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>First sign of a profession having a backbone in months They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embe

>First sign of a profession having a backbone in months They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embedded" shills, for decades. Now they suddenly grew a "backbone"? They just see the signs of lack of long term legitimacy for this particular government and play pretend at safe courage.

jacquesm 1y ago
Consider the power of this statement then: if they were ok with all of those things and now they draw a line that means that things have gotten much, much worse than they were before.
- coldtea 1y ago
  Or that they draw the line when it's about little hummiliations done to themselves, and not to lying and misreporting
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    You see what you want to see.
- roenxi 1y ago
  Well... maybe. If a company brings in new anti-sexual-assault training and a bunch of people quit around the same time that doesn't necessarily suggest the problem is the outrageous training. I'd quite like to actually see what the rules are, but this is just a complex one. On the one hand, obviously the US military would probably have an easier time securing classified info if unreliable people aren't wandering through the building. On the other hand, the US people do benefit from random people wandering the building and would get more out of looser requirements on who can get in. Making it easy to keep information classified has always been a strategic error that has probably done a lot of damage to the US.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - roenxi 1y ago
      If you want me to try explaining something more clearly you should include a rough outline of what you think I said. Otherwise I've basically got nothing to do but repeat myself. Hopefully this helps. The journalists and the generals can presumably still talk to each other over drinks after work. The journalists were only ever going to be tolerated in the building because US leadership thinks they are helping them achieve military propaganda aims which are rarely noble things. There isn't much at stake here beyond classified information. US classified information has been a bit of a disaster for them. It just means the government is slowly escaping accountability for what it does. They have that massive spying program on US citizens and the last I heard of the story was they can't sue anyone over it because the courts aren't allowed to believe it exists.
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        This isn't about security at all. This is about control of the narrative. Hegseth and co would like you to believe it is about security. But there is absolutely no indication that there was an urgent issue that needs resolution.
        roenxi 1y ago
        The reason they were in the building in the first place was to give the US government control over the narrative. We're moving from a state where the government was trying to control the narrative to the same state. That is what makes it an interestingly complex issue. We have to form an opinion on whether it is likely to be a "better" narrative with the journalists in the building or in a building a few blocks away. That isn't an obvious one and it largely hinges on what access they were getting in the building that they weren't officially supposed to have and what they then did with it.
- account42 1y ago
  You're making the conclusions you want to see without anything to back them up. There are countless reasons why they are acting now when they haven't before and most of them do not support what you are implying.
- ordinary 1y ago
  Journalists have a long and storied history of standing up for free and independent journalism, and they're right to!. However, they have a rather more spotty record (with highs and lows) of standing up for other fundamental requirements for a well-functioning liberal democracy. So one possible (admittedly uncharitable) take is that they were OK with all those other things because those things didn't hurt them, and might've helped them. They're not OK with this change not because it makes things worse, but because it makes things worse /for them/.
sillyfluke 1y ago
>They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embedded" shills, for decades. It's difficult to see those on the same plane really. There's spineless and there's spineless. The official "leaks" as theatre as it was, occasionally functioned as soft checks and balances for revealing in-fighting amongst the different departments of goverment -- when the pentagon, white house, CIA were at odds with each other over strategy and tactics on some topic-- and often this was used as narrative fodder for both the left and right. As for the embeds, at least they saw some shit and had skin in the game by being near the action. Some of them actually died on assignment. Lıke, what the fuck are we talking about here? And when you have Israel not letting any reporters into Gaza I have little confidence Trump won't take a page out of that playbook if he gets the US in some ground conflict either. So you have administrations that allowed all that in the past, and you have this snowflake administration who's afraid of some questions being asked on a golf course in Florida.
- ashanoko 1y ago
  Israel allows reporters into ghaza. Hamas kills journalist not following the brotherhoods storyline all the time. Which is why many, except for quatari al jazeera djihadis refused to go. Same as with the tulkarem incident where the west bank police lynched two israelis on camera and the mob noticed the filming reporters and smashed the cameras.
  - sillyfluke 1y ago
    Yeah ok, that's why foreign reporters had to shoot footage clandestinely from foreign aid airplanes: https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/stain-on-humanity-journalist-stunned-by-apocalyptic-destruction-in-gaza-after-capturing-rare-footage/ https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/stain-on-humanity-journali...
    - ashanoko 1y ago
      Aand its repackaged al jazeera as evidence
johncolanduoni 1y ago
It's pretty hard to take someone who is pointing at journalists embedded in combat units as examples of a deficit of backbone in that industry seriously.

