Comment by indubitable | Hacker News Reader

Comment by indubitable | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Seymour Hersh has written a phenomenal amount about Syria. Here are a couple of interesting articles:

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-a...

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n01/seymour-m-hersh/military-to-mi...

Stratfor, something like a private intelligence organization - well beyond a think tank, also has written a vast amount on Syria to the point that I think just googling for 'strator syria' would be more productive than me listing a slew of articles. In general I find news that's from first party analysts tends to be vastly more informative than the filtered drivel that you end up getting from most US news sites.

As an aside, I am not suggesting that that the above directly support OP's hypothesis. What it does support is the fact that what's stated in most US mainstream outlets is a childlike misrepresentation of the war over there framing it as the 'good guys' (which is naturally us) are trying to take out a pure evil 'bad guy.' I'm not sure if that's propaganda or just something that gets clicks. In either case, it's false. The interactions are complex, motivations rarely benevolent, and the whole thing an entire mess in general.

Ultimately the reason I stopped reading about Syria is because I think it's futile to try to 'truly' understand what's happening. We'll only be able to begin to actually dig into the truth 50 or so years from now when the documentation around the war is declassified.

Hersh's recent work has been pointedly criticized as that of a conspiracy theorist versus an investigative journalist. [1]

Generalizing reporting in "most US mainstream outlets" as "childlike misrepresentation" is the kind of fake news doubt-sowing that is killing our (America's) relationship with facts.

There has been some excellent reporting on the relatively complex Syrian Civil War from stalwarts such as the Washington Post and the New York Times. Even upstart Buzzfeed News has done some great stuff that was carefully sourced and thoroughly investigated - regardless of how bad it made the US look.

My perspective is that of someone who has been professionally and personally following the Syrian Civil War since 2012.

[1] - https://www.vox.com/2015/5/11/8584473/seymour-hersh-osama-bi...

In the end none of us are on the ground and so we're left to rely on the integrity of the individuals and organizations that are reporting on issues. If you would rather rely on Vox, WaPo, Buzzfeed, and increasingly even the NYT for in depth and critical analysis then that's certainly your prerogative.

At the same time, hailing them as beacons of integrity and truth is unreasonable. They increasingly routinely print news that later turns out to be entirely fake with corrections and updates often tucked away from site of their readers - though we also certainly contribute to that in that a million people may share a sensationalized story that turns out to be fake, but only a handful will share the correction stating it was all false. In a world where many receive their news through social media and implicitly virally, one thing I would certainly agree with you is that America is having an increasingly challenged "relationship with facts."

Another issue is that the US is obviously not monolithic. Speaking poorly of the US in one way or another will be either widely hailed or widely condemned depending on the person speaking and whom they're speaking of and to. This sort of split in society has become particularly true in the media today. All organizations you listed, for instance, are intermingled to the point of incestuousness and you will rarely find disagreement between them, in no small part due to this. See, for instance, things like JournoList [1] turned CabaList in which participating journalists at times conspired to kill stories that reflected poorly on their own personal biases, and at other times they even discussed ways they could conspire to try to kill off media outlets that did not conform to their biases. Perhaps it's fit to conclude there that the creator of JournoList was none other than Ezra Klein, the founder and now editor in chief of Vox.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList

I am not sure where I said anything about "beacons of integrity and truth," but I will take institutions that routinely call themselves out for their mistakes over Hersh who appears to stand by all of his reporting despite serious flaws in his stories.

I get my news from the sources you mentioned along with many others. I was taking issue with your disposal of babies with bathwater. If you are discounting information coming from flawed institutions with actual policies and procedures in favor of dubiously sourced "investigative" reporting by people like Hersh, we are in deep doo-doo.

FWIW, I am about as close to being on the ground as just about anyone outside of the actual participants in the war.

The sites do not routinely call themselves out. Rather they acknowledge to creating fake stories once overwhelming evidence of such is presented and spread to the point that it can no longer be ignored. And of course such acknowledgements invariably come with appeals to plausible deniability in their own culpability -- which I think should become decreasingly plausible to anybody of the slightest bit of objectivty, given the regularity of such 'errors.' The only reason it might seem routine is that the sites you've named have all put out an increasingly large number of false stories.

However, we're not in "deep doo-doo" just because you happen to think these organizations have value. When we would be in "deep doo-doo" is if we became monolithic in thought. It's great that you think Seymour Hersh has no credibility. It's great that I think your preferred sources have no credibility. It ensures we remain a critical audience which helps work as a safeguard against falsehoods. As your preferred sources are regularly outted, it is in large part thanks to people like me. And should Seymour indeed be shown to be generating fake news, it will be largely be thanks to people like you.

The only thing that's really changed in society is this fear of conflict. Disagreement, or the belief that 'others' are being misled by fake information, is hardly a novel thing. It's the self righteousness and fear of disagreement, arguably driven by social media echo chambers, that is the novel thing -- and that is the thing that, if anything, might leave us in "deep doo-doo."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com