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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

There seems to be a strong desire around the world to implement the Turkish media business model: Operate the media as a loss leader and make your profits from your other businesses by being favourable to the politicians in power and get just as favourable treatment.

This also scales nicely because you can start getting way overpriced ad buys when other companies also want to get favourable deals with the politicians, so you become a direct broker for access to the government.

Of course, the quality suffers and other media begins to emerge but you can keep buying the challengers or the govt can take care of them.

In Turkey, the pro-govt media is called "pool media" because a bunch of businessmen close to the ruling party created a pool to buy out newspapers and TV channels and an audio recording of them discussing the details was leaked(which is also very complicated, way out of the scope of this comment).

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> ... and make your profits from your other businesses by being favourable to the politicians in power and get just as favourable treatment.

David Frum writing in 2017:

> The transition [in Hungary] has been nonviolent, often not even very dramatic. Opponents of the regime are not murdered or imprisoned, although many are harassed with building inspections and tax audits. […] The courts are packed, and forgiving of the regime’s allies. Friends of the government win state contracts at high prices and borrow on easy terms from the central bank. Those on the inside grow rich by favoritism; those on the outside suffer from the general deterioration of the economy. As one shrewd observer told me on a recent visit, “The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.”

* https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/03/how-to-...

Do not let how autocracies worked in the 20th Century distract you from how they now work in the 21st. (Though no doubt there are still places where people are disappeared.)

> The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.

I hadn't really thought of it this way, but that's a common thread through so many political problems of the last 20 years. If you can convince enough voters that immigrants are the problem and you are the solution then you can do anything you like.

There was also a famous example of this in the 1930s-40s. It's been going on for a long time.

This is also why nativism was such a big part of fascist movements in the 20th century, too. Tell the majority that they are special, and could live happily ever after if it weren't for all those (insert boogeyman here).

> If you can convince enough voters that immigrants are the problem and you are the solution then you can do anything you like.

You can do better than such a low effort swipe.

Well, immigrants at some point become a problem (I'm one too) especially if they compete for the same low paying positions with no safety net. If you add competition for limited resources you have a bunch of people that are worse off and it's unfair to call them racist, they are just scared and pissed off their way of life that was promised "safe" is not so safe anymore.

The question is, what are we going to do about it? If we keep ignoring the condition of the working class for too long like in this country, you get Trump and the likes.

It's an enormous failure of our political class to have ignored real issues for so long, getting it to the point where pretty much the same thing is happening all around the world, and the plutocrats and billionaires are exploiting it because they can since they have all the power.

Not even a new thing, Rage Against The Machine wrote songs about all of this 20 years ago, it's just that most people weren't paying attention.

> The benefit of controlling a modern state is less the power to persecute the innocent, more the power to protect the guilty.

Is there a fundamental difference between these if there are private groups guilty of persecuting the innocent, and the party in power chooses to not persecute (or prosecute) those groups?

German and European Studies academic Alexander Clarkson has said that Orban's Hungary has a lot in common with Boss Tweed's Tammany Hall, not least in that the survival of Orban's rule is partly down to his willingness to play ball on Union-wide issues with "respectable" political blocs elsewhere: https://twitter.com/APHClarkson/status/1135860806141325312 https://twitter.com/APHClarkson/status/1135860966359543808 https://twitter.com/APHClarkson/status/1023633401105010688 .

This sounds so true of India as well. We have few media outlets that are unabashedly pro government and racist, and prominent among them(Republic TV) was in fact founded couple of years ago. Majority of mass regional language channels, including Hindi channels are controlled by pro government propagandists. While we do have a popular government at the center and by definition lot of folks in fact love these pro government propaganda, those in disagreement have no clue how to stand upto and win against these powerful power formation. They got the government, media, well funded social media teams that is few hundred thousand strong and sadly judiciary as well in their favor. They can twist and turn every facts to their convenience and feed the silent majority .

Though there has been a student and minority led protests against these of late, they are just not effective in combating these, with so much odds stacked against them. Honesty many are loosing hope. What in HN's collective wisdom is the way out for us, the nations like India, Turkey and others like us?

Media outlets being propaganda services for politicians or evil activities (like slavery) is not anything new. It's actually how it has mostly always been, everywhere.

> Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the U.S. media - Noam Chomsky

Not just Turkish, works in a lot of corrupt countries. Up to a point though: if the price is too high, you're going to jail and your media empire sold to the govt friendly ones. Tax evasion, corruption, murder or whatever. The ones on the good side get business and building permits, state advertising (they'll invent a campaign for you,) win contract bids, get out of jail free card etc etc.

To be fair, there's really no objective merit to this comment in the context of this acquisition really. I don't doubt your assertions on Turkey, but this is not Turkey. Not even FoxNews owners gain any indirect advantage from supporting the current government, rather, their owner's strategy is to simply stake out a claim on 'one side' of the political fence, wherein there happened to be a 'market opportunity'. It's cynical in the view that political views = markets, but it's not cynical to the point wherein we see clear corruption.

