11 ms·

A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio). It's sort of like the media has

A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio). It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic and now we're just left with the pulpy mess that no one really wants to deal with.

ianai 6y ago
I fear it might be more pernicious than that. There’s reason to believe states are misreporting their numbers to hide what’s going on with it. But I think the media senses the protests and racism issues have to take up all the available oxygen, “or else”.
- lostapathy 6y ago
  I think this is a lot of it, for better or worse. I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests.
  - ianai 6y ago
    What’s crazy though is for the first time in my life I actually fear for the future existence of the US. I watched 9/11 in real time and that didn’t feel as much of a threat to our existence as this does. There’s an actual civil war movement among the extremists now. I don’t think that existed during the civil rights movement days, even. Nor even the Vietnam fallout.
    - TeaDrunk 6y ago
      Do you have a link to the civil war movement claim? Are they being reported anywhere or by anyone?
      - pjc50 6y ago
        The "boogaloo" movement?
        TeaDrunk 6y ago
        I live in the middle of NYC, which has had several scenes of looting not 30 min from me broadcast to the entire nation, and I haven't heard of any such movement here. Maybe this is my east coast classist bubble, but I'd appreciate being educated on this matter?
        ianai 6y ago
        So there’s the boogaloo movement. There’s the Calexit campaign that was propped up by Russia in California last election. Probably you’re not seeing it because you’re not being targeted on social media for it and not going those parts of the internet. I really hope Zuckerberg was serious about policing foreign governments from buying ads on their platforms.
        TeaDrunk 6y ago
        Yes, do you have links to said movements or reporters of said movements? Where are you getting this information?
        briefcomment 6y ago
        Facebook has taken steps to limit Boogaloo groups on its platform. https://www.engadget.com/facebook-limits-boogaloo-groups-122931505.html https://www.engadget.com/facebook-limits-boogaloo-groups-122...
        meddlepal 6y ago
        For the record there are some of us who actually have uninfluenced interest in breaking apart the US either into separate countries or at least geographic regions with a significantly weakened federal government modeled after the Articles of Confederation from 1781. My general feeling is that it is too difficult to manage democracies over large geographic areas because the people at the edges tend to not have enough interaction with each other on a social or economic basis to recognize each other's problems. So I don't know about CalExit but I have definitely spoken about New England or Northeast Secession (heh NExit) as something I'm at least interested in. I just hope if the opportunity ever comes up we can do it peacefully...
    - lostapathy 6y ago
      I think there's a lot of rose colored history about the civil rights movement. We're mostly taught one side of it in school - that good people protested and won out over bad people. We don't, in general, talk about the horrible things that were happening back then. Only unlike a lot of racial problems today, they happened in plain sight and were celebrated. I know Rand Paul got a lot of hate for his recent speech against the legislation to make lynching a federal crime, but the things he talked about happening back when lynching was a frequent problem really opened my eyes to how bad things were. We don't talk about the fact that before MLK was assassinated, he was widely disliked by the american public. We don't talk about the fact that a lot of American gun control we still have was passed as a reaction to the civil rights movement - as a way to disarm minorities and weaken their ability to protest. I wasn't there, but I get the feeling we're still a long ways from things being as bad as they were during the 60's civil rights movement.
      - scruple 6y ago
        Most people don't even know who Fred Hampton was. Even people who lived through the civil rights movement don't recall his name. My own parents downplay the violence of the 70s in favor of the rhetoric du jour that they're fed from mainstream media, and they lived in DC from 1972 until late in 1980 (and, all things considered, they are leftists, not liberals, which makes it even more astonishing to me). It's quite astounding just how fragile our memories are and how easily we can be (emotionally) manipulated. "Days of Rage" by Bryan Burrough is a good read on the subject (political violence in the late 60s and 70s). There's a good blog / semi-book review that I link people to when they seem intent on learning more of the history (which I originally got from a comment on HN during the 2016 election cycle) [0]. [0]: https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
        ImaCake 6y ago
