[HN Gopher] A reporter's fight to expose Epstein's crimes, and e...
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A reporter's fight to expose Epstein's crimes, and earn a living
Author : dsr12
Score : 102 points
Date : 2021-07-18 16:53 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/4BSlw
| gameswithgo wrote:
| maybe this reporter at the nyt can talk to the one who doxxed a
| blogger/journalist ruining his employment
| CheezeIt wrote:
| > Berman revealed little about what went on inside his office,
| but said that his team was helped by "some excellent
| investigative journalism." He was clearly referring to Julie K.
| Brown's 2018 Miami Herald series "Perversion of Justice."
|
| Well, this is a facile lie, unsurprising from the New York Times,
| because before Brown, there was Alan Dershowitz and Mike
| Cernovich (another journalist) suing to unseal documents, and
| then Brown joined the party.
|
| But that would undermine their morality play about newspapers and
| their funding.
| fttx_ wrote:
| This seems dubious to me. Dershowitz appears to be deeply
| personally implicated in Epstein's crimes.
|
| Brown has been investigating Epstein since early 2017. I can't
| see any evidence of Cernovich being involved that early. Do you
| have any?
|
| In fact, Cernovich and Dershowitz working together and "suing
| to unseal documents" looks like it's that started in 2019, and
| while Dershowitz clearly has personal reasons for his
| involvement it looks like Cernovich's involvement is in fact
| directly in response to Brown's reporting.
| tunesmith wrote:
| It seems like there's a centralization mismatch - the revenue
| model of journalism has centralized, while regional corruption
| hasn't. So unless centralized journalism starts to demonstrate a
| real ability to quickly allocate resources to local school
| boards, city councils, etc, there's a real arbitrage opportunity
| for your garden-variety local corrupt official to get away with
| shenanigans without much of a check on their power.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| The problem here is we are being asked to "defend democracy and
| truth" by funding one or two decent journalists who will dig up
| the truth, and with one front page story solve all our problems.
|
| We are just outsourcing the hard work.
|
| Defending truth and justice (whatever that means) is something we
| pay a fortune for in our taxes, police, judges, prisons, mental
| health and drug addiction clinics - all of this is supposed to
| spot the criminals in our society and stop them.
|
| I think we need to consider why some people get away with certain
| crimes, and build the institutions to stop that - it please
| journalist will stumble on the story
| southerntofu wrote:
| I agree with your reasoning, but i strongly disagree with the
| core assumption that more power structures can solve the
| issues, as i believe they are the source of most problems you
| are pointing to.
|
| People being in positions of privilege and power is precisely
| why they can get away with certain crimes. The institutions to
| build to stop that cannot be centralized like social-democracy
| advocates, but have to be fully democratic, as in run directly
| by the people and for the people. Electing our next masters
| every 4 years (5 where i'm from) is not democracy. Democracy is
| about seizing power, not about giving it away to soulless
| sociopaths.
|
| If you believe democracy is a term that's been emptied out of
| meaning, i'd recommend reading some anarchist literature as
| another take on what democracy can (should?) look like.
| ummonk wrote:
| I wish there were a way for me to pay directly for original
| reporting like this without having to pay for editorials.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure it's fair to say that the opinion pages are one
| of the cheaper aspects associated with a newspaper.
| ummonk wrote:
| That might be the case, but newspapers seem to devote an
| enormous amount of space to opinion. It's especially stark
| compared to my favored medium for local news: local news
| channels - which incidentally tend to be profitable.
| imgabe wrote:
| It's bonkers to me that "Epstein didn't kill himself" is a joke.
| Like here's a known pedophile and sex trafficker connected to
| almost every powerful person in the world who was very very very
| obviously murdered to prevent him from testifying about something
| and the reaction of the mainstream media is "haha, that's weird,
| anyway..."
| derbOac wrote:
| My strong impression over the last couple of decades is for
| journalists to take many things at face value and defer to
| "experts" without digging into things like potential conflicts
| of interests or motives etc. So if you have a set of experts
| saying "Epstein killed himself," even if those experts have
| conflicts of interest and/or were appointed by those with CoI,
| a lot of journalists will defer. I think a similar phenomenon
| was in play with the lab leak hypothesis, various things
| related to Erdogan in Turkey, Russian assassinations in the UK,
| reporting over the Mueller Report, and a host of other things.
