Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

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> Journalists have essentially become socialites. They don't want to publish articles that will rock the boat, because the people they are friends with are the ones that own that boat, invite them to parties, and are a part of their friend groups.

To the extent this is arguably true of etablishment journalist, the mirror image seems to be true of anti-establishment journalists. Instead of being unreasonably resistant to publishing stories that rock the boat, they are unreasonable eager to do so, taking sources that validate this pre-established bias uncritically, opening themselves up for manipulation and as agents of propaganda, because the people they are friends with, and that invite them to parties are more interested in capsizing the boat than the truth.

Wow, exactly what I was thinking but probably more articulate than I could have put it. That there are a lot of people building a journalistic career on being anti-establishment, saying that the "mainstream media" et al are lying to us and censoring us and are crooked...and gaining followers as a result. Often telling us to not trust groups A-Y, and only trusting them, the Z.

At the end of the day, I have to trust someone to be doing the legwork, research, investigation to verify the stories and to report it to me as honestly as they can.

For me, I mostly trust the vast majority of professional journalists and institutions to do that work together, to check and balance each other most of the time to make sure something is as true as it can be, and feel skeptical when someone tells me to distrust them so strongly.

(I worry that sometimes I post things that may be too charged or opinionated or just inappropriate for HN, so if you think this is, I'd be grateful if you let me know why in a reply)

Extremely relevant reading: _Purity_, by Jonathan Franzen https://www.amazon.com/dp/0374239215

That's a really good and fair point, but we're at a junction where looking at the Ukraine situation and saying "yeah but that looks fucked tho" is met with ABSOLUTE OPPROBRIUM. Come on.

The same people who'd happily get someone fired for tweeting something insensitive are all closing ranks against any criticism of Mr. "You ain't black". Come on.

I can't wait until the election is over.

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