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Owlofcreamcheese posted:whats a good op-ed page supposed to look like? Let me answer a question with a question: if Trump has 90% approval ratings within his party, why is every conservative columnist for the NYT a Never Trumper? Why do they give that much real estate to people who represent such a small, incoherent and insignificant minority? And why do we get Bari Weiss, Bret Stephens, David Brooks AND Ross Douthat, but not even one mild socially democratic voice, much less a full-throated socialist?
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Dec 18, 2018 15:40
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:whats a good op-ed page supposed to look like? Edit: If what you're driving at is that op-ed writing is glorified blogging and obsolete, I'm at a loss to disagree. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 16:00
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selec posted:Let me answer a question with a question: if Trump has 90% approval ratings within his party, why is every conservative columnist for the NYT a Never Trumper? Why do they give that much real estate to people who represent such a small, incoherent and insignificant minority? The NYTimes makes sense when you realize it's a paper thats deeply rooted in a certain upper-class New York Jewish perspective and milieu and that, while it has risen to national/world prominence as a result of the rise of New York as a global capital, it has never really outgrown that. You aren't going to get, and you shouldn't expect, a full even-handed coverage of the political spectrum from them.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:10
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Halloween Jack posted:Do you really need me to go on a tear about what a pack of freaks and ghouls they have their now? Their op-ed would be more informative, enlightened, and in touch with actual American life and politics if it were written by randomly selected people from across the country who rotated out every month. Yeah, the takes aren’t good, and they’re a literal detriment to the things the NYT is good at, straight up reporting. You don’t pay David Brooks millions over the years without that money NOT going to actual shoe leather. So not only do these self-important fucks act like their critique or analysis is worth a drat (it’s not; when was the last time you read anything at all challenging or novel in an op-ed?) but they are parasites who could not live without the news-producing host they’re latched onto , and they have the temerity to look at the news of inequality and climate decay and say “this is great!” Giving your money to the NYT is like punching yourself in the junk.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:13
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SickZip posted:The NYTimes makes sense when you realize it's a paper thats deeply rooted in a certain upper-class New York Jewish perspective and milieu and that, while it has risen to national/world prominence as a result of the rise of New York as a global capital, it has never really outgrown that. You aren't going to get, and you shouldn't expect, a full even-handed coverage of the political spectrum from them. Buddy this isn’t a Jewish thing so stop making it weird. It’s a navel-gazing coastal elite thing, and a finance capitalism thing.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:15
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SickZip posted:The NYTimes makes sense when you realize it's a paper thats deeply rooted in a certain upper-class New York Jewish perspective and milieu and that, while it has risen to national/world prominence as a result of the rise of New York as a global capital, it has never really outgrown that. selec posted:Buddy this isn’t a Jewish thing so stop making it weird. It’s a navel-gazing coastal elite thing, and a finance capitalism thing.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:20
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Halloween Jack posted:True, but neither of these explain how a loving weirdo Catholic fascist like Douthat got in. Because his grandfather was governor of Connecticut, he served as Buckley’s “swimming partner” and probably took whatever disturbing blood vows at Harvard that our reptilian overlords require.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:24
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Silver2195 posted:Alas, we can't get off the subject of David Icke because Alice Walker just mentioned him favorably in the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/13/books/review/alice-walker-by-the-book.html Saw a Post story on this and oh boy do Walker's feelings on the Jews go deeper than a few books about the quote-unquote "lizard people". 