|
| I don't think all journalists are like this, and I understand
| where they're coming from, but increasingly reading between the
| lines and/or interpreting stated conclusions in the context of
| human motives seems lost on a lot of journalists and/or
| journalism outlets. It leads to these weird situations where
| _something_ is very _obviously_ off about a situation but you
| can 't get someone to say something on the record, so things
| are just shrugged off, taken at face value, and you're led to
| doubt your own logic.
|
| Often but not always eventually journalists can get someone to
| say something on the record, and then it's treated like some
| big revelation. Journalists getting intelligence experts to
| acknowledge "no it's not really likely someone could kill
| themselves and then afterwards stuff themselves into a black
| body bag and zip it up." Then everyone is like "oh ok I wasn't
| losing my sanity" and there's some correction. But sometimes
| it's just left to historians to pick up the threads.
|
| I'm not saying anything about Epstein or anything in
| particular, and there's a need to avoid going down conspiracy
| rabbit holes. But I wish there was more nuance in coverage
| sometimes, to acknowledge that something weird or shady is
| going on while acknowledging there's no evidence for anything
| in particular.
| daenz wrote:
| Isn't it disturbing how we all just sort of stopped hearing about
| the Epstein case? Doesn't that reveal the stranglehold of
| censorship that powerful people have on the media, when there is
| a clear risk to their financial interests and reputations?
|
| The story should have been headlining for a year as every sordid
| fact was uncovered, but people seem to have largely forgotten
| about it. Everyone seemed to be aligned against this person and
| what they did, but somehow the media didn't care much to dig into
| the details. I doubt your average person could mention more than
| a couple of high profile people that Epstein rubbed shoulders
| with (Likely "Trump" and "Bill Clinton").
| bcraven wrote:
| You presumably stopped hearing about it as he was arrested and
| then died. You can't prosecute a dead man, and there's no
| closure for the victims.
| foobarian wrote:
| I'm guessing he had tons of tape on people who didn't like
| that one bit, hence the "suicide." I was hoping to see
| something come of that, at the very least a conviction for
| his sidekick Ghislaine.
| pessimizer wrote:
| It's a very difficult story to report on because
|
| 1) the people who own your institution may be involved on some
| level,
|
| 2) all legitimate sources of novel material information will
| have been destroyed,
|
| 3) interviews are worthless because everybody _who we know
| about_ who would have anything interesting to say are also both
| implicated and endangered, and there are so many kooks claiming
| to know things that it would be impossible to sort them out of
| the people _who we don 't know about._
|
| It's bizarre that we even think that this story would have an
| outcome. A number of the completely arbitrary people we shower
| laurels on under crony capitalism like to have sex with
| runaway/endangered teenagers under completely safe and shielded
| circumstances. They disguised payment by parking money in a
| fake (investment fund/tax advisory structure/real estate
| partnership) with a guy who spent his entire life procuring for
| and protecting them. He probably kept blackmail material that
| got him out of the first prosecution, and lost control of that
| blackmail material before the next prosecution.
|
| Clinton's sanctions on Iraq killed a half million children.
| That's more important than the fact that he may have abused
| teenagers on a sex plane/island, and he still speaks at the
| Democratic convention. We know that he manipulated a young
| intern into sex while on the job, and suspect he may be a
| serial sex abuser/rapist, and we try to make his wife
| president. We all know about "pussy-grabbing" Trump.
|
| We need to get over the delusion that sunlight solves problems.
| Sunlight often makes problems seem commonplace and therefore
| unimportant. There would be nothing to expect out of a full
| exposure of Epstein and his network of associates other than a
| few old men going to jail, and being replaced by people just as
| bad. It's just something we desire out of prurient interest.
|
| If we're really interested, we create social and political
| structures that either limit the ability of the wealthy to
| operate with impunity (a pointless effort IMO, because money
| _is_ power), or limit the ability to become that wealthy. This
| is assuming we think that one of the purposes of government is
| to defend the weak from the strong. Maybe we don 't care about
| that, and abused teens are just another cost to maintain a
| desirable status quo, like half a million Iraqi children.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM0uvgHKZe8
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The whispers are that Epstein was in "intelligence"
| (CIA/Mossad/etc).
|
| I assume those organizations can silence investigative
| journalism that would expose their inner workings.
| adambatkin wrote:
| Those whispers must be pretty quiet. Do you have any sources
| for this?
