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The most disappointing part of the pandemic has been the utter lack of curiosity and professional duty displayed by journalists. The only other time I can thin
by omginternets 3y ago
The most disappointing part of the pandemic has been the utter lack of curiosity and professional duty displayed by journalists. The only other time I can think of such blatant dereliction of duty was the beginning of the war in Iraq.
- jstarfish 3y agoChina is very impenetrable. Too much of that line of inquiry discredits itself with speculation.
- omginternets 3y agoI don’t disagree with you, but it’s precisely the journalists job to lay bare these opacities and contradictions. What happened instead is that the lab leak hypothesis was treated as mere conspiracy theory. Edit: your comment also ignores the involvement of the USA in the purported lab leak. That’s easier to investigate. There is no excuse for the collective behavior of journalists.
- op00to 3y agoIf it’s so easy, why is no one doing it?
- omginternets 3y agoI suspect it’s easier not to do it. Rather than grind at an investigative journalism piece, it’s easier (and likely more beneficial to one’s career) to cultivate a network of influential persons and to churn out “exclusive quotes”. Nothing about investigative journalism is easy. I am lamenting that our journalists have no sense of duty.
- jakderrida 3y agoWhat would you have them do? Go sneaking around the Chinese Science Academy in Wuhan trying to find hard evidence in the dumpsters 4 years later? I'm not a fan of some "journalists" saying, "it's just the flu" and worried more about Trump's re-election than those that they no doubt killed, but I'm actually not sure what real journalists should have done either. Also, people were crying out for their blood while indulging in deranged conspiracies against them just for pointing a camera at their master and letting him talk. Even if they could fly over to China and investigate, being caught in Wuhan investigating would have both the Chinese government and the deranged conspiracy nuts crying out for your death, the latter claiming they found it too "suspicious" you were in Wuhan at all.
- cameldrv 3y agoThey have tried something similar (getting to the bat cave in Yunnan), but the Chinese put literal roadblocks in their way (parking a truck in the middle of the road to stop them from getting to the cave) https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-scientists-hope-coronavirus-clues-inside-2020-12 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-policing-bat-caves-sci... Getting any information from China has been made extremely difficult. I think it's reasonable to draw some conclusions from that.
- omginternets 3y agoYes, and at a minimum, this is evidence of a literal conspiracy.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoWhy can't they sanction China for obstructing this effort? They've got a real nice economy, it would be a shame if we piled on sanctions to help compound their current economic woes if they refus to allow this work to be done. That they were already read to go in blocking that cave suggests they already knew and are being obstructive.
- callalex 3y agoBecause, frankly, they have won the economic war. Every modern country is 100% reliant on the manufacturing that happens in China.
- omginternets 3y agoThis is effectively what is happening. The key phrases to look out for are "strategic interests" and "critical infrastructure". See: repatriation of chip-manufacturing, for example.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoI don't see (given their environment about secrecy and not wanting to give their bosses/politicians the bad news when there are failures) how this could be successfull. Its hard to innovate when your family risks being disappeared when you inevitably fail at some point of the larger effort and on the way to results that transcend the faults of that overall developmental process.