[HN Gopher] We Need a New Media System
___________________________________________________________________
We Need a New Media System
Author : Reedx
Score : 107 points
Date : 2021-01-11 19:55 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (taibbi.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (taibbi.substack.com)
| clint wrote:
| Matt Taibbi has never heard of public and nonprofit news?
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| nonprofit != nonpartisan
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| KQED, which is the default (to my knowledge) news/radio
| station is exactly this. Nonprofit, but definitely left
| leaning.
|
| I'd love if there was an alternative in the Bay Area,
| something truly more neutral or at least right leaning so I
| can listen to both points of view.
| jancsika wrote:
| Axois seems to do a decent job.
|
| However, if you watch their interviews, for example, you quickly
| realize the problem isn't maintaining veracity as a fair source
| of news. The problem is if the reporters remain intrepid (as they
| currently seem to be), the people they interview-- like Ted
| Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses. I'm honestly
| surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent figures.
|
| That, to me, is the bigger problem. There are plenty of partisan
| pundits who feel comfortable appearing on the "other" cable news
| to play the wrestling villain. Nearly none of them will ever
| appear on Democracy Now, for example, because Amy will:
|
| 1. not negotiate ground rules for the interview in advance
|
| 2. ask occasional follow-up questions
|
| Amy Goodman clearly sits pretty far on the left. But those two
| simple rules essentially made her as much of a nuisance to Bill
| Clinton as to George Bush. (And if you haven't heard it, go on
| youtube and watch her grill Clinton when he was attempting to
| campaign during Hilary's Senate run on Democracy Now.)
|
| And that's the bigger issue. I don't really care whether some
| pundit reinforces my worldview or not. I care whether they fold
| under pressure when an intrepid reporter reveals they don't know
| what they're talking about. The problem with MSNBC/Fox/CNN is
| they don't usually (or even consistently) apply that pressure.
| (And sometimes actively suppress it, e.g., not telling their
| audience that one of their military analysts who is arguing for
| an invasion is also a board member of a defense contractor that
| would benefit from the invasion.)
|
| Edit: clarifications
| save_ferris wrote:
| This is so true, and it doesn't get discussed enough. Folks
| like Medhi Hassan and Jonathan Swan are a completely different
| kind of journalist than most of the folks that occupy the
| airwaves, and it's really frustrating to watch the news when
| you know people like that are setting a much higher bar than
| everyone else.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| >The problem is if the reporters remain intrepid (as they
| currently seem to be), the people they interview-- like Ted
| Cruz-- end up looking like complete dumbasses. I'm honestly
| surprised they continue to get interviews with prominent
| figures.
|
| I grew up watching the BBC, and even though I emigrated from
| the UK before the famed "I ask you again minister, is that a
| yes or a no" repeats of jeremy paxman, this was something that
| always struck me about politicians on the BBC: why did they
| keep coming back?
|
| What I've realized over time was they kept coming back because
| they had to. If you were a UK politician at least well into the
| 1990s (and arguably right up to today), both the media
| infrastructure and the social culture required your appearance,
| even if you knew that David Marr or Paxman or whoever was going
| to chew you out.
|
| That's not true anymore in the USA (it may also not be true in
| the UK either). There's really no reason why anyone needs to
| appear anywhere. Get a reputation as a fiery take-no-bullshit
| interviewer, and you won't be doing any interviews.
|
| I don't think there's any way out of this now. The media
| landscape has exploded, and there's no outlet that is of enough
| importance anymore to hold people's feet to the fire.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > The media landscape has exploded, and there's no outlet
| that is of enough importance anymore to hold people's feet to
| the fire.
|
| Maybe not, but I'd still like a Fairness Doctrine -aligned
| news source such that I can do my part in rejecting dubious
| partisan citations (e.g., "I'm not going to believe your
| $partisanNewsSource article, but I might be more inclined to
| believe you you can support yourself with something on
| $aspirationallyNeutralNewsSource").
| kgog wrote:
| > I'm honestly surprised they continue to get interviews with
| prominent figures.
|
| All that matters to them is staying relevant. They don't care
| about friendly or unfriendly interviews.