| shrubble wrote:
| Alex Acosta told the Trump transition team that interviewed
| him that Epstein was 'intelligence' see:
| https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-
| intelligenc... and many other sources besides.
|
| Former Attorney General Bill Barr's father was involved in
| the Dalton School. (Edit: he was headmaster of Dalton
| School from 1964 to 1974).
|
| Barr's father previously got Epstein a job teaching at the
| Dalton School.
|
| Barr's father also wrote a creepy novel called Space
| Relations that involves a subplot of an enslaved teenager
| used to breed more slaves; there are other odd sexually
| charged subplots involving underaged girls as well.
|
| Epstein discussed with others the idea of breeding many
| women... the coincidences sure seem odd, at the least.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's on wikipedia. It's circumstantial not a smoking gun,
| but it seems very clear Gislane Maxwell's dad was connected
| to Mossad.
|
| My personal view is that Epstein was essentially a
| blackmailer, that was occasionally useful in passing
| information to intelligence agencies as a result of his
| activities.
| swader999 wrote:
| How could this not be an Intel opp? He ran in plain site
| for decades with token prosecution.
| the_optimist wrote:
| These whispers have been around for decades in certain
| circles, even before the weird Florida non-prosecution. The
| singularly most public, appropriately caveated, responsible
| discussion of this comes through Eric Weinstein, here:
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/25-the-construct-
| jeffr...
| 6nf wrote:
| When Epstein was convicted the first time, in 2008, the
| prosecutor got told to let him go because he was a CIA
| asset. He got a deal that included only a few months in
| jail.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| This Observer article from 2019 covers most of it:
| https://observer.com/2019/07/jeffrey-epstein-spy-
| intelligenc...
| hasbot wrote:
| Him becoming dead might have something to do with it.
| 1024core wrote:
| I wouldn't mind paying for quality journalism, and thus support
| journalists like Ms Brown.
|
| However, a digital subscription to (say) the NYT costs $4.75/week
| (regular rate), whereas print version costs $10. I can't share it
| with my family member. It costs so much more to actually deliver
| a physical newspaper, and printing it costs so much more. With
| the digital version, I can get targeted advertising, unlike the
| shotgun approach of print. So why does digital cost so much?
|
| Unlike print, I am able to access digital versions of almost any
| newspaper out there effortlessly. This makes it much easier to
| browse around and cherry-pick stories from different sources.
| Having to pay individually for every source is untenable.
|
| Why doesn't the newspaper industry work with companies like
| Google and Facebook to come up with a workable system that
| rewards journalists appropriately, without gouging readers?
|
| For example, I'd be willing to pay, say, $100/year for full
| access to every (major) newspaper out there. Let Google track my
| reading and then at the end of the year, divide up this $100
| proportionally to the consumption at each of the sources.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It costs so much more to actually deliver a physical
| newspaper, and printing it costs so much more. [Compared to a
| digital newspaper distributed over the internet.]
|
| It is not obvious that either of these claims is true. What do
| you think the marginal cost of one printing is? One delivery?
|
| Mail delivery is quite literally the paradigm example of
| something that is expensive if you do it once but essentially
| free at scale.
| [deleted]
| southerntofu wrote:
| > I wouldn't mind paying for quality journalism, and thus
| support journalists like Ms Brown.
|
| I don't know in the english-speaking world, apart from the
| Intercept who i understand has its own internal controversies,
| but in the french-speaking world we have a few independent
| publications, like CQFD, L'envolee, Le Monde Libertaire,
| Mediapart, Le Canard Enchaine... I assume it's the same on your
| side of the ocean and they're just not well known?
|
| > Let Google track my reading
|
| Why would you need tracking? There's some donation-based
| subscriptions for publications, and a centralized donation
| dashboard sounds amazing. Liberapay and similar donation-based
| platforms are good for that kind of stuff.
|
| Also, how would you actually measure? Size in bytes of content?
| Number of characters? Time spent? Is there any metric that can
| be fair to all and cannot be gamed to maximize profits while
| not providing quality content?