jacquesm 1y ago

Consider the power of this statement then: if they were ok with all of those things and now they draw a line that means that things have gotten much, much worse than they were before.

coldtea 1y ago
Or that they draw the line when it's about little hummiliations done to themselves, and not to lying and misreporting
- jacquesm 1y ago
  You see what you want to see.
roenxi 1y ago
Well... maybe. If a company brings in new anti-sexual-assault training and a bunch of people quit around the same time that doesn't necessarily suggest the problem is the outrageous training. I'd quite like to actually see what the rules are, but this is just a complex one. On the one hand, obviously the US military would probably have an easier time securing classified info if unreliable people aren't wandering through the building. On the other hand, the US people do benefit from random people wandering the building and would get more out of looser requirements on who can get in. Making it easy to keep information classified has always been a strategic error that has probably done a lot of damage to the US.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - roenxi 1y ago
    If you want me to try explaining something more clearly you should include a rough outline of what you think I said. Otherwise I've basically got nothing to do but repeat myself. Hopefully this helps. The journalists and the generals can presumably still talk to each other over drinks after work. The journalists were only ever going to be tolerated in the building because US leadership thinks they are helping them achieve military propaganda aims which are rarely noble things. There isn't much at stake here beyond classified information. US classified information has been a bit of a disaster for them. It just means the government is slowly escaping accountability for what it does. They have that massive spying program on US citizens and the last I heard of the story was they can't sue anyone over it because the courts aren't allowed to believe it exists.
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      This isn't about security at all. This is about control of the narrative. Hegseth and co would like you to believe it is about security. But there is absolutely no indication that there was an urgent issue that needs resolution.
      - roenxi 1y ago
        The reason they were in the building in the first place was to give the US government control over the narrative. We're moving from a state where the government was trying to control the narrative to the same state. That is what makes it an interestingly complex issue. We have to form an opinion on whether it is likely to be a "better" narrative with the journalists in the building or in a building a few blocks away. That isn't an obvious one and it largely hinges on what access they were getting in the building that they weren't officially supposed to have and what they then did with it.
account42 1y ago
You're making the conclusions you want to see without anything to back them up. There are countless reasons why they are acting now when they haven't before and most of them do not support what you are implying.
ordinary 1y ago
Journalists have a long and storied history of standing up for free and independent journalism, and they're right to!. However, they have a rather more spotty record (with highs and lows) of standing up for other fundamental requirements for a well-functioning liberal democracy. So one possible (admittedly uncharitable) take is that they were OK with all those other things because those things didn't hurt them, and might've helped them. They're not OK with this change not because it makes things worse, but because it makes things worse /for them/.

sillyfluke 1y ago

>They've been towing the Pentagon/S.D. line, getting privileged official "leaks", going to wars as "embedded" shills, for decades. It's difficult to see those on the same plane really. There's spineless and there's spineless. The official "leaks" as theatre as it was, occasionally functioned as soft checks and balances for revealing in-fighting amongst the different departments of goverment -- when the pentagon, white house, CIA were at odds with each other over strategy and tactics on some topic-- and often this was used as narrative fodder for both the left and right. As for the embeds, at least they saw some shit and had skin in the game by being near the action. Some of them actually died on assignment. Lıke, what the fuck are we talking about here? And when you have Israel not letting any reporters into Gaza I have little confidence Trump won't take a page out of that playbook if he gets the US in some ground conflict either. So you have administrations that allowed all that in the past, and you have this snowflake administration who's afraid of some questions being asked on a golf course in Florida.

ashanoko 1y ago
Israel allows reporters into ghaza. Hamas kills journalist not following the brotherhoods storyline all the time. Which is why many, except for quatari al jazeera djihadis refused to go. Same as with the tulkarem incident where the west bank police lynched two israelis on camera and the mob noticed the filming reporters and smashed the cameras.
- sillyfluke 1y ago
  Yeah ok, that's why foreign reporters had to shoot footage clandestinely from foreign aid airplanes: https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/stain-on-humanity-journalist-stunned-by-apocalyptic-destruction-in-gaza-after-capturing-rare-footage/ https://www.mediaite.com/media/tv/stain-on-humanity-journali...
  - ashanoko 1y ago
    Aand its repackaged al jazeera as evidence

johncolanduoni 1y ago

It's pretty hard to take someone who is pointing at journalists embedded in combat units as examples of a deficit of backbone in that industry seriously.