18 ms·

Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about raw power

196 points by apsec112 6y ago

undefined1 6y ago
"All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes." this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press. Put his head on a pike? They? Come on now. It will be interesting to see what will happens with this. Ever since the Scott Alexander NYT story, there's been a parade of old media criticism articles getting dredged up and making it to the front page, as well as a lot of broad-brush "I'm done with journalism, those fuckers" sentiment. It frankly sounds a lot like conservatives who are mad that the media wrote so many negative stories about Trump, and think it should have focused instead on positively covering stuff like the Trump administration's self-authored list of great accomplishments. Some people don't want journalism, they just want myside PR. I mean, the media's not perfect; but it's pretty unreasonable to get mad when your favorite band new album gets a bad review or a newspaper writes articles that fail to abide by the commenting norms of your favorite online message board.
  - haberman 6y ago
    Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" Is there any accusation -- outside of actual crimes -- more likely to cause a person to lose opportunities, social connections, or standing in their community? I can't speak to this reporter's motivations, but if a reporter wanted to metaphorically put someone's head on a pike, I can't think of any more effective way to do it than to insinuate that they are a racist, and somehow get it to stick.
    - ardy42 6y ago
      > Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" The actual article did not in fact label him as racist, and I don't think you could read it that way without being sloppy.
      - pochamago 6y ago
        It certainly tried to imply it with things like mentioning that he's cited Charles Murray, and then mentioning Murray's completely unrelated writing on race.
      - haberman 6y ago
        If you read my comment carefully, I didn't actually say that the article labeled him, I merely asked some questions and posed a hypothetical. And yet you drew an inference about my meaning beyond what my literal words were. You could call this sloppy reading, but I think the truth is that a writer can clearly communicate their intended conclusion without stating it directly. Which is just what Metz did.
- watwut 6y ago
  I read the article. There was like a little bit of criticism in article that contains both positive and negative claims. And everyone frankly overreacts to it. It is absolutely fair to disagree or argue against what was written, but it was not hit piece by any reasonable definition. And the first article about him also did not done anything that would be objectionable. And frankly, I have seen way more aggressive writing from journalists who are praised here as truth tellers.
williesleg 6y ago
Journalism is dead. Learn to code.
fatsdomino001 6y ago
I can't help but feel this article is saying the quiet part out loud.
netsharc 6y ago
Before Glenn Greenwald met Snowden and before he seems to have lost the plot about Russian collusion (maybe I'm wrong, but it seems lately he's been less willing to challenge his own conclusions), he wrote this (in 2010) about Washington journalists: https://www.salon.com/2010/06/07/washington_3/ https://www.salon.com/2010/06/07/washington_3/ . In another article he wrote about how a lot of news people are just desperate to be considered buddies by the people in power, so they can join the "elite"...
phkahler 6y ago
>> They felt that way because papers like the Post could offer the carrot of great exposure to those who needed it, but also, always, the stick of negative coverage to those who spurned them. There is nothing devious or ignoble about this; a powerful press, for all its flaws, is good for democracy No, doing hit pieces on anyone is a flagrant exercise of power that deserves no respect and destroys the credibility of the press. Stick to reporting facts and not exercising power and you'll fare much better. A recent example that was fascinating to me: during an emerging global crisis (covid19) the president of the USA held a press briefing to discuss the situation. A reporter was called on to ask a question by the president himself. That reporter decided to insinuate that the president was racist in addition to asking a question. The president's response included "you're a terrible reporter" in addition to answering the question. I'm sure that guy and his organisation were not welcome back, and rightly so. Keep your editorial shit on the page it belongs, or in another story. There is a place for that, but it's not during a press conference with "the leader of the free world" during a global crisis. And yet the MSM went wild over how bad the president was for calling out a reporter's bullshit. Stick to the facts and the story or you will be rightly identified as something other than a source of information.
- redelbee 6y ago
  Fact: You are conflating two separate instances where Trump bullied reporters to make your point. Instance from 2018 (with what you termed “racist” insinuations): https://youtu.be/OXp5GJjuOvQ https://youtu.be/OXp5GJjuOvQ Instance from 2020 actually relating to COVID-19: https://youtu.be/N5NQdmHzBTY https://youtu.be/N5NQdmHzBTY I’m going to take this as a reminder that we should all carefully consider sources of information, even when those sources are our own recollections and experiences.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-19-pandemic-us-president-donald-trump-abruptly-ends-coronavirus-press-conference-after-spat-with-reporter-2227194 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-19-pandemic-us-preside... No, this was the "racist" incident when Weijia Jiang asked Trump why he was insisting on bringing up the fact that the U.S. was doing better than (several European countries, including UK, Italy, Spain, and France at the time) other countries. And he said, "They're losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that's a question you should ask China. Don't ask me, ask China that question, OK?" because at the time, China was claiming they had basically solved Covid-19 with lockdowns and that the virus was no longer spreading in their country. And she said, "Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically?" implying it was due to her race (she being of Chinese heritage). And Trump, in standard form, said "I'm saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that." Every time Trump would be his ordinary self, you know, he always punches back at underhanded questions. The questions are a set up in the first place, to create a negative connotation. The coronavirus was a situation where nobody won, by the way, but the press certainly was going to do everything to make as much if it be Trump's fault as possible. Weirdly, some, who feared Trump being a true Hitler-like fascist 2-3 years ago, were upset that Trump wasn't being fascist enough and shutting the whole country down and overruling state governors on local policies. None of it was productive. None of it was healthy: on either side. None of it enlightened the population. None of it did any favors for democracy. It just inflamed already tense relations between conservatives and liberals. And note, there's no way in hell the media will ever be as hard on a democrat in office. They are 95% democrats themselves, and they have a bias. They soft balled Biden as it is, when he wasn't hiding in his basement.
pattusk 6y ago
I don't know if it's just me and my bias against the current state of the mainstream press but this article read like a pile of unacknowledged contradictions. The author advocates for the people's "right to know", but complains that social media has made it possible for people to reach a mass audience without relying on the press' megaphone. Surely social media increases people's right (or at least opportunity) to know, unless you consider that only what the press publishes is worth knowing. It goes on to complain about the influence that social media has given powerful people yet acknowledges that the press itself is owned by the same powerful people. And then we have the complaints about "tabloids" against respectable journalism at a time when the New York Post was the only paper with the guts to publish an election scandal while the Times is peddling public shaming campaigns that do little but lower the level of public debate. The title, at least, sounds right and if journalism want to have any power, they'll need to find wat to be indepedent. the recent case of Glenn Greenwald has shown that this seems to be the only road left.
konjin 6y ago
