Peter Thiel Is Reportedly Exploring Launching Conservative News Outlet | Hacker News Reader

Peter Thiel Is Reportedly Exploring Launching Conservative News Outlet

bloomberg.com

17 pointsmiraj16 comments

Good, and I hope it takes off. While there are numerous respected conservative magazines, the right has no legitimate news networks. I think we'd all be better off if conservatives had, say, a TV channel that actually reported real news.

Fat chance Peter Thiel will be the person giving us that.

You're probably right, but I'll be honest: the idea of some of my family and friends watching something other than Fox News all day makes me wishful.

>the right has no legitimate news networks.

Unless you specifically mean TV channels, the right has it's fair share of legitimate news outlets, like the WSJ.

I'm not sure that anyone would be better off with any more 24h cable news channels. The problem with all of these, regardless of political orientation, is that there's only so much useful content that can be produced on an ongoing basis that will appeal to the common denominator. As a result, we end up with the same kinds of talk shows and propaganda pieces that plague all cable news channels, and ultimately serve to delegitimate them.

I do mean TV channels. I meant that first part about there being plenty of legit, respected, analytic conservative news sources. There's just not an actual news channel for the right.

I believe that anything that could draw viewership away from Fox would be good for us as a nation.

I actually think you could pretty easily fill 24 hours with talk about policy if you had the funding and willpower to do so. The question is whether a market exists for that, or whether you can create one. I’d love to see any television station present meaningful policy discussions, regardless of political alignment. To me that’s a much more important indicator of quality than “conservative/liberal/whatever.”

Part of being a working conservative today is "might makes right", "the ends justify the means", and "the weak lose while the strong win". "Lying to get what you want" or "working over those rubes" is basically held as a virtue.

Through this lens, the point of having a conservative news outlet can only be to use it as a lie broadcasting machine.

I'm pretty sure if Peter Thiel has something to say, he has the resources to get the message out. In this case, he just wants a situation where there's a bunch of talking heads also agreeing with him as he talks because he is a total tool.

This is not inherent to conservatism; it's a perversity of Fox News in particular. Making a conservative news channel to compete with it would improve that situation considerably.

I guess I'm wondering what a more principled conservative news channel would have that CNN doesn't?

"More principled" in news really just means reporting the facts with minimal political color. The more you get away from that, the less you should be considered news. The extent to which you still insist you are news, that your opinions or outright lies are facts, is the extent to which you're operating a propaganda machine.

The world doesn't need more propaganda machines. Fox News has been a net negative to the world, except in educating a new generation about modern propaganda and maybe eventually increasing society's resistance to bullshit.

> The more you get away from that, the less you should be considered news.

So from that perspective, what makes CNN the golden standard here? I don’t have cable TV, but browsing the listings for my zip code, their lineup seems to be filled with talk shows. I guess the exception would be the airport darling the CNN Breaking News channel.

How does this fit into his Monopoly first strategy? News outlets are not monopolies and have no significant competitive advantage (unlike PayPal and FB which have network effects).

I've listened somewhere that he also opened a restaurant some time ago and it failed, which is why he's so negative on restaurants.

Diversity of thought is a good thing. I hope Thiel succeeds.

Comments here are hilarious. Replace "Peter Thiel" with "Elon Musk" and "conservative" with "liberal" and the circle jerk will fly.

This again? Either I’m entering my dotage, or this was on the front page recently. Either way, if Thiel wants to burn his money for ideological purposes, I’m sure that the line to sell him matches is around the block.

Edit: naeem, I’d encourage you to move past assumptions and actually look at comment histories; in my case at least you’re dead wrong.

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