The second tweet [Could the journos...identify yourselves?] is my question. In fact, wouldn't it be slick to have a simple table of journalists/publications, major world events, and a simple list of check boxes whether they were for, against, or indifferent/agnostic? Maybe even some indicator of when they change their initial position. Might be useful to see which organizations consistently have to/chose to switch their positions over time...
This is an interesting idea. An information management tool like git could accomplish this, but it would be really interesting to see this automated or self-reported or something like that. Although... the kind of company that you would use a tool like this to "discover" is not the kind of company that would self-report this data.
It's not a distraction in the "hey look over there!" kind of sense. It's more like "it's totally Snowden's fault all our spies are exposed now...like a week after the OPM and SF-86 hacks."
I'm not sure why it's credible to say that just because two events are happening in the news at similar times that one is a distraction from the other. You could say that about a hundred different news items throughout the day.
Mixing up Berlin/Laura Poitras with Moscow/Snowden is so incredibly sloppy, especially when it's being misused in an attempt to make a point. It's really basic stuff for anyone following this case, especially a British journalist who would have been aware of the court case involving Miranda.
The Sunday Times has now quietly deleted the key lie about Greenwald's husband (which the whole article depended on) from the online article, with no note.
It will still be in the print edition, which means it needs a retraction.
Yes, there are lots of user flags, and also a moderation downweight—not for being controversial but for being a quasi-duplicate.
Since front page space is the scarcest resource on HN, we try not to have more than one major thread about a story unless there's significant new information. In this case there had already been three: one on the original report [1] and two debunking it [2,3]. To prevent many incarnations of the same story from dominating the front page (a common complaint about HN in the past), we sometimes penalize these, though never as much as actual dupes.
A userscript replacing all paragraphs containing the phrases "sources familiar with the matter", "officials speaking on the condition of anonymity" and "anonymous government sources" with a lorem ipsum of the same length might help.
At first my lighter side responds by thinking these newspapers are just shooting themselves in the foot. But then I realise that there really is a market for this kind of trashpaper. Fortunately, there is also a market for movies [1], that expose the slime behind these publications.
In his situation finding a "safe" laptop that hasn't been backdoored or vulnerable to known (to spies) vulnerabilities is difficult. He has a much higher risk than the average person.
It is likely that he brought as many laptops as he could because sourcing new ones (should one get compromised) is difficult.
No, but in societies with more freedom like the US and the UK there generally tends to be more propaganda, because in those societies the government can't use force to coerce the population. They need people to agree with the official line, so they have to use the media to print stories like the Sunday Times'.
agreed.it is almost to the point that we as citizens might be better served by software that gathers data and outputs it in article form instead of counting on journalism majors with mortgages to assemble and relate the facts.
A bit of useful background here: The Guardian scooped The Sunday Times for one of the most impactful news stories of the decade, and I'm sure some of the Sunday Times article is just a somewhat bitter attempt at retribution.
I want to like GG, but this sort of reporting turns me off, even if I agree with his substance. I feel like you cede a substantial portion of the journalistic high ground when you rant and call people names like this.
As I noticed many years ago, it's
easy to notice that journalism
commonly, correction, nearly always,
is a long way short of
the commonly taught high school
term paper writing standards of
using primary sources, identifying
sources, quoting accurately, etc.
So, we can ask, why is that? Journalism
has too few college graduates
who majored in the humanities and
wrote stacks of term papers? Nope.
So, why? Sure: "Follow the money".
The media is ad supported. They are
in the ad business. For that they
want smelly bait for the ad hook.
Okay, how to get lots of smelly bait,
easily? Sure: Have one newspaper
write a smelly story, and then do
two things:
First, have other newspapers
write much the same story with
much the same smelly content and,
for credibility, maybe quoting
the first newspaper.
Second, with such a good thing, so
much smelly bait all on just one or
two days, of course, sure, keep it
going! So, write more such stories.
Then with so many stories, maybe
the readers will conclude that with
so much smoke there has to be
at least a little fire in there
somewhere. So, all the media
just does a gang up, pile on,
get on the band wagon, have a case of
some implicit collusion,
get on the big wave and ride it,
and, better to fit in with the
gang and, thus, get the security
from being one of the gang,
don't tell the truth, contradict,
or rock the boat and, instead,
just to along with the gang
-- mob.
So, create lots of smelly bait
across lots of newspapers for
lots of days.
Now that
ad revenue is really adding up.
All from a seed of nothing,
zip, zilch, zero, nichts, nil,
nada. Easy money!