|
| The figures need the media more than the media needs them.
| afavour wrote:
| > The figures need the media more than the media needs them.
|
| That's where generalizing to "the media" causes problems,
| though. They do need _some_ media to stay relevant, but can
| absolutely stay with sympathetic media outlets that will
| never challenge them. Ted Cruz need never give an interview
| to the likes of Axios for the rest of his career and he 'll
| be absolutely fine with just Fox News.
| wffurr wrote:
| " We need a new media channel, the press version of a third
| party, where those financial pressures to maintain audience are
| absent. Ideally, it would:
|
| not be aligned with either Democrats or Republicans; employ a
| Fairness Doctrine-inspired approach that discourages groupthink
| and requires at least occasional explorations of alternative
| points of view; embrace a utilitarian mission stressing
| credibility over ratings, including by; operating on a
| distribution model that as much as possible doesn't depend upon
| the indulgence of Apple, Google, and Amazon."
|
| This reads like a description of NPR to me.
| zkdbsks wrote:
| Of what NPR pretends to be. Maybe was, I don't know I only got
| to the US in '07.
|
| I remember how furious my professor was at Terry Gross for her
| (in his opinion rude) interview w/ Jimmy Carter. He otherwise
| loves Terry Gross.
|
| But he's a "liberal", so he likes NPR. NPR is pretty brutal if
| you disagree with them and are well informed about a topic.
|
| I had to stop listening to NPR years before Trump came along
| (yes, there was polarization back then) because they'd make my
| blood boil with, what I thought, has thinly veiled
| partisanship.
|
| Some of their reporting is just grossly wrong. If they report
| on anything about Christianity it's usually riddled with
| embarrassingly wrong statements.
|
| And then there's three editorial discussions. I'm an immigrant,
| and I'm embarrassed with NPRs obsessions with telling me how
| other people outside the US live. A little bit of it is very
| important, but after listening to NPR for about ten years I've
| learned nothing about the famous "meat and potatoe" Americans.
| My dad, who traveled to the Midwest for work for a couple
| decades taught me more about "fly-over" Americans.
| jeffbee wrote:
| That's the joke. We already have fact-focused, by-the-book
| journalism outfits that bend over backwards to present all
| reasonable sides of debate. These are always characterized as
| communist propaganda outlets by Trump's allies.
| kodah wrote:
| Sure, NPR and Axios exist. I think where Matt is wrong is
| that Fox, Salon, MSNBC and all the like need to be gone for a
| while. Their impacts will always overwrite whatever great
| accomplishments in truth and lack of narrative the other
| outfits work to establish because they're just another option
| to the average coffee pounding conservative or liberal
| looking to get their ideological rocks off on their break or
| in the car.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Not NPR. Not even close.
|
| We need dispassionate reporting of apparent facts, emphasis on
| equal time for both side of every issue/report, and zero
| editorializing by commission or omission.
|
| This is a pipedream sadly.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| No way. NPR is clearly aligned with the Democrats. You have to
| live in a bubble not to see it.
| umvi wrote:
| I feel like "The New Paper"[0] fits the bill of what the author
| wants. It's neutral (i.e. unaffiliated with either party),
| operates on an email distribution model, and strives really hard
| to keep news from being sensational. It also links to primary
| sources as much as possible. For example, in today's TNP email:
|
| - Twitter permanently suspended President Trump's account, citing
| "risk of further incitement of violence" (source). Several other
| social media and technology companies (including Facebook,
| Instagram, Shopify, and Stripe) took similar measures against
| President Trump, his campaign, and related accounts and websites.
|
| That's it. The source linked is Twitter's blog. I've been using
| it for a few months now and I love it.
|
| [0] https://thenewpaper.co/
| Imnimo wrote:
| >If you work in conservative media, you probably felt tremendous
| pressure all November to stay away from information suggesting
| Trump lost the election. If you work in the other ecosystem, you
| probably feel right now that even suggesting what happened last
| Wednesday was not a coup in the literal sense of the word (e.g.
| an attempt at seizing power with an actual chance of success) not
| only wouldn't clear an editor, but might make you suspect in the
| eyes of co-workers, a potentially job-imperiling problem in this
| environment.
