5 ms·

This is really, really upsetting to be happening in my country. I know it is a very big country, and Kansas isn't exactly proximate, but we are either a country

by Kapura 3y ago

This is really, really upsetting to be happening in my country. I know it is a very big country, and Kansas isn't exactly proximate, but we are either a country that protects the press, or we are a country where the press protects those who have power. If this is allowed to pass without the people ordering the raid fired, I am not optimistic about what the future holds.

the_optimist 3y ago
Our press doesn’t even protect the press at this point. We have all seen the tables pairing heads of each major news outlets with their respective political spouses, siblings, or parents. Gellhorn prize winner Julian Assange has been persecuted by the US intel complex for well over a decade. The choice is in your hands to continue to attribute credibility to institutions that may no longer merit it.
- xadhominemx 3y ago
  The fact that a raid on a tiny kanas newspaper is a major national story is a sign that the press is pretty interested in protecting the press.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    I disagree. All it shows is that national media outlets don't see the tiny newspaper as a threat. They consider independent reporting (eg YouTubers) to be the main threat, thus why we don't really see them making national headlines out of their suppression and why they even go out of their way to exclude them from their definition of press.
    - xadhominemx 3y ago
      Social media algorithmic recommendation engines has also been a major story. Or are you talking about a US law enforcement raid on some YouTuber that was successfully covered up by Google?
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        > some YouTuber They're saying that a YouTuber is most often not seen as a valid journalist in the eyes of the government despite Freedom of The Press being a supposed "unalienable right". Once they've been disclaimed as a journalist ("go out of their way to exclude them from their definition of press"), suddenly they're performing espionage if they report information that someone in the government didn't want to be revealed.
        xadhominemx 3y ago
        Who fits this description?
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        The description of people who are excluded “from their definition of press”: Julian Assange.
  - gotoeleven 3y ago
    They are very interested in stories like this because this gives them the chance to work themselves into high dudgeon about a shitty little paper no one cares about. This way they have something to point to when they pull their "50 intelligence officials said this is russian disinfo" bullshit. "We're not unprincipled, self-serving, corrupt morons look how huffy we got about this tiny paper in kansas!"
    - xadhominemx 3y ago
      So it seems you agree with me that the press is in fact inclined to protect the press?
      - the_optimist 3y ago
        This is a motte-and-bailey. The initial response has answered directly already.
    - Melting_Harps 3y ago
      > They are very interested in stories like this because this gives them the chance to work themselves into high dudgeon about a shitty little paper no one cares about. This way they have something to point to when they pull their "50 intelligence officials said this is russian disinfo" bullshit. "We're not unprincipled, self-serving, corrupt morons look how huffy we got about this tiny paper in kansas!" Furthermore, the stifling of not just Assange or Snowden no withstanding, there has also been direct vilification of people who stand up for the first Amendment; people seem to have glossed over that James Larkin (of Backpage infamy) who commited suicide while under extreme duress for his trail is actually a newpaper owner. He had been committed to standing up to power in a litany of documented stories, and even got settlements from them to keep operations going, it's sad, but I don't think the US mainstream news is worth anything but a coaxed form of derision, fear and a perverse 'infotainment.' Being from SoCal in the 90s I saw how the paprazzi made everything about celebrity a cult-like mania, and car chases, I still remember the OJ case being played where cartoons once stood; in the 2000s I saw it go to chasing on reality TV and socialites and just tuned out. It's also why I saw social media for what it was: it was a eye-ball grabbing solution to fill the vacumm in order to cash in on people's need to doomscrool and engage in pointless online fighting--most of us who grew up on the internet at the time had been in enough flamewars to know what this was. Honestly, I wish I could say I was entirely immune to it by only following a few sources and journalists, but I did follow the riots during COVID and saw the Blueleaks thing unfold and saw this captures people's attention. Elon destroying what little credibility he has since taking over Twitter/X and desperately holding on to his cult of personality the Market may have bestowed him by taking credit for his worker's efforts with reality TV like antics (celebrity fighting?) has been amusing but his comeupance raises a valid point: there is no trusted news source since its been so monetized. I feel that because British disinformation and Soviet/Russian propaganda tactics have been so pervasive and effective with these mediums that no one really knows what is going on at all. And that may be intended. I'm reminded about this clip from Newswipe of Bitter Lake [0] at least every 6 months, and seeing how more relevant it becomes with every passing year. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOY4Ka-GBus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOY4Ka-GBus
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
