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I apologize. I am mid other things and I clearly typed too fast without considering clarity. What I meant is that the sentence you wrote was sufficiently neutr

I apologize. I am mid other things and I clearly typed too fast without considering clarity. What I meant is that the sentence you wrote was sufficiently neutral in tone along the lines of 'this guy accused of a political crime.' << why was my comment neutral when the original "Julian Assange is possibly a criminal." was not? I think the issue is with the context. Would you be willing to rewrite the paragraph written by article's author, because you may be right in a sense that it is hard to judge it based on that one sentence fragment alone? My initial response is that the article pushes a clear agenda vis-a-vis Assange even though it seems to have a tenuous connection to the point author seems to be trying to make. So initial difference is there ( possibly criminal vs guy accused of crime reads very differently ) and it is hard to argue in good faith for an entity with a lot of editors no one thought that may read a tad biased. All that said, my own personal bias may be showing here, but then I am not sure Assange was obligated to keep that information secret -- whatever else you may think about qualitative goodness/badness of that action. Naturally that leaves 'hacking' angle, but I will admit I did not follow story closely enough to offer a useful analysis. edit: "Yet journalists are quick to defend anyone who uncovers and disseminates information" I am starting to think you may be right in general. This paragraph cannot be rewritten in an impartial manner, because it is at its core very partial. It is arguing with anti-Assange bias in mind.

slg 4y ago
> Would you be willing to rewrite the paragraph written by article's author, because you may be right in a sense that it is hard to judge it based on that one sentence fragment alone? No, because I don't think I can do better than the original author. >I am starting to think you may be right in general. This paragraph cannot be rewritten in an impartial manner, because it is at its core very partial. It is arguing with anti-Assange bias in mind. I don't think the paragraph is necessarily "arguing with anti-Assange bias in mind". It is remarking on a world which has an anti-Assange bias because many powerful people in the world, namely the US government, view Assange negatively. How do you report on that without either repeating or refuting that bias in the world? Maybe a less controversial figure is a better example of this. The FBI monitored MLK Jr. That is just a fact. How do you remark on that fact neutrally? The FBI as an institution has some inherent level of trust. Reporting simply that they monitored MLK implies to a certain extent that he was implicated in some wrongdoing. Do you therefore try to qualify that? Do you say the monitoring was "inappropriate"? Is that too strong? Doesn't that imply that the FBI is racist or corrupt? Do you say it was "potentially inappropriate"? But doesn't that imply you think it might be appropriate? I don't think the objective reporting of facts is nearly as easy as people seem to imply in conversations about media and in many cases it is impossible.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  MLK is actually not a bad choice for comparison ( sufficient time has passed, some records were unsealed and so on ). I think that 'FBI monitored MLK' is perfectly sufficient and captures everything without adding negative or positive sentiment to it. Now, had the article try to add 'inappropriate', the right move would be substantiate that claim with some sort of proof that it was indeed inappropriate ( at least in the eye of the writer ). That does not appear to happen in the article on HN today. We have an assertion without any way to determine whether or not writer is just making stuff up. Maybe, Pratchett's work was onto something when he indicated that in Discworld universe poetic license was somewhat limited[1]: “Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.” So in the case of Assange, the writer should have added a short narrative indicating his particular perception of the issue ("Assange is possibly a criminal") absent a completely generic and neutral in tone ( Assange did something US governemnt did not like ). [1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/586782-poetic-simile-was-strictly-limited-to-statements-like-his-mighty https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/586782-poetic-simile-was-st... In short, I don't think it is impossible. There is no willingness to agree on some basic standards.

slg 4y ago

> Would you be willing to rewrite the paragraph written by article's author, because you may be right in a sense that it is hard to judge it based on that one sentence fragment alone? No, because I don't think I can do better than the original author. >I am starting to think you may be right in general. This paragraph cannot be rewritten in an impartial manner, because it is at its core very partial. It is arguing with anti-Assange bias in mind. I don't think the paragraph is necessarily "arguing with anti-Assange bias in mind". It is remarking on a world which has an anti-Assange bias because many powerful people in the world, namely the US government, view Assange negatively. How do you report on that without either repeating or refuting that bias in the world? Maybe a less controversial figure is a better example of this. The FBI monitored MLK Jr. That is just a fact. How do you remark on that fact neutrally? The FBI as an institution has some inherent level of trust. Reporting simply that they monitored MLK implies to a certain extent that he was implicated in some wrongdoing. Do you therefore try to qualify that? Do you say the monitoring was "inappropriate"? Is that too strong? Doesn't that imply that the FBI is racist or corrupt? Do you say it was "potentially inappropriate"? But doesn't that imply you think it might be appropriate? I don't think the objective reporting of facts is nearly as easy as people seem to imply in conversations about media and in many cases it is impossible.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
MLK is actually not a bad choice for comparison ( sufficient time has passed, some records were unsealed and so on ). I think that 'FBI monitored MLK' is perfectly sufficient and captures everything without adding negative or positive sentiment to it. Now, had the article try to add 'inappropriate', the right move would be substantiate that claim with some sort of proof that it was indeed inappropriate ( at least in the eye of the writer ). That does not appear to happen in the article on HN today. We have an assertion without any way to determine whether or not writer is just making stuff up. Maybe, Pratchett's work was onto something when he indicated that in Discworld universe poetic license was somewhat limited[1]: “Poetic simile was strictly limited to statements like 'his mighty steed was as fleet as the wind on a fairly calm day, say about Force Three,' and any loose talk about a beloved having a face that launched a thousand ships would have to be backed by evidence that the object of desire did indeed look like a bottle of champagne.” So in the case of Assange, the writer should have added a short narrative indicating his particular perception of the issue ("Assange is possibly a criminal") absent a completely generic and neutral in tone ( Assange did something US governemnt did not like ). [1]https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/586782-poetic-simile-was-strictly-limited-to-statements-like-his-mighty https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/586782-poetic-simile-was-st... In short, I don't think it is impossible. There is no willingness to agree on some basic standards.