Comment by mtgp1000 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mtgp1000 | Hacker News Reader

>The call shows how Silicon Valley millionaires, who have been coddled by the press and lauded as innovators and disruptors, fundamentally misunderstand the role of journalism the moment it turns a critical eye to their industry.

No, I would argue that journalists don't understand that their role requires objectivity, and that the whole industry is broken because it has been completely dominated by ideologues, top to bottom, who are blatantly pushing politics onto the masses.

Don't support BLM? Have legitimate criticism? Be prepared to be called out by "journalists" until you fall in line, if you don't get cancelled first. And let's be real, this has been the status quo regarding taboo topics for at least a decade.

Edit: would you all be downvoting if the same journalists were adding pro Trump spin to a sizable proportion (or majority, depending on the outlet) of non-editorial (but editorialized) media? I'm not going to support blatantly partisan writing by ostensibly neutral platforms simply because they represent my politics. We need objective news and the fact that it is impossible to be purely objective is not an excuse to deliberately pollute news articles and headlines with consistent agenda.

There are still journalists who do things like reporting, but I agree the growth in significance of opinion relative to reporting, including in some historically very respectable outlets, is a bit worrying.

> No, I would argue that journalists don't understand that their role requires objectivity

Based on what? Objectivity hasn't been required since the printing press was invented

It's required because a democratic society relies on a healthy press. These are supposed to be scholars, with a code of ethics, dedicated to documentation. Journalists are not supposed to actually interfere in the system they are observing (e.g. by calling for de-platforming) because then they go from being journalists to being activists.

Edit: To be clear, I have no problem with newspapers including opinion articles about de-platforming, but there must be an acknowledgement that there's a difference between journalists and activists/thought leaders. We cannot go on mixing both.

Was Edward R. Murrow an activist?

Huh? Editorial boards express opinions all the time. The news has never been about documentation, there's always been too much to document.

Journalists are not mere observers, they are a part of the system itself and so cannot help but interfere with it.

You're asking for a state of affairs that had never existed.

De-platforming/cancelling is the hip word at the moment, and powerful people are getting nervous, because it is the rabble instead of the powerful doing the canceling.

I have two responses: (1) The amount of self-awareness demonstrated by the elites tends to be related to how they fair in peasant revolts. (2) People have short memories, the class-driven state of affairs you prefer will be back soon enough.

> People have short memories, the class-driven state of affairs you prefer will be back soon enough.

Are you sure? Can anyone be sure of this? The internet has fundamentally altered the dynamic with the new Gutenberg revolution. Now the angry mobs have louder voices than even the largest institutions. Worse, people at these institutions are encouraging the mob for clickbait driven profit.

The incentives are perverse and it's why a strong code of ethics is essential.

With unprecedented power comes unprecedented responsibility.

Based on what? Journalism has always been through the lens of the author and/or organization. Not every form of journalism is meant to be the AP news.

Ethics are rarely required but that does not lessen their importance. Are you argueing against having ethics in journalism simply because they were not required when the printing press was invented?

That's quite the leap you made there. Have you stopped beating your wife?

This has been the status quo regarding taboo topics for as long as human language has existed, and I don't think it has much to do with the journalism industry.

Journalists have long been a self-aggrandizing bunch who think that the only people who'd ever dislike or distrust them are evildoers up to something dubious, though I agree the aggressive social justice activism is new.

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