4 ms·

>"nice business you've got there, shame if someone were to publish a hit piece in a major media outlet." I might be misreading this, but are you implying that

by ABCLAW 5y ago

>"nice business you've got there, shame if someone were to publish a hit piece in a major media outlet." I might be misreading this, but are you implying that a subset of journalists perform investigative journalism to engage in blackmail rather than to follow-up on a lead or hunch? I think it's interesting that people believe that this is the ambit of journalists rather than short selling investor relations groups where it is literally their job to publish hit pieces about companies that are hopefully flawed, while taking a short position on their equity.

totony 5y ago
Being a journalist does not absolve you from wrongdoings. Wasn't the journalist who did the hit piece related to some religious anti-porn org?
AnthonyMouse 5y ago
> I might be misreading this, but are you implying that a subset of journalists perform investigative journalism to engage in blackmail rather than to follow-up on a lead or hunch? It's not blackmail for money, it's blackmail for capitulation. Suppose you have a dishonest journalist who thinks car companies should submit the location history of all their customers' vehicles to the FBI without a warrant. You can't successfully advocate for that as government policy because it would violate the Fourth Amendment and anyway the public isn't likely to want that. You can't use honest reporting to convince customers in the market to not buy a Ford just because Ford isn't doing that, because customers don't want to buy a car that constantly reports their location to the authorities without their consent. But if you call up Ford and ask them some leading questions implying that you're going to publish a hit piece on them if they don't change their policy, now you're blackmailing them to change their policy. The point of the story isn't to inform the public of the company doing something bad, it's to coerce the company to change their policy under threat of slanted negative media coverage.

by ABCLAW 5y ago

totony 5y ago

Being a journalist does not absolve you from wrongdoings. Wasn't the journalist who did the hit piece related to some religious anti-porn org?

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

> I might be misreading this, but are you implying that a subset of journalists perform investigative journalism to engage in blackmail rather than to follow-up on a lead or hunch? It's not blackmail for money, it's blackmail for capitulation. Suppose you have a dishonest journalist who thinks car companies should submit the location history of all their customers' vehicles to the FBI without a warrant. You can't successfully advocate for that as government policy because it would violate the Fourth Amendment and anyway the public isn't likely to want that. You can't use honest reporting to convince customers in the market to not buy a Ford just because Ford isn't doing that, because customers don't want to buy a car that constantly reports their location to the authorities without their consent. But if you call up Ford and ask them some leading questions implying that you're going to publish a hit piece on them if they don't change their policy, now you're blackmailing them to change their policy. The point of the story isn't to inform the public of the company doing something bad, it's to coerce the company to change their policy under threat of slanted negative media coverage.