The American Press Is Destroying Itself

I suspect that's correct. It's hard now to find any news outlet now that sticks to "Who, What, When, Where, Why". This is a consequence of pay per click, probably.

The left and the right now both have a checklist of mandatory positions required to avoid punishment. Those positions are in many cases contrary to fact. That's not good. Denial has become a core part of American politics.

By optimising for user engagement, media is ignoring the effect it has over society at large.

This is actually an argument for government sponsored news outlets implemented in a politically neutral manner; i.e. the television shouldn't just be a mouthpiece for the state/the ruling party.

For an example of state-financed but politically independent organisation, one can look at the civil servants system in the UK.

He said everyone thinks they want the news to be deeply insightful and informative, but the people who would consume that product tend to go out nights and do interesting things like attend ballets or go to museums, or go to things like the aspen festival. Or at least they are just reading a few articles online.

They make news for the sort of people who just binge television news constantly. These people don't have a custom rss feed to make that efficient, and that is a special type of person.

"We run the market test against PBS every night."

If PBS started hitting numbers, every other station would jump to that model immediately.

The reason is clear. While there is distraction, the real issues are unaddressed and they can keep putting their hands in your pocket when you aren't looking.

Also, excessive pseudo-socialism is a great tool to drive down wages and have the whole world compete against each other. Locust capitalism.

Accurate. Agreed. And a completely fair business decision. We all have bill to pay.

Unfortunately, they (wrongly) continue to sell this new version of their craft (?) as journalism. The masses buy in - confirmation bias is a powerful force - and we are today exactly where we should be: Truth is fluid. Editorial is journalism. Everyone - blue, red or orange - gets hammer their facts into their echo chamber. Etc.

It's important to realize that there is no democracy or democratic process without a health and proper Fouth Estate.

Btw, Tali Sharot's "The Influential Mind" is a great read on the subject on influence.

https://www.amazon.com/Influential-Mind-Reveals-Change-Other...

Edit: their to there. with to without.

It is not about the economics of the American Press, it's about the lynchmobs that have formed around thoughtcrime and the sometimes public hounding of people who don't push the proper narrative.

There might be economic factors intertwined with the push for more groupthink, but I think there is a link missing in the chain of logic from this article's subject matter and your reply.

I agree with you entirely except for this. For the poor, yes. But there are plenty of people the more pressing day-to-day matters is not survival but how to hoard even more wealth and advantage than they already have. Like sending their children to private schools despite that only exacerbating the already gross iniquities of life for poor children vs elite children. Or figuring out how to upgrade to an even nicer house or which gentrifying neighborhood will yield them the best returns in 10-20 years once it is fully taken over.

This is why NYT is going to stop growing if Trump loses in November. With no need to resist there is no need to subscribe

Slow down. This is the hackernews equivalent to "yada yada yadaing" over the real stuff. You say points big and silly you can't backup. I work at a business news organization, and know someone who just left WSJ. Now, think again how you'd tell them face to face they're niche? You're gonna tell them how the media business works? Like what are you going to say?Are you claiming FB is a new organization? In fact, are you really saying anything at all?

Those issues are important, but what I find most concerning about your reply is "the way our economical system work".

You're either not in management, are an incredibly crappy manager, or don't know anything about it. You do it for the money like some lame reach for that Tesla R&R refrain to argue for lower intellectual (ethics/morals) standards ... that's the beginning of the end for organizations ... what you fail to get is that other organizations who are not so easily sold your sale of good will be still doing the news and fighting the good fight.

Those who understand money the best and make the most over the long term know best money is NOT the measure of all things.

I mean, those kinds of market failures are exactly what large parts of "the left" are frequently highlighting.

If only subjectivity is true, society must fragment. Everyone forms a different view -- unity is lost

Do people just want to pay and read opinion. Or do they seek a reality truth

The second goal will succeed no matter what newspapers do

It's not working though. A lot of people canceled their NY Times subscriptions after the "Send in the troops" op-ed. Massively pissing off your customer base like that is not a winning move.

Reducing the cost could be one way to compete with "non-serious news".

I’ll cite a specific example to make this case. See this paragraph:

> Cotton did not call for “military force against protesters in American cities.” He spoke of a “show of force,” to rectify a situation a significant portion of the country saw as spiraling out of control. It’s an important distinction. Cotton was presenting one side of the most important question on the most important issue of a critically important day in American history.

What Cotton actually said:

> One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers.

(Emphasis mine)

It’s very clear to anyone reading Cottons article that the call is to deploy troops to subdue he largely peaceful protests, which are painted as overwhelmingly violent in the beginning of the article. The author of the current article is simply using selective words to further his argument.

The other arguments are similar in nature. So while it appears to be a good read, it actually is not.

The real overton window has moved a little bit, but a lot of this is really about Twitter. Many institutions, including universities and publishers, act like Twitter outrage represents their real readers and communities.