|
| Is this pressure coming from editors or from readers?
|
| Would an outlet that dispassionately reported the fact that Trump
| lost the election truly have been able to have been "perceived as
| neutral arbiters" by Trump supporters?
| circumvent123 wrote:
| "If you sell culture war all day, don't be surprised by the real-
| world consequences"
|
| Isn't culture war 95% of what Taibbi writes about?
|
| This isn't the worst diagnosis I've read, but I don't see him
| offering any solutions.
| flybrand wrote:
| Is he a derivative of that?
|
| He's covering - his beat is - the current media's stoking of
| culture war as a commercial reality of modern media tech.
| gfodor wrote:
| Taibbi is a reporter and a commentator, not an innovator or a
| leader. The latter two are who we are relying upon to find
| solutions. At least Taibbi is one of the few remaining
| journalists doing their job.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Who else is on your short list? I sometimes say that Ronan
| Farrow is America's last reporter, but of course there must
| be more than one.
| gfodor wrote:
| Greenwald's the only for-sure other. Yascha Mounk also
| seems to have his head screwed on straight but isn't a
| journalist per se. I was hoping Isaac Saul was another
| diamond in the rough but he ended up going off the deep
| end, as so many others have.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Both Taibbi and Greenwald have disgraced and discredited
| themselves in the Trump era by publishing a parade of
| disingenuous nonsense, carrying water for Putin and
| Trump, and slandering truth tellers.
| jessaustin wrote:
| I'd include Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton on the list.
|
| I want to say Glenn Greenwald too, especially for the stuff
| he did several years ago, but he and Taibbi are sort of
| occupying the same lane now. I hope he can escape the tomb
| that "The Intercept" became for him; he should have quit
| them much earlier.
| gfodor wrote:
| I just glanced at Ben Norton's feed which I've never read
| before, and "The world's largest systematic violator of
| human rights (by far), the US government" doesn't exactly
| leave a glaringly good first impression of dispassionate
| analysis.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| I'd say he is reporting on culture wars, not selling them.
| yborg wrote:
| It's what he writes about now, and I find his take on this
| somewhat disingenuous given that he's positioned himself as the
| "a pox on both your houses" guy and is making that his bread
| and butter. Given that, there really isn't any reason he'd want
| to solve this problem. I've followed him since the "vampire
| squid" days and enjoy his writing, but he's clearly toned down
| the gonzo style and largely dropped his coverage on the
| excesses of Wall Street, which have gotten worse if anything
| but which I guess don't get a lot of traction with most of the
| public.
|
| You have to write what sells. It's not like there weren't news
| organizations that followed the old impartial model as best
| they could, like McClatchy - who went bankrupt continuing to do
| it. The real issue is that the public wants the entertainment
| of blood sport in every venue, from e-celeb beefs to politics
| and because the barriers to entry are so low now, if you don't
| hot-take it, the next Youtuber will.
| rcurry wrote:
| From what I've read of Taibbi's work he's the last guy
| interested in stoking any kind of culture war - but he does a
| very good job of both analyzing how it's been developing and
| predicting how the end game will work out.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| To a certain extent he owns that at the end; even saying that
| substack _cannot_ solve this problem.
| save_ferris wrote:
| Nonprofit news organizations are a thing and I've been incredibly
| positive about their future (full disclosure: I used to work for
| a nonprofit publication).
|
| The nonprofit model encourages much more direct community
| engagement through conferences, festivals, and long-form
| interviews with local, state and national leaders.
|
| A major hurdle that nonprofit and higher-quality news outlets
| face is that the major media players have dopamine-driven news
| down to a science, and it's a lot easier to consume a small and
| practically meaningless soundbyte than it is to sit and listen to
| a politician have a challenging discussion with an interviewer
| for an hour. The attention span of the average American isn't
| equipped for higher-level discourse as it's not nearly as
| exciting and rage-inducing as watching CNN/FOX/ABC/??? network.
| jeffbee wrote:
| My town is blessed with an excellent nonprofit news
| organization: Berkeleyside and its spin-off, Oaklandside.