  These days it is touted as 'public-private partnership' and it extends far beyond press.
adventured 3y ago
It is a really big country and there's very little that can stop something like this from happening upfront. A corrupt person is always going to make it some distance before they're stopped, before the corrupt action gets enough sunlight on it. Said corrupt person isn't going to always make it easy to spot/stop, or easy to prosecute. You have to prosecute and pursue justice after the crime/s, not before. Justice is rarely a fast event. It's identical to someone walking into a convenience store and robbing it. You can't literally stop that from happening, you have to have a justice system that will prosecute crime. There are of course no precogs yet (Minority Report [0]). What happens next is far more important than that it happened. > If this is allowed to pass without the people ordering the raid fired, I am not optimistic about what the future holds. Given the scale of the US, that's overly dramatic for sure. All sorts of bad things - far worse than this - happen on a small level in the US across the states, that have practically no impact on the wider nation. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- dfxm12 3y ago
  We can't pretend this is the first time something like this has happened. The problem is we see this abuse of power all the time and no one pays the consequences. The problem is qualified immunity is baked in to our legal system, so it is all too easy for those responsible to evade justice.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > we see this abuse of power all the time and no one pays the consequences Where there is no consequence to the police departments go after the press who are investigating them? I don’t know that we see that all the time! In fact, that’s why this story is news!
    - petsfed 3y ago
      A quick search revealed at least 10 distinct incidents in the US over the last 4 years (mainly in summer 2020) of reporters identifying themselves as such, and then being attacked by police. I haven't done the work to see how often there were repercussions for those attacks, but I'm willing to be its pretty rare.
hanniabu 3y ago
It's a bit naive to think there's freedom of press in this country (freedom to publish without retribution)
- empath-nirvana 3y ago
  Freedom of the press is not freedom to publish "without retribution", and never has been. It is freedom to publish without _government_ retribution. If you publish some awful stuff, other people are allowed to point out that you said awful stuff and there are consequences for that, and that's how it's supposed to work.
  - mcpackieh 3y ago
    > Freedom of the press is not freedom to publish "without retribution", and never has been. It is freedom to publish without _government_ retribution. You're talking about the American First Amendment specifically, not freedom of the press generally. The World Press Freedom Index includes sociocultural context and safety; if journalists are being attacked by mobs of angry citizens that is obviously a problem for the freedom of the press. To assert otherwise is ludicrous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
    - jjk166 3y ago
      Well we already have laws against mobs violently attacking people. Freedom of the press means you suffer no legal consequences from publishing, which would include refusal of the government to enforce its laws to protect people from violence because of what they had published. But if people don't like what you're publishing, they must be free for exactly the same reason to express their opinions and act as they see fit within the normal limits of the law.
      - mcpackieh 3y ago
        > Well we already have laws against mobs violently attacking people. And violation of those laws is a threat to the freedom of the press. Let's consider a hypothetical but plausible example: A billionaire named Elon Bezos is tired of journalists exposing his illegal schemes so he hires the Pinkertons to stalk and harass journalists, dox them and post their personal information on 4chan with claims of those journalists working for the pizzagate illuminati, and threaten their friends and family with life ruination and murder. In this hypothetical everything done is illegal and none of it was done by the government; would you therefore earnestly conclude that none of it constitutes a threat to the freedom of the press? Ludicrous. You need to stop conflating the First Amendment with freedom of the press. The First Amendment is one law that aims to protect the freedom of the press from one specific kind of threat; threats coming from the government. It does not preclude the existence of other kinds of threats to freedom of the press.
sitkack 3y ago
Fired isn't enough. Poor people go to jail. The powerful move on to the next job where willingness to participate in corruption is a merit badge itself.
sanderjd 3y ago
I would argue that we don't know yet whether the system has worked or failed here. No amount of high idealism written on parchment paper can keep small people given power from using it corruptly. What matters is what happens then. If everyone were to shrug this off and say "well of course, that's just the way things go in America", then yep, I'm totally with you that this is really upsetting. But I don't think that's what's happening here at all. I have seen this story all over the place in national news. And what I think is that the mere fact that any of us living nowhere near this little town are aware this happened means that the people responsible for it are in deep sh*t. I think they'll be made an example of. I think the state and federal justice systems will be racing each other to make an example of them. And if I'm right about that, it's not an upsetting indictment of the system, it's an affirmation of its success.

