Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech | Hacker News Reader

Journalists Mobilize Against Free Speech

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12 pointsundefined19 comments

Personally, I disagree with the first sentence, which to me invalidates the premise.

There are numerous examples, just from the last 20 years, even excluding the last few years, where journalists have willingly silenced opposition, or even refused, with the consent of their own editors or even at editors behest, to not write or report on certain stories.

Then that begs the question, once you go back past 20 years you find more, fairly regular, examples of this behavior, which obviously comes with the silencing or exclusion of journalists who buck the cart, and their subsequent blackballing from the industry.

Unattributed quote "History is written by the victors" comes to mind. How would you know if you have not always been at war with Eastasia, thats what the journalists have said for decades, and the microfiche from their reporting in 1980s is missing (hyperbole).

Historically if one news organization wouldn't cover a story, its competitors might, or you could talk about it yourself. Now the most vocal "journalists" seem to be uniformly in favor of preventing anyone with a dissenting opinion from speaking. That's quite a shift.

My point is that its not as new as people think it is at all. The internet, however, has reached a point where being able to point it out en masse, has obviated journalists need to do it slyly under the table.

If the game is called out and you still hold the cards, why not just be frank about it, like they are doing now.

The left and the right used to both agree on free speech as a fundamental inalienable principle, even as late as the early 2010s. That has only changed in recent times and I do think the game has changed in journalism as well, as a result of that trend.

See http://campaignforfreespeech.org/free-speech-under-dire-thre...

Has it accelerated in the last ten years? sure.

Point still stands it was pretty common the past fifty years at least, just occurred in backrooms and editorial boards.

Plenty of examples of this.

NYT might as well have had the snowden leak information as far back as 2004 I believe it was, but they withheld it.

“In recent years the United States has seen more severe acts of political violence and deadlier riots than the events at the Capitol—but American guarantees of free speech apparently should not survive the shocking image of Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked. The notion that free expression is sedition’s handmaiden or that the prevention of treason should be a higher goal than the open exchange or exposure of allegedly dangerous arguments are not controversial views anymore; they pop up frequently, among putatively liberal-minded commentators in The Washington Post and The New York Times.”

We should all agree that any measure whatsoever is acceptable, in order to ensure that no Trump ever again may be elected.

Consider that people Voted for Trump, because of information they received.

You see the problem? How did these Trump voters receive this information?

Obviously, information must be controlled. It’s that simple. Now that we journalists have reached this consensus, you’ll be much safer and happier, and there won’t be any more of this unfortunate voting for people outside of our little club.

Edit: to be clear, I am satirizing the pro-censorship perspective.

> Obviously, information must be controlled. It’s that simple.

Better hope the people you agree with get the first go at doing so, because after you open that can of worms, you're not getting a second chance.

Edit: apparently I missed the sarcasm/satire. But that says something about where we are today as a society and what is within the realm of possibility.

No it’s not that simple. Especially because you’ve forgotten about past Capitol riots at McConnell’s office (https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/25/politics/sunrise-movement-mcc...), and Pelosi’s office (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...), and the legislative chambers when Kavanaugh was appointed (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45754771). Those riots were instigated, condoned, and encouraged by left leaning politicians not the right.

There are clear double standards in journalism both due to what they cover and how they cover it - see https://www.allsides.com/blog/capitol-hill-breach-riot-cover... or just watch the softball questions at the white house press conferences now. Or consider that you probably hadn’t heard of the above incidents I enumerated. News media is incredibly biased and even tenured houses of journalism have just become the next theater for activists to take over and amplify their worldviews from, using missing context, selection bias, and subtle redefinition of words like “peaceful”.

Free speech is the only thing that can help both sides seek the truth and it is the only thing that can prevent each side from thinking the other side must be tyrannically suppressed.

It's hardly satire, unfortunately. In the old days, you had to have leaks like JournoList, GameJournoPros, or Wikileaks to find out the narrative mainstream journalists wanted to push.

Now you need only read journo Twitter. They're quite open about it.

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