You don't even have to be operating at a loss to benefit from being favorable to politicians in power. It lets you get away with things.

For example: Apple paid Jobs in backdated stock options[1] while having Al Gore on the board. With a salary of $1/year, he was able to take all his income as long term capital gains and save on SS tax and income tax.

[1] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/steve-jobs-haunted-by-back...

How come tumblr sold for so little though? You would think that a site like tumblr would be worth far more as a way to influence the media.

Media has always been a part of the political arsenal since maybe thousands of years ago. The only difference is who is finacing it.

Why is Turkey so special?

In many European countries, the media gets directly paid by the government so they don't go tits-up. This ostensibly secures a free press. At the same time, wer zahlt, schafft an. In fact, if Turkey were doing this, they would probably be criticized for blatant corruption.

Well, there's a notion of intent. It is problematic of course, but right now I trust some Western European leaders comment to democracy and free press. Less so for ardogan. I don't trust him because of direct actions targeting political opposition.

See, that's what I was getting at. I know Turkey is an authoritarian state, and you know Turkey is an authoritarian state, but it's still a bit of circular reasoning:

1. It's authoritarian because it hurts the free press.

2. It hurts the free press because it's Turkey doing it.

3. Turkey is doing it because they are authoritarian.

And looking from the outside, I can't see a difference. The Western media, who are funded by the Western governments, praise the Western governments for their support of freedom and democracy.

The third world media, who are funded by the third world governments, praise the third world governments for their support of tradition and family values, or whatever it is they do down there.

My point is that it's absurd to call media free when they are getting paid by those who they are supposed to investigate. A better model, I think, would be this:

1. Each year, the government gives the media money.

2. If they wish to partake in this scheme, they have to put the money they get in a fund, which must be kept separate from the rest of their assets.

3. By law, they are prohibited from withdrawing more than say 5% of the assets each year, just as they must maintain a minimum share capital.

4. At registration, the government should give the various media corporations 20x the annual contribution for their such funds.

5. Upon liquidation, they must return the excess assets in the fund to the government.

This would insulate them from short-term political decisions. Even after ten years of no funding, they would still have 60% of their assets plus whatever the return on the way they invested them in was.

If you want to solve this by designing systems: I found the Dutch [0] one quite interesting. The way I understand, citizens kind of vote for their preferred content providers with air time / resources distributed accordingly.

But for me a critical aspect is their mission statement and whether they adhere to it. I expect the media in my country to be a check against politicians / the powerful. I understand having a system keeping this stable would be nice and being dependent on gov money has drawbacks, but just having such a culture is what I'd consider most important for the label free press.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_public_broadcasting_syst...

Name your favourite:

- official funding with oversight, including democratic participation of all parties, as well as transparent rules (eg equal screen time).

- private media without oversight, heavily favouring one party and in return getting kickbacks through eg state grants or contracts to related businesses.

You're thinking of public service - I mean the grants given to otherwise unprofitable newspapers. So there's a third option:

- private media without oversight, no requirements on democratic participation of all parties nor equal screen time, in return getting kickbacks by relatively transparent processes

But that is the way it is in my country, the USA, also. Now just a few corporations control most of the media people see, and positions who don’t go along with the establishment (like Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul) get at best sidelined by the media, at worst actively undermined.

Sorry to be a little off topic, but I recommend the book Surveillance Capitalism to better understand how people are manipulated.

Sadly, if have to agree on the Bernie example. Luckily, it gets hilarious enough to be very obvious.

>get at best sidelined by the media

Bernie's platform, like Trump's in 2016, has faced an incredible lack of scrutiny.

I have yet to see him pressed on the very high possibility that most of his platform will never get through congress.

I don’t think I’ve seen any candidate get pressed on the probability of their platform getting through Congress.

Actual negotiations are against adversaries in private; why force someone (Sanders or anyone else) to negotiate against themselves in public?

If you ask any presidential candidate about the chances of their platform passing as-is, they will all have the same three things to tell you: 1) Vote for members of congress who will support my agenda and this won't be a problem; 2) Give me a mandate to implement my agenda so I have more political capital for negotiations; 3) You need to plant a flag in the ground so that you have something to anchor negotiations later, which might involve compromises.

If your point is that voters, the media, and politicians spend way too much time on platforms when they are mostly just signalling devices, I agree.

Sure, but Sander's platform is significantly less concrete and likely (like Trump's) than the rest of the field.

Promising voters things and then not being able to come close to accomplishing them undermines people's faith in the system & process.

He has put some detailed calculations forward. Not sure how that's not concrete. Would you be able to make a single Biden Policy, or even better one that has actually been scrutinised?