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Dec 18, 2018 16:24
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Fallen Hamprince posted:Saw a Post story on this and oh boy do Walker's feelings on the Jews go deeper than a few books about the quote-unquote "lizard people". It’s just like...dummy, just read some loving Marx. Do a little pattern recognition: are the Kochs Jewish? The Mercers? No? Then maybe the rules for who is in the Secretly Running the World Club aren’t what you think they are? I wonder what’s so repellent to the idea that it’s just rich people except that it’s far too clear and simple a heuristic and robs the problem of inequality and suffering of all mysticism. selec fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 16:27
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selec posted:Let me answer a question with a question: if Trump has 90% approval ratings within his party, why is every conservative columnist for the NYT a Never Trumper? Why do they give that much real estate to people who represent such a small, incoherent and insignificant minority? I honestly prefer this to an op-ed page 1/3 full of Trump sycophants. quote:And why do we get Bari Weiss, Bret Stephens, David Brooks AND Ross Douthat, but not even one mild socially democratic voice, much less a full-throated socialist? This is closer to the real problem. Halloween Jack posted:Edit: If what you're driving at is that op-ed writing is glorified blogging and obsolete, I'm at a loss to disagree. And this comes even closer. We already have an abundance of takes elsewhere.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:28
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selec posted:It’s just like...dummy, just read some loving Marx. Do a little pattern recognition: are the Kochs Jewish? The Mercers? No? Then maybe the rules for who is in the Secretly Running the World Club aren’t what you think they are? These people think virtually every rich or powerful person is secretly "one of them". 'Control-F Marx' isn't going to help them, they'll just read 'bourgeois' as code the same way they do for 'lizard-people'.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:32
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Silver2195 posted:I honestly prefer this to an op-ed page 1/3 full of Trump sycophants. I think that it would be more honest to have those people defending Trump, because the current set of conservative writers are essentially peddling dishonesty; they don’t ever talk about the fact they agree with Trump on policy but hate his presentation. Having at least one genuine CHUD on the page would expose them as the assholes they are more than they do already.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:34
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selec posted:It’s just like...dummy, just read some loving Marx. Do a little pattern recognition: are the Kochs Jewish? The Mercers? No? Then maybe the rules for who is in the Secretly Running the World Club aren’t what you think they are? Silver2195 posted:I honestly prefer this to an op-ed page 1/3 full of Trump sycophants. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 16:35
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selec posted:Buddy this isn’t a Jewish thing so stop making it weird. It’s a navel-gazing coastal elite thing, and a finance capitalism thing. That's a complete dodge and you won't get an answer as to why the NYTimes behaves as it does if you're going to pretend that the NYTimes is some weird platonic ideal of journalism unrooted from its own history and the ethnic/religious identity of the people work there To use the list of "Bari Weiss, Bret Stephens, David Brooks AND Ross Douthat" that someone else drew up, 3 out of 4 were raised in New York and Jewish. If you want to answer the question of "Why Does The NY Times Hire So Many Of A Particular Kind Of Conservatives" you cannot honestly avoid this. When the NYTimes goes looking for a conservative writer, they're doing it at neighborhood dinner parties SickZip fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 16:37
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selec posted:Let me answer a question with a question: if Trump has 90% approval ratings within his party, why is every conservative columnist for the NYT a Never Trumper? Why do they give that much real estate to people who represent such a small, incoherent and insignificant minority? The problem with having Republicans on media is that they well not only agree but are much more outspoken now that Trump is in office with things like women's rights, the metoo movement and occasionally having slight alt-right tendencies which is freaking disturbing. That doesn't sell but a Republican who doesn't is a unicorn and worth a ton. As for left-leaning commentators. Does Paul Krugman not count? He might not be a socialist but he sure as hell leans left.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:43
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awesmoe posted:their news coverage is... they have some amazing stories. They have some of the best reporting in the business. they pretty regularly break national and international news on deeply reported stories that the public would never know about if they didn't do the legwork. They are one of the most trusted sources of news in the business. They also make some deeply loving questionable editorial calls, at times (iraq war, the amount of coverage given to clinton's emails, 'no fbi probe', etc etc etc). The first point makes the impact of the second point that much worse. Thanks for the effort post. This provides a ton of context although I have to admit there mistakes aren't that at all unique but rather common in US Media. Overall, I think we are better with the NY Times than without it.
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Dec 18, 2018 16:46
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selec posted:Buddy this isn’t a Jewish thing so stop making it weird. It’s a navel-gazing coastal elite thing, and a finance capitalism thing. This um, this isn't a good rebuttal given what both of those things are dogwhistles for on the right. But SickZip, noted haver of bad opinions and terrible rapsheet, delivering us the unironic "the NYT is bad because Jews work there" is very on brand. 
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Dec 18, 2018 16:56
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Tab8715 posted:The problem with having Republicans on media is that they well not only agree but are much more outspoken now that Trump is in office with things like women's rights, the metoo movement and occasionally having slight alt-right tendencies which is freaking disturbing. quote:As for left-leaning commentators. Does Paul Krugman not count? He might not be a socialist but he sure as hell leans left.
