something that's objectively bad for the country? Maybe, idk, Putin shills helping to convince people to vote for Brexit? I guess that's ok? I don't think it's that clear for a line.
- sojournerc 7y ago> don't think it's that clear for a line. Which is why liberal societies are on the side of individual responsibility, not authoritarian intervention.
- ericmay 7y agoYes, authoritarian intervention like this? "“There is enough for everybody,” German Agriculture Minister Julia Kloeckner said, castigating people for spreading panic by posting fake reports that supermarkets would be closing. “ https://apnews.com/15b99013e674de9ea83a707342e8ffe5 https://apnews.com/15b99013e674de9ea83a707342e8ffe5 When free speech causes panic (like shouting fire in a theater) or results in people actually dying, that's a problem for government to help solve. Writing some sort of op-ed is one thing. Actually working to undermine a country through the veil of journalism is another, especially if those people work for a disgusting dictatorship, like China. Or do we let people have "personal responsibility" and vote for more Brexit?
- luckylion 7y ago> Or do we let people have "personal responsibility" and vote for more Brexit? Listen to yourself. "Should we really allow voting when people might vote wrong?"
- ericmay 7y agoThat’s not what I’m saying. It’s the propaganda and lies from the campaign fueled by Russia to dismantle E.U. integration that I’m talking about. Its too easy for a country to just pay someone to be a journalist and spread propaganda, while also banning it in their own country. Tools of liberal democracy can and are being used against us, so we need to ensure that we limit their damage while respecting liberty.
- Natsu 7y agoI remember a very different consensus on that when it was Russians and fake news, with a lot of fear that the disinformation would destroy our democracy. Why is China somehow different? They even have paid online trolls at a level that other countries can only dream of.
- take_a_breath 7y agoWhat was the different consensus you reference? Was there a universal campaign to get the government to label a journalist as propaganda?
- drak0n1c 7y agoYes. CNN, MSNBC, and Washington Post were supportive of Congress removing RT’s press credentials and gallery access. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/362540-rt-fires-back-after-capitol-hill-press-credentials-pulled https://thehill.com/homenews/media/362540-rt-fires-back-afte...
- take_a_breath 7y agoCNN, MSNBC and Washington Post doesn’t even constitute a consensus of news companies, let alone Americans. This is mis-information.
- greycol 7y agoIn one case you're talking about the rules on if people can gather information. In the second you're talking about the rules on what it's reasonable to publish. Few are going to argue the merits of China publishing lies which is the same as when Russia does it. What they will argue is that banning journalists from gathering information be it russian or chinese is wrong.
- drak0n1c 7y agoCongress removed RT’s press credentials and gallery access. The move to limit their information gathering was supported by major US media outlets. https://thehill.com/homenews/media/362540-rt-fires-back-after-capitol-hill-press-credentials-pulled https://thehill.com/homenews/media/362540-rt-fires-back-afte...
- kube-system 7y agoNot within their own nation, for sure. But there is definitely a line somewhere between journalism and information warfare. The information age has brought with it a golden era of information warfare, and while the lines are blurring, they are still there. The dissemination of falsehood or misrepresentation directed by a government for the purposes of geopolitical influence is not journalism.
- jb775 7y agoWe're talking about foreign agents working for a communist government's state-controlled media. So yes, the federal government should "be in the business of" managing this.
- msbarnett 7y agoIf freedom of speech is something we truly care about, it is absolutely not the Government's business to crack down on individuals it chooses to view as "propagandists"
- spectramax 7y agoSure, I agree. But can we have this as a separate discussion. Focus of this article is about expelling journalists from China.
- true_religion 7y agoDo we care about free speech or intelligence against our “adversary”? The original comment talks about both and muddies the waters by trying to appeal to both cynics and idealists. Cynics invited into the discussion absolutely prefer cracking down on propagandists in the US, and keeping “good” journalists in China.
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- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- coliveira 7y agoA propagandist for a country is a prize winning journalist for another. Freedom of speech should work for all.
