4 ms·

I'll play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121509 https://www.jstor.org/

by ctoth 4y ago

I'll play: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121509 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4121509 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq-war-media-fail-matt-taibbi-812230/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/iraq... Or has Infowars started a war that killed hundreds of thousands of people which I haven't happened to read about?

epgui 4y ago
How does this point to a special failing of the media? Judith was let go and prosecuted, was she not? What other system of publication would have prevented these things? How is infowars protected from things like this, and how can anyone argue that it has an overall better track record?
- ctoth 4y ago
  Let's hear from James Risen, reporter at the Times at the time. :) > What angered me most was that while they were burying my skeptical stories, the editors were not only giving banner headlines to stories asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they were also demanding that I help match stories from other publications about Iraq’s purported WMD programs. I grew so sick of this that when the Washington Post reported that Iraq had turned over nerve gas to terrorists, I refused to try to match the story. One mid-level editor in the Washington bureau yelled at me for my refusal. He came to my desk carrying a golf club while berating me after I told him that the story was bullshit and I wasn’t going to make any calls on it. As a small protest, I put a sign on my desk that said, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” It was New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst’s supposed line to artist Frederic Remington, whom he had sent to Cuba to illustrate the “crisis” there before the Spanish-American War. I don’t think my editors even noticed the sign. So no, this wasn't just poor old Judy, who provided a convenient scapegoat. You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Whereas the flagship paper sends goons with golfclubs to threaten writers into following the narrative. The original comment I'm responding to asks for examples of corporate media being more wrong for longer. If starting a literal war 15 years ago doesn't count I'm not sure what you're looking for.
  - epgui 4y ago
    > You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Except in a universe where there are no news organizations and only blogs, then blogs will naturally attain a similar amount of influence, but with even fewer checks and balances, and probably lesser liability/responsibility. This is just a natural consequence of the graph-theoretic properties of social networks. If we agree that the media started the war (just for the sake of argument), then yes, it does count, it seriously counts and it counts for a lot. But you've selected one of the most extreme examples, in a sea of otherwise unremarkable examples. When we talk about an org's track record, we're not hoping to find zero mistakes: we're really hoping to find relatively few mistakes, and accountability and recognition of important mistakes. Also perhaps a self-correction mechanism. I'm not saying any of that is perfect, but legitimate news orgs do have some of that.
  - seattle_spring 4y ago
    > If starting a literal war 15 years ago So you're asserting that without The NYT, the Iraq war would have never happened at all? I'm not sure how else to interpret your claims.
amalcon 4y ago
I can ask GPT-3 to generate headlines. Most or all of these will be either incoherent or incorrect to at least this degree. It won't start any wars, because GPT-3 just isn't that influential. You're not necessarily wrong -- I don't know -- but don't mistake relative influence for relative inaccuracy. I suspect -- but don't know -- that giving Infowars the amount of influence you're citing here would result in a tragedy of at least similar scale.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Infowars wasn't "given" influence. It earned it by making news for wingnuts. Putting wingnut headlines in the NYT would just trash the NYT, which is why they had to work closely with the government to craft messaging that would be convincing to their audience. It wouldn't turn the world into wingnuts. edit: The world moves towards wingnuttery when outlets like the NYT knowingly (but deniably) lie about very important things, and make it clear that they would do the exact same thing again by not accepting responsibility. Then you've left the public completely adrift. Why not listen to Infowars? The worst they could be are liars.
  - amalcon 4y ago
    I'm not going to argue with that (not because I agree, but because it's not a discussion I feel like having). My issue is that it seems to have nothing to do with what I said. I was posing a hypothetical in which Infowars had influence comparable to the entire U.S. media apparatus, not making a statement about their history or how they obtained what little influence they have.
  - raxxorraxor 4y ago
    It greatest success was that he was elevated to a significant threat. Before he was just a guy that sold some man-pills, but now he has the world in his grasp only by uttering some words, destroying civil society with misinformation. That is nothing else than a huge promotion. Meanwhile onlookers are loosing faith in his "opposition". Naturally...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> The New York Times determined that several stories she wrote about Iraq were inaccurate, and she was forced to resign from the paper in 2005.[2] According to commentator Ken Silverstein, Miller's Iraq reporting "effectively ended her career as a respectable journalist". > She worked in The New York Times' Washington bureau before joining Fox News in 2008. Some shade being thrown by wikipedia there. It seems relevant that she literally outed a CIA agent, at the express request of the Republican President's team, to maintain a fictional reason they had invented for starting a war. The President then later commuted the sentence of the person involved, when their appeal failed, and they later got pardoned by Trump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby I'd suggest this perhaps points to the root of the problem being in neither wingnut TV shows, nor The New York Times, but somewhere deeper. When Oliver North and other people who betray their country are getting fat checks to spout lies on Fox News, then really what hope is there for truth to prevail. edit to add: minor but totally typical detail, the guy who leaked the CIA agent's info, got his licence to practice law back, because this same Judith Miller, claimed that her initial testimony was a mistake. There's just no consequences for lying.