        This is fascinating to me. The more I see about America's protest history, the more it seems like the last 20 years have been abnormally calm and your normal state of affairs is more like the mood in 2020. A quote I liked from your linked article: >You have to understand: in 1968, many radicals absolutely believed that the United States was getting ready to collapse. One Weatherman puts it: “We actually believed there was going to be a revolution. We believed 3rd World countries would rise up and cause crises that would bring down the industrialized West, and we believed it was going to happen tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, like 1976.”
    - double0jimb0 6y ago
      Yea, you are going to have to provide some references for that one.
    - alexilliamson 6y ago
      White supremacists have wanted civil war since... the actual civil war? I'm not sure there has ever been a point when civil war was not on the table among extremists. Do you have particular current examples that are especially disconcerting?
      - thatoneuser 6y ago
        Have these white supremacists done something on the scale of vandalism that's gone on during these protests? I saw $55 million in damages have been done to Minneapolis alone a couple days ago. Idk about "white supremacist" (I don't think I've met any), but the more "rebel south" people I've known may talk about civil war, but I've never seen any severe damage, violence or death come from them. These protests are filled with those things.
      - messick 6y ago
        Pretty sure OP was calling the people peacefully protesting police brutality as “the extremists”.
        ianai 6y ago
        Nope.
    - messick 6y ago
      Nah man, the cops don’t have it in them to actually destroy the country. Those extremists will quit long before then.
    - ForHackernews 6y ago
      Where have you been? There's been groups pepping for a second civil war (the meme-name is "boogaloo", as in "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo") for at least a decade now. I'm optimistic that red and blue America will have something more like Czechoslovakia's Velvet Divorce involving minimal bloodshed, but I'd be surprised if the USA makes it to 2100 as a single polity.
    - refurb 6y ago
      If you think things are worse now than in the 1960's, I don't know what to tell you. They were way worse. Multiple politicians assassinated. Major multi-day riots across multiple cities with hundred dead. Then a president being impeached. 2020 doesn't even come close to the 1960's.
      - Gibbon1 6y ago
        I remember the 1980 Miami Riots and the 1992 LA riots. This is basically nothing like that. Fundamental difference the protestors aren't the ones engaging in violence, the cops are.
        DuskStar 6y ago
        I seem to have missed the police setting buildings on fire and beating up shopowners. Not to say that the police haven't committed a ton of violence in these protests, but it's not all them.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        There are looters and then there are protestors.
        DuskStar 6y ago
        Well, sure. But if you define "protestor" as "no violence, no looting, no arson", of course the protesters won't do those things.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        Yes, yes. The "No True Protestor/Scotsman" argument.
        andrewzah 6y ago
        > but it's not all them. Sure, and the other ones look the other way. Totally "good" guys just lettin' bad guys be bad guys. Until the "good" guys start going after and punishing the "few bad ones", they are all bad. If we're going to use the "just some bad apples" argument, then it might be prudent to apply it to the protestors, too? At this point it's borderline ignorant to be unaware of the ongoing police brutalities. And if one -is- aware, it's disingenuous to compare what they're doing to some stores being set on fire- turns out people really, really care about property damage suddenly. [0] [1] [0]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/New%20York.md https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor... [1]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/California.md https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor...
    - HaloZero 6y ago
      I mean, people like to throw around race war occasionally now but I only hear about it from the far-right. Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence. During the 1960s, I believe Malcolm X was ready to have a real war to defend Black Americans. Now, at worse the discord is about justifying some looting that has diminished.
      - banads 6y ago
        >Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence I have seen many people talking about "burning the system to the ground".
        HaloZero 6y ago
        I think that's a metaphor like they want to destroy systematic racism or prison industrial complex? But I haven't seen those posts. Anything public you wanna share?
        banads 6y ago
        >I think that's a metaphor Maybe we could consider it purely metaphorical, if there hadn't been a rash of arsons across the US in recent weeks.
        HaloZero 6y ago
        I mean... I'm was looking up stuff and it seems the arsons have been up since March at least in Vancouver. https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-warn-of-sharp-increase-in-arson-crimes-during-pandemic https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-warn-of-sharp...
        banads 6y ago
        Cool story, its completely irrelevant to what happened last week in the US
