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Neutral is at best a measurement of the middle of the Overton window.
What is neutrality in regards to Ukraine vs Russia? What is an example of high quality "neutral" reporting in regards to it? How neutral do you think Russians would estimate your example to be?
I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies" as it gets people's hackles up and immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic. "Non-Neutral" seems to have been the best way in recent years to indicate that their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun in order to present a view of the world that they prefer.
It's hard to notice it when they're talking about things you don't know about, perhaps wheat imports for example. But then they do a story about something you do know about that you recognize is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job. A Not technically "lying" perhaps, but certainly not anything close to "neutral".
What's the word for that? Low-quality news? Mis/dis-information?
Personally I like the neutral/non-neutral because it reminds us of what the goal should be: actual truth, without the agenda.
I think this is a reasonably good faith revision:
> NPR lies. Non-Neutral is the best way to indicate that their reporting presents their different/false world view.
"Non-neutral" is the word you are using to indicate that NPR is not reporting what you believe.
People who agree with you are neutral. People who disagree are non-neutral.
Non-neutral is just a fancy way to call someone a liar while avoiding having to support your accusation with reasoning because it is self evident that having any opinion at all makes an entity non-neutral.
An example of how sophistry allows one to preserve facts while conveying a narrative that does not entail from them: https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2022/04/17/yes-virginia-the-n...
I am going to assume that is true and assume your judgement is correct.
Why do you think that is the case? What is your model for why there was a change in "neutrality"?
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]’s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the “wet streets cause rain” stories. Paper’s full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.”
NPR is largely an activist organization and has been since the mid-2010s. They never lie, mind you, but they consistently present half the story.
It's sad too -- they used to be the best around.
> I'd hate to come out and say "NPR lies"
> their reporting is, at best, slanted and spun
Just because you disavow the words that best describe your belief, doesn't mean that those words don't most accurately describe your position.
If those words aren't most representative of your beliefs, then I have failed to understand the nuance you were trying to communicate.
> immediately starts the us-vs-them dynamic.
Don't you understand that you are basically saying "I don't want conflict with people who find NPR credible, but they're definitely wrong.”? "People who find NPR credible just aren't experienced/smart enough to see they are being lied to."
You recognize there is conflict, but fail to realize you are half of the conflict. You are putting responsibility for creating an "us vs them" situation on the people who disagree with you. "I'm not wrong, they're wrong. They're creating an us vs them dynamic, not me, I know the truth and they are denying it.”
“Other peoples hackles are up, not mine, I'm just unemotionally stating the truth.”
> is absolutely a one-sided hatchet job
You pre-suppose your own correctness. I don't see how your position is materially different than: "It is as simple as I am right and they are wrong, people who don't see it my way just haven't understood they are wrong yet."
Of course you will get an us vs them response, because you go into the conversation with the axiom that you are right rather than a desire to understand why someone disagrees so you can help them understand why they are wrong by asking questions that are hard to answer given the set of beliefs you assess that they have.
> actual truth, without the agenda.
Don't you understand that you have defined neutral to be "things that have the same agenda I have, and things that see the same truth I do?"
The truth is intrinsically not neutral. The truth picks a side every time. All conflicts involve two parties that think they know the truth.
Neutral is a measurement of distance from your beliefs. To Chinese people, “Taiwan is part of china“ is a neutral statement. To express something else is to not be neutral.
Your subjective truth is the stick you are using to measure neutrality. Your agenda is the origin of the measurement.
There is only one way to assess truth and that is to look at internal consistency.
So you edit BY NECESSITY. You decide which stories are more newsworthy. I could report on the consistency and color of my dogs' feces at the park, and it would be part of objective reality, but my BIAS excludes those nuggets from any list of headlines I'd publish.
"Objective truth exists" is a useless comment in the context of reporting the news. It can be 100% true and yet still 100% useless. It doesn't matter.
That said, it's useful to examine which stories are covered, from which perspectives, and including which facts. The evaluation of semantics is a worthwhile endeavor. It's always important to keep an eye out for conflicts of interest. NPR and PBS are both really excellent sources of news and consistent at calling out their own limitations in addition to prominently reporting when they've made mistakes.
You may not care for their (necessary) biases and look for news from a variety of sources other than them, but if more news orgs were like them in practices, we would be a lot better off as a country. Be honest: how often does Fox News, Newsmax, or OANN make clear, public corrections of their previous reporting on prime time air?