This isn't true. Twitter is a thick bubble that gives the loudest voice to the angriest, most passionate outrage-mongers. Sometimes they use it for good causes, other times they're way outside the mainstream. They also firmly believe, in a way that's constantly contradicted by polling, surveys, and talking to people in real life, that they're not only right but the majority.

I can't say for sure that it's getting worse, but it feels like.

That’s not an Overton Window shift, even if it was happening (which it is not); an Overton Window shift would change what the outrages are; making questioning popular outrages less tenable would be a narrowing of the window rather than a shift. But there is widespread and viable news media coverage questioning the outrages of the day, more than any time previously I would venture. It's just that the media is more focussed on catering to various isolated demographic and ideological markets (some more for advertising sales reasons, some more for political propaganda reasons, but the net effect is the same), and so in any particular outlet there is probably less tolerance for stories questioning the outrages of that outlets target audience. But, while the Overton Window may have shifted and/or narrowed/widened over time, this isn't a sign of it so much as the increasingly narrow audience focus of much of the media.

Margins on digital products are lower than on print products but that's not unique to the Times and it's largely outside of their control. Ad margins have collapsed since their astronomical highs of the 90s and early 2000s because of the divorce of classifieds and news, rather than a collapse in total circulation.

So I'm just quibbling with the word "universally" here. I would rather editorial pages be forthright about where their window of acceptability lies for them. I would especially advocate aversion to doublespeak, especially in journalistic contexts. Propaganda, even well meaning propaganda, is another enterprise.

The article cites award-winning journalists being fired for running opinion pieces that a 58-80% of the population agree with (but that the fired editor disagrees with!), or for publishing error-free factual pieces.

It’s not just the press. When people point out the facts don’t support the conclusion or the math doesn’t add up in a COVID story, there’s a 50-50 chance it gets downvoted to oblivion.

I mean it's not like taibbi is speaking up for child molesters. He turned out to be factually right about a lot of this stuff, but it was completely unacceptable to say so.

Remember when Dan Rather was fired? It was over a story that had been carefully researched, both with written evidence, and with multiple recorded interviews with corroborating eye witnesses.

The excuse for firing him was that out of the 1000’s of documents they’d gathered, a few were forgeries. The reality was that he criticized W within a few years of 9/11, and the press decided that was off limits. We ended up fighting a useless war because no one was allowed to question the executive branch. That led to untold human suffering, and eventually the rise of ISIS, etc.

Anyway, by converting to a propaganda engine dedicated to ousting Trump, the liberal press is actually helping dismantle our democracy. They may as well be endorsing him for a third term in office.

They were on Joe Rogan recently (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eA9Tpf5Uuxs), so their audience will probably spike. I find that even when I don't agree with them, their smartness is usually a breath of fresh air from the fetid stupidities of the mainstream (both left and right) media. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts, and whether they will continue to be able to work together. Regardless of whether one agrees, they're managing to host a freer discussion for the time being.

It says something about our moment in history that it would take a maverick and upstart working at the edges of institutions to say something true about the great issues of our time.

Just for the record, I subscribe to The Intercept and am a fan of Glenn Greenwald.

That ship sailed a long time ago.

A. Because it's neither rare nor well done.

It was amusing to see Chinese tabs pull a tar-baby on Trump a few weeks ago, with regard to the trade treaty. When communists have tabloid journalism and hedge funds, it gets difficult to tell them apart from the capitalists. At least "having too few political parties" still seems a reasonable tell for repressive states.

(to be fair, ad-supported journalism has had a much longer run than I'd thought it would)

Edit: older than I'd thought:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china/chinese-a...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-trump/tru...

Having grown up during perestroika. I remember saluting the red banner and blood soaked monster Lenin portet while reading Archipelago Gulag at home.

Never though US will get here

While I don't disagree, I would add that all of us need to share our true opinions at least in one place: the voting booth. We are led by those whom we choose and we must start choosing more wisely if we want a better future.

Maybe a necessary defense, but still, saddening.

I recognized how overcome I was feeling by it all and switched off a while ago, and life has felt a lot easier since. I've a couple of subscriptions for print media and now defer checking the news, avoiding Twitter etc. and just catching up with the weekly editions over the weekend. HN is the only site I really look at daily due to its mix of interesting content, suppression of political battles and quality of moderation. Even then I'll often Pocket articles and defer them until later.

Recognize that you're being manipulated, that you've no influence over any of it and step away. I promise, after the initial come-down effect it entails, you'll feel a lot better for it.

What happens though when one group says (as they recently have) that silence is insufficient, not just on agreeing with not being a racist, but the wisdom of their proposed solution to the problem? I've seen the claim that silence is violence... what do we do then?

