5 ms·

A news organization that chased “diversity of opinion” would not be a good news organization. Some opinions are not worth entertaining. If NPR were broadcastin

by drewrv 2y ago

A news organization that chased “diversity of opinion” would not be a good news organization. Some opinions are not worth entertaining. If NPR were broadcasting the rantings of flat earthers, Sasquatch hunters, and anti-vax weirdos, it may be entertaining but it wouldn’t be news. Also: the reason DEI initiatives ignore “diversity of political views” is because that is not a trait you are born with.

astrange 2y ago
> Also: the reason DEI initiatives ignore “diversity of political views” is because that is not a trait you are born with. Is that true? You're born from your parents[0]. I don't think it's actually much of an important distinction that you would have different socialization if you were adopted. Younger LGBTQ/NB people don't agree with this nearly as much as they used to, for instance. Several of those groups are just things you decide to do. [0] as the vice president said: https://twitter.com/brownskinthem/status/1712665740069724184 https://twitter.com/brownskinthem/status/1712665740069724184
jimbokun 2y ago
NPR flat out got some stories wrong due to their biases.
- drewrv 2y ago
  Probably. Every news organization gets stories wrong. That’s why reputable news sites issue corrections: https://www.npr.org/corrections/ https://www.npr.org/corrections/
- vkou 2y ago
  Everyone does. Even as a baseline of "Things that almost all members of it can agree on", our society is incredibly biased in how it views the world. So is every other society in history. I'm sure ancient Greeks were convinced that they had it all figured out, too. Fish don't have a word for water. Spend a significant part of your life immersed in a society with a radically different worldview, and it'll be very clear just how arbitrary team blue/red complaints about bias are. You don't actually want unbiased reporting. It would be either useless, or make you extremely uncomfortable all the time. You're just unhappy that it's got the wrong bias.
  - jimbokun 2y ago
    The New York Times is an example of a liberal news organization that does a much better job of checking their biases to get their stories right.
josephg 2y ago
Sure; but its a mistake to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Its true that I don't want any of my news to come from flat earthers. But if all of my news (or all of my friends) share the same set of political biases, I'll end up wrong about important things and unable to connect with people around me. Its a balancing act. Like every balancing act, you can fail on both sides - by being too open minded (and believing Alex Jones or whatever), or by being too closed minded. I think if you live in a country where half of the population has some particular view of the world, you're being a bad democratic citizen if you don't take the time to understand that point of view.
- drewrv 2y ago
  I agree, but the solution is to consume a variety of news sources rather than expecting some perfect formula from one.
  - josephg 2y ago
    Hoping that people consume a variety of news sources sounds naively optimistic to me. And when a single news station 100% caters to their audience's biases, you end up in situations like Fox News knowingly lying to their audience over the idea that the election was stolen. (If they told the truth as they saw it, they would have lost viewers. So they chose to back Trump's lie.) I think its much healthier when news sources actively struggle against the pressure to be an echo chamber. And be self aware enough to know their own biases & make them clear to their readers. I also like hearing the reasonable arguments against their position: "We endorse candidate A, but here are some reasonable criticisms of A that their opponents bring up." The Economist does this. Other commenters in this thread mention the New York Times does this. Generally, I want to follow journalists who know more about the topic than I do, and can help me see a bigger picture.
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> If NPR were broadcasting the rantings of flat earthers, Sasquatch hunters, and anti-vax weirdos, it may be entertaining but it wouldn’t be news. Surely you can see the difference between airing the view that it's reasonable and expected for the modern IRS to have significantly fewer employees per capita than they did before the advent of computers, and airing the view that autism is caused by Lizardmen.
- specialist 2y ago
  No? Computers can do audits and litigate cases now?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Computers remove the need to have an army people to open envelopes and file all of the tax returns of the many millions of people who aren't getting audited and now file electronically, and electronically process payments or tax refunds, and validate the numbers on each tax return against the 1099s and W2s submitted by employers to make sure they match etc. All of these things used to be done by hand and it should certainly not require anywhere near as much labor to do them electronically.
- faeriechangling 2y ago
  Honestly no, because cuts to the IRS have clearly and blatantly been motivated by lobbying and the desire to make the IRS less effectual at tax collection. The vast majority of the contemporary debate revolves around the defunding of the IRS's legal team and their ability to hire external council, and the observed fact that they have been pursuing less and less tax cases over time against large companies in particular. there's a number of reasonable "defund the IRS" arguments I could entertain, such is "tax collection is bad", but the idea that computers simply means the cuts in IRS employees is "reasonable and expected" just ain't so. The cuts were directly agitated for by lobbying groups like CEETA, of which Microsoft is a member, Microsoft having a massive pending IRS tax case.