The post has never been able to say what it wants. It's only when it's safe to put a head on a pike that it does it. Nixon wasn't crucified for the genocide in Cambodia (I don't have another word for a bombing campaign that was projected to kill 20% of the countries population by the CIA) he was crucified for having fucked with the other powerful people in the US. Watergate wasn't even a blip compared to what Hoover did to the anti-war left, organized labor and organized anti-racism [0]. What was so bad about it is that it targeted people with power who could fight back. Journalists are being told that there is a new set of powerful people they need to be careful around and they haven't gotten the message yet. The current generation without the instinct to walk softly around big tech will be run out of journalism the same way that those who didn't understand they needed to walk softly around robber barons and not just land owners in the gilded age were. Trump, like Nixon, seems like an aberration to these people because he, again like Nixon, did not treat their sacred cows with the respect they expect. He treated them like he treated everyone. Interestingly enough Trump was a lot more successful at it, which means that they have lost a lot of power since Nixon was in power. [0] https://twitter.com/propagandopolis/status/1181641078652448768 https://twitter.com/propagandopolis/status/11816410786524487... that this is now thought of as racist in progressive America should tell you all you need to know about how successful cointelpro was.
bcherny 6y ago
This piece makes the case that the only way traditional media can hold powerful people accountable is by being the arbiters of their distribution, by controlling who gets published and how their story is told. The way things used to be before the internet. It’s a good thing this is not the case anymore. Big media is essential for democracy, but controlling distribution is not democratic. Big media has two options now. Either: 1. They can learn to use social media better, so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump. 2. They can ask social media companies to artificially boost distribution for Big News. The other option that the article seems to imply — going back to a world where Big media is the arbiter of distribution — isn’t going to happen. Social media (and the internet) are here to stay.
- tessierashpool 6y ago
  I agree that we need a new way to fulfill the same function that control over distribution used to accomplish. But the nuclear bomb is here to stay, too. That doesn't mean its invention was necessarily a positive development. Also, and hopefully you already know this and didn't intend to imply otherwise, but social media is just one way of using the internet. Which means that there's a third option: learning to use the internet better, in a less harmful and destructive way. And "Big Media" are obviously not the only group of people with access to that third option. edit: also, "so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump" is a very very low bar. that account now reaches zero people.
- op03 6y ago
  Why so much blind faith in the algo amplification systems Social Media companies have cooked up? People have accepted the like/click/upvote reward/amplification systems that surround us as if they are some well thought out foundation on top of which everything else has to be built. Once some country decides to ban algo amplification of all content, all the castles in the sky being built and debated will break. Who thinks that wont happen?
- nickysielicki 6y ago
  Big media is essential for democracy? Democracy literally predates the printing press.
ahepp 6y ago
>As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. But this is about power. We need to take some back, lest the rich and powerful run away from one of the last forces restraining them. It's interesting that they seem to consider themselves the only ones with pure hearts. I'm not sure why I should assume their hearts are so pure. Or if I assume their hearts are pure, why not Elon Musk's (mentioned in the article)? I do appreciate the role of the news media in creating a multi-polar rather than uni-polar world. But man, they really do think highly of themselves. I don't know how you could write all this realpolitik stuff, and still think you yourself are immune to it (outside of solipsism).
- qwantim1 6y ago
  The scary part of journalism is when it’s about activism vs. the truth. Activists can lie if the truth isn’t important. Lying for ratings, though, is also very bad. Activists lying for both activist causes and ratings is extremely bad.
  - rayiner 6y ago
    Activists, at the very least, exaggerate wildly. I’m a huge fan of and regular donor to the ACLU. But I had to stop reading their newsletter because Anthony Romano (or whoever writes these newsletter updates in his name) has a loose relationship with the truth. I would read about some criminal case they were involved in, and work up the intended frothy outrage. Then I’d read the Wikipedia article on it, and find out that they’d left out hugely important facts and mischaracterized the whole story. There was one about a teenager who had gotten together with a gang of his friends and murdered a pizza delivery driver in broad daylight in front of his family. The newsletter completely left that part out, making it seem like he was simply present when his friends had unexpectedly done something. Now there was a real legal issue buried in there. The folks on the legal side are top notch—and it’s entirely right and proper to get a bad person off on a technicality to defend an important legal principle. But the ACLU PR team would just fluff up the underlying story to make the party involved seem sympathetic as well. I can stomach this and just not read the newsletter when it comes to activist organizations. They’re in the business of leveraging outrage to further good causes. The blurring of lines between activism and journalism, however, is a total disaster. When the media whitewashes issues to further some perceived good cause, all it does is light their credibility on fire.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
motohagiography 6y ago
The article describes what's wrong with media, unless I've blanked on some ripping satire. What serious journalist would ever let themselves be quoted lamenting, "The subjects are winning." It's like her extravagance knows no bounds or something. The headline occurs mid article and it's a good choice. When writing is about power, its job becomes to deliver narrative in that power struggle, and that means it's no longer good. Who wants to read that? Maybe these institutions are losing their influence because they suck at the one thing they were supposed to do well, which was produce compelling, brave, and thoughtful writing that people wanted to read so much they would tolerate advertisers. Maybe if they were more interesting, more people would read them?
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  > Maybe if they were more interesting, more people would read them? This is what caused the existing problem. We had a media where people mostly believed them because they mostly cared about telling the truth, issued corrections when they were wrong, were critical of both political parties etc. That media discovered that if they published outrage bait they got more clicks, because if something is outrageous and true then people are very interested. But things that are outrageous and true aren't all that common, so to keep the mill running they started publishing things that were outrageous and false. That works until people figure out that they are no longer the media they were thought to be. Because things that are outrageous and false are boring. Anybody can write outrageous fiction. That's how we got into this. But the more readers who figure that out, the less credibility they have, and the less anybody wants to read their made up accounts. Their existing solution seems to be to turn the dial up to eleven. So then everything is an existential threat and a hot war and literally Hitler. That whips up the frenzy for the people who still think what they're hearing bears some resemblance to the truth, but increases the number of people who realize it doesn't. Eventually you get a critical mass of people no longer interested in hearing fantastical conspiracies about everything and somebody realizes there is a market for objective journalism and makes a name for themselves. Then, with any luck, the others follow. One can hope.
- itronitron 6y ago
  It reinforces for me that journos still don't understand the dynamics and potential of the internet even twenty years later. People are starved for information but have little interest in mainstream's news preference for packaging it up and waxing philosophic in order to provide their 'objective view' of events. A social media platform that amplifies people's ability to vet information and that is also resistant to dishonest campaigning would provide an advantage to its participants.
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
> why not Elon Musk's Maybe because of the lies and fraud? Or the hazardous working conditions? Or all the people Tesla's lemons have killed when the wheels fell off or the "full self driving" system crashed the car at speed? I don't believe that journalists are any better than the rest of us, but let's not pretend our "job creators" are good for the world.
- mc32 6y ago