- catalogia 7y agoIn fact the most infamous pro-Russian propagandists ever employed by the NYTs won a Pulitzer Prize for his propaganda. It took the NYTs a few decades to really admit it, but at least they came clean in the end. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
- jmeister 7y agoWhat a story. Thanks for sharing
- FpUser 7y agoFor starters could you please point out where exactly this "reputable journalists" vs "CCP propagandist" topic has been defined? On a subject "CCP Propagandists" were still officially a journalists. You might not like them and they might as well be a propagandists but there are agreements and written and unwritten rules in international politics and diplomacy. When said rules are broken you get tit for tat reaction.
- ardy42 7y ago> On a subject "CCP Propagandists" were still officially a journalists. Is journalist a title that's "officially" bestowed or gained from honestly trying to report the truth, as the journalist best understands it? I would argue that someone who's job is to knowingly push [1] a false government narrative in newspaper articles is not a journalist at all. [1] I need to really highlight this phrase here, even honest journalists can be mislead or honestly report the statements of others who intended to mislead.
- FpUser 7y ago"I would argue that someone who's job is to knowingly push [1] a false government narrative in newspaper articles is not a journalist at all." The term journalist has definition that depends from country to country. Generally all foreign journalists are given an accreditation by government and recognized as such, giving them certain privileges and responsibilities. Your personal opinion about this matter means zilch to any government.
- luckylion 7y ago> Is journalist a title that's "officially" bestowed or gained from honestly trying to report the truth, as the journalist best understands it? If that was what would earn you the title of journalist, the world's journalists would fit in a typical high school gym.
- irishcoffee 7y agoI wish I could give you more than one upvote. This site is infuriating sometimes
- bfieidhbrjr 7y agoThis. Me too.
- adventured 7y agoIt's the rampant moral relativism and whataboutism. It's why comments are frequently getting killed for pointing out China's early actions caused this global disaster, while simultaneously hundreds of comments are allowed to praise China (while they refuse to take any responsibility as a nation, even denying that it originated in China, and aggressively campaign with propaganda to blame the US for invading Wuhan with the US army to apparently launch a war against China and to attack China with a bioweapon and blah blah fucking blah).
- dang 7y agoPlease stop taking HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. We've had to ask you this before. "Whataboutism" is a shallow dismissal, so please don't use that one either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aguyfromnb 7y ago>You’re diverting the conversation from “China has expelled legitimate reputable journalists from many Pulitzer Prize winning newspapers” to “Hey, look at US, who expelled CCP propagandists”. I find this infuriating. The CCP apologists on this site are getting out of hand. Comments about the inability to trust CCP data getting down-voted in other threads, now the CCP are expelling journalists? Wonder why that is? Hmmm...
- dear 7y agoBecause we are side open. They want us to keep it that way so they can keep infiltrating our open society without consequence. Rest assured that they are working really hard in all the social sites including this one.
- irishcoffee 7y agoI can’t understand why you’re downvoted, except hn clearly hates ellipses...
- irishcoffee 7y agoIt’s tough being right all the time
- dang 7y agoThe comment clearly broke the site guidelines. Would you please review them? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Also, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- irishcoffee 7y agoOf all the comments on this site, you picked this one?
- dang 7y agoTake a look at https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=dang https://news.ycombinator.com/posts?id=dang and you'll soon drop that idea. Other bad comments don't make bad comments ok, so please don't post them.
- mengibar10 7y agoThere may be Pulitzer winner journalists working for these newspapers, but that does not prove the quality reporting is homogeneous. Actually the worst type of lies are the ones mixed with truth to hide the lie.
- spectramax 7y agoYou should be talking about the credibility of the CCP state media then? I'd rather have WSJ with decades of history of reputation vs. CCP State Media which is by definition owned by the CCP. Infuriating hypocrisy.
- coribuci 7y agoAfter listening to Radio Free Europe for some years i think it is safe to say that there is no difference between communist and capitalist propaganda. They both serve the "good" against the "evil".