It's not just about bias; it's about integrity. NPR's integrity frankly is unimpeachable whether you like their bias or not.
While objective truth exists nobody can know the objective truth, they can only approach it. Further, you can't approach the truth in an affirmative way, you can only approach it in a negative way.
We can know that that two ideas that can't be true at the same time means that one of them is definitely wrong.
I think this was the point of Socrates. Truth only comes from internal consistency.
Neutrality could be made into a reasonably objective standard - on any controversy, report the viewpoints of the top 3-4 groups involved in their own voice and then throw in the opinion of any academics who've made a point of studying similar situations. That is close enough to be called 'neutral'.
Why do you think there are any situations at all where people (at large) don't want reporting that reinforces their world view?
How would you define neutrality, like a one sentence definition?
I think doing so will make you understand pretty quickly that in doing "report the viewpoints of the top 3-4 groups" even choosing "the top 3-4 groups" already defies neutrality because you are implicily equating those groups giving them equal status and giving authority to whoever determines the top 3-4 groups. If 1 group is fringe, you are letting them be main stream.
The people chosen will alter the Overton Window whether the intent was to do so or not. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window
Another part of the Ukraine conflict that is strangely absent is that Ukraine has been in a civil war since 2014 when a CIA backed coup toppled their government. It is always presented as if one day for no reason Putin invaded a peaceful Ukraine.
No, its a China/North Korea/Iran vs. Ukraine proxy war.
Same with Iran and North Korea. They might supply weapons because Russia is paying them for it, but they don't have much to gain if Russia were to win.
It's possible that Putin's decision to invade was made under duress, but if so I think it's more likely that it was some faction inside Russia that was twisting his arm rather than an outside faction. (Xi /may/ have set up Russia for failure by requesting that the invasion not happen until the Olympics were finished and the rainy season had begun, but I think that's just idle speculation. I don't know if there's any real evidence of that.)
This is one of the most annoying tankie talking points. Maidan? Duh, obviously it was a CIA coup. There's no need to prove it, everyone knows that only anti-western uprisings can be genuine.
OTOH, when Russia sent their soldiers to Crimea and Donbas, it clearly was a show of the local people's will. Also, it's better not to mention that the separatist movement didn't exist before 2014 and then they suddenly were organized enough to wage a full-scale war.
It isn't, however, a proof that the US somehow caused the protests to happen. How would that even work?
On the other hand, there's a mountain of evidence for Russian military involvement in 2014, including Putin himself admitting that.
Yes! American geopolitics like to gloss over that Russia has been saying for at least a decade that Ukraine acceptance to NATO would incite a military response.
No, American geopolitics actually cites those threats which disrespect Ukraine’s sovereignty as part of the pattern of Russian aggression, though less significant than its actually launching various aggressive wars.
Also, Ukraine was not, at any point, accepted into NATO, so even if such a threat was somehow not a threat to engage in unwarranted aggression and deserved respect…it really wouldn’t be relevant.
In fact, they did! He lost in a landslide which the loser himself acknowledged as fair.
Russia declaring that Ukraine is a vassal state doesn’t make it so.
It’s basically fact reporting - who is doing what. It reads like an academic paper. No filtering of what’s covered based on who’s the “good guy”. The conclusion are focused on geopolitical impact - good or bad.
For me it was just the sheer volume of stories about identity. Politics, social, slice of life etc. They seemed like they were all about issues of identity. While the U.S. Overton window has certainly shifted in this direction I just wasn't interested in an outlet that was "all identity, all the time". It just wasn't super relative to me in the proportions they were dosing it out in.
It didn't really have much to do with whether I agreed with it or not.
I liked NPR because it was pretty reliable (probably still is I just haven't listened in a couple years) and their world view was different than my own so I was exposed to things outside of my bubble. But, and this is just my perception, when it was 80% of their programming, I stopped participating.
Right now the first headline on NPR.org is “ What a House GOP messaging bill could spell for 2024 culture war campaign”
This is a headline that passes judgement and takes a side, out is also a call to fear and anger. Of course not in an extremely explicit way, but it’s still obvious whose side NPR is on.
It’s ok for news to pick sides sometimes when things are obvious but I want my news more facts biased with less editorializing, especially when it comes to politics.
Neutral in regards to Ukraine v Russia is not having an unquestioning lovefest for Ukrainian leadership.
