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> All while basically all coverage had this angle! It's nearly impossible to analyze this because each person can point to their personally curated news feed a

> All while basically all coverage had this angle! It's nearly impossible to analyze this because each person can point to their personally curated news feed and "prove" any sort of bias. If you listen to a lot of Chapo Trap House, you are getting one view. If you listen to a lot of Daily Wire you are getting another. The point here is how the big, mainstream, corporate news rooms reacted to the aftermath of the George Floyd killing. You can show the editorial decisions to not use the word "rioter" or "looter" in favor of "protester". You can see how many of them gave air time to radical left-wing positions such as "In Defense of Looting"[0]. My personal read of the situation lines up with Matt Taibbi's. Basically, you had to publicly show support for all BLM riots/protests or risk losing your reputation or job. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178...

rtpg 5y ago
I put NYT and Wapo in scare-quote “liberal” for a reason. Those are the mainstream things. Fox News is hiring, OAN is hiring. And hell, if you’re an opinion writer you could get away with a bunch of factual flexibility at the Times as well. Yeah Code Switch covered a book release covering a way of describing the issue one way. Do we need to dig up all the air time given to people who thought cops should start “applying the law”? I do agree that establishing what the “real bias” was is hard. But Taibbi is just wrong on this. Like Weiss, they are confounding “people will yell at me” with “I will lose my job”, and confounding that with “I will not be able to practice journalism”.
- stolenmerch 5y ago
  Taibbi and Weiss, in particular, are interesting (along with Greenwald) because they are giving voice to the concerns of smaller journalists who can't muster a living on Substack. I don't think they are bemoaning their own status so much as pointing out the new yellow journalism of a post-Trump corporate news world. Non-celebrity journalists were not allowed to portray BLM riots as anything but virtuous. Again, hard to prove because of endless counterpoints on all things, but to consume CNN in every waiting room, lobby, etc. in 2020 was to know these protests as "fiery, but mostly peaceful".
  - rtpg 5y ago
    They can totally be anti-BLM, they might not be able to do it at the outlets they like. But that’s their own moral conflict. Weiss tried to get a professor fired, her anti-cancel culture screeds are disingenuous
    - 1cvmask 5y ago
      Yep and she is not a journalistic peer to Taibbi or Greenwald.
    - vanattab 5y ago
      >Weiss tried to get a professor fired, her anti-cancel culture screeds are disingenuous What are you referring to here?
  - pstuart 5y ago
    > were not allowed to portray BLM riots as anything but virtuous Gold star for framing there! Your tell was referring to all of that as BLM riots vs BLM protests. The protests themselves were by definition virtuous (a first amendment action at its core), whereas the riots were an ugly aftermath of that. If those riots bother you, are you bothered by the fact that outside agitators might have fanned the flames? Case in point: https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/06/02/whats-up-with-umbrella-man/ https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/06/02/whats-up-with-umbre...
    - unclebucknasty 5y ago
      >outside agitators might have fanned the flames This was absolutely the case, as clip after clip showed umbrella man and others performing and inciting vandalism and chaos. Meanwhile, actual protestors were pleading with them to stop or directly intervening to stop them. In each case, the instigators were young, white and frequently dressed in all black. Early arrestees matched this description and were frequently from out of town. There was absolutely an infiltration/false flag operation. It amazes me how little this has been covered and how successful they were at establishing their narrative, even while so obvious. Likewise, I'm amazed by how "Antifa" magically materializes at such opportune times for driving certain political narratives, then disappears again, yet there's very little questioning as to who these anonymous people really are. Instead, media and others just accept that they are who they say and assign them to a political "side".

rtpg 5y ago

I put NYT and Wapo in scare-quote “liberal” for a reason. Those are the mainstream things. Fox News is hiring, OAN is hiring. And hell, if you’re an opinion writer you could get away with a bunch of factual flexibility at the Times as well. Yeah Code Switch covered a book release covering a way of describing the issue one way. Do we need to dig up all the air time given to people who thought cops should start “applying the law”? I do agree that establishing what the “real bias” was is hard. But Taibbi is just wrong on this. Like Weiss, they are confounding “people will yell at me” with “I will lose my job”, and confounding that with “I will not be able to practice journalism”.

stolenmerch 5y ago
Taibbi and Weiss, in particular, are interesting (along with Greenwald) because they are giving voice to the concerns of smaller journalists who can't muster a living on Substack. I don't think they are bemoaning their own status so much as pointing out the new yellow journalism of a post-Trump corporate news world. Non-celebrity journalists were not allowed to portray BLM riots as anything but virtuous. Again, hard to prove because of endless counterpoints on all things, but to consume CNN in every waiting room, lobby, etc. in 2020 was to know these protests as "fiery, but mostly peaceful".
- rtpg 5y ago
  They can totally be anti-BLM, they might not be able to do it at the outlets they like. But that’s their own moral conflict. Weiss tried to get a professor fired, her anti-cancel culture screeds are disingenuous
  - 1cvmask 5y ago
    Yep and she is not a journalistic peer to Taibbi or Greenwald.
  - vanattab 5y ago
    >Weiss tried to get a professor fired, her anti-cancel culture screeds are disingenuous What are you referring to here?
- pstuart 5y ago
  > were not allowed to portray BLM riots as anything but virtuous Gold star for framing there! Your tell was referring to all of that as BLM riots vs BLM protests. The protests themselves were by definition virtuous (a first amendment action at its core), whereas the riots were an ugly aftermath of that. If those riots bother you, are you bothered by the fact that outside agitators might have fanned the flames? Case in point: https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/06/02/whats-up-with-umbrella-man/ https://minnesotareformer.com/2021/06/02/whats-up-with-umbre...
  - unclebucknasty 5y ago
    >outside agitators might have fanned the flames This was absolutely the case, as clip after clip showed umbrella man and others performing and inciting vandalism and chaos. Meanwhile, actual protestors were pleading with them to stop or directly intervening to stop them. In each case, the instigators were young, white and frequently dressed in all black. Early arrestees matched this description and were frequently from out of town. There was absolutely an infiltration/false flag operation. It amazes me how little this has been covered and how successful they were at establishing their narrative, even while so obvious. Likewise, I'm amazed by how "Antifa" magically materializes at such opportune times for driving certain political narratives, then disappears again, yet there's very little questioning as to who these anonymous people really are. Instead, media and others just accept that they are who they say and assign them to a political "side".