  I’ll take job creators over people who have money and do nothing with it. There are affluent people who have money and park it or spend it away. Also just having great volumes of potential workers and no one to organize them into a productive body does little good.
  - xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
    Yeah, Tesla is real productive. Only Elon Musk would have the brilliant idea of building a $100% automated factory, failing to do that, setting the goal of building 5,000 cars a week on normal lines, failing to do that, moving his employees into a circus tent in the hot sun to hit the goal, failing again, then giving up and declaring victory. Tesla can't build cars because Elon Musk, being a big dumb-dumb, disregarded everything we know about manufacturing. Those employees would be more useful at any other car manufacturer. And yes, that includes Chevy. I actually think Elon Musk probably is better than most other billionaires. That says more about them than it does about him.
axguscbklp 6y ago
Start acting more like investigators of truth rather than as promoters of ideology, start acting more like free thinkers and less like thought police, start speaking truth to power more and being in bed with power less, and maybe more people will trust you.
- drtillberg 6y ago
  That doesn't work. Now and always an independent investigator of truth will be a lone voice in a wilderness targeted by all warring dogmatic factions. Witness NYT seeking to draw HN to the fray with Saturday's piece about SSC.
young_unixer 6y ago
> As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. But this is about power. We need to take some back, lest the rich and powerful run away from one of the last forces restraining them. I don't want the same arrogant, self-unaware journalist that pushes pernicious narratives to the public and doxxes people for blogging to come and tell me how rich people are evil and their newspaper is a defender of the public good. Just look in the mirror for a moment and realize that you are the problem.
- sb1752 6y ago
  This 100%
- nverno 6y ago
  The self-righteous arrogance of this author is comical.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
    The tone was not that of an outrage juicer opinion piece to me. Rather it was that of someone finally peeling off the sugar coating in exasperation. I'm OK with that.
- orange_joe 6y ago
  Particularly when the largest news organizations are run to enrich and empower some of the richest men in the world. Slim, Murdoch, Bezos. All run the most widely read, widely respected papers in the country.
- the_local_host 6y ago
  > As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. The author really should have left this perspective out of the essay; it's vain and distracts from the valid larger point. If powerful people can "no comment" the Washington Post and other significant outlets because the media can no longer extract a penalty for doing so, then they only really have to worry about crossing each other. The public interest is likely to suffer as this trend continues. (edited for clarity)
imgabe 6y ago
Journalists were so desperate to take out Trump (and Republicans in general) that they torpedoed their own credibility. 4 years of non-stop "The world is ending" crises one right after another, with barely any time to realize that one amounted to nothing before the next one started has left people disillusioned. Add in the fact that when actual problems like Covid did occur, the press was slow to pick up on them. They wasted months mocking VC firms for not allowing handshakes instead of digging deeper into what they were talking about. People will go listen to Elon Musk et al directly because they've learned that when they compare his actual words to journalists' interpretation of those words, they are completely different. If they stop lying people might start listening to them again.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
The main stream media broke, the world is now figuring out what moving on means.
strken 6y ago
At some point one gets a knock on the front door, sees a journalist holding a guillotine and pike, but just can't muster the old outrage. The field of heads is vast, most of them had less power than the journalists who decapitated them, and is it really necessary to fight another battle in the culture war over a tiny bakery doing naughty things? Can I really trust you when you say Elon Musk's union-busting is bad, or am I going to give it a quick google and find out that GM and Ford are worse, and you're going after Elon because he's a celebrity CEO who smoked weed with Joe Rogan once? Would you tell me if a modern-day Kissinger was committing a modern day institutional mass murder? Why did you drop Hong Kong as soon as COVID happened? If your paper has power, then in some loose sense it governs, and have you kept the consent of the governed? And if you've lost it, why?
- AnHonestComment 6y ago
  I would argue that the media has become such a rabid monoculture representing only 8% of the population that it has lost the ability to manufacture consent, broadly. Disney has fallen so far that they failed to tell A Hero’s Journey in the latest Star Wars— and come across to most long time fans as A Villain’s Rise. The same can be said for Captain Marvel. Heck, even Wonder Woman raped a guy in the latest movie. Then they wonder why their sales are collapsing. Would you be friends with someone like that?
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
> We need to take some back, lest the rich and powerful run away from one of the last forces restraining them. What this neglects is that journalism is many times in bed literally and figuratively with the rich and powerful. Anderson Cooper of CNN is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt one of the oldest monied families in America. While Andrew Cuomo the New York governor, was doing policies that resulted in high number of elderly nursing home deaths, CNN was showing segments with him chumming with his brother CNN anchor Chris Cuomo telling each other how they loved their brother. Andrea Mitchel of NBC is married to Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve. Many of the high level journalists are family members of the "rich and powerful". Many of them went to the same Ivy League schools. Many times, they live in the same neighborhoods and send their kids to the same private schools. If you expect the mainstream media or journalism to hold the rich and powerful in check, you will be just like a medieval peasant, expecting the bishops and cardinals of the Church, to hold the nobles and kings(who were often the older brothers, fathers, or uncles of these same bishops and cardinals) in check.
bArray 6y ago
> [..] mainstream press still needs powerful people—quite literally, in the case of the Post, as it’s owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, who is no fonder of difficult stories about his companies than any other billionaire. There's your first problem. MSM got into bed with the people they are supposed to report on. In the recent case of the GME stocks story, the MSM literally reported fake news about WallStreetBets (WSB) pushing silver. This story didn't come from Reddit, it can only have come from sources close to the hedge funds, and then it was uncritically pushed out across the board. The MSM often work closely with political parties, specifically the Democrat party. The recent Time article on the so called 'shadow campaign' was written by the author (Molly Ball) of Pelosi's 2020 biography. That job was not just given to anybody, she was heavily vetted. These people all run in the same circles. How on earth could you ever trust Molly to report unbiased on Trump or the Republican party? How could ever trust her to report critically on Nancy Pelosi or the Democrat party? She's not going to bite the hand that feeds her. > When Elon Musk can say whatever he wants to forty million Twitter followers at any time with no filter, it is little surprise that he does not feel compelled to listen to unpleasant questions from some reporter who wants to know why he busts unions and wildly accuses people of pedophilia. They do realize that journalism still happened before Twitter? It just actually required hard work, instead of spending time on Twitter all day watching hash tags. It was called 'investigative journalism'. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing this again. I also suggest that every other company shutdown their social media accounts immediately. You cannot make a political statement without alienating some of your customers, no matter what the subject. Most high-profile interactions will likely be very negative. Few people logging into Twitter to say "thank you, it worked exactly as it should, for the n'th time in a row". There was a time when customer service was dealt with privately, rather than having all of your mistakes aired publicly. Currently, the only way possible to get issues resolved regarding Youtube for example is to publicly shame them on Twitter - _this_ is the system they have actively encouraged. > Donald Trump, unfortunately, looms large in this. His imperviousness to the usual blows from the press was evident five years ago. The damage to your publications were done long ago, you just only realized it then. You can't convince Republicans that Trump is bad, if no Republicans consume your media. They have switched to alternatives and you need to figure out why.
