Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruseom | Hacker News Reader

This interview is entirely about spin. It never once asks what the truth is [1].

  Brooke Gladstone: Now, let's take today the argument over NSA surveillance. 
                    Where would you come down on this?
  Peter Sandman:  Well, it would depend on who my client was -  
  [Brooke laughs]
  
  Brooke Gladstone: [Pause] I can see why you have such a nice apartment.
  Peter Sandman: [Laughing]
  Brooke Gladstone: Peter, thank you very much.
  Peter Sandman: My pleasure.

Can "journalism" get more oleaginous? Such a program should not be called On The Media, but Of The Media.

[1] Edit: to be fair, she does say "That's not true" at the beginning, re the number of murders with hammers.

View on HN

Are you a regular listener of On The Media? They don't report the news, they report on how the news is reported. So techniques, trends, and ways that the news and the media, including Mr. Sandman, report news and facts.

I've listened a few times and developed the impression that its main preoccupation is its own insider status. There's no reporting at all in, for example, this piece.

Let's not assume that a PR consultant (Mr. Sandman) belongs naturally to "the news and the media" without mentioning the much larger question of whether an independent press would be dominated by PR in the first place.

You should listen to OTM more. It's media criticism, so what reporting it does will necessarily seem like navel-gazing. But there's been some really great stuff on it.

A less... lubricated... venue for this kind of analysis is Jack Schafer's work for Reuters. Schafer has none of the insider status that OTM does.

BBC Radio Four also has a programme called "The Media Show" which is pretty good. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00dv9hq)

It never once asks what the truth is

At least one more time than what you point out, a more significant time really, did one of the participants raise the question of what the truth is too:

"But whether they’re actual stories or fictional stories is really... remains to be determined. But they, they are telling us stories."

But yeah, it was a piece about PR and how it's done.

Peter Sandman is clearly very good at it. I was somewhat surprised to see some hints that he was sympathetic to 'my' side -- he's the one that raised the question of whether the government was telling the truth above. But it also seems he's quite willing to work for whichever 'side' is paying him; I wonder if he ever would turn down a job because he thought he was doing evil, or if he just avoids thinking about which side is actually 'right', or promoting something harmful or helpful to humanity at large.

At least one more time than what you point out, a more significant time really

Gah. Usually I try to be more careful with the throwaway phrases. Thanks for getting my point anyway.

The point of this interview was the manipulation of perceptions. Sandman is a guy whose job it is to do just that: manipulate perceptions, without regard for the reality (though if he does his job right, he's not directly lying).

OTM _is_ one of the better programs around, but it is, as the title states, "on" the media. That is, a reflexive looking at the media and how it covers issues.

It's mostly pretty good, though at times Brooke in particular strikes me as rather pointedly naive (with her cred and background, she really shouldn't be). I've got a copy of her comic/book The Influencing Machine, which is also mostly pretty good, though there were multiple occasions I wanted to reach through the page and shake Brooke.

If you want serious media criticism, you have to look to the independents, not to the mainstream media.

A great example is the weekly radio show CounterSpin[1], from the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting).

[1] - http://fair.org/counterspin-radio/

I wouldn't exactly call FAIR "independent". OTM is an NPR show; I suppose it's dependent on NPR member stations or something. FAIR is ideologically dependent on the progressive left. If I have to choose dependencies, I'll go with NPR middle-of-the-roadness.

Thankfully, I don't have to choose, and so can enjoy FAIR's podcast while augmenting it with other sources. Thanks for sharing that; I had no idea they had a podcast.

FAIR is independent of any mainstream media outlet.

While NPR is nothing if not mainstream.

I don't disagree, but you see how fuzzy a concept "mainstream" is, right? CNN is owned by a massive media conglomerate. NPR isn't. In that sense, NPR is independent. Meanwhile, there's plenty of outsider content to be found under corporate umbrellas, too. The Koch brothers, for instance, fund Cato.

And likewise, how fuzzy a concept 'independent' is, when you start digging into it.

But, yes, everyone has an ideology, it is true. Even people on NPR. Even those with the most mainstream ideologies, where you don't even notice it's an ideology because it's just the status quo -- that's an ideology too.