Recently a major news outlet reported on the conditions Russian prisoners (in Ukrainian custody) were kept under.
It was very clear they did not have the ability to freely question prisoners, or freely move around the facility.
That’s normal. But it’s very important to point out. That’s responsible journalism.
Frankly fewer puff pieces of Zelenskyy, and a more critical look at his relationship with the tv production company that made him president would be nice.
There’s no need to maintain a false equivalence. But there are too many unquestioning puff pieces.
The war's purpose is to determine who is wrong and who is left.
I do not think there is any way to be neutral at all in regards to Russia and Ukraine because any stance taken at all will support one sides victory or the others. Puff pieces about Zelensky are not meant to profess truth, they are meant to increase morale so troops fight better/more tenaciously, so battles can be won, so the war can be won.
Neutrality is not desired nor is it good.
Neutrality almost always supports the oppressors and neutrality is almost always implicit support for both the ideology of might makes right and the outcome of might makes right.
Fewer puff pieces on zelensky has the opportunity cost of fewer peices tearing down putins legitimacy. There can truly be no neutrality.
There is no neutrality to be found because both parties are not good faith actors attempting to reach consensus. If any parties are bad faith, there can be no neutrality because they don't have a desire to reach consensus, they have a desire to dominate.
You seriously think uncritical puff pieces on Zelenskyy undermine Russias legitimacy?
I think time is finite and I think the act of spending time writing uncritical pieces on zelensky is a choice about how to spend the finite time. I think making that choice is an act of prioritization.
I think zelensky's puff pieces are propaganda, the same way I think putin as the head of a giant propaganda machine.
I think spending time un-puffing zelensky is a choice and I think that choice can be measured by its opportunity cost.
Zelensky puff pieces aren't even a tenth of the evil that putin's puff pieces are. Why is it a priority to spend time debunking Zelensky's puff?
There are a million stories that could be written. Choosing to write an anti-propaganda pieces is prioritizing the outcome of doing so over spending time writing about mistreatment of pows, and writing about the mistreatment of pows is at the cost of an infinite number of other potential stories. Each story has an outcome. Each story is a finger on the scale of public opinion.
So what does the way a news service prioritizes their stories say about the news service?
But NPR is doing better than most.
I feel like things really started to turn south after 2016 -- lots and lots of content about feelings and opinions presented during "news" times. But only for a super-narrow class of people, and never called out as opinion content. They did and do regularly mix editorial content with "news", and the line between each has been getting fuzzier with each passing year.
To be fair, the entire news media went crazy after 2016, but NPR was clearly on the left before, and went hard left after that. It's essentially propaganda now.
I still regularly listen to WAMU's The Big Broadcast; they may be more selective about the classic episodes they play, but I wouldn't know as they haven't turned it into a virtue signaling exercise. Ditto for Hot Jazz Saturday Night.
Some of the national, NPR-produced shows definitely recite identitarian narratives more often than they used to, but compared to KQED-produced content it's still a massive difference in tone and content.
Their reporting on so many topics has been biased bordering on being intentionally disingenuous so for a long time now.
I do occasionally listen however because I try to expose myself to a lot of points of view, especially when I know I might not agree with them. I was listening to Brian Lerher a few weeks back and it was so sad. I wish I could recall the exact topic but it was exactly some identity politics nonsense, presented in a way which was designed to stoke the most outrage possible (anyone who disagrees is knowingly trying to harm the other side, they can't possibly have good intentions but disagree with us!) and it was all over some trivial thing too.
Add onto that it just sounded like Lerher, someone I used to idolize, someone who used to be incredibly passionate, just sounded like he was phoning it in. It was very disheartening.
I remember WNYC was the place during the Afghan/Iraq wars where I could get some reasonable and balanced coverage of the situation, especially in the first few months/years when things were very in-flux (and I recall Lerher being an intimate part of that). Air America was the lib-left perspective, NPR would echo that but give me a reasonable perspective of what the other side thought. That seems completely and utterly dead now.
Do you understand that actual leftists consider NPR to be a voice of the corporate right-center?
Anyway, the correct analysis of NPR, like most "mainstream" media outlets, is that they are biased but not consistently left or right (or any other direction in whatever N-dimensional political space is now fashionable); their bias is pro status quo. That is, their bias is always towards the idea that we live in something roughly approximating the best of all possible worlds, that it requires a bit of tinkering, some careful tweaks to get it dialed in even closer to justice and desirability, but that's about it.