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests. That's exactly it. I've some friends who are on the whole rather apolitical, in fact I'd call them politically ignorant as it's not something they tend to invest any time into, but who either run relatively large social media pages as a side hustle or do so professionally on behalf of the company they work for. From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. The companies want to get info out to customers, however feel that if they post without the promo post first they'll be castigated for it. Those with influence pages want to retain engagement and are in the same position. In essence, those actually supporting the protests have created an environment whereby they'll never be able to judge the true sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed. Something that, in my eyes at least, has dangerous potential.
    - matwood 6y ago
      > From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. This tells me the protests are working. When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege and the plight of other groups. But, growth doesn't occur without first being uncomfortable. > sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed Sentiment will be judged through action and change.
      - zarathustreal 6y ago
        >When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege Unfortunately you're very correct there, though not in the way I think you're assuming. Force people with influence, power, money, ability to be above common problems, to see what's happening and you're not going to get a pat on the back. Change is certainly going to happen, and it's not going to be the change you're hoping for.
  - grandridge 6y ago
    Yeah it's called mob rule
- covidSurvivor19 6y ago
  Like in Italy, where people are now protesting against their goverments overreaction of COVID; mishandling of its elderly, actually at risk, population; and the inflation of death numbers attributed to COVID.
- SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
  "all the available oxygen". Interesting pun.
nkozyra 6y ago
Airtime is finite - editorially, it's unsurprising the story took a backseat. NYC curbed infection rate, there may be seasonality, numbers in general are going down in this country. If we see another phase it will be A1 material again.
- stephen_cagle 6y ago
  I wonder how much longer the words "A1 material" will even make sense to people? Like, they will probably think you are talking about quality of meat or something. Newspapers; I'd almost forgotten about them.
  - Hnrobert42 6y ago
    Funny. I am 40, certainly old enough to remember newspapers, but I didn’t get the reference until the last line of your post. Also, sorry you are getting downvoted. Emotions are running high. I’d guess folks are interpreting your snark against newspapers as snark against the parent.
adventured 6y ago
I have noticed that as well, the media across the board is no longer using the numbers to score points for their team. Certain politicians are no longer touting the death counts as political leverage. They've all moved on in the span of a week or two (they must have received their talking points update). They can't tout how horrible and scary the pandemic is (forcibly close all businesses! we're all gonna die! put people in jail for failure to socially distance! take their kids away from them!), while cheering on protests. They're in fundamental conflict and it became too obvious, the obnoxiousness of the contradiction was being pointed out constantly. They had to pick one, so they pivoted. Don't worry though, they plan to go back to focusing on the pandemic after the protests fade. There is more political juice there yet, perhaps in the fall if the virus picks up.
klenwell 6y ago
The daily numbers are often misleading due to patchy reporting, lags in test results, and the vagaries of weekly testing patterns. New case numbers are often not put in context of number of tests being done. There are lots of pretty graphs but, lacking or obscuring this context, they don't provide much useful information. When I do see or hear numbers pop up in local media, it's often offered without meaningful information about larger trends and lends itself to the same horserace/it's all sports mentality that afflicts political coverage. I put together my own spreadsheet based on my local health agency's data to try to get a more objective sense of how things are really progressing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSxCDL6xIQll_G3zW737SwkjB_Y9i5stL6ccF4Z3jFCLgaLDcrWIfquzc99DnYk_QUQQuiQbsgsXiJQ/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSxCDL6xIQll... It's more than an academic exercise. I've been citing it as my small company discusses whether to reopen our local office. (There's no business need to do so. Our office can operate entirely remotely -- and has been for several weeks now.) I'm also trying present the data in a meaningful way -- relative to testing and reopening guidelines. If you're frustrated by local reporting, I'd encourage you to do some something similar for your region.
enraged_camel 6y ago
