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>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 i

by 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.
  - apmcduck 6y ago
    The ACLU went off the deep end sometime in the last 20 years.
    - dang 6y ago
      Ok, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments, and please not use HN primarily for political battle? We're trying to avoid those things here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- jansan 6y ago
  The same is true for science. Just recently there was an article that claimed that global warming is responsible for the corona pandemic. What a load of bullshit, and the "scientists" probably knew it very well. Virologists are getting sponsored by the pharma industry, climate researchers are green warriors (while at the same time being funded by insurance companies), social scientists going completely off the rails turning universities into ideological war zones. These are interesting times, we have to be careful.
  - dinero_rojo 6y ago
    Have you got a link to that article? And I wonder how much “good” scientists lend their support to not-so-great scientific claims out of fear that refuting them might damage the public’s trust in “science” as a whole.
    - jansan 6y ago
      Only found this article, but it is directly from the PIK, which is considered the highest authority on climate research in Germany: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/climate-change-may-have-played-an-important-role-in-the-emergence-of-sars-cov-2?set_language=en https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/climate-chang... If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything suddenly starts looking like a nail.
moritonal 6y ago
A lot of people in security end up having absurdly weak passwords. A lot of police think they are immune from being bribed.
phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
It's interesting that you read that article and came up with the idea that they seem to consider themselves the only ones with pure hearts. I'm not sure why I should assume some random HNer -- who can read that article and come up with the phrase "they seem to consider themselves the only ones with pure hearts" when that wasn't what I read at all -- has any sort of reading comprehension. If anything, TFA is proof that your disdain of Big Media is working. It's specifically spelling out that whats-his-face running that car company already has a t-shirt launcher that reaches the entire planet, so there's no reason to talk to anyone he doesn't want to. I do appreciate the role of anonymous users of an anonymous chat group defending the honor of one of the richest men on the planet. But man, it's not a positive appreciation. I don't know how you could write six strawman sentences and still think you had something to say.
- fatsdomino001 6y ago
  no offense, but you come across as a dick. I mean that in a constructive way.
  - phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
    no offense, but fuck you for being offended about something I said to someone else and not actually adding to the conversation. It is entirely possible that I was wrong, but I don't think so. And you didn't bother to do so either. EDIT: Y'all forgot to downvote my post where I said "you're an awful person because you're arguing against something that isn't there"[0] and not just the one where I said "fuck you for having nothing to say" to someone else. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144124 [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145319
  - dang 6y ago
    Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. We ban accounts that post them, so please don't do that again. If you'd please stop posting unsubstantive comments too, we'd be grateful. You've done that repeatedly, and we're trying for something different here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
nxmnxm99 6y ago
Yeah it's a cute story but it's off the mark because more often than not nowadays the mainstream journalists ARE the rich and powerful. If you want to see journalists actually performing the role of being checks on power, go to the third world. Bankrolled journalism isn't true journalism.
- gumby 6y ago
  > more often than not nowadays the mainstream journalists ARE the rich and powerful. Really? Very few, if any. People like Tucker Carlson have wealthy contracts but they don’t even consider themselves journalists, but entertainers (in his case he’s not part of the news division, for example).
  - pochamago 6y ago
    Twenty percent of NYT writers attended an Ivy League school, which seems significant to me. https://www.journalofexpertise.org/articles/volume1_issue1/JoE_2018_1_1_Wai_Perina.html https://www.journalofexpertise.org/articles/volume1_issue1/J...
    - gumby 6y ago
      I do t know how many reporters you know but an Ivy League education doesn’t automatically make you rich. Especially if you become a reporter, social worked, public defender, or painter.
  - nxmnxm99 6y ago
    Not individual personas, but the media organizations themselves. These aren't scrappy publications living in damp, ill-lit rooms exposing the evil villains of Gotham, these are multi billion dollar corporations with political ambitions. The job of modern "journalism" is no longer to inform - it's to influence. The individual players just tow the party line.
    - gumby 6y ago
      > The job of modern "journalism" is no longer to inform - it's to influence. Has the purpose of journalism ever been to “inform”? Seems it has always (well, going back for centuries at least) been to argue a point. I say this out of sympathy for journalists, not to condem them. > The individual players just tow the party line. Aren’t you contradicting yourself? If your aim is to influence the last thing you’d do is toe the line; rather you’d cross it without a thought.