The concept that we live in something that is basically, fundamentally broken on the deepest levels is very difficult for mainstream media to tackle, and even though some occasionally do try, it is quickly put back in the box so that we continue to consider how best to tweak and tinker with what we already have.
The hard left is offended with the definition of a woman as someone born with female reproductive organs.
As a feminist liberal man I do find it amazing that we fought for women's rights for over 100 years only to make the term "woman" meaningless. I still enjoy some NPR shows, but they've gone way past what I'm comfortable with ideologically.
There's more to being a "woman" than having female reproductive organs.
That doesn't render the term "woman" meaningless. It just means there are a large number of characteristics that define "woman" and each woman exhibits a varying set of them.
And unless you're planning to mate with them, their vagina is none of your business.
And to your point, the things an XX chromosome does lead to can be changed, with hormones, etc.
It’s very obvious all mammals are dual sex, no more no less. It’s a fact that there are only 2 sexes when it comes to mammals. They also have average behavior differences due to hormones and their structure, but this only goes so deep. Bulls for instance are more aggressive than cows on average - this is because their hormonal differences that stem all the way back to their chromosomal differences, but also due to their body differences (like extra muscle and size) that give them the ability and perception by other cows.
These things are the same in humans: we have our “run-time sexual differences” that come from hormones, and our “static sexual differences” from how those hormones have built our bodies over time. Men behave differently on average because of the hormones profile in their body is different from that of women. Men also behave differently because those hormones over their life time have changed their body to be larger on average, and this on another level has led them to have different experiences than women that have shaped their mindset and behavior (eg being larger means people treat you differently, and that reinforces different behaviors).
All this to say that the differences between the sexes are almost entirely immutably biological at the base (including the social construct aspects). The differences between men and women start from the chromosomes, and that decides hormones and body structure, and those two affect how people treat you naturally (a larger, more aggressive organism is treated differently than a smaller, less aggressive person), which creates over time what we call gender roles.
Some examples: men being deemed “protectors” isn’t just some arbitrary gender role out of the blue, it stems from the fact that one sex of the human species is obviously larger, and so naturally expected to step up in these situations throughout their life. Aka: if you reset everyone’s memory of gender roles, they’d likely come back and be pretty similar in broad strokes very quickly, because they are determined at the base by chromosomes > hormones > body structure > how others perceive you and the experiences you have in your life as a result.
Men can never be women and vice versa. You can change the hormones, but you can’t change the body structure, the chromosomes, the experiences of the individual and others, and consequently how others naturally react to them. Those aspects all together are what makes a man fundamentally different from a woman.
And: you keep saying "on average" without acknowledging what that implies: there is a distribution, and that distribution overlaps. Some women are stronger than some men; that doesn't make them men. Some women are more aggressive than some men; that doesn't make them men. Some women are larger than some men; that doesn't make them men. All of that means that you can't simply define man/woman on the basis of size, strength, or aggression.
Looping back to gender: it's a social construct, and there is no way for a non-human mammal to declare what they think or feel in a way we can understand or interpret. (Lack of) examples from the animal kingdom have no bearing.
You can of course call yourself whatever you want, but expecting others to adhere to that, or even being bothered that they don't, is senseless.
He might desire to be a woman (and claim to have a "female gender identity" because of this), but that's not the same thing as actually being a woman. And if you look on the trans forums where these males discuss this, you can see it's all about performing stereotypes of femininity. Often related to being sexually aroused by the thought of cross-dressing - the so-called "euphoria boner", as they put it.
Furthermore, most of these men use their claims of having a "female gender identity" to demand access to women-only spaces, disregarding and violating women's boundaries, and defeating the whole point of why we have sex-segregated spaces in the first place. Gender identity is a dangerous, misogynistic concept that is harming women and children.
That said, I disagree :-)
I'm male -- both in chromosomes and in thought -- but I know that (generally) being a woman involves wearing skirts, makeup, and in general softer, more elaborate clothes; paying more attention to grooming a certain way; maybe wearing makeup, at least a little; being deferred to in lesser matters like who goes first through a door, but expected to defer in more serious matters like where to go and how to get there. I don't have to experience any of the above to envision what they feel like, or to know whether I would be more comfortable experiencing them one way or the other.
