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This isn't great reporting. It's politics.
by loeg 5mo ago
This isn't great reporting. It's politics.
- Analemma_ 5mo agoCompletely content-free junk statement. The post is purportedly about correcting bad information about a person who held public office, and (if it is in fact misinformation) was spread for political reasons. How are you supposed to do such a correction without it being political?
- vrganj 5mo agoEverything is politics. Which food you eat (are you vegan? carnivore diet? Both have implications in regards to animal welfare, climate change, soil use, identity etc etc), which media you consume (obvious), which job you have (which power structures do you strengthen with it? who benefits from your labor? who do you try to disrupt?). To say one is "apolitical" is just voicing a preference for the status quo. To decry something as political is just voicing one's political opposition to the view expressed.
- rationalist 5mo agoMaybe I just want to eat what tastes good, and not have to worry about how what I chose on the menu is going to support a politician, political party, businessperson, etc. The "everything is politics" meme is old and annoying.
- vrganj 5mo agoSure, you can. But don't pretend that's not a political choice.
- irishcoffee 5mo ago[flagged]
- pixl97 5mo agoYou're almost there and then you give up on original thought at the last minute. >“Care because I think you should!” Welcome to politics. Not only do I demand that you care because I think you should, but I will smash you with the full force of the law if you don't. Now, if you decide to do nothing, well, you're getting your ass smashed by the full force of the law and whining like a little bitch saying "I'm not political, why did this happen to me". "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice". And "There are no neutrals in the reality, entropy forbids it".
- vrganj 5mo agoYou seem to have fundamentally misunderstood my point. I never said “If you don’t participate in politics you’re evil”. My point is that there is no not participating in politics. The lack of participation is a political choice in itself.
- samtp 5mo ago“If you don’t participate in politics you’re evil” is an argument that you completely made up. You don't like to be called selfish for not considering how your actions might affect others, but others are supposed to care about how their actions might affect you? Seems like a pretty self centered attitude to have.
- rationalist 5mo ago> “If you don’t participate in politics you’re evil” is an argument that you completely made up. Incorrect. People were saying if you don't vote at all, you're supporting Trump.
- samtp 5mo agoOnce again, I have no idea what you're responding to, but it's not arguments that people are actually making in this thread. It creates a much better discussion if you respond to what people write rather than what you may have heard other random people say anytime over the last few years.
- samtp 5mo agoJust because you choose to ignore the externalities of your choices doesn't mean they no longer exist. It just means that you value your personal well being and comfort more than being informed about the results of your actions.
- nielsbot 5mo agoAnd have the luxury of being able to ignore them. That is a luxury.
- rationalist 5mo agoI never said anything about ignoring the externalities. I also never said that I was ignorant to the results of my actions. It's just not political for me. I guess I'm not surprised that this cognitive trap about politics has spread - after all, people care more about deploying any tools they can to "win", rather than being correct.
- samtp 5mo agoIt's pretty clear your definition of politics is a lot more narrow than what almost everyone else is talking about in this thread. And I know that you never said anything about ignoring the externalities, that's what I'm saying about you.
- JuniperMesos 5mo agoIt's a poltical act to eat food that tastes good, in defiance of the activists who think that the food yiu find tasty is immoral and want to make it illegal for you to do so. Something is a poltical act if other people want you not to do it and want to enforce this through law, which you have no control over.
- energy123 5mo agoThat's a pretty depressing worldview. Children playing in the park aren't being political. It's possible to just exist sometimes.
- maxlamb 5mo agoBut that park was probably created as a result of a vote or other political process.
- deleted 5mo ago[deleted]
- pixl97 5mo ago>Children playing in the park aren't being political I can assure you they absolutely are. Of course there isn't a well defined elected government here, but 'social politics' between children are absolutely occurring. Things like looks, material goods, clothes, ability to take care of themselves, etc all affect how they interact with each other and who is popular and gets to take the lead/be bullies/etc. HN posters can be really clueless to the world around them at times.
- alxjrvs 5mo agoWe don't even have to zoom in, to be honest. What children? What park? The presence of a park pre-supposes a political society that has prioritized parks, the budget to enact those priorities, and the space to do so. Any one of those can spiral into its own political microcosm. How is that park maintained? Is there a special kids area of the park? Is it "for kids" or is it "The kids area", implying that kids aren't allowed in the rest of the park? Are the children not allowed in the park after a certain time - and who decides that time, and why? Sometimes the park is used for town events, but can get rented out. Who decides that? Complexity is inherent, from the atoms to the galaxies. Any rejection of that is just plugging your ears, willfully or not.
- brendoelfrendo 5mo agoThe children playing in a park aren't being political, and are largely insulated from the politics of playing in a park... but those circumstances are surrounded by all kinds of political process. As another commenter said, the park's existence is probably due to politics; as are the rules the children need to follow, what activities are permitted, the safety and maintenance of park equipment and facilities, curfews, etc. It is also a choice on the part of the parents to let their kids play in a park, and which parks their kids play in, and those choices aren't made in a vacuum. Perhaps the perspective of the adult should not be to view children in the park as apolitical, but to be cognizant of the processes that influence their children and try to ensure that they work for the children's benefit.
- tptacek 5mo agoKind of a category error to suggest there's a stark difference. Over the last 100 years, enormous amounts of excellent journalism has been informed by political objectives on the part of reporters.
- jeremyw 5mo agoYikes. Vastly outweighed by the ruination of journalism by politics.
- tptacek 5mo agoThere's abusive intersections of politics and journalism just like there are abusive intersections of all sorts of other things and journalism. The idea of a truly neutral reporter though is a fiction.
- Schiendelman 5mo agoJournalism is politics. Choosing to daylight information about government is a political choice, regardless of which information you're daylighting. Often, there is a political party (or multiple political parties) trying to avoid daylighting that information. That's also a political choice. The existence of the fourth estate is the existence of a political actor in tension with the others.
- kasey_junk 5mo agoIt’s weirder than that. Even the idea of an apolitical journalism is ahistorical. Apolitical journalism started with the telegram wire services as a _marketing_ approach, not a moral one. It allowed them to sell to more local papers which were all politically aligned. You can see that in some of the surviving names. But local reporting stayed political in those individual papers the whole time. We have like a whole chapter in basic us history classes on the political implications of the Spanish American war journalism empires. Apolitical tv was similarly a market condition. The airwaves were limited, so the content was controlled. That was apolitical in that it tried to appease both parties, but you wouldn’t see any topical coverage on political issues they both opposed. So when people talk about politics entering journalism they are telling on themselves. They prefer a very narrow set of journalism that wasn’t ever some universal norm, and was itself political.