by Kapura 3y ago

the_optimist 3y ago

Our press doesn’t even protect the press at this point. We have all seen the tables pairing heads of each major news outlets with their respective political spouses, siblings, or parents. Gellhorn prize winner Julian Assange has been persecuted by the US intel complex for well over a decade. The choice is in your hands to continue to attribute credibility to institutions that may no longer merit it.

xadhominemx 3y ago
The fact that a raid on a tiny kanas newspaper is a major national story is a sign that the press is pretty interested in protecting the press.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  I disagree. All it shows is that national media outlets don't see the tiny newspaper as a threat. They consider independent reporting (eg YouTubers) to be the main threat, thus why we don't really see them making national headlines out of their suppression and why they even go out of their way to exclude them from their definition of press.
  - xadhominemx 3y ago
    Social media algorithmic recommendation engines has also been a major story. Or are you talking about a US law enforcement raid on some YouTuber that was successfully covered up by Google?
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
      > some YouTuber They're saying that a YouTuber is most often not seen as a valid journalist in the eyes of the government despite Freedom of The Press being a supposed "unalienable right". Once they've been disclaimed as a journalist ("go out of their way to exclude them from their definition of press"), suddenly they're performing espionage if they report information that someone in the government didn't want to be revealed.
      - xadhominemx 3y ago
        Who fits this description?
        lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
        The description of people who are excluded “from their definition of press”: Julian Assange.
- gotoeleven 3y ago
  They are very interested in stories like this because this gives them the chance to work themselves into high dudgeon about a shitty little paper no one cares about. This way they have something to point to when they pull their "50 intelligence officials said this is russian disinfo" bullshit. "We're not unprincipled, self-serving, corrupt morons look how huffy we got about this tiny paper in kansas!"
  - xadhominemx 3y ago
    So it seems you agree with me that the press is in fact inclined to protect the press?
    - the_optimist 3y ago
      This is a motte-and-bailey. The initial response has answered directly already.
  - Melting_Harps 3y ago
    > They are very interested in stories like this because this gives them the chance to work themselves into high dudgeon about a shitty little paper no one cares about. This way they have something to point to when they pull their "50 intelligence officials said this is russian disinfo" bullshit. "We're not unprincipled, self-serving, corrupt morons look how huffy we got about this tiny paper in kansas!" Furthermore, the stifling of not just Assange or Snowden no withstanding, there has also been direct vilification of people who stand up for the first Amendment; people seem to have glossed over that James Larkin (of Backpage infamy) who commited suicide while under extreme duress for his trail is actually a newpaper owner. He had been committed to standing up to power in a litany of documented stories, and even got settlements from them to keep operations going, it's sad, but I don't think the US mainstream news is worth anything but a coaxed form of derision, fear and a perverse 'infotainment.' Being from SoCal in the 90s I saw how the paprazzi made everything about celebrity a cult-like mania, and car chases, I still remember the OJ case being played where cartoons once stood; in the 2000s I saw it go to chasing on reality TV and socialites and just tuned out. It's also why I saw social media for what it was: it was a eye-ball grabbing solution to fill the vacumm in order to cash in on people's need to doomscrool and engage in pointless online fighting--most of us who grew up on the internet at the time had been in enough flamewars to know what this was. Honestly, I wish I could say I was entirely immune to it by only following a few sources and journalists, but I did follow the riots during COVID and saw the Blueleaks thing unfold and saw this captures people's attention. Elon destroying what little credibility he has since taking over Twitter/X and desperately holding on to his cult of personality the Market may have bestowed him by taking credit for his worker's efforts with reality TV like antics (celebrity fighting?) has been amusing but his comeupance raises a valid point: there is no trusted news source since its been so monetized. I feel that because British disinformation and Soviet/Russian propaganda tactics have been so pervasive and effective with these mediums that no one really knows what is going on at all. And that may be intended. I'm reminded about this clip from Newswipe of Bitter Lake [0] at least every 6 months, and seeing how more relevant it becomes with every passing year. 0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOY4Ka-GBus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOY4Ka-GBus
A4ET8a8uTh0 3y ago
These days it is touted as 'public-private partnership' and it extends far beyond press.