>>It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic NPR is not "the media". It is one media outlet out of many. Furthermore, NPR's website (along with that of all major media outlets) still contains live updates, trackers, charts. The only difference now is they have taken a backseat to the much more immediate and relevant news, which are the protests. edit: lmao, i guess people dislike facts. keep downvoting, it won't bother me. ;)
- DennisAleynikov 6y ago
  its a similar effect on fivethirtyeight, they were closely monitoring covid with most articles, then switched to 'protests good, what is covid-19?' as the 'justified' protests have taken place
  - enraged_camel 6y ago
    Why did you put the word justified in quotes?
    - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
      Either the vitriol people received for protesting the lockdown, wanting to reopen their businesses and resume life - they were labelled essentially as murderers and #COVIDIOTS - was justified OR the mass protests, flouting of concern about the virus, etc. is justified. You cannot have both. So either those out and about without masks, or protesting the lockdown, etc. AND the current protests are justified as COVID isn't actually a real concern, OR both sets of protests are unjustified because a lack of concern for COVID is in essence negligent homicide, and the current consort should be labelled as the previous. What you cannot say is that the first set of actions were unjustified but the second justified, whilst in the midst of the same conditions with the same virus making its way through our people. You may try to insert a "but" in there somewhere, but that will be merely a reflection of your political biases or adherence to the narrative of your chosen publication.
      - 6y ago
4636760295 6y ago
This is correct. It's not generating the clicks anymore, so they've moved on to other things. The media only cares about whatever gets the most eyeballs.
refurb 6y ago
Very astute observation. The media jumped all over Covid because, well, they could write a lot of news about it. Now? They've moved on.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  I get a lot of my news from text.npr.org. Only a daily basis, it still seems about 40% articles are about covid
throw0101a 6y ago
> A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio). Well I've noticed that the firing of Inspectors General hasn't been in the news lately. With the Controversy of the Week with Trump, it's kind of hard to keep up. Which has been his (and Bannon's) general strategy: * https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/impeachment-trial-trump-bannon-misinformation https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...
tenpies 6y ago
Keep in mind it's an election year, and the biggest failure in the US and the world, New York, is extremely Democrat. It is critical to the Democrats to shift the conversation. Clearly blaming Trump for the city's failure isn't going to work, so the pivot was to waiting until there was one particularly bad case of police abuse against a black person and then light the powder keg. If you look back this year there have been some awful cases. For example, one stands out from February where a man was murdered execution style with 4 shots to the head and back[1]. Never heard of it in the media? That's because the person murdered was white so it was not politically useful to the Democrat media machine. The takeaway for me is that this is only going to get worst. Elections are still in November. Biden is a terrible candidate so they're going to go absolutely nuts trying to sow discontent, instability, and outright rebellion. Can the US survive it's own media and it's two-party system, especially as foreign actors amplify the media's destabilizing message and focus on polarizing people? --- [1] https://6abc.com/west-sedgley-avenue-shooting-north-philadelphia-philly-deadly/5930193/ https://6abc.com/west-sedgley-avenue-shooting-north-philadel...
- HaloZero 6y ago
  I don't see why America would be outraged by the man in Philadelphia? Like it seems a terrible murder but what do you expect people to rise against? I'm glad the Democrats are shifting the conversation. You think this hasn't been happening regularly for decades? At the very least this has been brewing since 2014 and Ferguson. They might try to blame Trump but honestly he's given the Democrats enough material just by literally stoking the flames instead of trying to be conciliatory.
- greedo 6y ago
  Doesn't look like this victim was murdered by the police. We should hold the police to a higher standard since they have a government sanctioned monopoly on the use of lethal force.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  Lately, I started to think we make a mistake when we guess what motivates large, poorly defined groups like “Democrats”. I say “we” because I do it all the time, too. Maybe the way back to a less polarized society is to focus more on what people do/say and less on their perceived motives.
Rapzid 6y ago
The situation is no longer as urgent? Number of new cases and new deaths have dropped off a bit and mostly flattened out. Health care capacity is handling current loads. Economy is opening back up.. There is still plenty of talk about COVID-19, but I'm not sure how much cynicism is required to explain why something that is no longer a critically urgent emergency is no longer being reported as a critically urgent emergency.