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Dec 18, 2018 17:07
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Lightning Knight posted:This um, this isn't a good rebuttal given what both of those things are dogwhistles for on the right. How else do you talk about the incestuous bubble of people raised in coastal enclaves, then attended an Ivy, and all work as lanyards of some kind or another? While the idea of coastal elites has had a lot of other meanings wrapped into it by conservatives, like many of their dog whistles, they started by parroting an accurate leftist analysis (all these rich assholes from the coast hire and gently caress each other exclusively) and then adding their bullshit dog whistle to it. I don’t know that ceding the base truth under that is meaningful or useful. Same with finance capitalism; a leftist concept that accurately describes the systematic suction of capital upwards through a system of increasingly abstract and opaque mechanisms legalized and benefitted from by the same group of incestuous members of the elite. That reactionaries latched onto this because they are constitutionally incapable of forming new ideas is not the fault of the people, leftists, who accurately described the issue, and did so without the antisemetism that came to be attached to those concepts. In fact, that we have such a hard time discussing these two obvious concepts without the antisemetism of the right poisoning that discussion is super, super helpful to the people who benefit from those discussions not occurring. I think it might be okay to, in exclusively or majority leftist spaces, accept those commonplace understandings as coming from a place of sincerity without dogwhistles packages in them, especially considering the very post they were used in explicitly called out some pretty edgy/possibly antisemetic language.
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Dec 18, 2018 17:51
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selec posted:How else do you talk about the incestuous bubble of people raised in coastal enclaves, then attended an Ivy, and all work as lanyards of some kind or another? While the idea of coastal elites has had a lot of other meanings wrapped into it by conservatives, like many of their dog whistles, they started by parroting an accurate leftist analysis (all these rich assholes from the coast hire and gently caress each other exclusively) and then adding their bullshit dog whistle to it. I don’t know that ceding the base truth under that is meaningful or useful. The problem is not that there isn't a strong cultural bias towards the rich and powerful or that international capitalist institutions have an immense amount of control over society and the economy, it's that "international finance and the coastal elite" is literally the language of the right in 2018 and you can't escape that. You also can't assume that everyone in this thread is leftist when SickZip just came in with anti-Semitic dogwhistling and that dogwhistle has to be addressed. The framing of the right is insidious precisely for what you said: they adopt the language of the left and redirect it at the vulnerable. International finance and the coastal elite are bad, now let me tell you how the Jews control that herp derp. We're in the midst of a huge resurgence of antisemitism on the right precisely because we're also looking at the death throes of late capitalism, and leftists have to reckon with how fascists steal the rhetoric of the left to spin conspiracy theories about the Other. In the context of media criticism we see media outlets today uncritically regurgitating literal Nazi talking points like "cultural Marxism" and then turning to accuse left-wing leaders like Corbyn of antisemitism because they didn't bend over backwards to legitimize Israeli apartheid against Palestine. Edit: in this vein it's worth noting that the most influential voice on the "respectable right" isn't any of these columnists who are supposedly bad because they're Jewish, it's Jordan "I'm hella Christian" Peterson. Lightning Knight fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 18:01
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Dear God at how hard you guys are working to pretend that ethnic/in-group favoritism isn't a basic and universal bit of cognitive bias and prejudice. Spending thousands of words on justification and establishment of Proper Leftist Credentials and Dogma before your willing to even indirectly address the matter is insane. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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Dec 18, 2018 18:20
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Halloween Jack posted:The default stance of the Republican Party is to express dismay at Trump's personality but say that his critics are a bunch of hysterical, triggered libs. The Never Trumper "Unicorns" agree with Trump's policies like 90% of the time. I agree, whats your point exactly? Halloween Jack posted:Krugman is a self-identified liberal Keynesian economist whose default stance is being appalled at whatever the Republican Party is doing. He's a raging leftist relative to the likes of Brooks and Friedman, but that's not saying much. So, He's a self-identified liberal Keynesian Economist which in itself is clearly left-leaning and he openly argues that private health insurance isn't feasible. If that's not left enough, what is?