If you think FAIR's analysis is biased by their ideology, that may be. (And to show that about someone requires, well, showing it, not just showing that they have an ideology, as everyone does)

But it seems a semantic stretch to claim they are not 'independent' because they are 'ideologically dependent on the progressive left' -- "ideologically dependent", what does that even mean?

It means that they cater to a specific audience with a specific ideology and are less likely to present analysis that challenges that ideology.

(For what it's worth: that ideology is also my ideology).

I think that's probably true, but I'm not sure the language of 'dependency' or 'independent' is the right way to talk about it.

And I think most shows on NPR also cater to an audience with a specific ideology, and are less likely to present analyses that challenge that ideology. That ideology in the case of NPR, is just a status quo liberal ideology so mainstream that it appears invisible.

I do agree that FAIR could be less biased in their analytical perspective though, sometimes.

Specific to NPR: it's subject to manipulation by both Congressional funding (little to the organization itself, but about 10% of member stations' operating budgets), and by sponsorship arrangements from major sponsors.

http://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances

Charles Seife's "Edge" 2013 essay "Capture" http://www.edge.org/response-detail/23674

NPR's cousin PBS here, but I'd argue the same rationale holds: http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12118/pbs-killed-wiscons...

I'll grant you FAIR's slant (Democracy Now is another independent, though slanted, program I'd recommend).

But NPR has been showing a bias to my mind over the past 15 years or so more of timidity than ideology. There are places it simply won't go, questions it won't ask, and fire to which it blatently refuses to put the feet of recalcitrant, evasive, and often simply lying interview subjects (I witnessed a case of this with the coal industry shill organization "Institute for Energy Research" on the KQED Forum program last week). Perhaps simply asking the same question 2-3 times (and having the other side freely answer the same question) is enough, but I am somewhat fond of the (former, if not current) BBC "hard talk" tactic of asking deliberately pointed questions and highlighting evasions. NPR simply won't go there.

Noam Chomsky has also noted that he's been explicitly censored on multiple occasions (he's also very, very rarely given time on the network's flagship programs).

So, while I catch OTM more often than I do FAIR, I appreciate both views.

And with the Snowden / Greenwald reporting, I've also added The Guardian to my list of must-read news sites.

But that's the point of the article. That so much depends on the spin and the truth gets lost.

I didn't see that point in the article. Can you quote a sentence that is about any lost truth?

The entire article is about truth, perception, and perspective.

Loosely put in coder terms, you are interested in pass by value. This article acknowledges that some people pass by value, but instead this article focuses on pass by reference. They aren't saying that no one cares about direct values, they are concentrating on what happens when people use indirection. I.e. this is an article about perception management, not about what the facts are or who is "right" or "truthy".

Indeed. Early is this quote: SENATOR BILL JACKSON: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. BROOKE GLADSTONE: That’s not true, by the way. They then fail to address the objective truth: There’s more murders with hammers last year than there was [with] AK-47s and all other rifles. There's also more deaths from cars than with shotguns and pistols and AK-47s. He was making a point; rather than addressing the point, the critics drill in to one small verbal error and dismiss the inconvenient objective truth.

I forgot about that when I said the program doesn't once ask what the truth is. You may be right that they gave a misleading answer, but at least they (momentarily) brought up the question.

"There's more murders with hammers last year than there was shotguns and pistols and AK-47s" is not anywhere close to reality.

If we restrict to rifles (about 5% of homicides where a firearm is used) and broaden to all blunt instruments, we get the same ballpark, not a clear win for the rifles. I can't find anything that calls out hammers specifically, but lumped in a category with baseball bats and tire irons and golf clubs and 2x4s and wrenches and candlesticks and lead pipes, I'd be amazed to find hammers dominating.

It is certainly a perfectly reasonable position to assert that the number of homicides which used a rifle are low enough that a focus on reducing them is a misguided assignment of priority, even before discussion of particular mechanisms. This happens to be a position I hold.

But you don't get to make a point by making false (and false by an order of magnitude) statements.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com