ianai 6y ago

I fear it might be more pernicious than that. There’s reason to believe states are misreporting their numbers to hide what’s going on with it. But I think the media senses the protests and racism issues have to take up all the available oxygen, “or else”.

lostapathy 6y ago
I think this is a lot of it, for better or worse. I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests.
- ianai 6y ago
  What’s crazy though is for the first time in my life I actually fear for the future existence of the US. I watched 9/11 in real time and that didn’t feel as much of a threat to our existence as this does. There’s an actual civil war movement among the extremists now. I don’t think that existed during the civil rights movement days, even. Nor even the Vietnam fallout.
  - TeaDrunk 6y ago
    Do you have a link to the civil war movement claim? Are they being reported anywhere or by anyone?
    - pjc50 6y ago
      The "boogaloo" movement?
      - TeaDrunk 6y ago
        I live in the middle of NYC, which has had several scenes of looting not 30 min from me broadcast to the entire nation, and I haven't heard of any such movement here. Maybe this is my east coast classist bubble, but I'd appreciate being educated on this matter?
        ianai 6y ago
        So there’s the boogaloo movement. There’s the Calexit campaign that was propped up by Russia in California last election. Probably you’re not seeing it because you’re not being targeted on social media for it and not going those parts of the internet. I really hope Zuckerberg was serious about policing foreign governments from buying ads on their platforms.
        TeaDrunk 6y ago
        Yes, do you have links to said movements or reporters of said movements? Where are you getting this information?
        briefcomment 6y ago
        Facebook has taken steps to limit Boogaloo groups on its platform. https://www.engadget.com/facebook-limits-boogaloo-groups-122931505.html https://www.engadget.com/facebook-limits-boogaloo-groups-122...
        meddlepal 6y ago
        For the record there are some of us who actually have uninfluenced interest in breaking apart the US either into separate countries or at least geographic regions with a significantly weakened federal government modeled after the Articles of Confederation from 1781. My general feeling is that it is too difficult to manage democracies over large geographic areas because the people at the edges tend to not have enough interaction with each other on a social or economic basis to recognize each other's problems. So I don't know about CalExit but I have definitely spoken about New England or Northeast Secession (heh NExit) as something I'm at least interested in. I just hope if the opportunity ever comes up we can do it peacefully...
  - lostapathy 6y ago
    I think there's a lot of rose colored history about the civil rights movement. We're mostly taught one side of it in school - that good people protested and won out over bad people. We don't, in general, talk about the horrible things that were happening back then. Only unlike a lot of racial problems today, they happened in plain sight and were celebrated. I know Rand Paul got a lot of hate for his recent speech against the legislation to make lynching a federal crime, but the things he talked about happening back when lynching was a frequent problem really opened my eyes to how bad things were. We don't talk about the fact that before MLK was assassinated, he was widely disliked by the american public. We don't talk about the fact that a lot of American gun control we still have was passed as a reaction to the civil rights movement - as a way to disarm minorities and weaken their ability to protest. I wasn't there, but I get the feeling we're still a long ways from things being as bad as they were during the 60's civil rights movement.
    - scruple 6y ago
      Most people don't even know who Fred Hampton was. Even people who lived through the civil rights movement don't recall his name. My own parents downplay the violence of the 70s in favor of the rhetoric du jour that they're fed from mainstream media, and they lived in DC from 1972 until late in 1980 (and, all things considered, they are leftists, not liberals, which makes it even more astonishing to me). It's quite astounding just how fragile our memories are and how easily we can be (emotionally) manipulated. "Days of Rage" by Bryan Burrough is a good read on the subject (political violence in the late 60s and 70s). There's a good blog / semi-book review that I link people to when they seem intent on learning more of the history (which I originally got from a comment on HN during the 2016 election cycle) [0]. [0]: https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/ https://status451.com/2017/01/20/days-of-rage/
      - ImaCake 6y ago
        This is fascinating to me. The more I see about America's protest history, the more it seems like the last 20 years have been abnormally calm and your normal state of affairs is more like the mood in 2020. A quote I liked from your linked article: >You have to understand: in 1968, many radicals absolutely believed that the United States was getting ready to collapse. One Weatherman puts it: “We actually believed there was going to be a revolution. We believed 3rd World countries would rise up and cause crises that would bring down the industrialized West, and we believed it was going to happen tomorrow, or maybe the day after tomorrow, like 1976.”
  - double0jimb0 6y ago
    Yea, you are going to have to provide some references for that one.
  - alexilliamson 6y ago
    White supremacists have wanted civil war since... the actual civil war? I'm not sure there has ever been a point when civil war was not on the table among extremists. Do you have particular current examples that are especially disconcerting?
    - thatoneuser 6y ago
      Have these white supremacists done something on the scale of vandalism that's gone on during these protests? I saw $55 million in damages have been done to Minneapolis alone a couple days ago. Idk about "white supremacist" (I don't think I've met any), but the more "rebel south" people I've known may talk about civil war, but I've never seen any severe damage, violence or death come from them. These protests are filled with those things.
    - messick 6y ago
      Pretty sure OP was calling the people peacefully protesting police brutality as “the extremists”.