MattGaiser 6y ago
Where does one go to just get information these days without having to get it from someone on a crusade? Local papers seem a lot better in this regard, but they don't cover national and international content.
- randomsearch 6y ago
  The Economist
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    The Economist is sort of "on a crusade", but they have a very established and stable crusade, so you can control for it and get a lot of signal.
- bondarchuk 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Although of course Wikipedia is also not a perfect source when things are policitally controversial.
hohohmm 6y ago
I saw this title and I figured, good point, highest level in the world of journalism is about raw power, hardly about any truth. Then I clicked and read a few lines, wow, completely turned around, it's actually saying that powerful people don't need journalism, and it's bitching about being dumpped... Not a minute of self-reflection. what kind of irony is this? I have to say, well deserved...
nexthash 6y ago
A lot of people here are arguing that mainstream media had it coming for them because of bias, arrogance, pushing an agenda, etc. But I want to ask all of you: what replaces it as arbiter of truth? For all of the media's problems and imperfections, they have acted as a quasi-independent institution holding other powerful institutions and individuals in society in check. They have focused popular attention where it was needed to prevent corruption (think Watergate Scandal, Panama Papers, Edward Snowden, and many others). Their importance to the free distribution of accurate information was such that even the government itself in the form of federal courts and law has repeatedly recognized the privilege the press has in things such as keeping sources secret. They recognized the importance of such a space in keeping America's democracy powerful. Now, the media is completely being driven to the sidelines. With the rise of personal branding, content distribution, and disinformation, this once-independent place to examine society is going under. For all the pomposity in this piece, the question is quite relevant: what will replace the media as an arbiter of independent information and truth? For now, it seems that the news and content space is being swallowed up by the information networks of various individuals and institutions, each with the focus of pushing their own image rather than coming clean to the public. If you can't trust any of them because all their perspectives are manipulated, have we reached an end to free and independent discourse?
- analog31 6y ago
  >>> But I want to ask all of you: what replaces it as arbiter of truth? A strongman. An idea that I attribute to Imre Lakatos, is that if you strip people of the ability to debate and discern facts, you create a power vacuum that can only be filled by those who can act in the absence of debate and facts, notably thugs and tyrants. I believe this is the actual motivation behind the "war on truth" and the flood of misinformation.
  - nexthash 6y ago
    This is my biggest fear about the media. If they don't come clean and reclaim their integrity (this goes for both left and right outlets), the public will reject them. Discourse will move to blogs, podcasts, private networks, etc. In the process, the laws and protections for journalism will be weathered and may be abolished altogether (who needs those pompous journalists, right?). Then we'll be no better than a propaganda state, where you can be jailed or sued for publishing a perspective that offends or exposes someone. This is obviously a worst-case scenario, but I think that to prevent anything similar from happening Americans need to step up and pressure their news outlets to do better, and for social media platforms to be choked with regulation until they start preventing manipulative shit from spreading.
known 6y ago
True journalism is very difficult because "Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed" --Friedrich Nietzsche (b. 1844)
underseacables 6y ago
I wish I could read the news without an opinion or agenda behind it, because it’s not clear when I am reading or watching something that is fact, or driven by a journalist or corporate opinion.
davidgerard 6y ago
(2020)
galkk 6y ago
I often hear that journalists are living in a bubble, but this article has many examples of obnoxious arrogance. quote from opening: > we should also recognize this for what it is: one more glaring data point showing that powerful people no longer think they need the mainstream press, especially critical and ethical outlets like the Washington Post. quote from closing: > All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes. If the Post and all the other respectable media outlets lose their ability to do that, powerful people will, by extension, stop caring what the well-informed segment of the public thinks. -------- Listen, we are used that we are IMPORTANT, that we must be listened to. Given that the media in US is as divided as the politics, I'm happy that press loses their ability to control the narrative. As of today we clearly see (just look at recent frontpage discussions about Slate Star Codex, Jetbrains or a bit older Supermicro) that for rare gems there's too much activism, propaganda and hit pieces.
mandown2308 6y ago
Which stupid wrote this piece?
paganel 6y ago
Powerful people do in fact need the press, best example is Bezos who has used the Washington Post for attacking Trump (one of his enemies). I'm pretty sure any campaign for unionization at Amazon warehouses would also be short-lived.
pessimizer 6y ago
> critical and ethical outlets like the Washington Post. This is an absurd characterization of the WaPo. Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about power. It's about trading editorial positions and floating bullshit stories citing anonymous sources in exchange for insider access to (and financial partnerships with) powerful people and organizations, and advance leaks of their decisions. Musk has decided that he's deriving no benefit from this traditional relationship. He already has the contacts in government because he is both a contractor and otherwise works in heavily subsidized industries, and also employs a lot of scientists who are employed as often by government as by industry. He doesn't need reporters to influence politicians or the public. His stock price is more likely to move (medium-term) based on tweets and press releases than any WaPo article, whose effects won't last out the week and are an opportunity to buy. These outlets have no authority, or leverage. Musk realizes that he should be treated with kid gloves like any other major government contractor, ignored when not being defended or hailed. He's the girl. If an outlet chooses to start kissing his ass, that outlet will get all the inside scoops they can handle. Just pretend he's Raytheon. edit: the press maintains its power by putting powerful people on pedestals, not on pikes. The way you get power is through powerful sponsors. Alienating the powerful gets you censored out of existence.
Wolfenstein98k 6y ago
I am no longer on the journalists' sides here. They are right that "raw power" is being wrestled from them by social media. I am glad to see it, after seeing one-too-many hitjobs and too much activism all emanating from a singular and rapidly narrowing worldview.
- gonzo41 6y ago
  You know how everyone rolls their eyes and are skeptical of the police policing themselves. My feelings are the same with the media. I never see the media fight, hard against themselves, like other professions. It just seems a bit to chummy inside the establishment. But Social Media is no panacea either. It's lots of people not moderating each other.
apmcduck 6y ago
Journalist tears are delicious. "When the full flowering of the social media age turns even the most prestigious paper into just another midsize Facebook page struggling to catch up to the reach of Dan Bongino?" Good. That's a source of our strength. And It's not going to stop. Any media company is just another corporation with self-interest that doesn't align with the public good.
tim44 6y ago
This article waxing poetic about the bastion that is journalism, taking down the big guy. Oh please. What we've seen is that journalists are not allowed to take on certain topics or the big guy, unless it's an enemy of their own big guy. They act more as media relations than journalists. And mainstream media has really lost its mind and jumped the shark over the last few years. Might be harder than they think to recover reputations.
known 6y ago
"Power will go to the hands of rogues/freebooters.All Indian leaders will be of low caliber/men of straw.They will have sweet tongues/silly hearts.They will fight among themselves for power; India will be lost in political squabbles" --Churchill (b. 1874)

