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I support the Reddit moderators. There is no censorship going on, and the idea of unbiased journalism is becoming something we don't even respect any more (to

I support the Reddit moderators. There is no censorship going on, and the idea of unbiased journalism is becoming something we don't even respect any more (to say nothing of how hard it is to achieve, but we don't even seem to agree it's a laudable goal any more). Read the article, a non-analysis based piece on the same subject made the front page and was not removed. Reddit has other subreddits for analysis pieces, that why there are subreddits. /r/news just got a new reader.

selmnoo 13y ago
It's not really as simple as that. If you say GG is partaking in biased journalism, who's to say whether the silence and hesitance of established news organizations (to not be as aggressively iniquisitive as GG has always been) is pro-gov bias or not? You should read Bill Keller's conversation with Greenwald here on the objectivity/partiality of news: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-... It's a little long, but it's a very, very important conversation, everyone should read it really.
- higherpurpose 13y ago
  Agreed. I'm not liking this latest trend of saying journalists that attack the government are "biased", especially when they have strong facts to support their reasoning, and it's not just the daily senseless Obama-bashing we see on TV. I think there's a pretty big difference between these two. I really don't want this to just "fade in the background" like it happened the last time around with the NSA: http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/ http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-...
  - walshemj 13y ago
    No journalist is unbiased
    - selectodude 13y ago
      Any journalist that claims to be unbiased (I'm looking at you, Bill O'Reilly) is someone who you should never be listening to. It's all about accepting your biases and making them very clear, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. Disclaimer: this requires critical thought, which seems to have fallen out of favor these days.
      - walshemj 13y ago
        Quite unfortunately in the US Watergate seems to have elevated Hacks to some sort of sainted status who poop rainbows. When in the rest of the world they are regarded as at best a necessary evil or lower than estate agents and politicians in the trust states in the case of tabloid journalists.
- username223 13y ago
  > It's a little long, It's Greenwald -- what else would you expect? He is sometimes insightful, but always long-winded, hyperbolic, and shrill, which is why I don't usually bother to read him. It saves me time and head-desks to follow the Snowden thing through more mainstream sources.
  - Bud 13y ago
    Wow, tough crowd. No credit to Greenwald for actually breaking this story? I understand your impatience with Greenwald's prose style and all, but aren't you moving yourself another layer of filtering away from the real story if you won't read Greenwald at all? Don't know about you, but I'm trusting that filtering quality less and less, so even if I think Greenwald is being hyperbolic sometimes, I'm still going to read him on anything relevant to Snowden.
- jasallen 13y ago
  Who the hell said 'biased journalism'? It was an analysis piece. Plain and simple.
asgard1024 13y ago
The problem is that "objectivity" is often used as a way to frame the debate. I think you should listen to some Chomsky. He has a lot of examples of this happening.
- cryoshon 13y ago
  It's just as bad as "seriousness" in terms of moving the window of debate away from unwanted opinions. Before this latest leak, there was no way that you could suggest that the government was trying to influence conversations online or spying on activist groups-- you'd be decried as a conspiracy theorist aka "not serious" aka "don't listen to this crazy person". It's disturbing that people don't understand that the frame of discussion dictates the terms of the discussion.
nobbyclark 13y ago
Is unbiased journalism what /r/news and /r/worldnews readers actually want? Or are they looking for a channel where alternative - to mainstream press outlets - points of view can be seen and discussed? Judging by the reaction to the deletion of GGs stories, a significant minority or even a majority want the latter. So the real question is does the public get what the public wants?
- untog 13y ago
  So the real question is does the public get what the public wants? Well, not really. Not when creating a new subreddit is free and easy to do. If a significant minority of a subreddit audience dislikes a decision they can easily set up their own community.
  - revscat 13y ago
    But does nothing to address the original dishonesty on the part of the moderators. Your line of reasoning is similar to the jingoistic "USA! Love it or leave it!" style reasoning. Rather than abandonment, another remedy is to actually fix the problem, namely Reddit's moderation system. And of course abolish the NSA.
    - untog 13y ago
