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Yeah, I don’t really have an answer to the problems of journalism funding. Part of the problem is that basically all funding models are potentially corrupting in their own way. The problems with advertiser and government funding, as well as the patronage of a “benevolent” individual rich person, are obvious, but what we’ve surprisingly learned over the past few years is that reader funding can have unhealthy effects too. People sometimes talk about the “audience capture” that afflicts Substack types, where the journalist’s worldview becomes more and more aligned with the worldviews of his readers. People like this are sometimes called “grifters,” and maybe that’s not wrong, but the really horrible thing is that I think most of them aren’t even consciously aware that they’re grifting; people are very good at convincing themselves that something that benefits them financially is morally or factually right.
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Apr 26, 2023 15:22
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Necrobama posted:Yeah, the layout of Substack is...well it's something. I’m not super familiar with Hedges specifically, but I think the general distinction you’re drawing is thinner than you think. Seymour Hersh, for instance, was definitely a genuine anti-war investigative journalist back in the day, but is clearly a crank at this point. In general, I think a lot of investigative-journalism-adjacent people need active editors to push back against them occasionally and make them do more to verify what their sources are telling them.
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Apr 26, 2023 15:47
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Russian Disinformation Agent
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Edit: Overly snide remark was here that I thought better of. I’m sorry.
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Apr 26, 2023 15:51
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Necrobama posted:Please be willing to engage in good faith discussion with your fellow D&D posters You’re right; I should have been more substantive. Hersh has made some very specific and easily disproved claims (that a ship was used to carry out a bombing when it was verifiably somewhere else at the time, for instance) that suggest he’s uncritically repeating sources that are simply making things up.
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Apr 26, 2023 15:57
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Necrobama posted:Dude you have a Glenn Greenwald avatar, you think you're qualified to determine bad faith argumentation? I assume he didn’t buy that for himself, lol.
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Apr 29, 2023 13:16
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cat botherer posted:And journalists at institutions with the proper gravitas somehow are far less prone to distorting this objective reality with subjective biases and personal/instutional incentives than anyone else, am I right? Maybe? Though it depends on which "institutions with the proper gravitas" you mean. There are degrees of gravitas, and institutions can shift in weight, so to speak (I don't regard the current BBC as highly as I do the BBC of a few years back, for example). And of course some outlets are more useful for some subject areas than others. I take for granted that in almost any news story, even at a generally "good" outlet (say, the Washington Post), there's at least one substantial "fact" that an eyewitness or subject matter expert would point out is wrong, although it can be difficult to remember this principle when reading a given story (the "Gell-Mann Amnesia" problem). The general gist of the story is at least 80% likely to be accurate - but the headline doesn't always accurately convey the general gist of the story! At the same time, even that level of benefit of the doubt is considerably more than we should give, say, the National Enquirer or modern Newsweek. I tend to assume that any surprising claim made by such publications is false unless a more reputable publication confirms it. (I'm speaking for myself rather than Vox here, obviously.)
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Apr 30, 2023 18:30
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Probably Magic posted:This is not unique to RT though, as this same level of "throwing poo poo against the wall" has been used several times by Israel in the current genocidal campaign to explain away their war crimes, with the United States general media organs (can't believe I have to be this specific, I'd rather we didn't just constantly resort to pedantry) picking through the lies to find which one they like. This became the narrative with both "sides' major American media, and this process, at least to someone relatively young like me, makes me wonder if a similar process of "editing lies" was used in the lead-up to the Gulf War with the lies about Iraqis unplugging Kuwaiti incubators and such. We do know a method like this was used by the Bush Jr. state department in drumming up reasons to go to war. I do agree that Israel has basically adopted the same approach as Russia in terms of not really trying to be consistent in its messaging. At the same time, I think Israeli war crimes are quite apparent to someone getting their news from a typical US general media organ (though perhaps you’re not thinking of the same outlets I am).
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Jan 2, 2024 22:51
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Silver2195 posted:I do agree that Israel has basically adopted the same approach as Russia in terms of not really trying to be consistent in its messaging. At the same time, I think Israeli war crimes are quite apparent to someone getting their news from a typical US general media organ (though perhaps you’re not thinking of the same outlets I am). One caveat to this: I do think some outlets (like the NYT, IIRC) do end up giving American metadiscourse surrounding the war (e.g., Claudine Gay) excessive focus, which I suppose does distract from Israeli war crimes to some degree even though they’re also covering the war crimes. It’s hard to say how much of this is a manifestation of a particular “centrist” ideology often seen in the US media vs. a particular kind of provincialism - or maybe those are just different ways of saying the same thing.
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Jan 2, 2024 23:08
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Probably Magic posted:It's like the old "what's the difference between an opinion segment on Fox versus a regular news segment on Fox," but in this case, the proxies like Psaki and Hannity are placed alongside Chris Wallace, whichever channel he's on, can't even keep track anymore, which kinda firms up my point lol. Basically, an American BBC. That's what I want. But unlike the BBC, doesn't hold a monopoly. I’m not sure how the BBC is supposed to be fundamentally different from NPR.
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Jan 3, 2024 00:27
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golden bubble posted:https://www.threads.net/@jayrosen_nyc/post/C2pnxs6u2Rq/ We already have NPR, etc., so I'm not sure what solution you think he should be embracing.
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Jan 29, 2024 20:15
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