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Comment by pmorici | Hacker News Reader

There was a thread on Twitter a while ago pointing out a slew of journalists who frequently wrote articles attacking tech companies and specifically how each of them came from wealthy families. This idea that journalists are by and large people from well to do backgrounds is an idea that has been floating around for a couple years now.

Edit: Here is a tweet in that vein Balaji in particular had a lot of tweets on the journalists are often from wealth idea.

https://twitter.com/balajis/status/1256819545546735616

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I love it when "critical" of tech companies is transformed into "attacking". The tech industry is now the biggest industry in the world, ranking billions in profits every year, having the power to influence elections, human rights violation, etc. Of course they should be criticized and not get a free pass. Too many years they were only reported as "startups" doing "good".

People were specifically upset with unfair negative articles it wasn’t about factual criticism.

The New York Times doxing a popular pseudo anonymous blogger for example Slat Star Codex, there were articles dragging people for making charitable donations just a lot of stuff that was more gossip and hit pieces injected with the journalist’s opinion and not news.

Also articles dragging tech for not being “diverse” when journalism has a much bigger lack of diversity problem.

https://oonwoye.com/2020/07/31/tech-journalism-is-less-diver...

> there were articles dragging people for making charitable donations

You mean articles stating correctly that donations are not a sustainable way of financing and tech billionaires should instead pay higher taxes? Cause that's the articles I remember and that's not an unfair article. Just one you and others may not agree with.

Then why not write an article advocating a higher taxes policy? Taxing doesn’t magically make money multiply in fact a donation managed properly can endow a charitable organization indefinitely that is never the case with government taxation since taxes are always spent and never invested. Your argument makes no sense.

I don’t understand how reporters apparently don’t advocate for higher taxes. Wealth tax has been a radar on political reporting beat for ages. Elizabeth Warren campaigned on it and tons of ink was spilled analyzing on if it would work, how it would work, and headlines made over bill gates being “scared” of it or whatever.

Additionally, it can be true that one endowment to a charity can keep the charity perpetual while also criticizing that charity overall is not a sustainable model of good in society broadly. One of the things that come to mind is that a billionaire is unlikely to fund an anti-billionaire charity, for example a charity for renters rights and renter organization Eg. Rent strikes and the like.

What does advocating for that position have to do with dragging someone for donations to charities?

Also why are journalists advocating anything they should be reporting facts. Advocacy belongs in the opinion section.

Reporters are always advocating based on what they believe are facts from their backgrounds. That’s why media in America are always covering less wealthy countries as “war-torn x dealing with militant y” and never the same language to America. There was a hilarious thread in which a Kenyan reporter did headlines on America the same way America reported Kenya.

And it doesn’t have anything to do with the other. I don’t even know why it was brought up as an alternative.

>since taxes are always spent and never invested

Are not the road networks and other such infrastructure investments? What about the basic science research the government funds?

If every billionaire gave 50% of their net worth to the government, we would still have massive deficits.

It would be unfair if the article was demonizing, say, Jack Dorsey for not paying enough in taxes, unless Jack has gone out of his way to lobby to get his tax burden lowered. Otherwise, he is merely living within the rules of the system, and the article should be attacking the politicians who are responsible for our tax laws.

The New York Times wrote article about the blogger in the same exact way articles about people in journals have always been written. Just because the blogger is generally in tech does not mean the New York Times has to treat him in some complete different way then any other subject.

> The tech industry is now the biggest industry in the world

Is it though? I can’t find reliable sources (likely because “tech” isn’t specific enough), but some site says tech is 10.5% of US GDP. That’s not even close to being the biggest industry.

The problem is that alot of the "criticism" seems be around economic protectionism not actual criticism. They are critical that a tech company dare allow an a person from the unwashed masses to have as big of a megaphone for their speech as the gilded elites from an established journalistic outlet

Being critical of something immediately makes you into a “hater”. People have been trained to either be all in on something or to completely reject it. It’s really not allowed to be in the middle. “Pick a side”.

Yes, but how much is a "slew" relative to the entire roster of working journalists?

Do you happen to have a link to that twitter thread? I'm curious to read it.

It wasn’t just one but look at Balaji Sirinvasin’s timeline starting around summer 2020. He was a big proponent of the idea.

Is it attacking people like Elon Musk to point out that he wants others to not be able to benefit from the same sorts of government assistance his companies have benefited from or is it simply pointing out he isn't being consistent?

No I believe the specific thing that set people off was a hit piece against the female CEO of Away a relatively small company that sells luggage. They tried to cancel her because she tweeted something about how she though many media outlets had low standards of reporting and much of their content bordered on liable.

They then wrote negative articles about her saying she should have been using her time to talk about other issues like BLM or Gay rights. The whole premise was ridiculous as if tweets are a limited resource.

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