196 points by apsec112 6y ago

"All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes." this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press.

ardy42 6y ago
> this is what just happened with Scott Alexander. they tried to put his head on a pike, because he's a high value node in the tech community that's eroding the power of the legacy press. Put his head on a pike? They? Come on now. It will be interesting to see what will happens with this. Ever since the Scott Alexander NYT story, there's been a parade of old media criticism articles getting dredged up and making it to the front page, as well as a lot of broad-brush "I'm done with journalism, those fuckers" sentiment. It frankly sounds a lot like conservatives who are mad that the media wrote so many negative stories about Trump, and think it should have focused instead on positively covering stuff like the Trump administration's self-authored list of great accomplishments. Some people don't want journalism, they just want myside PR. I mean, the media's not perfect; but it's pretty unreasonable to get mad when your favorite band new album gets a bad review or a newspaper writes articles that fail to abide by the commenting norms of your favorite online message board.
- haberman 6y ago
  Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" Is there any accusation -- outside of actual crimes -- more likely to cause a person to lose opportunities, social connections, or standing in their community? I can't speak to this reporter's motivations, but if a reporter wanted to metaphorically put someone's head on a pike, I can't think of any more effective way to do it than to insinuate that they are a racist, and somehow get it to stick.
  - ardy42 6y ago
    > Is there any more toxic label you can attach to a person in contemporary America than "racist?" The actual article did not in fact label him as racist, and I don't think you could read it that way without being sloppy.
    - pochamago 6y ago
      It certainly tried to imply it with things like mentioning that he's cited Charles Murray, and then mentioning Murray's completely unrelated writing on race.
    - haberman 6y ago
      If you read my comment carefully, I didn't actually say that the article labeled him, I merely asked some questions and posed a hypothetical. And yet you drew an inference about my meaning beyond what my literal words were. You could call this sloppy reading, but I think the truth is that a writer can clearly communicate their intended conclusion without stating it directly. Which is just what Metz did.
watwut 6y ago
I read the article. There was like a little bit of criticism in article that contains both positive and negative claims. And everyone frankly overreacts to it. It is absolutely fair to disagree or argue against what was written, but it was not hit piece by any reasonable definition. And the first article about him also did not done anything that would be objectionable. And frankly, I have seen way more aggressive writing from journalists who are praised here as truth tellers.

williesleg 6y ago

Journalism is dead. Learn to code.

fatsdomino001 6y ago

I can't help but feel this article is saying the quiet part out loud.

netsharc 6y ago

Before Glenn Greenwald met Snowden and before he seems to have lost the plot about Russian collusion (maybe I'm wrong, but it seems lately he's been less willing to challenge his own conclusions), he wrote this (in 2010) about Washington journalists: https://www.salon.com/2010/06/07/washington_3/ https://www.salon.com/2010/06/07/washington_3/ . In another article he wrote about how a lot of news people are just desperate to be considered buddies by the people in power, so they can join the "elite"...

phkahler 6y ago

>> They felt that way because papers like the Post could offer the carrot of great exposure to those who needed it, but also, always, the stick of negative coverage to those who spurned them. There is nothing devious or ignoble about this; a powerful press, for all its flaws, is good for democracy No, doing hit pieces on anyone is a flagrant exercise of power that deserves no respect and destroys the credibility of the press. Stick to reporting facts and not exercising power and you'll fare much better. A recent example that was fascinating to me: during an emerging global crisis (covid19) the president of the USA held a press briefing to discuss the situation. A reporter was called on to ask a question by the president himself. That reporter decided to insinuate that the president was racist in addition to asking a question. The president's response included "you're a terrible reporter" in addition to answering the question. I'm sure that guy and his organisation were not welcome back, and rightly so. Keep your editorial shit on the page it belongs, or in another story. There is a place for that, but it's not during a press conference with "the leader of the free world" during a global crisis. And yet the MSM went wild over how bad the president was for calling out a reporter's bullshit. Stick to the facts and the story or you will be rightly identified as something other than a source of information.

redelbee 6y ago
Fact: You are conflating two separate instances where Trump bullied reporters to make your point. Instance from 2018 (with what you termed “racist” insinuations): https://youtu.be/OXp5GJjuOvQ https://youtu.be/OXp5GJjuOvQ Instance from 2020 actually relating to COVID-19: https://youtu.be/N5NQdmHzBTY https://youtu.be/N5NQdmHzBTY I’m going to take this as a reminder that we should all carefully consider sources of information, even when those sources are our own recollections and experiences.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisco255 6y ago
  https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-19-pandemic-us-president-donald-trump-abruptly-ends-coronavirus-press-conference-after-spat-with-reporter-2227194 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/covid-19-pandemic-us-preside... No, this was the "racist" incident when Weijia Jiang asked Trump why he was insisting on bringing up the fact that the U.S. was doing better than (several European countries, including UK, Italy, Spain, and France at the time) other countries. And he said, "They're losing their lives everywhere in the world. And maybe that's a question you should ask China. Don't ask me, ask China that question, OK?" because at the time, China was claiming they had basically solved Covid-19 with lockdowns and that the virus was no longer spreading in their country. And she said, "Sir, why are you saying that to me specifically?" implying it was due to her race (she being of Chinese heritage). And Trump, in standard form, said "I'm saying it to anybody who would ask a nasty question like that." Every time Trump would be his ordinary self, you know, he always punches back at underhanded questions. The questions are a set up in the first place, to create a negative connotation. The coronavirus was a situation where nobody won, by the way, but the press certainly was going to do everything to make as much if it be Trump's fault as possible. Weirdly, some, who feared Trump being a true Hitler-like fascist 2-3 years ago, were upset that Trump wasn't being fascist enough and shutting the whole country down and overruling state governors on local policies. None of it was productive. None of it was healthy: on either side. None of it enlightened the population. None of it did any favors for democracy. It just inflamed already tense relations between conservatives and liberals. And note, there's no way in hell the media will ever be as hard on a democrat in office. They are 95% democrats themselves, and they have a bias. They soft balled Biden as it is, when he wasn't hiding in his basement.

pattusk 6y ago

I don't know if it's just me and my bias against the current state of the mainstream press but this article read like a pile of unacknowledged contradictions. The author advocates for the people's "right to know", but complains that social media has made it possible for people to reach a mass audience without relying on the press' megaphone. Surely social media increases people's right (or at least opportunity) to know, unless you consider that only what the press publishes is worth knowing. It goes on to complain about the influence that social media has given powerful people yet acknowledges that the press itself is owned by the same powerful people. And then we have the complaints about "tabloids" against respectable journalism at a time when the New York Post was the only paper with the guts to publish an election scandal while the Times is peddling public shaming campaigns that do little but lower the level of public debate. The title, at least, sounds right and if journalism want to have any power, they'll need to find wat to be indepedent. the recent case of Glenn Greenwald has shown that this seems to be the only road left.