- dang 7y agoWould you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You're running into the problem I described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22609080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22609080 - and breaking the site guidelines in the process.
- spectramax 7y agoOk, when there is extreme bias for untruthful, factually incorrect, obtuse and imbalance in HN opinions, I resign. I want to be part of a community that is not overrun by falsehood and hypocrisy. I shall resign from HN. It was fun. Btw, I have a lot of respect for you and generally doing a great job at moderating this forum. I’ve just had it enough with the people that exist here.
- gameswithgo 7y agoBecause we elected a president who has exactly the kind of childish attitude that would do this.
- nostromo 7y agoWe've had decades of letting China walk all over us. I'm not sure why this is unwarranted. They ban our companies, we let their companies in with open arms. They tariff our goods, we buy theirs up. They steal our IP, we respect theirs. They manipulate their currency, we let ours float. Open societies and open markets must remain open to each other. But that doesn't mean you roll over and allow a closed society to take advantage of you. Reciprocity is important.
- faitswulff 7y agoReciprocity at the expense of principles is a loss for the US.
- Jorge1o1 7y agoArguably, reciprocity and a strong independent nationalistic streak are the principles the US were founded on. For example, dumping tea into the Boston harbor to protest taxes imposed by a “””foreign””” government
- carapace 7y agoAh, but that's "Captain Hindsight" eh? Many people (right or wrong) legitimately thought that opening up to China would crack the authoritarian government.
- outside1234 7y agoOur reciprocity should be asymmetric. We should hit them where it hurts them, not us. And it hurts us to compromise our values.
- drak0n1c 7y ago
- mrscottson 7y agoThese news papers (NYT, WaPo & especially WSJ), will print whatever nonsense that is in the national interest and whatever narratives pushed by govt insiders regardless of whether true or not. Makes sense to ban the propagandist news orgs on both sides. Many that base their world outlook on knowledge gained from these sources are woefully ignorant of how the world really works.
- s17n 7y agoI think it's telling that the piece that started this whole episode was a WSJ opinion piece - I agree with you that the opinion sections of all three of these papers are pretty bad and that the WaPo opinion section in particular is a US military propaganda outlet by any reasonable definition. It's unfortunate that this is affecting their legitimate news gathering arms.
- stiglitz 7y agoThe opinion articles are on the same webpage, about the same topics as the “non-opinion” articles. The single indicator of the “opinion” status of these articles (which in the case of all papers mentioned here is just the word “opinion” above thw articles) is easy to miss on a skim. If you ask me, the same journalism standards should apply to every word on the website of any news outlet that wants to claim to be “unbiased.” Whether a paper without opinion sections would stay in business is a good question of course.
- s17n 7y agoYeah, to me the main problem isn't bias it's just that: 1. It's not possible for any human to produce insightful opinion pieces on anything close the schedule that oped writers are expected to 2. So opinion pages end up being full of mediocre filler 3. The writing thus ends up just being a regurgitation of the biases of the writers / editors
- saber6 7y ago> "But China did it first!" Well, then we should highlight how outrageous and unacceptable that behavior is, and sanction them some other way. Not reciprocate. You're falling squarely into the trap that I believe China plays so frequently: the belief that every other group of people shares a compatible value system and culture and any disagreement can be resolved with diplomacy, but never force. To be frank, the Chinese view us as dumb by setting restrictions on ourselves, in an effort to inspire them to do similar self-restraint measures. This methodology is flawed and outdated, the Chinese are not the Russians.
- tracker1 7y agoIt's kind of ridiculous all the way around. On the one hand, the U.S. should probably be more pragmatic in cases like this. On the flip side, I'm frankly surprised that they're simply being banned/removed from the country. I'm all for calling out a lot of the issues on both sides of the ocean on this one, even if I do feel that the actions of one country are far worse than the other. Two wrongs do not make a right. The U.S. should never have allowed more than half of any given industry (especially medicine and other essential infrastructure) to be produced overseas to begin with. The trade war was bound to happen, still, civility should always remain at the table.