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It's kinda funny for a newspaper could colluding with government to influence a country to go to war (in that case the Iraq war), and more recently doxing blogg

It's kinda funny for a newspaper could colluding with government to influence a country to go to war (in that case the Iraq war), and more recently doxing bloggers to pick publish such opinions pieces...

skrebbel 6y ago
A good newspaper doesn't have a singular, consistent opinion. They'll publish opinion pieces from many authors who will often disagree with one another and with newspaper editors.
Shivetya 6y ago
The legacy media has spent the better part of the last decade trying to find a means to blunt the effect of the social media and probably two decades trying to blunt the effect of the internet as a whole. So they go the route that should have been obvious 1) Declare a problem that threatens all 2) Spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt 3) State that they are the solution Step two also involves using seemingly unrelated parties along with their own efforts to make it appear more of a problem than it otherwise would be. It is along the lines of when a group of politicians suddenly all use the same new word, a word they never used before and likely to never use again. they had the public trust when the public did not know better and we have a very well established self checking system where nearly every false claim can be called out and usually is. I don't know of a legacy media brand that has not tarnished their name. Social media is here to stay and while some may not like Facebook, Twitter, and similar, the legacy media and the politicians who rely on them to spread the news they desire look to muzzle all forms of communication they don't themselves control or influence.
Terretta 6y ago
> newspaper colluding with government Clever conspiracy seems less likely than sloppy stupidity. This didn’t need “collusion” for the same bad outcome. ”Collusion is a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading or defrauding others of their legal right.” In what way was NYT in a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation with the government to influence the country to go to the Iraq war? NY Times has said, “The lead-up to the war in Iraq in 2003 was not the Times’s finest hour. Some of the news reporting was flawed, driven by outside agendas and lacking in needed skepticism. Many Op-Ed columns promoted the idea of a war that turned out to be both unfounded and disastrous.” Media Matters covered this at the time, and also quoted Slate, attributing the collusion as between Bush administration and Chalabi, and NYT report Miller and Chalabi, with Chalabi as the common element: “Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives with Iraq, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated by some insider she always describes as a 'senior administration official.' She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi.” https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-still-haunts-new-york-times https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti... This is not saying Miller colluded with the White House, but that the method of corroboration was flawed, as both paper and government were relying on the same (false) source such that fake news checked out. Insufficient skepticism of a very high ranking source is not the same thing as collusion with another party also over-reliant on the same source. And journos protecting a source or CIA keeping a source secret are also not secret cooperation. The result is the same for similar reasons, you want future sources to be willing to share, but this doesn’t imply collusion. TL;DR: Hanlon’s Razor: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Most “conspiracies” are probably just people being coincidentally dumb, incompetent, or lazy.
- zepto 6y ago
  > TL;DR: Hanlon’s Razor: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Most “conspiracies” are probably just people being coincidentally dumb, incompetent, or lazy. At some point Hanlon’s razor becomes a middlebrow dismissal, and a bit of a red herring. It’s a good rule of thumb for not getting mad at your boss, but useless when analyzing the actions of powerful institutions. It really doesn’t matter whether we can prove some kind of ‘malice’ in the hearts of NYT journalists. It does seem unlikely that they are any more malicious than any other corporation. However that is utterly irrelevant to whether their institutional biases or lack of analytical capacity make them harmful given the power they hold.
  - Terretta 6y ago
    GP comment was a particular accusation of collusion with the government versus check on the government. I’d been responding more narrowly to that, rather than the “is the press net harmful” question you’re posing. Having studied and earned money from journalism, giving me familiarity with the education and the professional newsroom, I’m skeptical of journalism skeptics. The existence of big journalism (particularly getting paid to investigate and shine a light) seems to bring an important check-and-balance on big religion, big enterprise, and big government it’s unclear how else to systematically achieve. Zuckerberg’s boosterism aside, it seems The Fifth Estate has not yet shown itself able to achieve the same scope, depth, and truth ratio, of coverage as a well-funded newsroom.
    - zepto 6y ago
      > GP comment was a particular accusation of collusion with the government versus check on the government. I’d been responding more narrowly to that, rather than the “is the press net harmful” question you’re posing. I don’t think that changes the sense of what I said. ‘Collusion’ can be a conspiracy of people actually meeting in smoke filled rooms, or it can be simply giving the benefit of the doubt to ones ideological bedfellows. > Having studied and earned money from journalism, giving me familiarity with the education and the professional newsroom, I’m skeptical of journalism skeptics. The existence of big journalism (particularly getting paid to investigate and shine a light) seems to bring an important check-and-balance on big religion, big enterprise, and big government I’ve seen this claim from people who work or have worked in the industry. > it’s unclear how else to systematically achieve. That’s a problem. What you are callings journalism skepticism, I consider to be journalism criticism. It’s reasonable to assume that Journalism is just as susceptible to institutional problems as any of the institutions it purports to be a check-and-balance on. I’m not anti-journalism, but I’m appalled by the lack of self-awareness and responsibility the industry takes for it negative impacts. > Zuckerberg’s boosterism aside, it seems The Fifth Estate has not yet shown itself able to achieve the same scope, depth, and truth ratio, of coverage as a well-funded newsroom. Being ‘better than Facebook’ is at this point, not much different from being better than a cigarette company. I agree without but I’m not why you’re even mentioning this, but it’s not a good thing to compare journalism with.

skrebbel 6y ago

A good newspaper doesn't have a singular, consistent opinion. They'll publish opinion pieces from many authors who will often disagree with one another and with newspaper editors.