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Dec 18, 2018 18:25
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SickZip posted:Dear God at how hard you guys are working to pretend that ethnic/in-group favoritism isn't a basic and universal bit of cognitive bias and prejudice. Spending thousands of words on justification and establishment of Proper Leftist Credentials and Dogma before your willing to even indirectly address the matter is insane. there is not a shortage of jewish socialists, and yet, weirdly, the NYT SickZip views as a hive of degenerate jewry is unwilling to extend them the same courtesies it extends to a Ross Douthat or an Erik Prince. wonder why
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Dec 18, 2018 18:33
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Tab8715 posted:I agree, whats your point exactly? quote:He's a self-identified liberal Keynesian Economist which in itself is clearly left-leaning "Left-leaning" does a whole lot of work covering everyone and everything that isn't free-market absolutism and paranoid conservatism. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 18:48
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Lightning Knight posted:The problem is not that there isn't a strong cultural bias towards the rich and powerful or that international capitalist institutions have an immense amount of control over society and the economy, it's that "international finance and the coastal elite" is literally the language of the right in 2018 and you can't escape that. You also can't assume that everyone in this thread is leftist when SickZip just came in with anti-Semitic dogwhistling and that dogwhistle has to be addressed. I'm not even going to address the weird ritual hygiene about arguments preceding it because it's psychotic beyond understanding but I'm extremely confused at how I'm dogwhistling? Did your powerful mod mind decipher my reference to "upperclass New York Jewish perspective" and determine that it was coded reference to Jews? quote:Edit: in this vein it's worth noting that the most influential voice on the "respectable right" isn't any of these columnists who are supposedly bad because they're Jewish, it's Jordan "I'm hella Christian" Peterson. One might say that Jordan Peterson would be a bad example of the particular kind of "respectable right" conservative hired by the NYTimes as he is not a writer who works for the NYTimes but I'll roll with it. So lets look at how the NYTimes talks about Jordan Peterson. Here's literally the first 4 NYTimes articles I found that talk about him: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/18/style/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life.html "Jordan Peterson, Custodian of the Patriarchy" - Negative https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/12/opinion/trump-jordan-peterson-charlatans.html "Why We Are So Vulnerable to Charlatans Like Trump" - Very Negative https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/free-speech-just-access.html "The Ignorant Do Not Have a Right to an Audience" - Very Negative https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/25/opinion/jordan-peterson-moment.html "The Jordan Peterson Moment" - Positive Yeah, definitely someone the NYTime is favorable towards.
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Dec 18, 2018 18:51
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Lightning Knight posted:You also can't assume that everyone in this thread is leftist when SickZip just came in with anti-Semitic dogwhistling and that dogwhistle has to be addressed. Lmao. As if leftism and anti-semitism are incompatible. There's a big trend among the right, particularly among those who support Likud and the other conservative Israeli political parties, to conflate their political views with the Jewish religious identity, to legitimize those views. To undermine support, or even sympathy for the Palestinian cause, by labeling it as anti-semitism. So we get this political environment where Amnesty International can write a report that is rooted entirely in the on the ground situation in Palestine, and objectively call for the human rights and dignity of Palestinian people to be respected, just as they would if the tables were turned and it were Jewish people being repressed by a Muslim superpower, and get called anti-semites for it. So the meaning of the term anti-semitism has become quite blurry in recent decades, which is sad considering that that cloudiness has helped provide cover for no poo poo anti-semites like the recent synagogue shooter. But that being said, there's absolutely anti-semitism on the left. Re: the threads topic, there's definitely been room for criticism of the ~mainstream media~ these days. Yellow journalism, punditry, and buzzfeed-esque non reports are something every major network and paper have gotten deeply wrapped up in at this point. You hear about this type of thing every day, but what nobody ever talks about is Marie Colvin, who worked in mainstream media all her life, getting killed in Syria by the government trying to report the story of people who were suffering there. You don't hear about Clarissa Ward of CNN, who has visited Syria repeatedly during a time period when jihadists were running rampant, to try and give people the story of what was going on there at risk of being kidnapped or worse. Shah Marai of AFP, who was killed in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan while reporting on what daily life was like for people there. There's tons people out there doing good work who tend to get wrapped up in this culture of anger towards what people perceive as mainstream journalism these days. Hell, even Buzzfeed has Mike Giglio and Borzou Daragahi breaking huge stories and writing excellent long form reports. So in comes this new legion of self-appointed experts and pundits, who have two major differences from ~mainstream media~. For one, they have 0 obligation to get anything factually right, as they are generally pedaling ideology rather than news, and two, they don't need to have an education, or much of any idea what they are talking about at all. They have a vested interest in discrediting journalism from traditional sources, as the anger towards traditional sources is the only thing giving them any legitimacy. As bad as the current state of American journalism is right now, it's the wild west when it comes to alternative sources, both on the left and the right. It's why people are becoming dumber and less informed, often intentionally. I do