by ctoth 4y ago

epgui 4y ago

How does this point to a special failing of the media? Judith was let go and prosecuted, was she not? What other system of publication would have prevented these things? How is infowars protected from things like this, and how can anyone argue that it has an overall better track record?

ctoth 4y ago
Let's hear from James Risen, reporter at the Times at the time. :) > What angered me most was that while they were burying my skeptical stories, the editors were not only giving banner headlines to stories asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, they were also demanding that I help match stories from other publications about Iraq’s purported WMD programs. I grew so sick of this that when the Washington Post reported that Iraq had turned over nerve gas to terrorists, I refused to try to match the story. One mid-level editor in the Washington bureau yelled at me for my refusal. He came to my desk carrying a golf club while berating me after I told him that the story was bullshit and I wasn’t going to make any calls on it. As a small protest, I put a sign on my desk that said, “You furnish the pictures, I’ll furnish the war.” It was New York Journal publisher William Randolph Hearst’s supposed line to artist Frederic Remington, whom he had sent to Cuba to illustrate the “crisis” there before the Spanish-American War. I don’t think my editors even noticed the sign. So no, this wasn't just poor old Judy, who provided a convenient scapegoat. You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Whereas the flagship paper sends goons with golfclubs to threaten writers into following the narrative. The original comment I'm responding to asks for examples of corporate media being more wrong for longer. If starting a literal war 15 years ago doesn't count I'm not sure what you're looking for.
- epgui 4y ago
  > You ask for what protections a blog has? Its protection is that it's a darn blog on the internet just like any random person can make. It has no authority, asks for no special recognition. Except in a universe where there are no news organizations and only blogs, then blogs will naturally attain a similar amount of influence, but with even fewer checks and balances, and probably lesser liability/responsibility. This is just a natural consequence of the graph-theoretic properties of social networks. If we agree that the media started the war (just for the sake of argument), then yes, it does count, it seriously counts and it counts for a lot. But you've selected one of the most extreme examples, in a sea of otherwise unremarkable examples. When we talk about an org's track record, we're not hoping to find zero mistakes: we're really hoping to find relatively few mistakes, and accountability and recognition of important mistakes. Also perhaps a self-correction mechanism. I'm not saying any of that is perfect, but legitimate news orgs do have some of that.
- seattle_spring 4y ago
  > If starting a literal war 15 years ago So you're asserting that without The NYT, the Iraq war would have never happened at all? I'm not sure how else to interpret your claims.

amalcon 4y ago

I can ask GPT-3 to generate headlines. Most or all of these will be either incoherent or incorrect to at least this degree. It won't start any wars, because GPT-3 just isn't that influential. You're not necessarily wrong -- I don't know -- but don't mistake relative influence for relative inaccuracy. I suspect -- but don't know -- that giving Infowars the amount of influence you're citing here would result in a tragedy of at least similar scale.

pessimizer 4y ago
Infowars wasn't "given" influence. It earned it by making news for wingnuts. Putting wingnut headlines in the NYT would just trash the NYT, which is why they had to work closely with the government to craft messaging that would be convincing to their audience. It wouldn't turn the world into wingnuts. edit: The world moves towards wingnuttery when outlets like the NYT knowingly (but deniably) lie about very important things, and make it clear that they would do the exact same thing again by not accepting responsibility. Then you've left the public completely adrift. Why not listen to Infowars? The worst they could be are liars.
- amalcon 4y ago
  I'm not going to argue with that (not because I agree, but because it's not a discussion I feel like having). My issue is that it seems to have nothing to do with what I said. I was posing a hypothetical in which Infowars had influence comparable to the entire U.S. media apparatus, not making a statement about their history or how they obtained what little influence they have.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  It greatest success was that he was elevated to a significant threat. Before he was just a guy that sold some man-pills, but now he has the world in his grasp only by uttering some words, destroying civil society with misinformation. That is nothing else than a huge promotion. Meanwhile onlookers are loosing faith in his "opposition". Naturally...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

> The New York Times determined that several stories she wrote about Iraq were inaccurate, and she was forced to resign from the paper in 2005.[2] According to commentator Ken Silverstein, Miller's Iraq reporting "effectively ended her career as a respectable journalist". > She worked in The New York Times' Washington bureau before joining Fox News in 2008. Some shade being thrown by wikipedia there. It seems relevant that she literally outed a CIA agent, at the express request of the Republican President's team, to maintain a fictional reason they had invented for starting a war. The President then later commuted the sentence of the person involved, when their appeal failed, and they later got pardoned by Trump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby I'd suggest this perhaps points to the root of the problem being in neither wingnut TV shows, nor The New York Times, but somewhere deeper. When Oliver North and other people who betray their country are getting fat checks to spout lies on Fox News, then really what hope is there for truth to prevail. edit to add: minor but totally typical detail, the guy who leaked the CIA agent's info, got his licence to practice law back, because this same Judith Miller, claimed that her initial testimony was a mistake. There's just no consequences for lying.