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Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

This is no different than pretty much any company. Do you think Apple lets reporters wander throughout their campus looking for new hardware, and allow them to ask engineers information about what they are working on? No. Apple does not let them wander around, and they advise all of their employees to never talk to press.

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Hey you’re on a roll, don’t stop there. How does Apple respond to FOIA requests?

They’re not subject to FOIA you say? Perhaps there’s a difference to the organizations after all.

What possible relevance does what companies do have? I can't believe you're arguing this in good faith.

Apple doesn't demand ideological conformity from news oganizations before letting their reporters in, no.

Well, it kinda does. Reporters Apple doesn't like get cut off from early access, interviews etc.

However, Apple is a private company and can do whatever it pleases, however shitty that behavior is.

Apple is neither a state nor a democracy. The journalists and the government are there to aserve the same boss: the people. Now one of the people's employees sabotages the work the other employee.

If Apple had the ability to deploy military forces on behalf of my democratically elected government I'd actually be pretty concerned with them locking out the press too.

We've already seen Musk boasting about the CIA organising a coup for him, so it wouldn't surprise me

https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/29/we-will-coup-whoever...

> We've already seen Musk boasting about the CIA organising a coup for him

I had a friend go deep into addiction. I think there was a period when every headline was his doing, too.

Apple doesn't require you to pay a significant portion of you paycheck to them either.

Unless you're a developer

You are right, Apple should have its own nukes and bombers.

Apple is a private company that answers to shareholders. The DoD is a government department that used to answer to the people.

Answering to the people doesn't mean that every secret must be made immediately public.

This is about not wanting the journalists to even ask for information from e.g. generals. No-one is saying that they want immediate disclosure of all secrets - I'm concerned that you're building a strawman.

You have classified information for that reason. It's not the same as requiring journalists you literally let into public press conferences to shut up and spread propaganda unquestioningly

No one is suggesting that secrets be made public. The gov can and does classify info that must be kept secret.

But it does require answers. Answers are a response to questions, otherwise they're just statements.

Who is allowed to decide which secrets should or should not be made public?

If your answer is "the government", then every cover up will never be revealed, and the government will answer to no one.

If your answer is "journalists", then you have the status-quo in any functioning democracy.

And when it actually moves into sedition territory, that's what an independent court system is for.

Unfortunately, once things devolve into a two-party system, it becomes ever increasingly difficult to keep the various branches independent.

This is moving the goal posts from your original position. Spend the time to refocus - if your position was erroneous, it was erroneous. Correct it, figure out what that means, then proceed.

Moving on to a new version is to waste your own intelligence in reactionary sentence creation.

I don't think the US DoD meaningfully answered to me (a US citizen) by its previous policy of letting a bunch of reporters from some mainstream news outlets have offices inside the Pentagon under one set of rules, and I don't think the US DoD meaningfully answers to me by its current policy of putting more rules on those reporters that they don't like and are willing to resign over. I have a healthy amount of mistrust for both the US military and mainstream US journalism operations, and I don't assume that the military-related stories these reporters covered previously were the ones that were actually important for me to know.

No one resigned.

Apple doesn't own a monopoly on violence. Your argument doesn't carry any weight.

For Apple that makes sense as there are financial damages. Can/should the US be able to sue for defamation if the claims aren't libel?

Governments are companies now? The capitalism brain rot is in its final stages

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