Comment by tracker1 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tracker1 | Hacker News Reader

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Journalism is kind of a weird thing... it's often been about truth to power and reporting even what the govt/establishment doesn't always want to see. Of course this also attracts a lot of activism. I think they've, for a long while, crossed over to more propaganda over truth in general. This combined with infotainment news business trends in general is a bad mix.

I think it was just yesterday, I saw an article about an ICE raid of the Samsung plant in Georgia. It was a pretty long article, and even the tone of the article was pretty level. That said, there was a critical and very important piece missing from the article altogether... "Why?" As in what law(s) were broken and how/why the raid was used. TBH, I don't know that a raid was necessary over revised negotiations between DoJ/ICE, Samsung, Korea and the people in question... That said, the fact the article clearly didn't even attempt to report the ICE reasoning was pretty damning of the author and the site.

> I think it was just yesterday, I saw an article about an ICE raid of the Samsung plant in Georgia. It was a pretty long article, and even the tone of the article was pretty level. That said, there was a critical and very important piece missing from the article altogether... "Why?" As in what law(s) were broken and how/why the raid was used. TBH, I don't know that a raid was necessary over revised negotiations between DoJ/ICE, Samsung, Korea and the people in question... That said, the fact the article clearly didn't even attempt to report the ICE reasoning was pretty damning of the author and the site.

Or maybe this was a rhetorical point? Even today, there are articles that are trying to piece together who informed on the plant and what the basis for an ICE raid was. It seems you and the authors retain a similar understanding of the situation.

My understanding is that the workers are actually contractors and not direct employees of Samsung and were left to make their own Visa arrangements and instead of getting the correct Visas to be able to actually work in the US, they used business travel (B-1) Visas which are supposed to be for temporary travel in order to enter the US for a maximum of 6 months.

This was reported in other articles on the situation... it was clearly missing from the article I was referencing which changes the context to place a shift in narrative.

I likely have read at least one of the articles you were citing (or similar work) and my sense was that information was obtained later that was unclear at the time of the event. I see your point - especially when a journalist writes about an area where I have personal experience - but I guess I don't equate this to a decline in journalist quality given the confusion around an event like this.

To me, it's just a core part of "Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How" as basic tenants of what a news article should cover in terms of an event. Part of this in terms of professional reporting (not twitter) is to reach out to sources or agency contacts for comments/statements. Even a "ICE has not yet returned a request for comment." placeholder would have helped significantly. It's just a matter of due diligence, and with online reporting there should be some follow-up/editing as new information presents or responses do come in.

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