Shivetya 6y ago

The legacy media has spent the better part of the last decade trying to find a means to blunt the effect of the social media and probably two decades trying to blunt the effect of the internet as a whole. So they go the route that should have been obvious 1) Declare a problem that threatens all 2) Spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt 3) State that they are the solution Step two also involves using seemingly unrelated parties along with their own efforts to make it appear more of a problem than it otherwise would be. It is along the lines of when a group of politicians suddenly all use the same new word, a word they never used before and likely to never use again. they had the public trust when the public did not know better and we have a very well established self checking system where nearly every false claim can be called out and usually is. I don't know of a legacy media brand that has not tarnished their name. Social media is here to stay and while some may not like Facebook, Twitter, and similar, the legacy media and the politicians who rely on them to spread the news they desire look to muzzle all forms of communication they don't themselves control or influence.

Terretta 6y ago

> newspaper colluding with government Clever conspiracy seems less likely than sloppy stupidity. This didn’t need “collusion” for the same bad outcome. ”Collusion is a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation between two or more parties to limit open competition by deceiving, misleading or defrauding others of their legal right.” In what way was NYT in a deceitful agreement or secret cooperation with the government to influence the country to go to the Iraq war? NY Times has said, “The lead-up to the war in Iraq in 2003 was not the Times’s finest hour. Some of the news reporting was flawed, driven by outside agendas and lacking in needed skepticism. Many Op-Ed columns promoted the idea of a war that turned out to be both unfounded and disastrous.” Media Matters covered this at the time, and also quoted Slate, attributing the collusion as between Bush administration and Chalabi, and NYT report Miller and Chalabi, with Chalabi as the common element: “Chalabi is providing the Bush people with the information they need to support their political objectives with Iraq, and he is supplying the same material to Judy Miller. Chalabi tips her on something and then she goes to the White House, which has already heard the same thing from Chalabi, and she gets it corroborated by some insider she always describes as a 'senior administration official.' She also got the Pentagon to confirm things for her, which made sense, since they were working so closely with Chalabi.” https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-still-haunts-new-york-times https://www.mediamatters.org/new-york-times/how-iraq-war-sti... This is not saying Miller colluded with the White House, but that the method of corroboration was flawed, as both paper and government were relying on the same (false) source such that fake news checked out. Insufficient skepticism of a very high ranking source is not the same thing as collusion with another party also over-reliant on the same source. And journos protecting a source or CIA keeping a source secret are also not secret cooperation. The result is the same for similar reasons, you want future sources to be willing to share, but this doesn’t imply collusion. TL;DR: Hanlon’s Razor: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Most “conspiracies” are probably just people being coincidentally dumb, incompetent, or lazy.

zepto 6y ago
> TL;DR: Hanlon’s Razor: “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Most “conspiracies” are probably just people being coincidentally dumb, incompetent, or lazy. At some point Hanlon’s razor becomes a middlebrow dismissal, and a bit of a red herring. It’s a good rule of thumb for not getting mad at your boss, but useless when analyzing the actions of powerful institutions. It really doesn’t matter whether we can prove some kind of ‘malice’ in the hearts of NYT journalists. It does seem unlikely that they are any more malicious than any other corporation. However that is utterly irrelevant to whether their institutional biases or lack of analytical capacity make them harmful given the power they hold.
- Terretta 6y ago
  GP comment was a particular accusation of collusion with the government versus check on the government. I’d been responding more narrowly to that, rather than the “is the press net harmful” question you’re posing. Having studied and earned money from journalism, giving me familiarity with the education and the professional newsroom, I’m skeptical of journalism skeptics. The existence of big journalism (particularly getting paid to investigate and shine a light) seems to bring an important check-and-balance on big religion, big enterprise, and big government it’s unclear how else to systematically achieve. Zuckerberg’s boosterism aside, it seems The Fifth Estate has not yet shown itself able to achieve the same scope, depth, and truth ratio, of coverage as a well-funded newsroom.
  - zepto 6y ago
    > GP comment was a particular accusation of collusion with the government versus check on the government. I’d been responding more narrowly to that, rather than the “is the press net harmful” question you’re posing. I don’t think that changes the sense of what I said. ‘Collusion’ can be a conspiracy of people actually meeting in smoke filled rooms, or it can be simply giving the benefit of the doubt to ones ideological bedfellows. > Having studied and earned money from journalism, giving me familiarity with the education and the professional newsroom, I’m skeptical of journalism skeptics. The existence of big journalism (particularly getting paid to investigate and shine a light) seems to bring an important check-and-balance on big religion, big enterprise, and big government I’ve seen this claim from people who work or have worked in the industry. > it’s unclear how else to systematically achieve. That’s a problem. What you are callings journalism skepticism, I consider to be journalism criticism. It’s reasonable to assume that Journalism is just as susceptible to institutional problems as any of the institutions it purports to be a check-and-balance on. I’m not anti-journalism, but I’m appalled by the lack of self-awareness and responsibility the industry takes for it negative impacts. > Zuckerberg’s boosterism aside, it seems The Fifth Estate has not yet shown itself able to achieve the same scope, depth, and truth ratio, of coverage as a well-funded newsroom. Being ‘better than Facebook’ is at this point, not much different from being better than a cigarette company. I agree without but I’m not why you’re even mentioning this, but it’s not a good thing to compare journalism with.