think there needs to be a radical shift in how news is presented by corporate media, and there's major fundamental flaws in how they operate that should be pointed out and fixed. But this current level of hostility and anger towards the mainstream media I see going nowhere good, because it's simply feeding into conspiratorial thinking. No matter who you are, there's now some outlet somewhere who will try to make their money by telling you you are right about everything. And people find comfort and safety in that, so they buy into it. The results have been not good, as you see lefties and fascists finding a lot of common ground as they both have an interest in discrediting the establishment, and as a result, leftist discourse in tatters. The center and the right wing are also falling apart as this nationwide hatred for CNN and journalists has given everyone the justification they need to believe in Facebook pages reporting on fake nonsense that confirms their prejudices. And in the process, they are given more reason to hate the mainstream media because those reporters and pages have an interest in fostering that hate by discrediting traditional sources, ironically enough, often through shoddy reporting and fake stories. It's a dangerous little cycle we've entered and I'm not sure at this point there's much anyone can do about it.
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Dec 18, 2018 19:05
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Volkerball posted:lefties and fascists finding a lot of common ground
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Dec 18, 2018 19:12
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SickZip posted:I'm not even going to address the weird ritual hygiene about arguments preceding it because it's psychotic beyond understanding but I'm extremely confused at how I'm dogwhistling? Did your powerful mod mind decipher my reference to "upperclass New York Jewish perspective" and determine that it was coded reference to Jews? I put this entire quote into google and this was the first result. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/philosophy/people/eqandwelfare/map/saul_dogwhistles_political_manipulation_and_philosophy_of_language.pdf Extremely lol.
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Dec 18, 2018 19:14
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I'll concede that the reference isn't coded.
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Dec 18, 2018 19:20
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Halloween Jack posted:When, where, and how is this happening? I couldn't tell you where it started, but when I first noticed it was during the course of the uprising in Syria, and I do tend to think it rose to a pretty high level throughout it. There's been a number of pieces out since then that outline what has since been dubbed red-brown convergence, but I'll illustrate it this way. If I speak to someone who tells me that Bashar al-Assad is fighting terrorism, and that we need to support him and Russia because the alternate is people like Hillary Clinton and the American center/liberals who would risk or want to start world war 3 regime changing him. That the only Syrians worth mentioning are terrorists, and that ISIS is backed by US democrats who are in the pockets of the 9/11 committing Saudi royal jihadists. That reports of Assad's human rights abuses are overblown or flat out lies perpetrated by the mainstream media and the American establishment that has lied to us before, and by Syrian jihadist networks that fabricate evidence and stories to try to get support for an American invasion. I would have no loving clue what ideology that person subscribed to, I would just know that it starts with "far." People curious about why this is have done the dirty work finding some of the common sources that central players in each ideologies pundits rely on. SPLC had a really good piece on it that was taken down after Max Blumenthal threatened legal action. I think it still gets passed around via web archive but I don't have time to find it. Volkerball fucked around with this message at 19:40 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 19:25
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Lightning Knight posted:I think if you’re unironically quoting the Protocols even if you sincerely believe in actual lizard people, you’re still spreading propaganda of fascists and should be considered as such. I actually think we could take this a step further and say that the popularization of conspiracy theories and vast anti-government narratives fertilizes the soil out of which various authoritarian and fascist movements have arisen. The historian Richard Hofstadter wrote a famous essay on this back in the 60s "The Paranoid Style in American Politics which illustrates just how old and yet weirdly repetitive a lot of the tropes of conspiracy theories are: R. Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", p. 4 posted:When I speak of the paranoid style, I use the term much as a historian of art might speak of the baroque or the mannerist style. It is, above all, a way of seeing the world and of expressing oneself. Webster defines paranoia, the clinical entity. as a chronic mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions of persecution and of one's own greatness. In the paranoid style, as I conceive it, the feeling of persecution is central, and it is indeed systematized in grandiose theories of conspiracy. [b]But there is a vital difference between the paranoid spokesman in politics and the clinical paranoiac: although they both tend to be overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression, the clinical paranoid sees the hostile and conspiratorial world in which he feels himself to be living as directed specifically against him; whereas the spokesman of the paranoid style finds it directed against a nation, a culture, a way of life whose fate affects not himself alone but millions of others. Insofar as he does not usually see himself singled out as the individual victim of a personal conspiracy,' he is somewhat more rational and much more disinterested. His sense that his political passions are unselfish and patriotic, in fact, goes far to intensify his feeling of righteousness and his moral indignation. So you're not going to get any disagreement from me that the man advocating the theory about reptilian space overlords is doing the work of fascists and authoritarians or at least is implicitly pushing society toward a condition that is more receptive to them.
