4 ms·

Because if the Proud Boys believe in gravity, evolution, and fascism, only one of these three is newsworthy.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
The source article is pretty explicit about its goal: it's trying to inform readers on how a specific group of people think, which is important because many powerful people are in that group. Describing only the parts of their ideology that are "newsworthy", the parts that are strange or shocking to a typical NYT reader, is going to present a picture so distorted that it ends up being simply false. It would be like a human interest story that studiously refused to mention anything normal about the subject.
- mpweiher 6y ago
  Yes. But that's how reporting (sadly) generally works. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” - Michael Crichton I was first mentioned at a very young age in a newspaper when Der Spiegel reported on my dad. What it mentioned was that he had two children, my sister and myself. It then stated our ages, and got both of them completely wrong. This is not hard. It's also not important, but if it's not important enough to get right, maybe it's not important enough to simply make up? And later, I discovered the effect Michael mentions: every time they reported on anything I knew even a little about, they got it comically wrong. Except I don't suffer from amnesia. UPDATE: the only news source that I've found the be reasonably reliable over time is The Economist, if you ignore them on executive compensation ("our valued readers and sponsors: everything is fine with your outrageous salaries") and GMOs.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    I’ve been “quoted” in a couple press releases over the years. I never spoke nor wrote any of the quotes attributed to me. The comms team sends me a draft and says “looks good?” And I respond “yeah, whatever, don’t care”. The first time I was really surprised as I had taken the time to actually write something they could quote, but they didn’t want it.
    - mattdotc 6y ago
      Corporate communications is not journalism, so what's your point?
      - leesalminen 6y ago
        Journalists quote corporate communications in their journalism all the time, so what’s your point?
        mattdotc 6y ago
        You were complaining about being inaccurately quoted in press releases. Press releases are written by comms dept within a business, so if you have a complaint with how they're written, that's something to take up with your internal teams, not with external journalists.
      - devlopr 6y ago
        It should probably read corporate journalists are not journalists. To be one a journalist one must serve the truth but to remain employed by corporation means you have to accept some truths that aren't and reject others thar are.
- seppin 6y ago
  > The source article is pretty explicit about its goal That's your projected goal about the author's intention, which cannot be known. Maybe focus on the content? In the context, the reference was fair. The mainstreaming of truly extremist and dangerous ideas has gone too far, calling them out where ever they are is step one of making fascism bad again.

The source article is pretty explicit about its goal: it's trying to inform readers on how a specific group of people think, which is important because many powerful people are in that group. Describing only the parts of their ideology that are "newsworthy", the parts that are strange or shocking to a typical NYT reader, is going to present a picture so distorted that it ends up being simply false. It would be like a human interest story that studiously refused to mention anything normal about the subject.

mpweiher 6y ago
Yes. But that's how reporting (sadly) generally works. “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.” - Michael Crichton I was first mentioned at a very young age in a newspaper when Der Spiegel reported on my dad. What it mentioned was that he had two children, my sister and myself. It then stated our ages, and got both of them completely wrong. This is not hard. It's also not important, but if it's not important enough to get right, maybe it's not important enough to simply make up? And later, I discovered the effect Michael mentions: every time they reported on anything I knew even a little about, they got it comically wrong. Except I don't suffer from amnesia. UPDATE: the only news source that I've found the be reasonably reliable over time is The Economist, if you ignore them on executive compensation ("our valued readers and sponsors: everything is fine with your outrageous salaries") and GMOs.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  I’ve been “quoted” in a couple press releases over the years. I never spoke nor wrote any of the quotes attributed to me. The comms team sends me a draft and says “looks good?” And I respond “yeah, whatever, don’t care”. The first time I was really surprised as I had taken the time to actually write something they could quote, but they didn’t want it.
  - mattdotc 6y ago
    Corporate communications is not journalism, so what's your point?
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      Journalists quote corporate communications in their journalism all the time, so what’s your point?
      - mattdotc 6y ago
        You were complaining about being inaccurately quoted in press releases. Press releases are written by comms dept within a business, so if you have a complaint with how they're written, that's something to take up with your internal teams, not with external journalists.
    - devlopr 6y ago
      It should probably read corporate journalists are not journalists. To be one a journalist one must serve the truth but to remain employed by corporation means you have to accept some truths that aren't and reject others thar are.
seppin 6y ago
> The source article is pretty explicit about its goal That's your projected goal about the author's intention, which cannot be known. Maybe focus on the content? In the context, the reference was fair. The mainstreaming of truly extremist and dangerous ideas has gone too far, calling them out where ever they are is step one of making fascism bad again.