      - ianai 6y ago
        Nope.
  - messick 6y ago
    Nah man, the cops don’t have it in them to actually destroy the country. Those extremists will quit long before then.
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Where have you been? There's been groups pepping for a second civil war (the meme-name is "boogaloo", as in "Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo") for at least a decade now. I'm optimistic that red and blue America will have something more like Czechoslovakia's Velvet Divorce involving minimal bloodshed, but I'd be surprised if the USA makes it to 2100 as a single polity.
  - refurb 6y ago
    If you think things are worse now than in the 1960's, I don't know what to tell you. They were way worse. Multiple politicians assassinated. Major multi-day riots across multiple cities with hundred dead. Then a president being impeached. 2020 doesn't even come close to the 1960's.
    - Gibbon1 6y ago
      I remember the 1980 Miami Riots and the 1992 LA riots. This is basically nothing like that. Fundamental difference the protestors aren't the ones engaging in violence, the cops are.
      - DuskStar 6y ago
        I seem to have missed the police setting buildings on fire and beating up shopowners. Not to say that the police haven't committed a ton of violence in these protests, but it's not all them.
        Gibbon1 6y ago
        There are looters and then there are protestors.
        DuskStar 6y ago
        Well, sure. But if you define "protestor" as "no violence, no looting, no arson", of course the protesters won't do those things.
        sokoloff 6y ago
        Yes, yes. The "No True Protestor/Scotsman" argument.
        andrewzah 6y ago
        > but it's not all them. Sure, and the other ones look the other way. Totally "good" guys just lettin' bad guys be bad guys. Until the "good" guys start going after and punishing the "few bad ones", they are all bad. If we're going to use the "just some bad apples" argument, then it might be prudent to apply it to the protestors, too? At this point it's borderline ignorant to be unaware of the ongoing police brutalities. And if one -is- aware, it's disingenuous to compare what they're doing to some stores being set on fire- turns out people really, really care about property damage suddenly. [0] [1] [0]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/New%20York.md https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor... [1]: https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/reports/California.md https://github.com/2020PB/police-brutality/blob/master/repor...
  - HaloZero 6y ago
    I mean, people like to throw around race war occasionally now but I only hear about it from the far-right. Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence. During the 1960s, I believe Malcolm X was ready to have a real war to defend Black Americans. Now, at worse the discord is about justifying some looting that has diminished.
    - banads 6y ago
      >Nobody on the far-left is advocating for the extreme violence I have seen many people talking about "burning the system to the ground".
      - HaloZero 6y ago
        I think that's a metaphor like they want to destroy systematic racism or prison industrial complex? But I haven't seen those posts. Anything public you wanna share?
        banads 6y ago
        >I think that's a metaphor Maybe we could consider it purely metaphorical, if there hadn't been a rash of arsons across the US in recent weeks.
        HaloZero 6y ago
        I mean... I'm was looking up stuff and it seems the arsons have been up since March at least in Vancouver. https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-warn-of-sharp-increase-in-arson-crimes-during-pandemic https://www.straight.com/news/vancouver-police-warn-of-sharp...
        banads 6y ago
        Cool story, its completely irrelevant to what happened last week in the US
- cmdshiftf4 6y ago
  >I feel like a lot of people are afraid to talk about anything but the protests lately, lest they be branded as not supporting the protests. That's exactly it. I've some friends who are on the whole rather apolitical, in fact I'd call them politically ignorant as it's not something they tend to invest any time into, but who either run relatively large social media pages as a side hustle or do so professionally on behalf of the company they work for. From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. The companies want to get info out to customers, however feel that if they post without the promo post first they'll be castigated for it. Those with influence pages want to retain engagement and are in the same position. In essence, those actually supporting the protests have created an environment whereby they'll never be able to judge the true sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed. Something that, in my eyes at least, has dangerous potential.
  - matwood 6y ago
    > From chatting to them over the last week or two, they've said they've been put in a place whereby they can't not post something in support of the protests in either case. This tells me the protests are working. When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege and the plight of other groups. But, growth doesn't occur without first being uncomfortable. > sentiment around their movement, as dissent or even public agnosticism toward it has been all but quashed Sentiment will be judged through action and change.
    - zarathustreal 6y ago
      >When people who normally do not pay attention are forced to see what's happening, then change can occur. It's going to be uncomfortable for a lot of people as they come to terms with their own privilege Unfortunately you're very correct there, though not in the way I think you're assuming. Force people with influence, power, money, ability to be above common problems, to see what's happening and you're not going to get a pat on the back. Change is certainly going to happen, and it's not going to be the change you're hoping for.
- grandridge 6y ago
  Yeah it's called mob rule
covidSurvivor19 6y ago
Like in Italy, where people are now protesting against their goverments overreaction of COVID; mishandling of its elderly, actually at risk, population; and the inflation of death numbers attributed to COVID.
SomeoneFromCA 6y ago
"all the available oxygen". Interesting pun.

