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Nixon bombed more people to death in Laos and Cambodia than the U.S. Army lost in all of World War II.

Nixon connived to have Kent State students attacked and slain by the National Guard.

These are both facts that can easily be reported and are more than damning enough on their own without editorializing.

The editorializing actually makes the case weaker. It does a good job of riling up people who already agree with you, but to everyone else it just looks like you're biased and attacking someone because of a personal grudge.

You've contradicted yourself in your own comment though.

First - Nixon inherited a war that others started, and put in place a strategy to end it, which he did.

Second - Your statement "killed more people in Laos and Cambodia than the US Army lost in WW2" is technical factual, but also kind of nonsense. It's pointless to compare civilian casualties in one war, with Army casualties in another.

Eisenhower definitely killed more civilians that Nixon - does that make him worse?

See how your selective facts are actually a form of editorializing?

Journalism is actually kind of hard, but yes, there is too much partisan news. Again this is our fault - if we clicked on straight news, and that's where the eyeballs went, that's where the money would go.

Fair point, and good journalism is hard. It takes a lot of knowledge and skill to put things into the appropriate context. As much as I like Hunter S Thompson's writing, I don't think the answer is to throw all that out the window and just rant about your own personal viewpoints.

I love that obit because it's so funny. But to take it seriously? To look for guidance there, from Hunter S. Thompson? Bad idea.

> Facts you can find on Wikipedia or in the phone book

This is the problem. For the most part, journalists are using the same facts everyone has access to (from wikipedia, google searches, or...twitter). So why do we need journalists? To tell us what to think about the facts?

To the extent that journalists are doing that, we no longer need them. There's a place for journalism, but it involves uncovering new facts, not telling us what to think about publicly available information.

Also, badgers don't actually fight best on their backs.

"Uncovering new facts": yes, that's reporting. We need that.

But there are actually too many facts. People can't read all the facts. We also need "analysis" - putting the facts in perspective, deciding which ones are important, and why. But, and here's where the press has failed spectacularly, we need that analysis to be unbiased, not pushing an agenda, but actually letting the data drive the narrative.

Ah, the holy grail, unbiased journalistic analysis! Which unfortunately is impossible.

I think it actually is impossible, in any absolute sense. But it's possible to do better than they're doing...

How often though, now, is journalism speaking truth and doing it "to power," which is to say those on top? I recall the journalists who decided to make an online map of all of the registered gun owners in the area. A furious strike against ... the little guy?

It might be a good idea for journalism to speak truth to power, but it must then make sure that it is truth, and that it is aiming at the powerful. Too often it has been a very slanted truth and often aligned with the interests of the real powers in the world.

>> Journalism should not just stick 'to facts'. Journalism's objective is to speak truth to power by whatever means necessary and to bring truth to light.

That's fine, but there is a time and place for it. As someone else said, doing it in that particular situation may have made the reporter a real bro among his own side but he looked like an ass to others. It's not ones own side that needs convincing, so it's ineffective in addition to making one look biased and like a child.

> Facts you can find on Wikipedia or in the phone book

No no no! The facts on Wikipedia are supposed to be dug up by journalists!

Yeah, let's not legitimize citogenesis[0]. Wikipedia is supposed to source its facts from first sources, not be considered a first source.

--

[0] - https://xkcd.com/978/

Here's Matt Taibbi's writings on White Fragility:

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility

It's plenty opinionated. But it's interesting because Matt Taibbi is not a Republican, in the same way that Reason (not Democrats) is interesting when it criticizes Republican ideas.

CNN saying anything about Trump or Fox News saying anything about Biden is by comparison of insignificant (if not negative) value, because there is a 97% chance that it's just partisan culture warring.

And so that should be the rule. If you're talking about the other team, be objective. If you're talking about your team, have an opinion. Because an opinion that the other team is bad is not actually useful.

> It's very opinionated. But it's interesting because Matt Taibbi is not a Republican, in the same way that Reason (not Democrats) is interesting when it criticizes Republicans.

Well, except Reason is a platform with a right-libertarian that is generally supportive of similar things to the Republican Party and favorable to Republicans, whereas Taibbi, however leftist his editorial position might be, is generally not aligned with Democratic policies or politicians and spends disproportionate time targeting them, often presenting the exact same arguments are are being used by the Right on the exact same issues, but with a few negative references to “Corporate America” or some Republican (usually, Donald Trump) to mark it as a Genuine Left-Wing Critique. It's not at all a parallel scenario.

> Well, except Reason is a platform with a right-libertarian that is generally supportive of similar things to the Republican Party and favorable to Republicans

That they agree with Republicans on many things is the point. But then they criticize the Republican position on drug legalization, mass surveillance, foreign wars, various proposals to spend tax money etc., which are correspondingly interesting because they're unlikely to be motivated by partisan animosity.

> whereas Taibbi, however leftist his editorial position might be, is generally not aligned with Democratic policies or politicians and spends disproportionate time targeting them

If he was 100.0% aligned with Democratic policies or politicians then he would be CNN or MSNBC and not be a suitable example.

> often presenting the exact same arguments are are being used by the Right on the exact same issues

Being the same argument isn't a problem, any more than Reason and Democrats using the same arguments against the War in Iraq. The interesting thing, and the thing that makes it a useful filter, is when it comes from someone not uniformly aligned with the opposing party, because it makes partisanship a less likely motive.

Also, are you criticizing the principle or the example? Would you like to provide your own example of some leftist criticism of the left? How about Greenwald or Chomsky?