I don't think your quote is logically consistent; the man is talking about actions taking place in a vacuum where race isn't a factor, which doesn't apply to the current environment.

It is a very derogatory term, though to be fair, it is also used as a foil against criticism of internal Chinese policies.

If you’re uncomfortable with someone’s ideas making them a pariah, you’re describing a basic social dilemma that many can sympathize with, but not an Orwellian future being pushed upon us by the political left.

But hang on. What rights, and which viewpoints, and what are people acting morally superior about? Your appeal to those ideals is not as universally applicable as you make it sound. I mean, this is pretty self-evident - one can easily pick examples of completely reprehensible beliefs that almost no one would tolerate.

Let's make this concrete. Someone who supports a policy of the government killing all American Jews could make an impassioned argument about the injustice done when a tyrannical moral orthodoxy imposes its views on a free man and vilifies him for daring to think differently, and about the tragedy of the fact that in its zeal to stamp out the dissenter it would betray its own cherished value of free thought. But it wouldn't be a very convincing argument.

And similarly the left is increasingly unconvinced by people who say that their reasonable disagreements are being demonized and complain that the usual framework of liberal democracy should protect them from that kind of treatment. When someone - anyone - finds a position monstrous enough, they're no longer going to be willing to tolerate it. That's what's happening. The human costs of our current status quo are so emotionally and ethically explosive that people come to see these issues as non-negotiable. Your appeal to those norms of civil disagreement and compromise is just not convincing if you're no longer willing to accept the consequences of playing by those rules.

(Sullivan should shut up about this particular controversy; he has not covered himself in glory on this issue in the past, and has no extra credibility here to burn).

Seek out people who seek to be right and back up their arguments consistently with logic and data, not people who are disliked by people you dislike.

Wikipedia is actually a decent free news source too, since articles about current events get updated and reviewed frequently.

The internet has opened the disfunction of every institution and and elites (i say this word in the positive light, the George Washington/MLK/Rosa Parks meaning, not the karl rove/donna brazile kind of way, ie leaders with great responsibility, at a significany personal risk )

Institutions used to control the message fairly effectively, now they cant due to citizen journalism.

Its not republicans or démocrats. Its literally every institution of centralized power.

Thats why opinion polls rate so low for everything, congress, NYT, Fox & all networks, FBI, DoJ, etc.

The people at the top of these institutions have looted americans for their own benefit, and never really had the people as their top of mind concern.

(R)s and (D)s wont reform themselves, any more than institutions will let go of power.

You need to take power forecefully from them, unless you want someone to literally set them on fire.

Where this prescription falls short of the cure: the most extreme are also the most vocal, and are the ones creating change. Regardless of which side we're on, we're letting them speak for us and pull as hard as they can in the direction we want the needle to move.

As a moderate liberal, if someone I know says they're allowing their child to choose their gender or that they want to shut down police departments, I try to keep an open mind, but don't really feel the same way they do.

I imagine moderate conservatives probably grin and bear a lot of racism, misogyny, and toxic nationalism by the same token.

Let me give you an example that's closer to home: you know how Facebook hires a bunch of people and pays them to collect more and more and more data on everyone? Do you think a single person within Facebook doesn't know it? They all know it and they all like their paycheque more than they like having a conscience. They buried that conscience long ago, in the name of 'providing for my family' or some other straw-man. Some never had much of a conscience to begin with.

That's most people, most of the time. They want what they want for them first, everybody else is everybody else's problem.

It's really that simple.

There are many ways this attitude is being enabled but really, being a selfish monkey comes natural to most people, it's overcoming that selfishness in the name of something bigger that takes a great deal of work. If that work goes unappreciated, what you get is a fake democracy or a real tyranny - all other options require citizens that aren't infantile, self-centered brats.

The way to see this most clearly is to ask 1000 educated, not random people, what critical theory [0] is. Maybe one will be familiar with it? We've had people thinking about the problem you're describing for nearly 100 years and hardly anyone knows about it. Now why would that be? Critical theory and philosophy more broadly has something to say about it :)

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

But we on the left need to recognize how crazy this s* is getting.

If anyone questions the insane dogma that has taken over the newsrooms pushed by the far left, then they are labeled a right-winger or worse. Never mind the fact that it causes the left to lose elections when we let our fringe elements take over.

there are tens of thousands of people at any given moment talking about how crazy the right wing is, especially Fox news and Breitbart. But where are you when the New York times is completely going off the rails? You're just defending them as your tribal instincts take over.

Also let's be honest here:

Kneeling before people you've never met to atone for the sins of of other human beings who happen to share your skin color might be something that's normal to you. It is utterly alien to the vast majority of the American public. Defunding police might have nuance to it but it is lost to the American public. If we want to win this next presidential election and Congress in the Senate, we need to be aware of the fact that these ideas are insane to most of America. I can't think of anything that will push a Midwestern voter to pull the lever for Trump faster than watching Minneapolis disband its police department as a councilwoman interviewed on CNN states that calling the police on an intruder is an act of privilege.