      Your line of reasoning is similar to the jingoistic "USA! Love it or leave it!" style reasoning. It really isn't. "USA, love it or leave it" it useless at best because people very rarely have the ability to just up and leave their home country, let alone deal with the employment and family repercussions of doing so. In short: it isn't a reasonable expectation. To refer back to the post I replied to: Is unbiased journalism what /r/news and /r/worldnews readers actually want? I don't know. But the point is this: /r/news has rules. I don't see how the mods are being dishonest - the rules are stated quite clearly. If a significant minority disagree with those rules, starting a new subreddit is incredibly simple and has no repercussions beyond people adding another subreddit to their subscribed list.
  - sitkack 13y ago
mcphilip 13y ago
Having obsessively read the news 1+ hours a day since the financial crisis, I'm no longer under the illusion that there is much unbiased news in the first place. Even a non-analysis piece listing just the facts can still be biased by virtue of the facts that are left out. I always assume that news pieces are sketches of the truth and that it takes discipline and effort to educate oneself about what's really going on -- and often times it's simply not possible. You can't rely on a single source, you have to be willing to take the analysis along with the fact lists if your goal is to try and piece together a big picture. Perfect example is the news from Syria. I can't tell you how many articles and longform pieces I've read on the situation and still can't even pretend that I've achieved some true awareness of what's really going on, though I can recite facts and figures that make me look more well read than the average person.
comice 13y ago
the ideal of unbiased journalism is a myth. It does not exist. Whenever it's claimed to be a goal it's either made from ignorance or as a way to mislead.
- RankingMember 13y ago
  100% agree. The moment an idea is taken into someone's brain it is translated and distorted by their unique perspective. That said, I feel like there's a certain point at which the interpretation goes from being unconsciously-manipulated to consciously-manipulated. For example, Roger Ailes presenting a narrative on a daily basis for Fox News personalities to play to is obviously a conscious manipulation. Someday, there'll be a way some kind of biometric way to authenticate a put-forth idea as your brain's best attempt at neutral translation of an event (sort of like verifying a message is from you with PGP), but until then we'll have to rely on people being dumb and obvious in their manipulations a la Fox News.
  - comice 13y ago
    The unconscious (often institutionalized) manipulation is the most "effective" anyway. See Manufacturing Consent for a good explanation of this if you're not familiar. Even if we could produce a neutral translation of an event, biases still come into play though the selection of which events to cover and which to pass over.
SeanDav 13y ago
Of course there is censorship going on - it is clear that not everything that someone thinks is news can be posted. That is not necessarily a bad thing in principle. In reality it is a very slippery slope and has to be closely monitored, especially in the case of articles commenting on manipulation of the news!
forgottenpass 13y ago
the idea of unbiased journalism is becoming something we don't even respect any more The problem isn't (entirely) biased news. It's that society's current relationship with it is unhealthy. These subreddits just bury stories without helping their readers understand how to identify and digest bad news sources/articles/etc... It only perpetuates the false notion that unbiased news can exist, and that unbiased is generally regarded as "doesn't rock the boat," regardless of what bias actually goes into the reporting. (If "unbiased" reporting could exist, it wouldn't have to walk back any meaningful points made just to teeter in the middle of the national political spectrum...) I read a column a while back that really helped me to process news, "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism" by Matt Taibbi [0]. Funny enough, digging that link up it also turns out to be a reaction to a reaction to Greenwald. You can still get information out of biased sources. I'd expect Fox News to be banned outright on that subreddit, but if they managed to get a scoop on (for example) the Chris Christy trainwreck I'd still want to read that. I wouldn't, and shouldn't, need CNN to synthesize another reporter's reporting for me, I need their reporting for further developments and to help me synthesize and contextualize Fox's reporting en masse. [0] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-all-journalism-is-advocacy-journalism-20130627 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-...
darkarmani 13y ago
> I support the Reddit moderators. There is no censorship going on How exactly do you define censorship? I'm not saying censorship is a bad thing but removing something is exactly censorship.