konjin 6y ago

The post has never been able to say what it wants. It's only when it's safe to put a head on a pike that it does it. Nixon wasn't crucified for the genocide in Cambodia (I don't have another word for a bombing campaign that was projected to kill 20% of the countries population by the CIA) he was crucified for having fucked with the other powerful people in the US. Watergate wasn't even a blip compared to what Hoover did to the anti-war left, organized labor and organized anti-racism [0]. What was so bad about it is that it targeted people with power who could fight back. Journalists are being told that there is a new set of powerful people they need to be careful around and they haven't gotten the message yet. The current generation without the instinct to walk softly around big tech will be run out of journalism the same way that those who didn't understand they needed to walk softly around robber barons and not just land owners in the gilded age were. Trump, like Nixon, seems like an aberration to these people because he, again like Nixon, did not treat their sacred cows with the respect they expect. He treated them like he treated everyone. Interestingly enough Trump was a lot more successful at it, which means that they have lost a lot of power since Nixon was in power. [0] https://twitter.com/propagandopolis/status/1181641078652448768 https://twitter.com/propagandopolis/status/11816410786524487... that this is now thought of as racist in progressive America should tell you all you need to know about how successful cointelpro was.

bcherny 6y ago

This piece makes the case that the only way traditional media can hold powerful people accountable is by being the arbiters of their distribution, by controlling who gets published and how their story is told. The way things used to be before the internet. It’s a good thing this is not the case anymore. Big media is essential for democracy, but controlling distribution is not democratic. Big media has two options now. Either: 1. They can learn to use social media better, so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump. 2. They can ask social media companies to artificially boost distribution for Big News. The other option that the article seems to imply — going back to a world where Big media is the arbiter of distribution — isn’t going to happen. Social media (and the internet) are here to stay.

tessierashpool 6y ago
I agree that we need a new way to fulfill the same function that control over distribution used to accomplish. But the nuclear bomb is here to stay, too. That doesn't mean its invention was necessarily a positive development. Also, and hopefully you already know this and didn't intend to imply otherwise, but social media is just one way of using the internet. Which means that there's a third option: learning to use the internet better, in a less harmful and destructive way. And "Big Media" are obviously not the only group of people with access to that third option. edit: also, "so their accounts reach as many people as @realdonaldtrump" is a very very low bar. that account now reaches zero people.
op03 6y ago
Why so much blind faith in the algo amplification systems Social Media companies have cooked up? People have accepted the like/click/upvote reward/amplification systems that surround us as if they are some well thought out foundation on top of which everything else has to be built. Once some country decides to ban algo amplification of all content, all the castles in the sky being built and debated will break. Who thinks that wont happen?
nickysielicki 6y ago
Big media is essential for democracy? Democracy literally predates the printing press.

ahepp 6y ago

>As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. But this is about power. We need to take some back, lest the rich and powerful run away from one of the last forces restraining them. It's interesting that they seem to consider themselves the only ones with pure hearts. I'm not sure why I should assume their hearts are so pure. Or if I assume their hearts are pure, why not Elon Musk's (mentioned in the article)? I do appreciate the role of the news media in creating a multi-polar rather than uni-polar world. But man, they really do think highly of themselves. I don't know how you could write all this realpolitik stuff, and still think you yourself are immune to it (outside of solipsism).

qwantim1 6y ago
The scary part of journalism is when it’s about activism vs. the truth. Activists can lie if the truth isn’t important. Lying for ratings, though, is also very bad. Activists lying for both activist causes and ratings is extremely bad.
- rayiner 6y ago
  Activists, at the very least, exaggerate wildly. I’m a huge fan of and regular donor to the ACLU. But I had to stop reading their newsletter because Anthony Romano (or whoever writes these newsletter updates in his name) has a loose relationship with the truth. I would read about some criminal case they were involved in, and work up the intended frothy outrage. Then I’d read the Wikipedia article on it, and find out that they’d left out hugely important facts and mischaracterized the whole story. There was one about a teenager who had gotten together with a gang of his friends and murdered a pizza delivery driver in broad daylight in front of his family. The newsletter completely left that part out, making it seem like he was simply present when his friends had unexpectedly done something. Now there was a real legal issue buried in there. The folks on the legal side are top notch—and it’s entirely right and proper to get a bad person off on a technicality to defend an important legal principle. But the ACLU PR team would just fluff up the underlying story to make the party involved seem sympathetic as well. I can stomach this and just not read the newsletter when it comes to activist organizations. They’re in the business of leveraging outrage to further good causes. The blurring of lines between activism and journalism, however, is a total disaster. When the media whitewashes issues to further some perceived good cause, all it does is light their credibility on fire.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

motohagiography 6y ago

The article describes what's wrong with media, unless I've blanked on some ripping satire. What serious journalist would ever let themselves be quoted lamenting, "The subjects are winning." It's like her extravagance knows no bounds or something. The headline occurs mid article and it's a good choice. When writing is about power, its job becomes to deliver narrative in that power struggle, and that means it's no longer good. Who wants to read that? Maybe these institutions are losing their influence because they suck at the one thing they were supposed to do well, which was produce compelling, brave, and thoughtful writing that people wanted to read so much they would tolerate advertisers. Maybe if they were more interesting, more people would read them?

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> Maybe if they were more interesting, more people would read them? This is what caused the existing problem. We had a media where people mostly believed them because they mostly cared about telling the truth, issued corrections when they were wrong, were critical of both political parties etc. That media discovered that if they published outrage bait they got more clicks, because if something is outrageous and true then people are very interested. But things that are outrageous and true aren't all that common, so to keep the mill running they started publishing things that were outrageous and false. That works until people figure out that they are no longer the media they were thought to be. Because things that are outrageous and false are boring. Anybody can write outrageous fiction. That's how we got into this. But the more readers who figure that out, the less credibility they have, and the less anybody wants to read their made up accounts. Their existing solution seems to be to turn the dial up to eleven. So then everything is an existential threat and a hot war and literally Hitler. That whips up the frenzy for the people who still think what they're hearing bears some resemblance to the truth, but increases the number of people who realize it doesn't. Eventually you get a critical mass of people no longer interested in hearing fantastical conspiracies about everything and somebody realizes there is a market for objective journalism and makes a name for themselves. Then, with any luck, the others follow. One can hope.
itronitron 6y ago
It reinforces for me that journos still don't understand the dynamics and potential of the internet even twenty years later. People are starved for information but have little interest in mainstream's news preference for packaging it up and waxing philosophic in order to provide their 'objective view' of events. A social media platform that amplifies people's ability to vet information and that is also resistant to dishonest campaigning would provide an advantage to its participants.