This ship sailed a long time ago everywhere across the world. It's just that one side of the spectrum (left in some places, right in some) had a large control of the media.

I find it ironic that now that a right leaning investor might influence [which we don't know if it would have an effect but may] Twitter people are having a fit, but not many have a problem with Twitter when it favors the leanings of its left-leaning management.

When Twitter suspends people it's always been "but they are private company!" We'll see how they pull that same line if this goes through.

I don’t remember anyone saying that twitter favoured the left. If yo hear it from the left it’s that Twitter favours the right. Facebook on the other hand very much favoured the right through intentional algorithms.

Not true. Sources: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=twitter+political+bias+left+right

The false equivalence between left and right here is the issue IMO. I truly believe the left-lead media largely acts in good faith, and the right-lead media largely does not.

I understand that people on the right feel the opposite, that's fine. But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.

> I truly believe the left-lead media largely acts in good faith

I would like to raise to your awareness that when Bernie was accused of saying a woman couldn't be president, his talking point we're very close to what people on the right have been saying for years.

> But I don't feel like I should be obligated to complain when the media behaves in a fashion that I feel is appropriate, just to appease this both-sidesism.

You're saying that you want the media to be a political instrument, but you want to make sure it's a political instrument used only by the party you prefer?

Because the alternative wouldn't be "it should be used by both sides", the alternative would be "it shouldn't be a political instrument".

The alternative is "tell the truth". The truth as of late has a strong preference for left leaning positions.

yawn. Again, the argument was "it's okay if it helps my side". It's essentially "I'm fine with throwing the code of law out the window, but only if my side does it".

How do you know?

> The truth as of late has a strong preference for left leaning positions.

Can you give 3 examples?

I can give you hundreds lately. If you didn’t notice you’re probably part of the problem.

I'll give you one for free, the rest you're going to have to bother googling by yourself:

https://www.gq.com/story/coronavirus-trump-conspiracy

The complaint from the left has always been that Twitter protects extreme right wing view points even when they violate their terms of service

Probably because when Twitter was created the goal was to create a new communication medium... and any political leanings were incidental.

Whereas this is an outright political attack that has no concern for the technical work of Twitter.

The difference in motives is clear

Do motives matter if the result is indistinguishable?

Yes, for two reasons.

First, a political motive could not have created Twitter. If twitter was created as a tool to influence politics, it would drastically changed who signed up for the platform, and it's influence and reach. There are plenty of platforms that have tried that route, and not a single one has been successful. Reddit is in a similar position as Twitter on this same issue, and take a look at Voat to see what that looks like. Therefore, Singer seeks to obtain influence he would not have had by co-opting a platform created for other purposes.

Second, Twitters political leanings are incidental. Twitter's employees are human beings, and when they make a decision, they are biased by their own thoughts and opinions, which happen to generally be on the left. While leftist, this still allows people like Trump and other conservatives to use the platform... and it limits what political actions they can take (they cant get too extreme or their diverse user base may revolt). In other words, this is a passive bias.

Whereas Singer (may--we don't really know his motives) seek to turn Twitter into a political weapon that he can use to battle liberalism. That's an active bias. And depending on how active he wants to get with politics using Twitter, it may destroy the platform.

A passive bias is very different than an active bias. And I don't know how you can claim they are indistinguishable.

> If twitter was created as a tool to influence politics, it would drastically changed who signed up for the platform, and it's influence and reach.

That's assuming you have to start with what you want to eventually achieve. Startups don't work like that in business, why should they in politics? You invest money to buy growth and market share before you monetize.

I'm not suggesting that Twitter was created to be a political tool, but "political apps don't work, Twitter worked, therefore Twitter wasn't meant to be a political app" falls a bit short I think.

> While leftist, this still allows people like Trump and other conservatives to use the platform...

Isn't that mostly because they really don't want to open that can of worms by banning the US president? Do you believe that, if Trump had lost to Clinton in 2016 but just kept on playing the politics game instead of tweeting about how great his new show will be, they would've tolerated that? I seriously doubt that.

> Whereas Singer (may--we don't really know his motives) seek to turn Twitter into a political weapon that he can use to battle liberalism.

Burning it to the ground, wasting his money, because of his personal politics? Doesn't that sound a bit strange for a hedge fund?

Hillary doesn’t run twitter. Trump used twitter for 8 years to attack and spread conspiracy theories about Obama. I would say the character of his tweets are unchanged since he became president. So I see no reason to believe he would have been banned on year 9 of his behavior.

Besides there are plenty of other conservatives on twitter. Then and now.

> Hillary doesn’t run twitter.

That's not the point. It wouldn't be Hillary making Twitter ban Trump, it would be Twitter not having to ban the president. Trump's tweets may not have changed (I'd say they did; his reach and the importance certainly has), but Twitters policies have evolved and what was okay 5 years ago isn't okay today.

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