Calling these things "stereotypes" is a silly minification of them. If they are just stereotypes, then women should be able to discard them whenever they wish, but that is far from the case when it comes to negotiating, advancing, getting their way, etc., etc.
"And if you look on the trans forums where these males discuss this, you can see it's all about performing stereotypes of femininity." You've done extensive research? :-) And again, "stereotypes" is dismissive.
Your last paragraph is an unjustified panic, but I'll at least reply to say that if I were to be concerned about someone in the bathroom, it would be concern for someone who presents as a woman, but is forced to use the men's room because beneath their poodle skirt they happen to have a penis.
Men and women have different chromosomes. They have different skeletal structures. They have different amounts of hormones. They have different averages.
Women can have children. Men cannot.
The fact that people are trying to argue otherwise is frankly insane.
Saying men and women have different chromosomes is circular logic. You're saying that XX = woman and XY = man, and then defining "man" and "woman" in terms of the standard you set up for them.
As I responded to in a different reply, skeletal structures exist on a distribution. Those distributions generally overlap, meaning there are some women closer to the "male" average, and some men closer to the "female average. That doesn't determine their gender or even their sex.
Edit to add: you list hormones as a determining factor -- but hormones can be adjusted. Would you agree that a person who achieves "male" hormones through pills or injections qualifies as male? Or vice versa?
Saying they have different averages ignores that distribution, and again would arbitrarily classify some people as the opposite of their chromosomal classification.
"Women can have children" -- even among XX women, that's clearly false. Or are you saying that women who can't bear children aren't women?
And again, "sex" is not "gender": https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/environmentalaccounts/article...
Yes XX is a woman and YY is a man. Mammals require one of each to reproduce. Creating a clear, simple definition is what science is supposed to do so that we can better understand existence.
When a woman can no longer have kids she has gone through menopause or had a genetic aberration that prevented her from doing so.
Yes there are bell curves within nature. This doesn't change chromosomes.
No I would not agree that hormones received from an external source make one male or female. If I color my skin green, my skin is still not green. I have simply made it appear that way.
Personality is an element of gender, but they are not synonymous. Even in your definition of men vs. women, there are people of all "personalities" in each "gender".
Yes, science classes chromosomes, and yes, one of each is (generally, let's not get too caught up in parthenogenesis) required to reproduce. Is that all you see in men v. women? You used reproduction as a determinant, but now you're saying that women who can't reproduce are still women because...they're supposed to be able to reproduce? That's not quite circular logic, but it's darn close.
Taking hormones is pretty far from "coloring your skin green" -- by your definition Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn't really as muscular as he was, or Lance Armstrong as fast as he was, because they took steroids/PEDs. It's easy to argue that they cheated, but hard to argue that they actually weren't as big/fast as they were.
Your argument seems to simplify to chromosomes. Of course you know that there are people born with neither XX nor XY. You can claim those people are "something else," but if they want to present as male or female, is that wrong? And I'll ask you the same question I posted in a separate comment: if we were standing in Times Square and I asked you to point out the women walking by, would you really say, "I can't until I get blood samples"?
What is it then ?
Edit: I'm sorry, i realise that this is a troll-leading question, that ensures no good answer, because we can't give a good answer that doesn't offend someone. It shows that we're as a group intentionally ignoring basic reality, which is a shame but it is what it is.
If a person has longer hair, no facial hair, is wearing a dress, has a higher voice, wider hips, and the appearance of breasts, I'd assume they are a woman.
BUT: if a person with all of those traits says they're a man, I'm going to nod, file it away for future reference, and -- most importantly -- move on with my day.
And likewise, if a person with none of those traits tells me they are a woman, again, I will nod, remember it, and move on.
It's not hard.
Does everyone take "woman" as this meaning though, or is this the root of the confusion that everyone has ?
I think a lot of the confusion does come from people having a hard time separating "what does this person want me to call them" from "how do I treat this person". I think (again, I speak only for myself, and I'm not even trans) most trans people would be happy to be called their chosen pronouns and treated in a neutral way.
There is a lot of history backing up a more constrained interpretation of gender and interpersonal relationships, and the present situation is definitely outside many people's comfort zone.
The physical differences between men and women are not just societally imposed, and form the basis for their oppression. This cannot be wished away.
Yet, anyone who did such a thing would be seriously problematic. It is equally problematic for a man to claim he is woman by exactly the same logic as the oppression against women cannot fairly be appropriated by men.