| Together they publish 1-2 articles each day, because that's how
| much news there is. There's really no reason to have the local
| dailies like the SF Chronicle, the only major-city newspaper to
| my knowledge to have been openly mocked in a famous movie, or
| the SJ Mercury News and the other papers of the Bay Area News
| Group, a Denver company that hasn't printed anything worth
| reading in the past decade.
| Meekro wrote:
| The most popular podcaster right now is Joe Rogan, who does 2-3
| hour interviews. Doesn't the popularity of his content suggest
| that Americans are very interested in higher level discourse,
| but have long been denied it?
| save_ferris wrote:
| > Doesn't the popularity of his content suggest that
| Americans are very interested in higher level discourse, but
| have long been denied it?
|
| This is probably true to degree, although Rogan specifically
| is a pretty polarizing example due to his proclivity for
| hosting guests that aren't always welcome elsewhere. It's
| hard to say how much of his popularity is due to his
| interview style versus his politics. I also expect that the
| demographic breakdown of podcast listeners aren't reflective
| of the country as a whole, it probably skews a bit younger.
|
| Long-form interviews with political leaders aren't a new
| genre, I suspect they just don't get as much attention as the
| more soundbite-y forms of news, but I could be wrong.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Boring-ass long-form interviews with nonagenarians like
| Charlie Rose or the 60 Minutes gang don't get much
| attention because they are without substance. Rogan isn't
| necessarily trying to embarrass his guests, but neither is
| he desperate to support the status quo. So, occasionally,
| something true gets said. Like, once an hour. Still better
| than the nonagenarians.
| trentnix wrote:
| _What Rolling Stone did in giving a political reporter the
| freedom to write about the banalities of the system was
| revolutionary at the time. They also allowed their writer to be a
| sides-taker and a rooter, which seemed natural and appropriate
| because biases end up in media anyway. They were just hidden in
| the traditional dull "objective" format._
|
| I think Taibbi, whom I'm not generally a fan but do believe
| strives to be intellectually honest, makes a really unfortunate
| statement here. First, Rolling Stone would have only allowed your
| opinionated voice as long as it was generally an opinion the
| editors shared. Second, the idea that you did it _the right way_
| but the current breed is nothing but shallow polemics is
| tremendously arrogant. Third, "taking sides" means you are no
| longer a reliable reporter, as you unavoidably feel compelled to
| report things that justify the side you've selected.
|
| Really, Matt and others who took off their masks of objectivity
| during the Bush presidency (Dan Rather, Helen Thomas, Bill
| O'Reilly to name a few) were the ones that opened the gates to
| the journalists of today that wear their bias and ignorance on
| their sleeve. "They literally know nothing", as Ben Rhodes
| famously said. And their "reporting" proved it.
|
| That said, I lament the same things in the article that Taibbi
| laments. The fear merchants selling wall-to-wall panic porn (from
| the Russians are coming! to Birtherism to whatever the lie du
| jour happens to be) have significantly damaged American culture
| and American politics. And all for clicks and eyeballs! But
| Taibbi, despite his attempts to distance himself, deserves a
| measure of blame for leading the way.
|
| I don't doubt that journalism hasn't always had some measure of
| bias, but their was an incentive to make sure the bias wasn't
| overt. Because overt bias would have been considered unethical. I
| don't think we are better for it now the pretense of objectivity
| is gone.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| "The flaw in the system is that even the biggest news companies
| now operate under the assumption that at least half their
| potential audience isn't listening. This leads to all sorts of
| problems, and the fact that the easiest way to keep your own
| demographic is to feed it negative stories about others is only
| the most obvious."
|
| After Trump won, story after story, show after show in the MSM
| and beyond was about reaching out and talking to the Trump
| voters. Famously left-wing people went out to speak with Trump
| voters to get to know them, to understand why they voted, and
| made sure to humanize them. They went out of their way to not be
| negative. This went on for a long time.
|
| This was on CNN, NYTimes, Washington Post, and other MSM outlets.
