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He admits ‘At some point Scott would have to choose which role he wanted to play full time.’ And then immediately negates himself by saying ‘But that should hav

He admits ‘At some point Scott would have to choose which role he wanted to play full time.’ And then immediately negates himself by saying ‘But that should have been his decision. What right did the New York Times have to make that decision for him?’ The answer is: because they are a newspaper. I dislike NYT as much as anyone (mostly because of their focus on access journalism). But The New York Times is still a newspaper. Their job is to report the news, and much of the time they do so it is against the personal or professional interests of the people they are reporting on. in many cases not reporting the news against those interests would actually be a violation of their own professional ethics. It is not their job to help someone tightrope walk the ethics of their profession in the precarious way they’ve chosen. The author here admits that the anonymous blogger at the center of this controversy is walking such a tightrope, at their own risk. Isn’t that on them? lots of people would like to remain anonymous. would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? wouldn’t that be the opposite of journalism? so what’s different here? the fact that we are ok with or even admire what the subject is doing? and why should the ny times care about that?

Hammershaft 6y ago
I think that people were frustrated with the large inconsistencies in how the NYT handled that policy.
kenniskrag 6y ago
> Their job is to report the news I think they should report news of public interest. Is he of public interst has to be discussed?
FeepingCreature 6y ago
> would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? I think there's a structural difference between anonymity in actions and anonymity in writing, where in actions it is easy to leverage resources from one persona to benefit in the other, hence anonymity providing you with a structural advantage. But writing generally rests only on your skill as a writer, not your financial or political resources. The one case where writing benefits structurally from political resources in your de-anonymized persona is whistleblowing - a situation where journalists do their level best to keep people anonymous! Likewise, I think there's a difference between a newspaper trying to drag corruption into the light, and a newspaper, made up by writers, depriving another writer of a layer of protection, against community norms and their own standard, in order to (or at least accepting the risk to) destroy their livelihood. The NYT and Scott Alexander are not in direct competition, but it's still hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to bring harm on a fellow writer for their own gain. In other words, the goal of a newspaper should be to increase the views and voices available to the public, not to shut them up.
wpietri 6y ago
Yup. I don't think anybody has an inherent right to make a significant ongoing attempt to influence the public without people saying, "Well who is this person really?" People living private lives should have that privacy respected. And journalists certainly have the right to agree to protect somebody's anonymity when they think the circumstances merit it. But if somebody is going to step onto the national stage, they don't have any sort of right to demand that everybody else help conceal obvious facts about them. Somebody is welcome to try that, of course, but the opsec burden is on them, not every other person with a keyboard. As an aside, one of the things linked in this article was really helpful to me in understanding why Siskind's prose never worked for me: http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method/ http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-...
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  But what does it mean to step onto the national stage here? As far as has been reported, Alexander didn’t seek publicity, or obtain any position of power, or make himself available for the rich and powerful to privately consult. He just wrote a blog that a lot of people happen to like. There can be very serious costs to being thrust onto the national stage, so I’m not comfortable with the idea that you can just get promoted there by default.
  - acdha 6y ago
    The NYT article gives a pretty clear explanation for why they believed it was of interest: someone influencing a lot of high-level people in an industry which has an outsized influence on society. It might be useful to think about it in terms of similar but older mediums: would you consider it problematic to learn about, say, a philosopher, preacher, guru, etc. who was cited by a bunch of people like Sam Altman, Paul Graham, etc.? This wasn’t at the level of, say, Norman Vincent Peale but it’s not like every single story is required to be about national level politics, either. I’ve certainly read plenty of articles over the years about people who are influential in a community but not well known outside of it - it’s one of the reasons why journalism matters for helping you learn about things you wouldn’t have thought to ask about on your own.
mudita 6y ago
"lots of people would like to remain anonymous. would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to?" That's a false dichotomy. You can respect a wish for anonymity in cases like Scott's without giving up the possibility of making the names of other people public, when there's a good reason for it.
- Aqueous 6y ago
  what are the 'good reasons' exactly, though? Is it whether we like them or not? And should the NY Times be in the business of adjudicating that?
  - mudita 6y ago
    In principle, I really like the legal situation in Germany, where I live: There’s a fundamental right to “informational self-determination”, but this right is not absolute. Journalists have the duty to weigh the freedom of the press and especially the "interests of the public to be informed" against this “personality right”. In the end, a person like Scott would be able to sue the newspaper, if he thinks that in their case the interests of the public did not outweigh his personality rights and a court would decide. (Sorry, this post contains a lot of ad hoc translations of German legal terms, I hope it's still understandable and more or less correct English)
FeepingCreature 6y ago
Ah, I think I have a maybe simpler way to describe my anger about this: Consider the difference between these two reported pieces of information: 1. Senator McSenatorface has, anonymously via a shell company, accepted donations from Boeing in a quid pro quo to adjust the regulations to require less oversight. 2. Senator McSenatorface has, anonymously, booked three holiday tickets for himself and his family at the Isolated Mountain Lodge in Canada, where he will be out of phone contact for the coming four weeks. Both are true information, that the person prefers to keep hidden, that some readers would find informative or useful, and both can be used to harm their interests. But I hope we are in agreement that one is valid and important journalism and the other is three inches away from incitement of violence. So by what criterion do we divide them? To me, the distinguishing factor is whether the information is more useful to moral or immoral action. In my opinion, revealing Scott's name is primarily of benefit to not just immoral action, but action that is near-universally acknowledged as immoral. If it has a redeeming moral justification, I don't see it.