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

> why not Elon Musk's Maybe because of the lies and fraud? Or the hazardous working conditions? Or all the people Tesla's lemons have killed when the wheels fell off or the "full self driving" system crashed the car at speed? I don't believe that journalists are any better than the rest of us, but let's not pretend our "job creators" are good for the world.

mc32 6y ago
I’ll take job creators over people who have money and do nothing with it. There are affluent people who have money and park it or spend it away. Also just having great volumes of potential workers and no one to organize them into a productive body does little good.
- xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
  Yeah, Tesla is real productive. Only Elon Musk would have the brilliant idea of building a $100% automated factory, failing to do that, setting the goal of building 5,000 cars a week on normal lines, failing to do that, moving his employees into a circus tent in the hot sun to hit the goal, failing again, then giving up and declaring victory. Tesla can't build cars because Elon Musk, being a big dumb-dumb, disregarded everything we know about manufacturing. Those employees would be more useful at any other car manufacturer. And yes, that includes Chevy. I actually think Elon Musk probably is better than most other billionaires. That says more about them than it does about him.

axguscbklp 6y ago

Start acting more like investigators of truth rather than as promoters of ideology, start acting more like free thinkers and less like thought police, start speaking truth to power more and being in bed with power less, and maybe more people will trust you.

drtillberg 6y ago
That doesn't work. Now and always an independent investigator of truth will be a lone voice in a wilderness targeted by all warring dogmatic factions. Witness NYT seeking to draw HN to the fray with Saturday's piece about SSC.

young_unixer 6y ago

> As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. But this is about power. We need to take some back, lest the rich and powerful run away from one of the last forces restraining them. I don't want the same arrogant, self-unaware journalist that pushes pernicious narratives to the public and doxxes people for blogging to come and tell me how rich people are evil and their newspaper is a defender of the public good. Just look in the mirror for a moment and realize that you are the problem.

sb1752 6y ago
This 100%
nverno 6y ago
The self-righteous arrogance of this author is comical.
- Ericson2314 6y ago
  The tone was not that of an outrage juicer opinion piece to me. Rather it was that of someone finally peeling off the sugar coating in exasperation. I'm OK with that.
orange_joe 6y ago
Particularly when the largest news organizations are run to enrich and empower some of the richest men in the world. Slim, Murdoch, Bezos. All run the most widely read, widely respected papers in the country.
the_local_host 6y ago
> As journalists, we all view this as a horrifying assault on the public’s right to know, and on our own status as brave defenders of the public good. And that is all true, for what it’s worth. The author really should have left this perspective out of the essay; it's vain and distracts from the valid larger point. If powerful people can "no comment" the Washington Post and other significant outlets because the media can no longer extract a penalty for doing so, then they only really have to worry about crossing each other. The public interest is likely to suffer as this trend continues. (edited for clarity)

imgabe 6y ago

Journalists were so desperate to take out Trump (and Republicans in general) that they torpedoed their own credibility. 4 years of non-stop "The world is ending" crises one right after another, with barely any time to realize that one amounted to nothing before the next one started has left people disillusioned. Add in the fact that when actual problems like Covid did occur, the press was slow to pick up on them. They wasted months mocking VC firms for not allowing handshakes instead of digging deeper into what they were talking about. People will go listen to Elon Musk et al directly because they've learned that when they compare his actual words to journalists' interpretation of those words, they are completely different. If they stop lying people might start listening to them again.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

The main stream media broke, the world is now figuring out what moving on means.

strken 6y ago

At some point one gets a knock on the front door, sees a journalist holding a guillotine and pike, but just can't muster the old outrage. The field of heads is vast, most of them had less power than the journalists who decapitated them, and is it really necessary to fight another battle in the culture war over a tiny bakery doing naughty things? Can I really trust you when you say Elon Musk's union-busting is bad, or am I going to give it a quick google and find out that GM and Ford are worse, and you're going after Elon because he's a celebrity CEO who smoked weed with Joe Rogan once? Would you tell me if a modern-day Kissinger was committing a modern day institutional mass murder? Why did you drop Hong Kong as soon as COVID happened? If your paper has power, then in some loose sense it governs, and have you kept the consent of the governed? And if you've lost it, why?

AnHonestComment 6y ago
I would argue that the media has become such a rabid monoculture representing only 8% of the population that it has lost the ability to manufacture consent, broadly. Disney has fallen so far that they failed to tell A Hero’s Journey in the latest Star Wars— and come across to most long time fans as A Villain’s Rise. The same can be said for Captain Marvel. Heck, even Wonder Woman raped a guy in the latest movie. Then they wonder why their sales are collapsing. Would you be friends with someone like that?

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

> We need to take some back, lest the rich and powerful run away from one of the last forces restraining them. What this neglects is that journalism is many times in bed literally and figuratively with the rich and powerful. Anderson Cooper of CNN is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt one of the oldest monied families in America. While Andrew Cuomo the New York governor, was doing policies that resulted in high number of elderly nursing home deaths, CNN was showing segments with him chumming with his brother CNN anchor Chris Cuomo telling each other how they loved their brother. Andrea Mitchel of NBC is married to Alan Greenspan, former head of the Federal Reserve. Many of the high level journalists are family members of the "rich and powerful". Many of them went to the same Ivy League schools. Many times, they live in the same neighborhoods and send their kids to the same private schools. If you expect the mainstream media or journalism to hold the rich and powerful in check, you will be just like a medieval peasant, expecting the bishops and cardinals of the Church, to hold the nobles and kings(who were often the older brothers, fathers, or uncles of these same bishops and cardinals) in check.

bArray 6y ago

> [..] mainstream press still needs powerful people—quite literally, in the case of the Post, as it’s owned by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, who is no fonder of difficult stories about his companies than any other billionaire. There's your first problem. MSM got into bed with the people they are supposed to report on. In the recent case of the GME stocks story, the MSM literally reported fake news about WallStreetBets (WSB) pushing silver. This story didn't come from Reddit, it can only have come from sources close to the hedge funds, and then it was uncritically pushed out across the board. The MSM often work closely with political parties, specifically the Democrat party. The recent Time article on the so called 'shadow campaign' was written by the author (Molly Ball) of Pelosi's 2020 biography. That job was not just given to anybody, she was heavily vetted. These people all run in the same circles. How on earth could you ever trust Molly to report unbiased on Trump or the Republican party? How could ever trust her to report critically on Nancy Pelosi or the Democrat party? She's not going to bite the hand that feeds her. > When Elon Musk can say whatever he wants to forty million Twitter followers at any time with no filter, it is little surprise that he does not feel compelled to listen to unpleasant questions from some reporter who wants to know why he busts unions and wildly accuses people of pedophilia. They do realize that journalism still happened before Twitter? It just actually required hard work, instead of spending time on Twitter all day watching hash tags. It was called 'investigative journalism'. There is absolutely nothing stopping them from doing this again. I also suggest that every other company shutdown their social media accounts immediately. You cannot make a political statement without alienating some of your customers, no matter what the subject. Most high-profile interactions will likely be very negative. Few people logging into Twitter to say "thank you, it worked exactly as it should, for the n'th time in a row". There was a time when customer service was dealt with privately, rather than having all of your mistakes aired publicly. Currently, the only way possible to get issues resolved regarding Youtube for example is to publicly shame them on Twitter - _this_ is the system they have actively encouraged. > Donald Trump, unfortunately, looms large in this. His imperviousness to the usual blows from the press was evident five years ago. The damage to your publications were done long ago, you just only realized it then. You can't convince Republicans that Trump is bad, if no Republicans consume your media. They have switched to alternatives and you need to figure out why.