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Dec 18, 2018 19:33
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Halloween Jack posted:That there's no reason for Never Trump Conservatism to carry any special intellectual currency entitling it to a great deal of representation in a major newspaper. It's not about "Never Trumpers" it's about respect and dignity. People don't want to read column how yet another Republican thinks that #metoo is a false flag or other garbage nor does the NY Times want give them a platform. How is this so hard to understand? Halloween Jack posted:Nah. Is there a way to describe the phenomenon where people believe something sucks, can't prove it but aren't able to offer any alternatives or solutions?
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Dec 18, 2018 19:44
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Volkerball posted:I couldn't tell you where it started, but when I first noticed it was during the course of the uprising in Syria, and I do tend to think it rose to a pretty high level throughout it. There's been a number of pieces out since then that outline what has since been dubbed red-brown convergence, but I'll illustrate it this way. If I speak to someone who tells me that Bashar al-Assad is fighting terrorism, and that we need to support him and Russia because the alternate is people like Hillary Clinton and the American center/liberals who would risk or want to start world war 3 regime changing him. That the only Syrians worth mentioning are terrorists, and that ISIS is backed by US democrats who are in the pockets of the 9/11 committing Saudi royal jihadists. That reports of Assad's human rights abuses are overblown or flat out lies perpetrated by the mainstream media and the American establishment that has lied to us before, and by Syrian jihadist networks that fabricate evidence and stories to try to get support for an American invasion. I would have no loving clue what ideology that person subscribed to, I would just know that it starts with "far." With regard to that last sentence, you could say the same thing about wackos who think that The X-Files was a documentary series, but that's not representative of the American radical Left or Right.
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Dec 18, 2018 19:45
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Volkerball posted:So in comes this new legion of self-appointed experts and pundits, who have two major differences from ~mainstream media~. For one, they have 0 obligation to get anything factually right, as they are generally pedaling ideology rather than news, and two, they don't need to have an education, or much of any idea what they are talking about at all. They have a vested interest in discrediting journalism from traditional sources, as the anger towards traditional sources is the only thing giving them any legitimacy. As bad as the current state of American journalism is right now, it's the wild west when it comes to alternative sources, both on the left and the right. It's why people are becoming dumber and less informed, often intentionally. Can you define what you mean by "mainstream" and "alternative" in this context and maybe clarify how your statement that: "[alternative media pundit] have 0 obligation to get anything factually right, as they are generally pedaling ideology rather than news". Because first of all that statement is obviously factually inaccurate in many specific cases where experts have blogs or do interviews in the alternative press, and because two you seem to be suggesting that none of the things you described are problems for mainstream punditry. quote:I do think there needs to be a radical shift in how news is presented by corporate media, and there's major fundamental flaws in how they operate that should be pointed out and fixed. But this current level of hostility and anger towards the mainstream media I see going nowhere good, because it's simply feeding into conspiratorial thinking. No matter who you are, there's now some outlet somewhere who will try to make their money by telling you you are right about everything. And people find comfort and safety in that, so they buy into it. The results have been not good, as you see lefties and fascists finding a lot of common ground as they both have an interest in discrediting the establishment, and as a result, leftist discourse in tatters. The center and the right wing are also falling apart as this nationwide hatred for CNN and journalists has given everyone the justification they