Men have been screwing over women for thousands of years. It's not ok for them to appropriate their name and identity because of some qualitative feeling they're experiencing. It's not ok.
What's wrong with the term "transwoman" for a transwoman?
The truth is what we call 'the left' and 'the right' is some kind of attempt to cluster a bunch of orthogonal belief systems that in our contemporary time tend to cluster.
You then also have things like post-modernist ideas that in some sense reject the idea of an objective reality and are idealist, whereas orthodox Marxism is solidly materialist and modern. People don't know what the hell any of these terms mean. Even Marx himself, in comparison to some self-proclaimed Marxists, said something like, "if they are marxists then surely I am not a marxist."
Most orthodox Marxists I know do not consider themselves liberals by the way and many wouldn't call themselves feminists because they may disagree with a bunch of baggage there, while being stridently in favor of equality between the sexes. A common struggle among "the left" (e.g., the "new left" in the 60s) is whether or not it is an intra-liberal struggle and whether or not class is the primary or even only determinate and other 'identities' should be subsumed. It's complicated.
Personally I try to not take on a label that defines for me a set of beliefs that are orthogonal. Someone can disbelieve in the trans movement you identified entirely and also want a workers revolution. It's not actually uncommon.
"The hard left" is something British people call other British people in order to dismiss them. Americans who are calling out the hard left need to stop reading the Spectator.
The left is concerned with public ownership of the means of production.
We have to give up on arguing about what "leftism" is. It doesn't mean anything, and Glenn Beck stirred the American brain so thoroughly that there's no way to even give them a general idea of what it used to mean. Just let liberals have it. We have to just talk about our specific political positions on their merits and leave the taxonomies in the history books.
NPR is exactly what you would think its sponsors, which are managed funds, massive health care insurers, huge agribusinesses, silicon valley and chemical companies want it to be. Arguing about whether it's "leftist" with people who think the most "leftist" things are massive banks, Hillary Clinton, and fundamentalist Islam is a waste of your life.
As a person who identified as a leftist and hung with other people like that for 30 years (and continuing), we were calling NPR National Petroleum Radio 25 years ago when it was gutted at the end of the Clinton administration. It no longer has any serious intention to inform; like most media it's staffed by the children of the wealthy, generating content to support current political initiatives.
However, the OP chose to label an organization "leftist", when I'm fairly sure that the people he would identify as "leftist" would not share the feeling that NPR represents their perspective.
Whether or not NPR represents my viewpoint is not of much concern to me. I don't expect it, if it happens it happens, it probably won't. That's fine.
Google: "No True Scotsman". Just because you think that they're not left enough to be "really left" is not responsive to my point.
Another recent front page HN story talks about ChatGPT and other advances in AI. So, defining “no true Scotsman” would be within AI’s wheelhouse. I think Openai needs to verbify the act of using GPTx to summarise ideas.
1. NPR used to have a stricter separation between editorial content and news content.
I agree and you're right I think this got a lot worse after 2016 across the board and IMO NPR has been better than many other agencies about it.
2. NPR took a turn left.
I disagree. I think they continue to be vaguely American center-left and haven't really changed much. In general it's quite hard to define "left" as there's multiple groups, but yes since 2016 the social justice left has become a bigger part of the conversation.
It's more accurate to say that the U.S. went crazy, and media is doing its best (which is not good enough) to adapt and keep up.
The Blue Tribe says the Red Tribe are all nazis.
Are they both correct or neither correct? How boring.
There is no reason the relation of two faction’s opinions to the truth must be the same.
Red Tribe: Is the full-scale genocide on the unborn boring?
See how boring and unproductive these tribes are yet?
Do you know any women? Maybe ask if they’re bored.
You need to get out more.
When did they call for shared ownership of the means of production or nationalization of industry?
That's what being left wing means. Identity politics are liberal, which is a right wing movement.
I get your point, especially as someone on the left myself. That said, it’s more useful in conversations about American politics to understand the political dichotomy is centered on the American political Overton window, not on the center of all extant political philosophies.
There has effectively been no real left wing party with national political presence in the US in the lifetimes of the majority of Americans alive today. Both major parties and nearly all smaller parties in US politics are right of extant center, but many are left of American center.
“Liberals” aren’t even liberals in the US, anyway. “Liberals” in the US are populist globalists. Identity politics is arguably not affiliated with any particular political philosophy or party, but rather is a cynical methodology employed by many parties to create a social device to shift the political median in their direction. For whatever philosophical rigor you’d assign to identity politics, it’s at best an ideology, but lacks the necessary substance to be a complete philosophy.
