3 ms·

It's also quite chauvinist to suggest that the major newspapers cannot arrive at the same conclusion about disclosure independently, and pretty ignorant to impl

It's also quite chauvinist to suggest that the major newspapers cannot arrive at the same conclusion about disclosure independently, and pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing information is inconsistent with democracy.

ehvatum 4y ago
> pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing information is inconsistent with democracy It sort of is inconsistent with democracy. People should know for whom and for what they vote.
- safety1st 4y ago
  Not necessarily backing the decision of the Japanese newspapers here, but US politics is basically a circus of unsubstantiated allegations which are front and center because they get more eyeballs. Sensationalism is hardly a pillar of democracy. It's a scourge and the country would be better off if Fox, MSNBC, Twitter's apocalypse algorithms etc. were a little more reserved.
- paulmd 4y ago
  Is it? In most democracies in the world there are things you cannot publish even if they are true - Britain for example still maintains an official state censor, and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are. Britain and many other countries also maintain a right to privacy that protects non-public-figure individuals against salacious soap-opera tabloid shit - you can't just go telling the whole world that Joe Q Public cheated on his wife, even if it's absolutely true because it's not a good idea for the panopticon to be pointed at the powerless like that. Again, as should be said every time the topic comes up here on HN - the idealization of absolute and unlimited free speech is kind of a uniquely American phenomenon and even then it is not quite absolute. The rest of the world views freedom of speech as a right that needs to be limited and balanced like every other right. Everyone has frequently talked about how we shouldn't be having media broadcast the manifestos of these shooters and glorifying them, how the media should just suppress information about them and refuse to publish their pictures and only and talk about them in the abstract... isn't that exactly what is going on here? This guy killed the prime minister and you want to know exactly what his cause was in exacting detail...
  - moomin 4y ago
    Britain’s an interesting case, but I don’t think it makes the point you think it does. Yes, there’s a censor, but the real reason all the newspapers report the same thing at the same time is cultural a) newspaper ownership is concentrated amongst a very small group of people, most of whom are billionaires b) they employ people who they trust to do the right thing c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division d) partly as a result of that and partly as a result of falling revenues, most journalist's idea of what good journalism is consists of asking two people what they think and reporting what they say e) this makes them extremely dependent on the lobby system, which is pretty similar to press clubs e) Blair set a precedent for cutting funding to the BBC if it said things it didn’t like, and the current government hasn’t hesitated to threaten to do it again f) this culture is so ingrained it has spread even to those publications that theoretically shouldn’t be affected. So the situation in Japan is pretty similar to that in the U.K. You just need to identify the levers.
    - simonh 4y ago
      > c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division Actually the prime minister’s press office, and to be fair Labour perfected this process thanks to Alastair Campbell.
  - krisoft 4y ago
    > and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are That is simply not true. There are many examples where USA newspapers published leaked secrets and the journalist were not convicted for it in any case. The Pentagon Papers come to mind as the most famous example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
    - sacrosancty 4y ago
      The claim was that there are some secrets, not all secrets which is the claim you countered.

ehvatum 4y ago

> pretty ignorant to imply that suppressing information is inconsistent with democracy It sort of is inconsistent with democracy. People should know for whom and for what they vote.

safety1st 4y ago
Not necessarily backing the decision of the Japanese newspapers here, but US politics is basically a circus of unsubstantiated allegations which are front and center because they get more eyeballs. Sensationalism is hardly a pillar of democracy. It's a scourge and the country would be better off if Fox, MSNBC, Twitter's apocalypse algorithms etc. were a little more reserved.
paulmd 4y ago
Is it? In most democracies in the world there are things you cannot publish even if they are true - Britain for example still maintains an official state censor, and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are. Britain and many other countries also maintain a right to privacy that protects non-public-figure individuals against salacious soap-opera tabloid shit - you can't just go telling the whole world that Joe Q Public cheated on his wife, even if it's absolutely true because it's not a good idea for the panopticon to be pointed at the powerless like that. Again, as should be said every time the topic comes up here on HN - the idealization of absolute and unlimited free speech is kind of a uniquely American phenomenon and even then it is not quite absolute. The rest of the world views freedom of speech as a right that needs to be limited and balanced like every other right. Everyone has frequently talked about how we shouldn't be having media broadcast the manifestos of these shooters and glorifying them, how the media should just suppress information about them and refuse to publish their pictures and only and talk about them in the abstract... isn't that exactly what is going on here? This guy killed the prime minister and you want to know exactly what his cause was in exacting detail...
- moomin 4y ago
  Britain’s an interesting case, but I don’t think it makes the point you think it does. Yes, there’s a censor, but the real reason all the newspapers report the same thing at the same time is cultural a) newspaper ownership is concentrated amongst a very small group of people, most of whom are billionaires b) they employ people who they trust to do the right thing c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division d) partly as a result of that and partly as a result of falling revenues, most journalist's idea of what good journalism is consists of asking two people what they think and reporting what they say e) this makes them extremely dependent on the lobby system, which is pretty similar to press clubs e) Blair set a precedent for cutting funding to the BBC if it said things it didn’t like, and the current government hasn’t hesitated to threaten to do it again f) this culture is so ingrained it has spread even to those publications that theoretically shouldn’t be affected. So the situation in Japan is pretty similar to that in the U.K. You just need to identify the levers.
  - simonh 4y ago
    > c) journalism in the U.K. operates a revolving door with the conservative party’s communications division Actually the prime minister’s press office, and to be fair Labour perfected this process thanks to Alastair Campbell.
- krisoft 4y ago
  > and even in the US there are still some state secrets that you cannot publish regardless of how true they are That is simply not true. There are many examples where USA newspapers published leaked secrets and the journalist were not convicted for it in any case. The Pentagon Papers come to mind as the most famous example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
  - sacrosancty 4y ago
    The claim was that there are some secrets, not all secrets which is the claim you countered.