nkozyra 6y ago

Airtime is finite - editorially, it's unsurprising the story took a backseat. NYC curbed infection rate, there may be seasonality, numbers in general are going down in this country. If we see another phase it will be A1 material again.

stephen_cagle 6y ago
I wonder how much longer the words "A1 material" will even make sense to people? Like, they will probably think you are talking about quality of meat or something. Newspapers; I'd almost forgotten about them.
- Hnrobert42 6y ago
  Funny. I am 40, certainly old enough to remember newspapers, but I didn’t get the reference until the last line of your post. Also, sorry you are getting downvoted. Emotions are running high. I’d guess folks are interpreting your snark against newspapers as snark against the parent.

adventured 6y ago

I have noticed that as well, the media across the board is no longer using the numbers to score points for their team. Certain politicians are no longer touting the death counts as political leverage. They've all moved on in the span of a week or two (they must have received their talking points update). They can't tout how horrible and scary the pandemic is (forcibly close all businesses! we're all gonna die! put people in jail for failure to socially distance! take their kids away from them!), while cheering on protests. They're in fundamental conflict and it became too obvious, the obnoxiousness of the contradiction was being pointed out constantly. They had to pick one, so they pivoted. Don't worry though, they plan to go back to focusing on the pandemic after the protests fade. There is more political juice there yet, perhaps in the fall if the virus picks up.

klenwell 6y ago

The daily numbers are often misleading due to patchy reporting, lags in test results, and the vagaries of weekly testing patterns. New case numbers are often not put in context of number of tests being done. There are lots of pretty graphs but, lacking or obscuring this context, they don't provide much useful information. When I do see or hear numbers pop up in local media, it's often offered without meaningful information about larger trends and lends itself to the same horserace/it's all sports mentality that afflicts political coverage. I put together my own spreadsheet based on my local health agency's data to try to get a more objective sense of how things are really progressing: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSxCDL6xIQll_G3zW737SwkjB_Y9i5stL6ccF4Z3jFCLgaLDcrWIfquzc99DnYk_QUQQuiQbsgsXiJQ/pubhtml https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSxCDL6xIQll... It's more than an academic exercise. I've been citing it as my small company discusses whether to reopen our local office. (There's no business need to do so. Our office can operate entirely remotely -- and has been for several weeks now.) I'm also trying present the data in a meaningful way -- relative to testing and reopening guidelines. If you're frustrated by local reporting, I'd encourage you to do some something similar for your region.

enraged_camel 6y ago

>>It's sort of like the media has extracted all the juice they can from the pandemic NPR is not "the media". It is one media outlet out of many. Furthermore, NPR's website (along with that of all major media outlets) still contains live updates, trackers, charts. The only difference now is they have taken a backseat to the much more immediate and relevant news, which are the protests. edit: lmao, i guess people dislike facts. keep downvoting, it won't bother me. ;)