The left of the American center is mainly held by populist globalists, with orbiting positions which at its most collectivist aligns to environmentalism. The right of the American center is mainly held by populist nationalists, with orbiting positions which at it’s most collectivist aligns to religious fascism. American society is very deeply individualistic, and this is a major factor why populism holds so much sway and why collectivist philosophies exist in the fringes at best.
Hopefully I’ve managed to short-circuit repeating the same comment subthread about semantics of the term “left wing” that happens in every HN thread about American politics.
They may not be, you know, outright communists or anything, but that doesn't mean they don't lean towards the left side of the American political spectrum a fair bit past center. In the standard distribution of political views calling them "left wing" is fair, even if they're not out on the long tail.
But my point isn't that they're "far left", just that they are reliably left of american center. They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument.
It is easy to understand how the degrading position of the English workers, engendered by our modern history, and its immediate consequences, has been still more degraded by the presence of Irish competition ~ Friedrich Engels
> gun control
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary ~ Karl Marx
> all modern "social justice" issues
None of those are left wing. They're all liberal, which is a counter model to leftism.
> They make no (or at least almost no) effort to present the center-right versions of the argument.
They almost exclusively present the liberal argument, which is the center right.
Unedited broadcasts of congressional proceedings isn't "journalism" --- that's a broadcast. By the same token, most 24hr news on TV, which is just commentary on some live event, is barely or often not journalism at all.
Journalists write and tell stories. Journalism offers an account of real (or supposed) events. It always involves storytelling in some degree, in the sense that an account of events (in order, or in an order which clarifies the chain of events) is constructed and presented. There's an ideal of neutrality, which is generally understood as a certain set of journalistic "practices", but journalism is ultimately storytelling with the general idea of offering an accurate account of a real event. The idea that journalists have special access to the "truth" is largely just a thing journalists say to make their job sound more specialized than it really is because it has become a "prestige" job. The same goes for 'neutrality' as a relatively recent ideal for journalists to strive for. The history of journalism is actually rife with journalists saying they weren't neutral and never tried to be.
Journalism is important, and vital to democracies, but it's important to understand and clarify why they are because journalists can hang themselves on their own petard. They're storytellers with the idea of "holding people, institutions, and the public to account" by offering the public accounts of events that happened, which the public could not immediately witness. For instance, an unedited broadcast of congressional proceedings doesn't require nor is it journalism at all because the public can just watch it. The most a journalist could do is offer context...by situating the proceedings in a chain of historical events.
C-SPAN journalists host “Washington Journal” on the TV and “Washington Today” on C-SPAN Radio. They interview newsmakers, authors, and other journalists. On “Washington Today” they do summarize the day’s happenings.
But they’re not attempting to synthesize a narrative. There is no storytelling. On “Washington Journal” they let guests and callers speak for themselves with no attempts to corner them or edit them. C-SPAN shows every day a way of doing journalism that’s about the subject and not about what the journalist thinks.
Journalism is (and should be) nothing more than a record of what happens or happened. A proper journalist, after all, is writing a journal. If someone is writing a story, they are a storyteller and should not be relied upon as a useful source of objective and accurate information.
In this sense, C-SPAN is as journalism as it can get: Unedited recordings and presentations of the goings-on inside Congress insofar as Congress will allow.
Dictionaries have no business in providing definitions! Their business is diction!
That said, unedited broadcasts of meetings isn't really journalism. Journalism is highlighting the portions of the proceedings that need highlighting. It's an editorial process by nature.
That's not to say what C-SPAN does isn't important; it absolutely is valuable and important to have a record of the proceedings, and with video and audio rather than just a transcript or minutes is quite useful.
RSS feed: https://feeds.megaphone.fm/cspanqa
I won't say the same of any other "news" or "journalism" outfit in their mission to journal goings-ons. Everyone from CNN to BBC to NHK to Al Jazeera to Wall Street Journal to New York Times can all go screw themselves for being propagandists disguised as journalists.
If you watch only C-SPAN you might think that laws are enacted by Congress after some debate or deliberation on camera about the content of those laws.