MattGaiser 6y ago

Where does one go to just get information these days without having to get it from someone on a crusade? Local papers seem a lot better in this regard, but they don't cover national and international content.

randomsearch 6y ago
The Economist
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  The Economist is sort of "on a crusade", but they have a very established and stable crusade, so you can control for it and get a lot of signal.
bondarchuk 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events Although of course Wikipedia is also not a perfect source when things are policitally controversial.

hohohmm 6y ago

I saw this title and I figured, good point, highest level in the world of journalism is about raw power, hardly about any truth. Then I clicked and read a few lines, wow, completely turned around, it's actually saying that powerful people don't need journalism, and it's bitching about being dumpped... Not a minute of self-reflection. what kind of irony is this? I have to say, well deserved...

nexthash 6y ago

A lot of people here are arguing that mainstream media had it coming for them because of bias, arrogance, pushing an agenda, etc. But I want to ask all of you: what replaces it as arbiter of truth? For all of the media's problems and imperfections, they have acted as a quasi-independent institution holding other powerful institutions and individuals in society in check. They have focused popular attention where it was needed to prevent corruption (think Watergate Scandal, Panama Papers, Edward Snowden, and many others). Their importance to the free distribution of accurate information was such that even the government itself in the form of federal courts and law has repeatedly recognized the privilege the press has in things such as keeping sources secret. They recognized the importance of such a space in keeping America's democracy powerful. Now, the media is completely being driven to the sidelines. With the rise of personal branding, content distribution, and disinformation, this once-independent place to examine society is going under. For all the pomposity in this piece, the question is quite relevant: what will replace the media as an arbiter of independent information and truth? For now, it seems that the news and content space is being swallowed up by the information networks of various individuals and institutions, each with the focus of pushing their own image rather than coming clean to the public. If you can't trust any of them because all their perspectives are manipulated, have we reached an end to free and independent discourse?

analog31 6y ago
>>> But I want to ask all of you: what replaces it as arbiter of truth? A strongman. An idea that I attribute to Imre Lakatos, is that if you strip people of the ability to debate and discern facts, you create a power vacuum that can only be filled by those who can act in the absence of debate and facts, notably thugs and tyrants. I believe this is the actual motivation behind the "war on truth" and the flood of misinformation.
- nexthash 6y ago
  This is my biggest fear about the media. If they don't come clean and reclaim their integrity (this goes for both left and right outlets), the public will reject them. Discourse will move to blogs, podcasts, private networks, etc. In the process, the laws and protections for journalism will be weathered and may be abolished altogether (who needs those pompous journalists, right?). Then we'll be no better than a propaganda state, where you can be jailed or sued for publishing a perspective that offends or exposes someone. This is obviously a worst-case scenario, but I think that to prevent anything similar from happening Americans need to step up and pressure their news outlets to do better, and for social media platforms to be choked with regulation until they start preventing manipulative shit from spreading.

known 6y ago

True journalism is very difficult because "Sometimes people don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed" --Friedrich Nietzsche (b. 1844)

underseacables 6y ago

I wish I could read the news without an opinion or agenda behind it, because it’s not clear when I am reading or watching something that is fact, or driven by a journalist or corporate opinion.

davidgerard 6y ago

(2020)

galkk 6y ago

I often hear that journalists are living in a bubble, but this article has many examples of obnoxious arrogance. quote from opening: > we should also recognize this for what it is: one more glaring data point showing that powerful people no longer think they need the mainstream press, especially critical and ethical outlets like the Washington Post. quote from closing: > All I know is that there is only one way the press maintains its power in society: by metaphorically putting the heads of powerful people on pikes. If the Post and all the other respectable media outlets lose their ability to do that, powerful people will, by extension, stop caring what the well-informed segment of the public thinks. -------- Listen, we are used that we are IMPORTANT, that we must be listened to. Given that the media in US is as divided as the politics, I'm happy that press loses their ability to control the narrative. As of today we clearly see (just look at recent frontpage discussions about Slate Star Codex, Jetbrains or a bit older Supermicro) that for rare gems there's too much activism, propaganda and hit pieces.

mandown2308 6y ago

Which stupid wrote this piece?

paganel 6y ago

Powerful people do in fact need the press, best example is Bezos who has used the Washington Post for attacking Trump (one of his enemies). I'm pretty sure any campaign for unionization at Amazon warehouses would also be short-lived.

pessimizer 6y ago

> critical and ethical outlets like the Washington Post. This is an absurd characterization of the WaPo. Journalism, particularly at the highest level, is about power. It's about trading editorial positions and floating bullshit stories citing anonymous sources in exchange for insider access to (and financial partnerships with) powerful people and organizations, and advance leaks of their decisions. Musk has decided that he's deriving no benefit from this traditional relationship. He already has the contacts in government because he is both a contractor and otherwise works in heavily subsidized industries, and also employs a lot of scientists who are employed as often by government as by industry. He doesn't need reporters to influence politicians or the public. His stock price is more likely to move (medium-term) based on tweets and press releases than any WaPo article, whose effects won't last out the week and are an opportunity to buy. These outlets have no authority, or leverage. Musk realizes that he should be treated with kid gloves like any other major government contractor, ignored when not being defended or hailed. He's the girl. If an outlet chooses to start kissing his ass, that outlet will get all the inside scoops they can handle. Just pretend he's Raytheon. edit: the press maintains its power by putting powerful people on pedestals, not on pikes. The way you get power is through powerful sponsors. Alienating the powerful gets you censored out of existence.

Wolfenstein98k 6y ago

I am no longer on the journalists' sides here. They are right that "raw power" is being wrestled from them by social media. I am glad to see it, after seeing one-too-many hitjobs and too much activism all emanating from a singular and rapidly narrowing worldview.

gonzo41 6y ago
You know how everyone rolls their eyes and are skeptical of the police policing themselves. My feelings are the same with the media. I never see the media fight, hard against themselves, like other professions. It just seems a bit to chummy inside the establishment. But Social Media is no panacea either. It's lots of people not moderating each other.

apmcduck 6y ago

Journalist tears are delicious. "When the full flowering of the social media age turns even the most prestigious paper into just another midsize Facebook page struggling to catch up to the reach of Dan Bongino?" Good. That's a source of our strength. And It's not going to stop. Any media company is just another corporation with self-interest that doesn't align with the public good.

tim44 6y ago

This article waxing poetic about the bastion that is journalism, taking down the big guy. Oh please. What we've seen is that journalists are not allowed to take on certain topics or the big guy, unless it's an enemy of their own big guy. They act more as media relations than journalists. And mainstream media has really lost its mind and jumped the shark over the last few years. Might be harder than they think to recover reputations.

known 6y ago

"Power will go to the hands of rogues/freebooters.All Indian leaders will be of low caliber/men of straw.They will have sweet tongues/silly hearts.They will fight among themselves for power; India will be lost in political squabbles" --Churchill (b. 1874)