If Trump wins in 2020 this will be why. I don't want him to win in 2020. Do you?

Thats like saying Judge Richard Posner is one of the best jurists in the country without adding anything else.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Posner

The NYT is far-left? Self-censorship in there is one of the core topics of the article. And many other mainstream left (and some not even political) journals are mentioned. It doesn't feel like you've read the article in any depth if that's your takeaway.

I'd still rather have the ability to dissent online, rather than losing the platforms that may be held liable for what I post.

Section 230 is a good thing. Removing it would (in my opinion) only lead to de-platforming people the state disagrees with.

"Think of the children!"

You could provide evidence that the information was fabricated, but it probably wasn’t. That doesn’t mean it’s entirely accurate. The FBI doesn’t seem to think it is that credible, but I’m really not sure how much that is worth.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but simply saying you can find contradictory information on Google isn't sufficient.

Greenwald equated Michael Flynn's plea deal with the plight of poor folks being forced into bad deals by disinterested public defenders/overextended court systems on a recent episode of The Intercepted podcast. I no longer recognize the person I used to look forward to seeing as a guest on Democracy Now.

This is all in the Horowitz Report.

There is zero reason to believe anything in the Steel Dossier.

Not everyone on the "left" is on board with this. There's still a large number of us who respect reason, intelligence, civil discourse, liberty. We just don't appear to have a candidate who represents us, or a late night talk show that represents us, because our stances are not principally rooted as being in opposition to other entities. There are a few journalists and voices that still speak and write foremost with respect to reason and in accordance to reality, but the current social and political climate is so inflammatory that this becomes difficult.

People like us exist, our existence is just not expressed majorly in media or social media.

By the way, Taibbi is doing fine, financially. So I hardly think this is a grudge article.

The question then is why do we expend so much time and money engaging with and propagating discourse which we know is so fundamentally misrepresenting reality?

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-silicon-valley/th...

Then cops are killing people.

Are people meant to keep their minds? If ethical behavior is material, then are we not incentivizing unethical behavior by not providing the means to basic material when it is well within our own means to do so? And what king-of-kings thrives clad in white, righteous anger against the unethical? If we chastise those in pain, we will all know despair.

Being told to chill out on your own camp when you have deranged lunatics running the show who, by all accounts, are an order of magnitude more dangerous, leads to anything but chilling out.

The aggresiveness and disdain for dialogue of the fringe extremists running the executive in the US is basically leading to a more militant left wing, tired of being demanded nuance in the face of truly abhorrent adversaries.

Bringing up concentration camps in that way is just a way of assuming your conclusion.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?

There is something to be said for asking someone to start by getting their own house in order.

Like to me that statement is a non sequitur, and says either:

that the cause of increased violence is systemic adverse conditions and outright theft of wealth/quality of life over 400 years making communities tough to succeed in (doubt my Mom understands this)

or that if this is not true, that POC are somehow more violent as a race. Some Stoddard, Günther eugenics BS.

All my parents thoughts about the protests have these racist undertones and I don't know how to open my parents to education and understanding - and it's also scary with the election they would never vote Trump but his Reagan esque re-launch next week seems like this is his new strategy.

Just googling now I found this PDF, maybe I try sending that https://www.hks.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/centers/wien...

From Charlottesville to this, you can safely bet that anything reconciliatory that Trump says will be twisted into something divisive through intentionally misreporting what was said.

This is the actual quote. The fact is that he made this remark during a press conference which also discussed jobs numbers;

“Equal justice under the law must mean that every American receives equal treatment in every encounter with law enforcement regardless of race, color, gender, or creed," Trump said. "They have to receive fair treatment from law enforcement. They have to receive it. We all saw what happened last week. We can't let that happen. Hopefully, George is looking down right now and saying, 'This is a great day that's happening for our country.' It's a great day for him. It's a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great day in terms of equality. It's really what our Constitution requires and it's what our country is all about."

When I read this quote I hear Trump praising the protests and supporting the cause of equal treatment under the law and ending police brutality. The mass media reported the statement as, among other things, “revolting”. [1]

[1] - https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/202...

Here is the literal quote from the article: "Calls to “dominate” marchers and ad-libbed speculations about Floyd’s “great day” looking down from heaven at Trump’s crisis management and new unemployment numbers (“only” 21 million out of work!) were pure gasoline at a tinderbox moment. The man seems determined to talk us into civil war."

That said, it's also standard to turn off flags sometimes, for example if an article is particulary interesting and able to support a substantive HN thread. I did that in this case.

Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23512983, and if you still have a question that I haven't answered, let me know.

That’s rich. No, he did not say that. He said some readers may find it dangerous. It does not mean he himself finds it dangerous.