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Comment by mc32 | Hacker News Reader

It’s odd because they pick and choose which “violence” is right and wrong. When Arab spring (in the end a very destabilizing movement) was facilitated by FB and Twitter it was great. When it facilitates caravan protests it’s great. When it facilitates anti-tax movements that threaten viability of an unpopular (vis a vis locals) but popular internationally (ie elites) then it’s seen as facilitating “bad” protests. Obviously media like to pick their narrative and winners and losers, deserving of freedom and those who don’t rather than let the masses decide for themselves.

That’s manipulation by traditional media upset their worldview and power to project it is slipping away from them.

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This may be my reading only, but "populist" seeems to carry a negative connotation. I wonder, what is the opposite of populist? Is it "elitist?"

If you agree with decision taken by the majority then it's "democratic". If you disagree, it's "populist".

I'm from India where we have a similar term in the political lexicon - "vote-bank politics". It's means a policy that a plurality of voters (the "bank") like and want, but you don't. If you're within the vote bank, then it's no longer vote-bank politics, it's democracy in action.

The bad kind of populism is when an elite says they speak for the masses without actually consulting them. The public at large in such populism is a passive entity. The masses become a strawman used to pretend a majority support the autocrat's actions even if you cant find any particular person who does.

The sort of "populism" without a leader discussed in this article is nothing like that. But there are political powers that wish to ignore that a lot of people can be legitimately angry at the same time.

Media has always been biased like that, because they report the news relative to the established opinion at the time and place where they are published. It is easy in hindsight to pick examples that paints a picture of manipulation.

This also extends to which incidents of police violence are approved and covered or not. If circumstances were different we might see cries of authoritarianism and calls for regime change!

Exactly, they'd be decrying the use of “chemicals weapons” by police (i.e. tear gas/pepper spray) and ask if it violates treaties against its use on civilians, etc. It’s all so blatantly political and partisan by a group which sets itself up as paragon of impartiality, truth, etc., but it’s all about world view, power and exerting that power to project that world view.

Now of course editorials and editorializing _is_ understandably different but unfortunately that wall has been completely breached and demolished.

Who is “they”? Your little anti-media ciclejerk here seems to target “the media”. But you can’t all be so dense as to not notice that this is just some guy on medium.com, right?

Please omit name-calling from your HN comments, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

He's actually much worse than a media member, he's a professor of journalism.

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