selmnoo 13y ago

It's not really as simple as that. If you say GG is partaking in biased journalism, who's to say whether the silence and hesitance of established news organizations (to not be as aggressively iniquisitive as GG has always been) is pro-gov bias or not? You should read Bill Keller's conversation with Greenwald here on the objectivity/partiality of news: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-lieu-of-a-column.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/28/opinion/a-conversation-in-... It's a little long, but it's a very, very important conversation, everyone should read it really.

higherpurpose 13y ago
Agreed. I'm not liking this latest trend of saying journalists that attack the government are "biased", especially when they have strong facts to support their reasoning, and it's not just the daily senseless Obama-bashing we see on TV. I think there's a pretty big difference between these two. I really don't want this to just "fade in the background" like it happened the last time around with the NSA: http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-the-nsa-is-dead-no-one-noticed-no-one-cares/ http://pando.com/2014/02/04/the-first-congressman-to-battle-...
- walshemj 13y ago
  No journalist is unbiased
  - selectodude 13y ago
    Any journalist that claims to be unbiased (I'm looking at you, Bill O'Reilly) is someone who you should never be listening to. It's all about accepting your biases and making them very clear, allowing the reader to come to their own conclusions. Disclaimer: this requires critical thought, which seems to have fallen out of favor these days.
    - walshemj 13y ago
      Quite unfortunately in the US Watergate seems to have elevated Hacks to some sort of sainted status who poop rainbows. When in the rest of the world they are regarded as at best a necessary evil or lower than estate agents and politicians in the trust states in the case of tabloid journalists.
username223 13y ago
> It's a little long, It's Greenwald -- what else would you expect? He is sometimes insightful, but always long-winded, hyperbolic, and shrill, which is why I don't usually bother to read him. It saves me time and head-desks to follow the Snowden thing through more mainstream sources.
- Bud 13y ago
  Wow, tough crowd. No credit to Greenwald for actually breaking this story? I understand your impatience with Greenwald's prose style and all, but aren't you moving yourself another layer of filtering away from the real story if you won't read Greenwald at all? Don't know about you, but I'm trusting that filtering quality less and less, so even if I think Greenwald is being hyperbolic sometimes, I'm still going to read him on anything relevant to Snowden.
jasallen 13y ago
Who the hell said 'biased journalism'? It was an analysis piece. Plain and simple.

asgard1024 13y ago

The problem is that "objectivity" is often used as a way to frame the debate. I think you should listen to some Chomsky. He has a lot of examples of this happening.

cryoshon 13y ago
It's just as bad as "seriousness" in terms of moving the window of debate away from unwanted opinions. Before this latest leak, there was no way that you could suggest that the government was trying to influence conversations online or spying on activist groups-- you'd be decried as a conspiracy theorist aka "not serious" aka "don't listen to this crazy person". It's disturbing that people don't understand that the frame of discussion dictates the terms of the discussion.

nobbyclark 13y ago

Is unbiased journalism what /r/news and /r/worldnews readers actually want? Or are they looking for a channel where alternative - to mainstream press outlets - points of view can be seen and discussed? Judging by the reaction to the deletion of GGs stories, a significant minority or even a majority want the latter. So the real question is does the public get what the public wants?