|
| The flaw in this article is reading only the negative headlines,
| and ignoring all the reporting that is done.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| They did. They really did (at least, some of them). And their
| outlets ran stories that were 95% negative about Trump
| _anyway_. They tried to "listen", to "understand", but they
| never listened enough to understand.
| majormajor wrote:
| Seems like Trump played really well into the victim complex
| then - if you throw yourself behind a mostly-bad hollow
| asshole, and people point out "wow this person is bad", you
| can dismiss the substance of the complaints and just use it
| as reinforcing evidence that you're being victimised.
|
| What happened to the days when these party leaders were
| decrying relativism?
| BikiniPrince wrote:
| For a long time I tried to understand why news
| organizations said he violated the law and did terrible
| things. No organization provided facts. It's no surprise
| that I couldn't find actual factual data to back up their
| statements. The thing in me that hungers for data and not
| allegations forced me to dig.
|
| I never found anything.
|
| I've concluded that people mask their feelings with
| ambiguity. It's really just a matter I don't agree with
| their policies, but can't be enough of an adult to say so.
|
| It took a few years before I decided to dig in. Now, I am
| surprised at the number of people who either lie or have
| been mislead.
|
| Media manipulation is real.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| One of the problems with your quest is that "violating
| the law and doing terrible things" are, despite
| everyone's best intentions, matters of judgement.
|
| Let's take a trivial example: the emoluments clause of
| the Constitution. Did Trump violate this or not? If
| you're looking for a simple factual answer, you cannot
| get one, because this is a legal question, and will only
| ever (if ever) decided by an actual court case. There are
| arguments that he did, based on some data, and there are
| arguments that he didn't, based on beliefs that the data
| isn't relevant. Only an actual court case will ever come
| to a conclusion (and even that will be disputed by many).
|
| There's a tendency for some of us (I include myself in
| this) to want the world to offer clear, black-or-white,
| yes-or-no, true-or-false answers to things. But the world
| doesn't offer this most of the time, certainly not in the
| realm of human affairs. There are no hall monitors or
| gods sitting on thrones to decide if Trump did or did not
| break the law or do terrible things. Only other human
| beings, whose opinions, clearly, diverge.
| afavour wrote:
| I don't understand. These outlets were obliged to publish
| positive stories about Trump because they interviewed people
| who liked him? Wouldn't it be important to counterbalance
| anecdotal interviews with people you met on the street?
| incrudible wrote:
| > After Trump won, story after story, show after show in the
| MSM and beyond was about reaching out and talking to the Trump
| voters. Famously left-wing people went out to speak with Trump
| voters to get to know them, to understand why they voted, and
| made sure to humanize them. They went out of their way to not
| be negative. This went on for a long time.
|
| If that is true - and I don't remember it that way at all - it
| clearly doesn't make a difference now.
|
| > The flaw in this article is reading only the negative
| headlines, and ignoring all the reporting that is done.
|
| That's how news is consumed though, so what little reporting
| and journalism actually occurs _can_ safely be ignored for the
| sake of his argument.
| jeffbee wrote:
| You don't remember it that way? Every national paper and
| magazine tied itself in knots to explain Trump as the result
| of economic anxiety among misunderstood white people who
| don't have a racist bone in their bodies, they just fly that
| confederate flag from their front porch for non-racism
| reasons.
|
| https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/04/race-
| ris...
|
| Here is a fair summary of the "real americans in diners"
| genre of post-Trump jounalism.
|
| https://thecounter.org/trump-rust-belt-diner-presidential-
| ra...
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| I've been working on this idea of a news site that presents the
| events of the world in two columns. In the first column is a dry,
| wikipedia like list of events and facts, with references to how
| those facts were established, or who testified to the fact. (with
| lots of links thorough to related events)
|
| Then in the second column is the commentary. Its where
| "journalists" and the community discuss the event.
|
| A clear separation of "reality" and our interpretation of that
| reality.
| guscost wrote:
| In a fast-moving globally-connected world, even the choice of
| facts to present is an editorial decision, and subject to bias.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| That's where the commentary comes in, if a reader feels
| something important is missing, we'll have some mechanism for
| that to be verified and added.
| afavour wrote:
| How do you order the column with dry information in it? How do
| you choose what gets included in that column and what doesn't?