Hammershaft 6y ago

I think that people were frustrated with the large inconsistencies in how the NYT handled that policy.

kenniskrag 6y ago

> Their job is to report the news I think they should report news of public interest. Is he of public interst has to be discussed?

FeepingCreature 6y ago

> would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to? I think there's a structural difference between anonymity in actions and anonymity in writing, where in actions it is easy to leverage resources from one persona to benefit in the other, hence anonymity providing you with a structural advantage. But writing generally rests only on your skill as a writer, not your financial or political resources. The one case where writing benefits structurally from political resources in your de-anonymized persona is whistleblowing - a situation where journalists do their level best to keep people anonymous! Likewise, I think there's a difference between a newspaper trying to drag corruption into the light, and a newspaper, made up by writers, depriving another writer of a layer of protection, against community norms and their own standard, in order to (or at least accepting the risk to) destroy their livelihood. The NYT and Scott Alexander are not in direct competition, but it's still hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to bring harm on a fellow writer for their own gain. In other words, the goal of a newspaper should be to increase the views and voices available to the public, not to shut them up.

wpietri 6y ago

Yup. I don't think anybody has an inherent right to make a significant ongoing attempt to influence the public without people saying, "Well who is this person really?" People living private lives should have that privacy respected. And journalists certainly have the right to agree to protect somebody's anonymity when they think the circumstances merit it. But if somebody is going to step onto the national stage, they don't have any sort of right to demand that everybody else help conceal obvious facts about them. Somebody is welcome to try that, of course, but the opsec burden is on them, not every other person with a keyboard. As an aside, one of the things linked in this article was really helpful to me in understanding why Siskind's prose never worked for me: http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-kill-people-with-bad-writing-the-scott-alexander-method/ http://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/the-beigeness-or-how-to-...

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
But what does it mean to step onto the national stage here? As far as has been reported, Alexander didn’t seek publicity, or obtain any position of power, or make himself available for the rich and powerful to privately consult. He just wrote a blog that a lot of people happen to like. There can be very serious costs to being thrust onto the national stage, so I’m not comfortable with the idea that you can just get promoted there by default.
- acdha 6y ago
  The NYT article gives a pretty clear explanation for why they believed it was of interest: someone influencing a lot of high-level people in an industry which has an outsized influence on society. It might be useful to think about it in terms of similar but older mediums: would you consider it problematic to learn about, say, a philosopher, preacher, guru, etc. who was cited by a bunch of people like Sam Altman, Paul Graham, etc.? This wasn’t at the level of, say, Norman Vincent Peale but it’s not like every single story is required to be about national level politics, either. I’ve certainly read plenty of articles over the years about people who are influential in a community but not well known outside of it - it’s one of the reasons why journalism matters for helping you learn about things you wouldn’t have thought to ask about on your own.

mudita 6y ago

"lots of people would like to remain anonymous. would you like to live in a world where the New York times lets powerful people who are doing awful, unethical things remain anonymous as they would like to?" That's a false dichotomy. You can respect a wish for anonymity in cases like Scott's without giving up the possibility of making the names of other people public, when there's a good reason for it.

Aqueous 6y ago
what are the 'good reasons' exactly, though? Is it whether we like them or not? And should the NY Times be in the business of adjudicating that?
- mudita 6y ago
  In principle, I really like the legal situation in Germany, where I live: There’s a fundamental right to “informational self-determination”, but this right is not absolute. Journalists have the duty to weigh the freedom of the press and especially the "interests of the public to be informed" against this “personality right”. In the end, a person like Scott would be able to sue the newspaper, if he thinks that in their case the interests of the public did not outweigh his personality rights and a court would decide. (Sorry, this post contains a lot of ad hoc translations of German legal terms, I hope it's still understandable and more or less correct English)

FeepingCreature 6y ago

Ah, I think I have a maybe simpler way to describe my anger about this: Consider the difference between these two reported pieces of information: 1. Senator McSenatorface has, anonymously via a shell company, accepted donations from Boeing in a quid pro quo to adjust the regulations to require less oversight. 2. Senator McSenatorface has, anonymously, booked three holiday tickets for himself and his family at the Isolated Mountain Lodge in Canada, where he will be out of phone contact for the coming four weeks. Both are true information, that the person prefers to keep hidden, that some readers would find informative or useful, and both can be used to harm their interests. But I hope we are in agreement that one is valid and important journalism and the other is three inches away from incitement of violence. So by what criterion do we divide them? To me, the distinguishing factor is whether the information is more useful to moral or immoral action. In my opinion, revealing Scott's name is primarily of benefit to not just immoral action, but action that is near-universally acknowledged as immoral. If it has a redeeming moral justification, I don't see it.