But that's not how it works. The way it works is that members of Congress spend a huge amount of time, sometimes the majority of their time, soliciting donations. And then a lobbyist for a company that has donated money to a member of Congress will give them the exact text of a law that they want enacted. The member of Congress will get that into a bill that makes it through committee, possibly by trading votes. Then the bill will come up to a vote, no one will have read the whole bill they are voting on, in some cases that would be impossible, the bill will be hundreds of pages long and it is only given to the members of Congress a few hours before the vote.
Then they vote on the bill that lobbyists wrote without any idea what is in it.
Is that what they show on C-SPAN? If not, why not?
Because someone made a very non-neutral decision that that is what they will show on C-SPAN.
NPR is definitely not doing that. A single fact or a group of handpicked facts is not the truth.
Fact A) Carrots are healthy. Fact B) Carrots may be carcinogenic.
These are both inherently important facts to any story talking about the health, or danger, of carrots. To present a position on if one should be eating carrots or not, without including both of these facts, is to handpick facts to tell the story you want to tell.
If there were a per-story bias, or even a per-author bias, I might agree with you, but NPR has a very clear per-topic bias. And the goal of every reporter should be to eliminate their personal bias and report the facts. NPR's bias is so pervasive on certain topics though that one can only conclude that they too are taking dictation from some overlord, or are so caught up in group-think that they have fundamentally misunderstood reality.
I don't actually think this is too bad, as long as you know what you're getting and can correct for the bias.
Consider the most recent geopolitical conflict involving the US, the war in Ukraine. There are a number of articles on NPR's website about the possibility of the US sending F-16 jets to Ukraine.
I've read many of them, and they tend to support the US sending planes. Some of these articles include quotes from Ukrainian defense officials who are obviously in favor. Some articles speculate as to why the US has not done so (e.g. the overhead of training pilots).
My issue with the reporting is that the writers never really bothered to explain the arguments from the opposing side. Obviously, this decision involves many tradeoffs and it was not taken lightly. NPR's reporting on this subject was not very informative and it just left me asking more questions. As a reader, I want to understand the tradeoffs behind important decisions.
This isn't the only topic with shoddy reporting. It's just the first one I noticed where activism got in the way of journalism. There are legitimate arguments in support of both sides of this issue (and I say this as a supporter of Ukraine). Readers are entitled to read/hear them, and writers should present them fairly.
For those doubting the massive ideological shift beyond opinion, consider that new content being pumped out.
do you see content like the Commanding Heights series coming out? Now review what is actually coming out.
You be the judge
Shortly after Trump won the election they had a round table of journalists (including some of their own) on and they basically said “we need to fight him.” So, during Trump’s presidency I specifically listened for any positive coverage of literally anything he did.
None. Zip. Nada. I probably heard hundreds of negative stories.
Guess what? About a month or so after Trump lost his re-election bid I finally heard a tempered positive sentence on All Things Considered.
I consider that propaganda. I also remember a specific moment on All Things Considered back in the earlier days of COVID where they stated the lab leak theory was debunked because - get this - China said it didn’t happen.
Anything to hurt Trump, until it didn’t matter.
NPR was clearly executing the same crisis management PR strategy, as instructed to all the politically aligned media outlets.
Unfortunate; I recall many driveway moments some 10-15 years ago, where the topic discussed was so compelling (this american life in particular) that I just had to stay in the car and keep listening.
I, for one, would like to know a few things about flat earthers. Do they actually exist? How many of them really are out there? What arguments to they use to try and make their points?
These are valuable things to know, especially on issues that mostly settled. They make you, the reader, better understand the issue and better prepared to deal with people you encounter who hold this belief. I'm not Neil Armstrong, I don't have the cache to simply punch moon landing deniers in the nose, I need some true facts to use when talking to one.
As a consumer of journalism I'm way more interested in stuff like that than simple sneering scorn about people who clearly believe "wrong" things.
When it comes to topics that I don't personally understand, perhaps wheat tariffs, I'm going to be way more likely to agree to the "right" answer when I understand both sides and can see how exactly it is that the "wrong" side is wrong. But the very minute I find out that the story is being spun by omitting certain facts or arguments, I'm going to assume the author is lying about pretty much everything.
Thus, neutrality. You've got to show me both sides honestly for me to be able to believe that what you're saying is actual truth, not just your "truth".
As one example, NPR made a very public decision not to carry the Hunter Biden laptop story just before an election, with no solid basis for doing so. It was a legitimate story, it was newsworthy, but NPR intentionally spiked the story.