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Tracking makes sense in this case--divvying up the amount
| received according to which articles you read. Basically
| Kindle Unlimited for newspapers.
| southerntofu wrote:
| According to what criteria, as i was asking in my parent
| comment? I don't think we can find a fair one.
|
| Also Kindle Unlimited, what's that? Is that like
| spotify/netflix for ebooks? I'm personally hostile to
| private companies operating such schemes, but as a public
| service it sounds like it may make sense.
|
| Of course, the tracking is unacceptable either way, and we
| should pursue better models in order to finance cultural
| productions. Hint: the answers are the same as for every
| other area of activities (including free software), just
| redistribute the **ing wealth already, which the people who
| "own" it didn't produce.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| What happens to that model when someone starts reporting at
| Google, FB, NYT, Wash Post, etc. is tracking your every scroll
| and click? And does this biz model actually promote higher
| quality journalism? Anecdotally, it doesn't look that way.
|
| I'm not sure what the solution is but giving more powerful to
| the powerful is not a sustainable route to fixing The Fourth
| Estate.
| ghaff wrote:
| The short answer is that "targeted" (and we know how well that
| works) or not, digital advertising isn't nearly as lucrative as
| print advertising was. The old rule of thumb was that
| subscriptions/newsstand sales paid for the distribution of the
| physical paper. Advertising paid for everything else.
|
| Digital subscriptions obviously don't incur the same physical
| distribution costs Although a fair bit still exists so long as
| you're going to have a physical paper and the digital
| production has its own costs. (Digital plus physical costs more
| than physical alone.)
|
| In any case, how many people who won't pay $100/year for the
| NYT--plus maybe another $100/year for something like The
| Economist will pay $100-200/year for a broad-based subscription
| to a bunch of different pubs?
| cromulent wrote:
| Yes, For example, nearly all job advertisements used to be in
| newspapers. Rivers of gold, they were called in the
| Australian print media. All that revenue is long gone from
| newspapers.
| ghaff wrote:
| The collapse of the classifieds--and I'm guessing job
| adverts around the same time--were the first dagger into US
| newspaper profitability.
| dillondoyle wrote:
| I love Apple News and think it had real potential.
|
| But then lots of the 'premium' became like extra premium.
|
| Even though I still pay for it premium articles included now
| are mostly magazines, which the New Yorker and Businessweek are
| good but most are like lifestyle I don't really care about.
|
| I would like WaPo back in the bundle and same with adding
| NyTimes.
|
| I'd pay another $5 a month but seems like the big papers make
| more themselves even with smaller % of readers.
|
| Seems like streaming is going the same way.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Digital gets you access to the archives
| southerntofu wrote:
| Good point, but do you think it's beneficial to humanity,
| research and education, and political critique that newspaper
| archives are locked down behind subscription?
| ghaff wrote:
| You can probably find libraries with subscriptions. Someone
| has to pay for it.
| southerntofu wrote:
| A library with subscriptions has quite a lot of
| infrastructure to maintain. A digital archive of
| published newspapers can be maintained by a single worker
| using off-the-shelf hardware for an annual budget lesser
| than the salary of a single newspaper exec, or even
| better a community project like archive.org or Wikimedia
| Commons who's dedicated to that kind of stuff.
| ghaff wrote:
| So who is paying the organization that created the
| information in the first place? That's the cost. The cost
| of a local library subscribing to a service is fairly
| trivial. My tiny local library subscribes to a number of
| them. The cost is the subscription which goes to paying
| licensing fees.
| southerntofu wrote:
| Subsidizing the cost of current production of stuff
| (whether hardware or immaterial) is an actual concern.
| The easiest solution of course is to abolish money and
| private property and to abundantly redistribute power and
| wealth, but that's not happening anytime soon as
| privileges cannot be abolished through wishful thinking
| or self-criticism from the elites.
|
| On the other hand, subsidizing the cost of production of
| information that's already been produced and account for?
| That makes no sense from an economic perspective. If
| you're talking about reaping benefits for past work (not
| accounting for a "cost" because past production costs
| nothing in the present by definition), it raises ethical
| questions: why would the newspaper/editor get paid and
| not the actual author, now that the logistical work of
| publishing the article has been accounted for (and even
| profited upon) by the editor?
|
| There is nothing inherently natural or fair about
| copyright laws. We need broader perspectives if we want
| to develop a knowledge economy based on sharing
| information and resources for social progress, if you'd
| like to call it like that.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Like this?
|
| https://www.apple.com/apple-news/
| 1024core wrote:
| Except that I'm not in the Apple walled garden. No Apple
| devices here.
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