DennisAleynikov 6y ago
its a similar effect on fivethirtyeight, they were closely monitoring covid with most articles, then switched to 'protests good, what is covid-19?' as the 'justified' protests have taken place
- enraged_camel 6y ago
  Why did you put the word justified in quotes?
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    Either the vitriol people received for protesting the lockdown, wanting to reopen their businesses and resume life - they were labelled essentially as murderers and #COVIDIOTS - was justified OR the mass protests, flouting of concern about the virus, etc. is justified. You cannot have both. So either those out and about without masks, or protesting the lockdown, etc. AND the current protests are justified as COVID isn't actually a real concern, OR both sets of protests are unjustified because a lack of concern for COVID is in essence negligent homicide, and the current consort should be labelled as the previous. What you cannot say is that the first set of actions were unjustified but the second justified, whilst in the midst of the same conditions with the same virus making its way through our people. You may try to insert a "but" in there somewhere, but that will be merely a reflection of your political biases or adherence to the narrative of your chosen publication.
    - 6y ago

4636760295 6y ago

This is correct. It's not generating the clicks anymore, so they've moved on to other things. The media only cares about whatever gets the most eyeballs.

refurb 6y ago

Very astute observation. The media jumped all over Covid because, well, they could write a lot of news about it. Now? They've moved on.

Hnrobert42 6y ago
I get a lot of my news from text.npr.org. Only a daily basis, it still seems about 40% articles are about covid

throw0101a 6y ago

> A thing I've noticed is that they stopped mentioning the daily numbers on the radio (NPR, more specifically Iowa Public Radio). Well I've noticed that the firing of Inspectors General hasn't been in the news lately. With the Controversy of the Week with Trump, it's kind of hard to keep up. Which has been his (and Bannon's) general strategy: * https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/impeachment-trial-trump-bannon-misinformation https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/1/16/20991816/i...

tenpies 6y ago

Keep in mind it's an election year, and the biggest failure in the US and the world, New York, is extremely Democrat. It is critical to the Democrats to shift the conversation. Clearly blaming Trump for the city's failure isn't going to work, so the pivot was to waiting until there was one particularly bad case of police abuse against a black person and then light the powder keg. If you look back this year there have been some awful cases. For example, one stands out from February where a man was murdered execution style with 4 shots to the head and back[1]. Never heard of it in the media? That's because the person murdered was white so it was not politically useful to the Democrat media machine. The takeaway for me is that this is only going to get worst. Elections are still in November. Biden is a terrible candidate so they're going to go absolutely nuts trying to sow discontent, instability, and outright rebellion. Can the US survive it's own media and it's two-party system, especially as foreign actors amplify the media's destabilizing message and focus on polarizing people? --- [1] https://6abc.com/west-sedgley-avenue-shooting-north-philadelphia-philly-deadly/5930193/ https://6abc.com/west-sedgley-avenue-shooting-north-philadel...

HaloZero 6y ago
I don't see why America would be outraged by the man in Philadelphia? Like it seems a terrible murder but what do you expect people to rise against? I'm glad the Democrats are shifting the conversation. You think this hasn't been happening regularly for decades? At the very least this has been brewing since 2014 and Ferguson. They might try to blame Trump but honestly he's given the Democrats enough material just by literally stoking the flames instead of trying to be conciliatory.
greedo 6y ago
Doesn't look like this victim was murdered by the police. We should hold the police to a higher standard since they have a government sanctioned monopoly on the use of lethal force.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
Lately, I started to think we make a mistake when we guess what motivates large, poorly defined groups like “Democrats”. I say “we” because I do it all the time, too. Maybe the way back to a less polarized society is to focus more on what people do/say and less on their perceived motives.

Rapzid 6y ago

The situation is no longer as urgent? Number of new cases and new deaths have dropped off a bit and mostly flattened out. Health care capacity is handling current loads. Economy is opening back up.. There is still plenty of talk about COVID-19, but I'm not sure how much cynicism is required to explain why something that is no longer a critically urgent emergency is no longer being reported as a critically urgent emergency.