| Where is the information for that column even coming from, are
| all sources of info equally trustworthy?
|
| It's going to need editing no matter what, and any process of
| editing introduces bias.
| trident5000 wrote:
| This is just like the "fact checkers" that didnt last long.
| amoorthy wrote:
| Every few weeks this issue comes on HN. It's hard not to mention
| my startup, The Factual, which is proving that people will pay a
| modest amount for ad-free, unbiased news on trending topics. I
| suspect this will get downvoted but I don't know how not to
| scream "we have a solution" to a problem so many have. So as not
| to be entirely biased let me mention other good offerings: The
| New Paper, Knowhere News.
|
| Of course, our solution is not for everyone. If you have a well-
| tuned Twitter feed, or have figured out forums like HN/Reddit
| where you get news and commentary you trust, then we may not be
| as useful for you. But for the vast majority that just want the
| facts on topics of importance our daily newsletter is an easy way
| to stay informed and then get on with life. And we've priced it
| to be affordable for everyone so that factual news is not just
| for the rich.
| umvi wrote:
| Yes, I can vouch for this model. I currently use The New Paper,
| but I will probably try other similar services (like yours)
| just to see which if I like any of the competition better.
| zarkov99 wrote:
| I agree whole heartily, but I think we should go bigger. I think
| we should create a fourth branch of government, call it the
| Informational, whose job is to independently educate and inform
| citizens of matters relevant to their citizenship. This could be
| modeled after the supreme court, that is life-term (or reasonably
| long) nominations with a public vetting process.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I'm wondering if there is any way for a "trusted to be mostly
| neutral" news organization to come about. Let's pretend we have a
| nascent neutral organization X:
|
| Action: X publishes something properly critical of the
| right/left.
|
| Reaction: The extreme right/left media throws all sorts of
| criticisms of X's reporting and sees what sticks.
|
| Result: Some fraction of the right/left constituency starts to
| believe (and voice) that X is biased.
|
| Action: X publishes something wrongly (or at least with more bias
| than expected) of the right/left
|
| Reaction: All right/left media publishes articles lambasting X's
| coverage of the item in question.
|
| Result: A fraction of the more moderate right/left constituency
| starts to think "maybe my extreme friend was right about X"
|
| Cycle through the above a few times, and even though the majority
| of the country may trust X, most of _that_ majority will be among
| the least politically engaged (because partisanship and political
| engagement are correlated), so you are left without much of an
| audience that cares about what you are reporting.
| simias wrote:
| Neutrality is implausible. What matters is honesty. Sometimes I
| will find a political article written by somebody whose views I
| disagree with but the author attempts to be thorough, doesn't
| reason backward from their conclusion and tries to account for
| their own biases and limitations. It's frankly heart warming
| what that happens.
|
| Most of the news that seems to gain popularity on social
| networks is not that though. It's not really news, it's
| pandering and it's reinforced by the echo-chamber nature of
| said social networks.
|
| I'm lucky enough to be able to read several languages and I
| found that the best way to find consistently decent news
| coverage is simply to look for it on the outside. See how the
| Russians or Brasilians report the Capitol riots. See what the
| Ukrainians have to say about the British elections. Of course
| these news outlets are not without their own biases, but at
| least they tend to be less emotionally involved and don't have
| a horse in the race, which in my experience leads to more
| factual reports.
|
| For instance while most European news outlets will lean anti-
| Trump, they are unlikely to consciously or unconsciously
| silence or downplay pro-Trump or anti-Democratic news simply
| because they don't really have any direct influence on American
| politics. Meanwhile a journalist at CNN or Fox News is in a
| different position, because their reporting will be de-facto
| politicized and could have direct consequences one way or an
| other.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| The thing is, if you don't write the piece as critical, if you
| write it neutral, some people will see it as positive, and some
| negative.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Neutrality is not a realistic goal. In fact, the idea that
| neutrality is the goal has just resulted in more shrill
| commentary as each side claims their position is more neutral
| (i.e more truthful).
|
| Humans aren't neutral. The way we interpret events isn't
| neutral. It is difficult to be brief or put this down to any
| one event/cause but, ultimately, media is just a reflection of
| what people want.