need to believe in Facebook pages reporting on fake nonsense that confirms their prejudices. And in the process, they are given more reason to hate the mainstream media because those reporters and pages have an interest in fostering that hate by discrediting traditional sources, ironically enough, often through shoddy reporting and fake stories. It's a dangerous little cycle we've entered and I'm not sure at this point there's much anyone can do about it. I honestly find it fascinating that your entire post is written as though the only things that matter are changes in the media structure. This is all written as though hatred for CNN spontaneously bubbled up out of the ether and irrationally turned everyone against CNN and other major news sources for no particular reason. Volkerball posted:I couldn't tell you where it started, but when I first noticed it was during the course of the uprising in Syria, and I do tend to think it rose to a pretty high level throughout it. There's been a number of pieces out since then that outline what has since been dubbed red-brown convergence, but I'll illustrate it this way. If I speak to someone who tells me that Bashar al-Assad is fighting terrorism, and that we need to support him and Russia because the alternate is people like Hillary Clinton and the American center/liberals who would risk or want to start world war 3 regime changing him. That the only Syrians worth mentioning are terrorists, and that ISIS is backed by US democrats who are in the pockets of the 9/11 committing Saudi royal jihadists. That reports of Assad's human rights abuses are overblown or flat out lies perpetrated by the mainstream media and the American establishment that has lied to us before, and by Syrian jihadist networks that fabricate evidence and stories to try to get support for an American invasion. I would have no loving clue what ideology that person subscribed to, I would just know that it starts with "far." People curious about why this is have done the dirty work finding some of the common sources that central players in each ideologies pundits rely on. This really just sounds like your bad faith conflation of 'the left' with a handful of people you argue with on these forums and twitter. quote:SPLC had a really good piece on it that was taken down after Max Blumenthal threatened legal action. I think it still gets passed around via web archive but I don't have time to find it. You mean the report that they full out retracted because it was so indefensible? Not even a correction like "oops we went overboard in a few places" but a full on "this was such a bad hit piece we're completely pulling it from our site and posting an apology".
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Dec 18, 2018 19:59
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Tab8715 posted:It's not about "Never Trumpers" it's about respect and dignity. People don't want to read column how yet another Republican thinks that #metoo is a false flag or other garbage nor does the NY Times want give them a platform. quote:Is there a way to describe the phenomenon where people believe something sucks, can't prove it but aren't able to offer any alternatives or solutions?
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Dec 18, 2018 20:00
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Tab8715 posted:It's not about "Never Trumpers" it's about respect and dignity. People don't want to read column how yet another Republican thinks that #metoo is a false flag or other garbage nor does the NY Times want give them a platform. The issue is that the Never Trump Republicans are by and large a bunch of prominent architects of neoconservative foreign policy who have been revealed to speak for a constituency of approximately twelve rich people in a country club somewhere. Their ideas did incredible damage and many of them are actual war criminals who in a just world should be serving life long prison sentences for their actions. They used their power and influence to advocate for some of the worst things the US government has done in the last few decades and never paid a price for it - in fact they were generously rewarded. The fact that big parts of the liberal establishment keep trying to prop these figures up even after it's become clear that 1) these people are monsters and 2) they're not even representative of the type of monstrous Republican ideology we need to reckon with, it sort of raises the question why does the liberal establishment keep propping them up and giving them a platform like this?