adventured 3y ago

It is a really big country and there's very little that can stop something like this from happening upfront. A corrupt person is always going to make it some distance before they're stopped, before the corrupt action gets enough sunlight on it. Said corrupt person isn't going to always make it easy to spot/stop, or easy to prosecute. You have to prosecute and pursue justice after the crime/s, not before. Justice is rarely a fast event. It's identical to someone walking into a convenience store and robbing it. You can't literally stop that from happening, you have to have a justice system that will prosecute crime. There are of course no precogs yet (Minority Report [0]). What happens next is far more important than that it happened. > If this is allowed to pass without the people ordering the raid fired, I am not optimistic about what the future holds. Given the scale of the US, that's overly dramatic for sure. All sorts of bad things - far worse than this - happen on a small level in the US across the states, that have practically no impact on the wider nation. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dfxm12 3y ago
We can't pretend this is the first time something like this has happened. The problem is we see this abuse of power all the time and no one pays the consequences. The problem is qualified immunity is baked in to our legal system, so it is all too easy for those responsible to evade justice.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > we see this abuse of power all the time and no one pays the consequences Where there is no consequence to the police departments go after the press who are investigating them? I don’t know that we see that all the time! In fact, that’s why this story is news!
  - petsfed 3y ago
    A quick search revealed at least 10 distinct incidents in the US over the last 4 years (mainly in summer 2020) of reporters identifying themselves as such, and then being attacked by police. I haven't done the work to see how often there were repercussions for those attacks, but I'm willing to be its pretty rare.

hanniabu 3y ago

It's a bit naive to think there's freedom of press in this country (freedom to publish without retribution)

empath-nirvana 3y ago
Freedom of the press is not freedom to publish "without retribution", and never has been. It is freedom to publish without _government_ retribution. If you publish some awful stuff, other people are allowed to point out that you said awful stuff and there are consequences for that, and that's how it's supposed to work.
- mcpackieh 3y ago
  > Freedom of the press is not freedom to publish "without retribution", and never has been. It is freedom to publish without _government_ retribution. You're talking about the American First Amendment specifically, not freedom of the press generally. The World Press Freedom Index includes sociocultural context and safety; if journalists are being attacked by mobs of angry citizens that is obviously a problem for the freedom of the press. To assert otherwise is ludicrous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Press_Freedom_Index
  - jjk166 3y ago
    Well we already have laws against mobs violently attacking people. Freedom of the press means you suffer no legal consequences from publishing, which would include refusal of the government to enforce its laws to protect people from violence because of what they had published. But if people don't like what you're publishing, they must be free for exactly the same reason to express their opinions and act as they see fit within the normal limits of the law.
    - mcpackieh 3y ago
      > Well we already have laws against mobs violently attacking people. And violation of those laws is a threat to the freedom of the press. Let's consider a hypothetical but plausible example: A billionaire named Elon Bezos is tired of journalists exposing his illegal schemes so he hires the Pinkertons to stalk and harass journalists, dox them and post their personal information on 4chan with claims of those journalists working for the pizzagate illuminati, and threaten their friends and family with life ruination and murder. In this hypothetical everything done is illegal and none of it was done by the government; would you therefore earnestly conclude that none of it constitutes a threat to the freedom of the press? Ludicrous. You need to stop conflating the First Amendment with freedom of the press. The First Amendment is one law that aims to protect the freedom of the press from one specific kind of threat; threats coming from the government. It does not preclude the existence of other kinds of threats to freedom of the press.

sitkack 3y ago

Fired isn't enough. Poor people go to jail. The powerful move on to the next job where willingness to participate in corruption is a merit badge itself.

sanderjd 3y ago

I would argue that we don't know yet whether the system has worked or failed here. No amount of high idealism written on parchment paper can keep small people given power from using it corruptly. What matters is what happens then. If everyone were to shrug this off and say "well of course, that's just the way things go in America", then yep, I'm totally with you that this is really upsetting. But I don't think that's what's happening here at all. I have seen this story all over the place in national news. And what I think is that the mere fact that any of us living nowhere near this little town are aware this happened means that the people responsible for it are in deep sh*t. I think they'll be made an example of. I think the state and federal justice systems will be racing each other to make an example of them. And if I'm right about that, it's not an upsetting indictment of the system, it's an affirmation of its success.