by ahepp 6y ago

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.
- apmcduck 6y ago
  The ACLU went off the deep end sometime in the last 20 years.
  - dang 6y ago
    Ok, but can you please stop posting unsubstantive comments, and please not use HN primarily for political battle? We're trying to avoid those things here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
jansan 6y ago
The same is true for science. Just recently there was an article that claimed that global warming is responsible for the corona pandemic. What a load of bullshit, and the "scientists" probably knew it very well. Virologists are getting sponsored by the pharma industry, climate researchers are green warriors (while at the same time being funded by insurance companies), social scientists going completely off the rails turning universities into ideological war zones. These are interesting times, we have to be careful.
- dinero_rojo 6y ago
  Have you got a link to that article? And I wonder how much “good” scientists lend their support to not-so-great scientific claims out of fear that refuting them might damage the public’s trust in “science” as a whole.
  - jansan 6y ago
    Only found this article, but it is directly from the PIK, which is considered the highest authority on climate research in Germany: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/climate-change-may-have-played-an-important-role-in-the-emergence-of-sars-cov-2?set_language=en https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/climate-chang... If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything suddenly starts looking like a nail.

moritonal 6y ago

A lot of people in security end up having absurdly weak passwords. A lot of police think they are immune from being bribed.

phjesusthatguy3 6y ago

It's interesting that you read that article and came up with the idea that they seem to consider themselves the only ones with pure hearts. I'm not sure why I should assume some random HNer -- who can read that article and come up with the phrase "they seem to consider themselves the only ones with pure hearts" when that wasn't what I read at all -- has any sort of reading comprehension. If anything, TFA is proof that your disdain of Big Media is working. It's specifically spelling out that whats-his-face running that car company already has a t-shirt launcher that reaches the entire planet, so there's no reason to talk to anyone he doesn't want to. I do appreciate the role of anonymous users of an anonymous chat group defending the honor of one of the richest men on the planet. But man, it's not a positive appreciation. I don't know how you could write six strawman sentences and still think you had something to say.

fatsdomino001 6y ago
no offense, but you come across as a dick. I mean that in a constructive way.
- phjesusthatguy3 6y ago
  no offense, but fuck you for being offended about something I said to someone else and not actually adding to the conversation. It is entirely possible that I was wrong, but I don't think so. And you didn't bother to do so either. EDIT: Y'all forgot to downvote my post where I said "you're an awful person because you're arguing against something that isn't there"[0] and not just the one where I said "fuck you for having nothing to say" to someone else. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144124 [1]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26145319
- dang 6y ago
  Personal attacks aren't allowed on HN. We ban accounts that post them, so please don't do that again. If you'd please stop posting unsubstantive comments too, we'd be grateful. You've done that repeatedly, and we're trying for something different here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

nxmnxm99 6y ago

Yeah it's a cute story but it's off the mark because more often than not nowadays the mainstream journalists ARE the rich and powerful. If you want to see journalists actually performing the role of being checks on power, go to the third world. Bankrolled journalism isn't true journalism.

gumby 6y ago
> more often than not nowadays the mainstream journalists ARE the rich and powerful. Really? Very few, if any. People like Tucker Carlson have wealthy contracts but they don’t even consider themselves journalists, but entertainers (in his case he’s not part of the news division, for example).
- pochamago 6y ago
  Twenty percent of NYT writers attended an Ivy League school, which seems significant to me. https://www.journalofexpertise.org/articles/volume1_issue1/JoE_2018_1_1_Wai_Perina.html https://www.journalofexpertise.org/articles/volume1_issue1/J...
  - gumby 6y ago
    I do t know how many reporters you know but an Ivy League education doesn’t automatically make you rich. Especially if you become a reporter, social worked, public defender, or painter.
- nxmnxm99 6y ago
  Not individual personas, but the media organizations themselves. These aren't scrappy publications living in damp, ill-lit rooms exposing the evil villains of Gotham, these are multi billion dollar corporations with political ambitions. The job of modern "journalism" is no longer to inform - it's to influence. The individual players just tow the party line.
  - gumby 6y ago
    > The job of modern "journalism" is no longer to inform - it's to influence. Has the purpose of journalism ever been to “inform”? Seems it has always (well, going back for centuries at least) been to argue a point. I say this out of sympathy for journalists, not to condem them. > The individual players just tow the party line. Aren’t you contradicting yourself? If your aim is to influence the last thing you’d do is toe the line; rather you’d cross it without a thought.