> but with a few negative references to “Corporate America” or some Republican (usually, Donald Trump) to mark it as a Genuine Left-Wing Critique

Didn't Taibbi first break out with his coverage of the Great Financial Crisis, and specifically his vigorous criticism of the big banks' role? IIRC, he even coined the term "vampire squid" to refer to Goldman. His leftism is a lot more than superficial references to corporate America.

Matt Taibbi's is however very consistenly against sjw/racial justice advocetes/feminists or what have you.

This is not Taibbi arguing against own, it is Taibbi arguing against his long term ennemies.

> Matt Taibbi's is however very consistenly against sjw/racial justice advocetes/feminists or what have you.

Which is fine; being consistent is not a vice. They're still people in the same major tribe.

Also, people are still arguing against the example rather than the principle.

I dont know what you mean by principle here. He is partizan for his tribe arguing against other tribe. And by partizan I mean strong clear partizan. There is nothing wrong with consistency, but there is also nothing interesting or special here.

Interesting, what does he think of Winston Churchill. As an Indian we are not fond of that guy.

Read the history of World War II sometime, particularly how long Britain held off Nazi Germany by itself between when France fell and when the US entered the war. As a Bangladeshi I’d put a few caveats on his bio, but I’m pretty happy not to be speaking German. (Likewise, I’m not thrilled Nixon armed Pakistan during the Cold War—weapons which were used by Pakistan to gun down Bangladeshis. At the same time, I’m willing to give some slack to the US for what it felt it had to do to win the Cold War. Had it not won, the sub-continent would be Soviet vassal states today. Geopolitics is tough.)

Those are if and buts. I am more interested if he wrote similar for Churchill. As they say winners write the history.

And if Hitler had been the winner?

Well what if East India Company did not come to India, what if Turks did not invade India it would go on. Anyway Churchill's polices led to famine, which could have been avoided. His attitude towards India can be considered as racist.

Most things in life are not simplistic black/white decisions, whereby bad outcomes occurred because the people themselves were bad.

Doing anything results in trade-offs. Some trade-offs are worse than others, and some have horrible consequences, like deaths of many, but writing off the decision as a racist one implies malicious intent, which ignores the potentially real decisions that were being made.

For others reading this thread, parents seems to be referring to the Bengal Famine of 1943. Wiki has a decent summary, but it again demonstrates the circumstances and trade-offs that were made. Was it a good outcome? Famine and death certainly isn't. But was it done maliciously out of "racism"? Some scholars claim so, but often these are the same scholars who see everything through a lens of racism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943#1942%E2%...

This happens whenever Churchill is mentioned. Since he was fought against Nazis seems people don't want to judge his actions not related to it. Since it might picture him not as great man. Most of his opinions are the westerners. What we needed was more articles from Indians since they are the one who were affected.

> Well what if East India Company did not come to India, what if Turks did not invade India it would go on.

The East India company came to India 262 years before Churchill was born. But if we want to talk about that, why not also talk about the Mughals, Muslims who invaded India and are the source for many aspects of Indian culture. (I have an Arabic last name because of the Mughals.) Like other Muslim empires, the Mughals were prolific slavers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_India (“Slavery in India escalated during the Muslim domination of northern India after the 11th-century, after Muslim rulers re-introduced slavery to the Indian subcontinent.”).

If we start wiping out parts of our history that are unpleasant we won’t have anything left.

> Anyway Churchill's polices led to famine, which could have been avoided.

No, the famine was caused by environmental disasters. Nobody thinks it “could have been avoided.” https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-53405121 (“‘We can't blame him for creating the famine in any way,’ says Ms. Khan. ‘What we can say is that he didn't alleviate it when he had the ability to do so, and we can blame him for prioritising white lives and European lives over South Asian lives.’”).

Churchill made a decision to prioritize resources for the war effort. By 1943 the UK was devastated. It lost 1% of its population in World War II. Those resources could have saved many lives in Bengal. But how friendly do you think Nazi Germany would have been to Indians had Britain not won the war? You can’t judge Churchill purely by the consequences of his actions without also addressing what could have happened had Churchill acted differently.

> His attitude towards India can be considered as racist.

Churchill once said “Indians are the beastliest people in the world after Germans.” But Ghandi was racist towards Africans (although his views evolved somewhat as he got older): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-34265882. Everyone was racist back then, and in most of the world, people are still very racist. Churchill was no more racist towards India, than Indians in my parents generation are racist towards Africa or China. (And in Bangladesh, toward Jews.) And frankly, outside maybe the educated class in India and Bangladesh, most people are still that racist today.

It doesn’t make any sense to judge people by the standards of society decades later. If we did that we would have nobody left to admire. Churchill isn’t famous for his racism. He is famous for holding off Nazi Germany for years while American sat in the sidelines. He deserves to be held in esteem for that virtue, even if we recognize the faults he shared with other people of his era.

> If we start wiping out parts of our history that are unpleasant we won’t have anything left.

Then why are you trying to defend Churchill. You are trying to paint everyone was racist, Hitler would have come to power, we would have been doomed. Churchill was racist that is that.

> It doesn’t make any sense to judge people by the standards of society decades later. If we did that we would have nobody left to admire.

Depends on who judges whom. As they say terrorist is another martyr. For British people he is great savior for us he was responsible to death of millions. As someone said "If we start wiping out parts of our history that are unpleasant we won’t have anything left"

Tharoor wrote a couple of blog posts on him that are easy to find. In fact they were discussed on HN recently after I had posted