|
| Weakening bonds between people in society, an education system
| that teach facts over nuance (kind of interesting given that
| lawyers are so dominant), low levels of respect for other
| people, etc.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > a "trusted to be mostly neutral" news organization
|
| Until there's a definition of 'neutral' that everyone agrees
| with, that won't work. It's impossible to avoid making
| important editorial judgements unless you're going to literally
| report all information being generated. News organizations are
| not a substitute for doing research on the things that matter
| to you.
| metabagel wrote:
| "If you work in the other ecosystem, you probably feel right now
| that even suggesting what happened last Wednesday was not a coup
| in the literal sense of the word (e.g. an attempt at seizing
| power with an actual chance of success) not only wouldn't clear
| an editor, but might make you suspect in the eyes of co-workers,
| a potentially job-imperiling problem in this environment."
|
| This is pedantic and downplays what occurred.
| gfodor wrote:
| Congratulations on your successful fishing expedition.
| metabagel wrote:
| That isn't a substantive reply to my comment.
|
| Taibbi frequently argues that "both sides" are equally
| culpable. "Both sides do it" is a lazy argument which fails
| to make reasonable distinctions between two very different
| groups of people.
|
| In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal
| leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as
| those on the right, because they (according to him) feel
| pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more
| accurate term "insurrection".
|
| We can do without this sort of pedantry. It's not
| sensationalizing the situation to call it an "attempted
| coup". It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the
| most accurate description.
|
| A bunch of thugs armed with blunt weapons, firearms, and zip
| ties for securing hostages broke into the capitol building
| with the stated intent of preventing the peaceful transition
| of power. Let's not downplay it simply because they were
| unsuccessful. Let's not be coy with word games.
| gfodor wrote:
| > In this case, his both-siderist argument is that liberal
| leaning journalists and commentators are just as guilty as
| those on the right, because they (according to him) feel
| pressured to use the word "coup" rather than the more
| accurate term "insurrection".
|
| This is a beautifully constructed strawman argument.
| Taibbi's claim is there a unified underlying incentive
| structure that has manifested in emergent behavior across
| all of the media. Your mental model about tribes is purely
| incidental: it is tribeless, so the idea of "sides" even
| coming into it is your own construction. The reason Taibbi
| uses the tribalist framing to articulate arguments is
| because it helps readers understand the alternative sub-
| incentives that lead to different emergent phenomena
| grounded in the same root incentives.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > It's very near to what happened, even if it's not the
| most accurate description.
|
| Does anyone have an obligation to use "the most accurate
| description", and if so, when?
|
| I'm not antagonistic to your POV, but I'm troubled by the
| sloppy language and lack of accurate descriptions. I am not
| sure how to reconcile my desire to avoid "coyness with word
| games" and my sense that accurate descriptions are really
| important.
| jessaustin wrote:
| It is troubling that Trump disputes the recent election. It
| was also troubling when Democrats an news media firms
| disputed the previous election, but more so because that
| went on at least until Mueller embarrassed himself during
| Congressional testimony. At least in this sense, "both
| sides" is just the truth.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It was also troubling when Democrats and news media
| firms disputed the previous election
|
| No substantial fraction of Democrats or the mainstream
| news media argued that the result that was certified and
| carried into execution of the 2016 election was not the
| proper, lawful result of the election.
|
| There was an argument that the successful campaign had
| committed illegal actions in an attempt to manipulate the
| public in regard to that election, and that those actions
| had some effect. And there was an argument that that
| conduct rendered the successful candidate _unfit_ for
| office. But there was no substantial segment of the
| Democratic Party (especially no substantial segment of
| the Democratic Party elites like members in government or
| the defeated candidate) that argued that that misconduct
| rendered the election result invalid, and there was no
| armed attempt egged on by Democratic elites by supporters
| of the Democratic candidate to obstruct the electoral
| vote or the transfer of power to the elected Republican.
| gfodor wrote:
| The fact that this is where the argument has gone is
| revealing. The claims in 2016 was that it was stolen by a
| foreign adversary's interference. The claim in 2020 is
| that it was stolen by on-the-ground cheating, people
| exploiting mail-in ballots, and, on the craziest track, a
| foreign government manipulating our election machines.