untog 13y ago
So the real question is does the public get what the public wants? Well, not really. Not when creating a new subreddit is free and easy to do. If a significant minority of a subreddit audience dislikes a decision they can easily set up their own community.
- revscat 13y ago
  But does nothing to address the original dishonesty on the part of the moderators. Your line of reasoning is similar to the jingoistic "USA! Love it or leave it!" style reasoning. Rather than abandonment, another remedy is to actually fix the problem, namely Reddit's moderation system. And of course abolish the NSA.
  - untog 13y ago
    Your line of reasoning is similar to the jingoistic "USA! Love it or leave it!" style reasoning. It really isn't. "USA, love it or leave it" it useless at best because people very rarely have the ability to just up and leave their home country, let alone deal with the employment and family repercussions of doing so. In short: it isn't a reasonable expectation. To refer back to the post I replied to: Is unbiased journalism what /r/news and /r/worldnews readers actually want? I don't know. But the point is this: /r/news has rules. I don't see how the mods are being dishonest - the rules are stated quite clearly. If a significant minority disagree with those rules, starting a new subreddit is incredibly simple and has no repercussions beyond people adding another subreddit to their subscribed list.
- sitkack 13y ago

mcphilip 13y ago

Having obsessively read the news 1+ hours a day since the financial crisis, I'm no longer under the illusion that there is much unbiased news in the first place. Even a non-analysis piece listing just the facts can still be biased by virtue of the facts that are left out. I always assume that news pieces are sketches of the truth and that it takes discipline and effort to educate oneself about what's really going on -- and often times it's simply not possible. You can't rely on a single source, you have to be willing to take the analysis along with the fact lists if your goal is to try and piece together a big picture. Perfect example is the news from Syria. I can't tell you how many articles and longform pieces I've read on the situation and still can't even pretend that I've achieved some true awareness of what's really going on, though I can recite facts and figures that make me look more well read than the average person.

comice 13y ago

the ideal of unbiased journalism is a myth. It does not exist. Whenever it's claimed to be a goal it's either made from ignorance or as a way to mislead.

RankingMember 13y ago
100% agree. The moment an idea is taken into someone's brain it is translated and distorted by their unique perspective. That said, I feel like there's a certain point at which the interpretation goes from being unconsciously-manipulated to consciously-manipulated. For example, Roger Ailes presenting a narrative on a daily basis for Fox News personalities to play to is obviously a conscious manipulation. Someday, there'll be a way some kind of biometric way to authenticate a put-forth idea as your brain's best attempt at neutral translation of an event (sort of like verifying a message is from you with PGP), but until then we'll have to rely on people being dumb and obvious in their manipulations a la Fox News.
- comice 13y ago
  The unconscious (often institutionalized) manipulation is the most "effective" anyway. See Manufacturing Consent for a good explanation of this if you're not familiar. Even if we could produce a neutral translation of an event, biases still come into play though the selection of which events to cover and which to pass over.

SeanDav 13y ago

Of course there is censorship going on - it is clear that not everything that someone thinks is news can be posted. That is not necessarily a bad thing in principle. In reality it is a very slippery slope and has to be closely monitored, especially in the case of articles commenting on manipulation of the news!

forgottenpass 13y ago

the idea of unbiased journalism is becoming something we don't even respect any more The problem isn't (entirely) biased news. It's that society's current relationship with it is unhealthy. These subreddits just bury stories without helping their readers understand how to identify and digest bad news sources/articles/etc... It only perpetuates the false notion that unbiased news can exist, and that unbiased is generally regarded as "doesn't rock the boat," regardless of what bias actually goes into the reporting. (If "unbiased" reporting could exist, it wouldn't have to walk back any meaningful points made just to teeter in the middle of the national political spectrum...) I read a column a while back that really helped me to process news, "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism" by Matt Taibbi [0]. Funny enough, digging that link up it also turns out to be a reaction to a reaction to Greenwald. You can still get information out of biased sources. I'd expect Fox News to be banned outright on that subreddit, but if they managed to get a scoop on (for example) the Chris Christy trainwreck I'd still want to read that. I wouldn't, and shouldn't, need CNN to synthesize another reporter's reporting for me, I need their reporting for further developments and to help me synthesize and contextualize Fox's reporting en masse. [0] http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-all-journalism-is-advocacy-journalism-20130627 http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/hey-msm-...

darkarmani 13y ago

> I support the Reddit moderators. There is no censorship going on How exactly do you define censorship? I'm not saying censorship is a bad thing but removing something is exactly censorship.