by drewrv 2y ago

astrange 2y ago

> Also: the reason DEI initiatives ignore “diversity of political views” is because that is not a trait you are born with. Is that true? You're born from your parents[0]. I don't think it's actually much of an important distinction that you would have different socialization if you were adopted. Younger LGBTQ/NB people don't agree with this nearly as much as they used to, for instance. Several of those groups are just things you decide to do. [0] as the vice president said: https://twitter.com/brownskinthem/status/1712665740069724184 https://twitter.com/brownskinthem/status/1712665740069724184

jimbokun 2y ago

NPR flat out got some stories wrong due to their biases.

drewrv 2y ago
Probably. Every news organization gets stories wrong. That’s why reputable news sites issue corrections: https://www.npr.org/corrections/ https://www.npr.org/corrections/
vkou 2y ago
Everyone does. Even as a baseline of "Things that almost all members of it can agree on", our society is incredibly biased in how it views the world. So is every other society in history. I'm sure ancient Greeks were convinced that they had it all figured out, too. Fish don't have a word for water. Spend a significant part of your life immersed in a society with a radically different worldview, and it'll be very clear just how arbitrary team blue/red complaints about bias are. You don't actually want unbiased reporting. It would be either useless, or make you extremely uncomfortable all the time. You're just unhappy that it's got the wrong bias.
- jimbokun 2y ago
  The New York Times is an example of a liberal news organization that does a much better job of checking their biases to get their stories right.

josephg 2y ago

Sure; but its a mistake to throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Its true that I don't want any of my news to come from flat earthers. But if all of my news (or all of my friends) share the same set of political biases, I'll end up wrong about important things and unable to connect with people around me. Its a balancing act. Like every balancing act, you can fail on both sides - by being too open minded (and believing Alex Jones or whatever), or by being too closed minded. I think if you live in a country where half of the population has some particular view of the world, you're being a bad democratic citizen if you don't take the time to understand that point of view.

drewrv 2y ago
I agree, but the solution is to consume a variety of news sources rather than expecting some perfect formula from one.
- josephg 2y ago
  Hoping that people consume a variety of news sources sounds naively optimistic to me. And when a single news station 100% caters to their audience's biases, you end up in situations like Fox News knowingly lying to their audience over the idea that the election was stolen. (If they told the truth as they saw it, they would have lost viewers. So they chose to back Trump's lie.) I think its much healthier when news sources actively struggle against the pressure to be an echo chamber. And be self aware enough to know their own biases & make them clear to their readers. I also like hearing the reasonable arguments against their position: "We endorse candidate A, but here are some reasonable criticisms of A that their opponents bring up." The Economist does this. Other commenters in this thread mention the New York Times does this. Generally, I want to follow journalists who know more about the topic than I do, and can help me see a bigger picture.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> If NPR were broadcasting the rantings of flat earthers, Sasquatch hunters, and anti-vax weirdos, it may be entertaining but it wouldn’t be news. Surely you can see the difference between airing the view that it's reasonable and expected for the modern IRS to have significantly fewer employees per capita than they did before the advent of computers, and airing the view that autism is caused by Lizardmen.

specialist 2y ago
No? Computers can do audits and litigate cases now?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Computers remove the need to have an army people to open envelopes and file all of the tax returns of the many millions of people who aren't getting audited and now file electronically, and electronically process payments or tax refunds, and validate the numbers on each tax return against the 1099s and W2s submitted by employers to make sure they match etc. All of these things used to be done by hand and it should certainly not require anywhere near as much labor to do them electronically.
faeriechangling 2y ago
Honestly no, because cuts to the IRS have clearly and blatantly been motivated by lobbying and the desire to make the IRS less effectual at tax collection. The vast majority of the contemporary debate revolves around the defunding of the IRS's legal team and their ability to hire external council, and the observed fact that they have been pursuing less and less tax cases over time against large companies in particular. there's a number of reasonable "defund the IRS" arguments I could entertain, such is "tax collection is bad", but the idea that computers simply means the cuts in IRS employees is "reasonable and expected" just ain't so. The cuts were directly agitated for by lobbying groups like CEETA, of which Microsoft is a member, Microsoft having a massive pending IRS tax case.