|
| In both cases, voters on the ground felt that their
| ability to respect election results was diluted.
| Democrats felt that the Russian government tipped the
| scales. Republicans now feel that Democrat bad actors
| tipped the scales. The semantics you state here are far
| afield from the thing that matters: distrust in elections
| as a pure expression of the will of the people and our
| government and media's inability to unwind that distrust.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Basically a bunch of beer belly rednecks who broke into a
| building after a protest/rally was over, yelled, and left in 6
| hours with no plan whatsoever. Id hardly call that much of a
| planned out effort to overthrow a country.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| They did some photo-ops, knocked over some furniture, stole
| AOC's shoe collection, and took pelosi's lectern as a war
| trophy. It was a ruthless attack on our democracy.
| metabagel wrote:
| You're leaving out that they murdered a capitol police
| officer. People who were in the building have said they
| feared for their lives.
|
| Again, let's not downplay the seriousness of what happened.
| Acrobatic_Road wrote:
| I'm sure most of those people had weapons back at home.
| If they actually wanted to stage a coup, I'm pretty more
| than one police officer would have died.
|
| >Again, let's not downplay the seriousness of what
| happened.
|
| Let's not overplay it either.
| trident5000 wrote:
| K well the summer riots caused 20 billion in damage and
| destroyed peoples livelihoods and we didnt hear of a coup
| when the fringe stormed the white house. The hyperbole
| seems to go one way.
| metabagel wrote:
| All they had to do was kill a single Democratic Senator in
| order to shift the balance of power in Congress. They did
| bludgeon to death a capitol police officer.
|
| We're very fortunate that no member of Congress was taken
| hostage or killed.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Thats not even factually accurate he would be replaced by
| another dem. It would not shift the balance of power.
| WaltPurvis wrote:
| No. Your attempted correction is factually inaccurate. In
| most states, the governor appoints a replacement when
| there's an unexpected Senate vacancy, and in only six of
| those states is the governor required fill the vacancy
| with someone of the same political party as the prior
| senator. In the other states, governors can and do
| appoint someone from their own party, so a Democratic
| senator from most states with a Republican governor would
| be replaced by a Republican. That's the case in Georgia,
| Ohio, New Hampshire, etc.
|
| It's a real concern; given the current atmosphere and the
| 50-50 Senate split, it would not surprise me at all to
| see someone murder a senator in order to tip the balance
| of control.
| afavour wrote:
| Again, you're wrong. Take the example of Sherrod Brown,
| senator from Ohio. If he leaves office or dies a
| Republican governor would pick his replacement. They are
| in no way obliged to pick a Democrat.
| trident5000 wrote:
| What would have happened if they killed the president and
| VP when they stormed the white house? Nancy Pelosi is 3rd
| in line right?
| afavour wrote:
| I don't understand the line of questioning. The President
| wasn't there and they were acting specifically on his
| behalf, why would they kill him?
| afavour wrote:
| Thank you for a very clear example of the exact downplaying
| that's been discussed.
|
| > Basically a bunch of beer belly rednecks
|
| False. Was a huge mix of people, including very well off
| folks, off duty police officers and former military. Flying
| to DC on a week day is not exactly a working class pursuit.
|
| > broke into a building after a protest/rally was over,
| yelled
|
| Amongst other things they were yelling that they wanted to
| kill the Vice President. Five people died. You can claim
| their shouts to kill the VP were bluster if you'd like, but
| personally I'm in no doubt that things could have gone south
| very, very quickly if they'd found Pence, Pelosi or anyone
| else. Just watching the video footage of the violence is
| enough of a hint of that.
|
| > with no plan whatsoever
|
| To an extent I agree with you here. It was a mess of anger
| and resentment, not a convert military operation. But there
| were also pipebombs, and the current theory is that they were
| going to be used to distract Capitol police. People arrived
| with plastic zip ties to be used as hand cuffs. It doesn't
| require the whole mob to be organized, it just needs a small
| group within that mob.
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