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Dec 18, 2018 20:07
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Volkerball posted:I couldn't tell you where it started, but when I first noticed it was during the course of the uprising in Syria, and I do tend to think it rose to a pretty high level throughout it. There's been a number of pieces out since then that outline what has since been dubbed red-brown convergence, but I'll illustrate it this way. If I speak to someone who tells me that Bashar al-Assad is fighting terrorism, and that we need to support him and Russia because the alternate is people like Hillary Clinton and the American center/liberals who would risk or want to start world war 3 regime changing him. That the only Syrians worth mentioning are terrorists, and that ISIS is backed by US democrats who are in the pockets of the 9/11 committing Saudi royal jihadists. That reports of Assad's human rights abuses are overblown or flat out lies perpetrated by the mainstream media and the American establishment that has lied to us before, and by Syrian jihadist networks that fabricate evidence and stories to try to get support for an American invasion. I would have no loving clue what ideology that person subscribed to, I would just know that it starts with "far." People curious about why this is have done the dirty work finding some of the common sources that central players in each ideologies pundits rely on. SPLC had a really good piece on it that was taken down after Max Blumenthal threatened legal action. I think it still gets passed around via web archive but I don't have time to find it. I first became aware of the communo-fascist conspiracy against the United States, Mandrake, during the physical act of love
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Dec 18, 2018 20:28
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Volkerball posted:So in comes this new legion of self-appointed experts and pundits, who have two major differences from ~mainstream media~. For one, they have 0 obligation to get anything factually right, as they are generally pedaling ideology rather than news, and two, they don't need to have an education, or much of any idea what they are talking about at all. It's impossible to take you seriously when you say stuff like this. There's no such thing as "non-ideological news." Even if all the facts are technically correct, there will always be an ideological slant simply by virtue of what an organization chooses to report on, how frequently they choose to cover certain subjects, the tone they use when discussing them, etc. In practice, what people like you view as "just news" or "objective/non-ideological/unbiased" or whatever is really just "ideologically biased towards the mainstream/status-quo consensus." It's actually kind of interesting to see stuff like this, because it's basically the result of successful propaganda. It's easy for most people to identify propaganda when it takes place in a different culture or in a historical context, but many people are incapable of perceiving the fact that contemporary mainstream media is also propaganda because it feels normal to them. In cases like Volkerball's, any sort of negative opinion towards mainstream ideology immediately conjures to mind various negative stereotypes. This isn't a coincidence; the interests of those who enjoy privilege under the status quo are defended through the discrediting of anyone who threatens to significantly change that status quo. In general, liberals specifically tend to cling to the idea that their interpretation of media/news must be correct as long as all the facts are technically true, but they're completely blind to the way the media acts as propaganda through ignoring inconvenient facts/ideology and giving emphasis to information that supports their ideological slant. They have a certain mental image of what constitutes "propaganda," and it's just obvious to them that the label doesn't apply to the normal media they take seriously. It is likely that most people who read this post and disagree with it have already mentally filed away this argument as contrary nonsense. An obsessive focus on only facts also lends itself towards defense of the status quo, simply by virtue of the fact that significant change to society is often driven by ethical/moral values (and it isn't possible to travel into the future and conclusively prove the positive impact of significant change). You see the results of this in the countless discussions where the left demands the addressing of some injustice and the liberal response is to ask for proof that doing so won't cause Republicans to win. I'm not even sure if the people making these arguments are aware of how consistently they try to draw conversations away from ethical concerns and towards some bizarre question of electability. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:19 on Dec 18, 2018 |
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Dec 18, 2018 21:11
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Ytlaya posted:It's impossible to take you seriously when you say stuff like this. There's no such thing as "non-ideological news." Even if all the facts are technically correct, there will always be an ideological slant simply by virtue of what an organization chooses to report on, how frequently they choose to cover certain subjects, the tone they use when discussing them, etc. I also find it remarkable how so many of the anxieties I heard expressed in the early 2000s about Fox News and its then unprecedented levels of open partisanship have seemingly all turned into to anxieties about the internet, facebook, fake news and the decline of trust in "mainstream" sources. So far as I can tell nobody really disputes that Fox counts as "mainstream" news now so I'm not really sure how people sustain the idea that the internet has made some uniquely malign contribution to our media culture. It feels like there's been a willful forgetting of how bad stuff was already getting before social media came along as a convenient scapegoat.
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Dec 18, 2018 21:28
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 13:35 |
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I do not understand how you can be Online enough to be on these forums, basic enough in the brain to be scandalized by highly advanced Russian Active Measures (aka. interferentsiya) across *gasp* EVERY social media network like and not be demanding a roll of warm scalps at the seemingly-implacable development of things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSLJriaOumA We, as a nominally democratic society, are in no way prepared for how totally the notion of an agreed-upon reality is about to get bent in into origami by the application of currently existing tech.
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Dec 18, 2018 21:38
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