There is a lot in common between
the OP and the movie
Absence of Malice (1981)
written by knowledgeable
newspaper guy Kurt Luedtke.
To paraphrase from the movie,
"If we only published stuff
we really knew, then we'd publish
monthly" and nearly all of that
would less important than
Mrs. Murphy's cat Fluffy
crying high in an oak tree.
There really is a lot of important
information the newspapers
could publish, but they won't consider
doing that, apparently because it
is just not part of their traditions.
Or, really, in the grand new standards
of intellectual safety, efficacy, and
relevance of the ascent of man
from mathematics and science,
the newspapers are still back in the
days of superstition, phlogiston,
Chaucer, and the techniques of formula fiction.
E.g., what is the definition of GDP?
Okay, now, to be more relevant, how is
it actually measured? Are there
some critiques of that measurement
technique? If we are going to pay
any attention at all to GDP, then
we at least should discuss how the
heck it gets measured.
Yesterday Hillary claimed that
some of the best paid 25 hedge
fund guys pay a lower tax rate
than kindergarten teachers.
Okay, address that issue:
Give us some solid answers.
True or false? If true,
then how do they do that?
I.e., what parts of the tax
law are they using?
I can toss off such questions
faster than I can type, and so
can nearly anyone interested in
government, but
such will nearly never be addressed in
the mainstream media.
One of the points in common in the OP
and the movie
is the defense by the newspaper
that "We have no evidence that the
story is false". Of course,
neither did they have any
"evidence" the story was true!
It's old stuff, e.g., back at
least to the movie Citizen Kane.
That's just what the newsies --
newspapers, news magazines,
TV news, news Web sites, etc. --
do. It's a very old story.
Greenwald's point is solid:
Can't believe what you read in
the newspapers.
Indeed, that remark is so
common and so readily believed
by the public that it is in
an old Andy Hardy movie from
the 1930s. Did I mention
"old"?
Some years ago,
I really, really wanted
to be a well informed citizen
and subscribed to more and
more news publications
trying to know more.
One day I added up I
was receiving 22 publications
a month. Earlier, I spent
a summer with my parents
in DC and each day read
The Washington Post
fairly carefully. Net,
I finally concluded I wasn't
learning much. Now I subscribe
to nothing on paper and very little
on the Internet.
I still want to be informed,
but the media is junk. Maybe
I'd take The New York Times,
but I (A) have no dead fish
trimmings to wrap,
(B) need no packing materials
(besides, all that ink creates
a mess), (C) have no need for
kitty litter, (D) for my
fireplace already have plenty
of fire starter paper from
all the phone books that are left,
etc.
So, media? Sure, light entertainment
following the rules of formula
fiction with good guys, a problem,
bad guys, etc. Any connection
with actual reality is
thin and incidental.
The media
would be less harmful if
people would just ignore it,
and I'm getting good at that.
I'm glad Greenwald called then put for using the term "boyfriend" for his 10-year old spouse. Something didn't sit well with me about that term, but I couldn't have vocalized it. It seems meant to evoke sexual connotations, when they played no part in the story.
"After two years of living together, they became common-law husbands."
David Miranda: "I never met anyone like Glenn — he's my husband and I don't know where either of us would be without each other."
Greenwald: "They [the goons who detained Miranda at Heathrow airport] humanized the story, and they gave a platform for my charming and admirable husband to speak out."
Regardless of whether they are technically, legally married according to a particular definition, they consider themselves to have been married for 10+ years, and actually do seem to have some legal basis for that view.
BTW, I can think of other minority populations that historically have been named by the majority with diminutive words -- language that intuitively sees that population as less legitimate. Perhaps a good rule of thumb is to call people what they want to be called, and default to the respectful choice if we don't know.
I'm sorry, but doesn't this completely ignore the fact that the state has not sanctioned partnerships between same-sex couples and codified that relationship universally? And where those partnerships are sanctioned, it has only happened recently?
And doesn't this ignore that a partnership lasting ten years between adults intrinsically has more gravitas than the 'boyfriend' moniker implies?
I don't make my living writing, but I can easily think of a word that better represents that relationship. Someone who professes to be a professional writer, but can't do that either shouldn't be writing, or has an underlying agenda they are trying to fulfill by using what is obviously the wrong word for what is being described.
"Dear pro-govt BBC journalists: even NSA admits it has no idea how many docs Snowden took. Is this too complicated?"
"Could the journalists who a) attacked Sy Hersh for using anon sources but b) accepted this Sunday Times report please identify yourselves?"
"Next in the Sunday Times RT @DieZauberer Next they'll be telling us he has chemical weapons that could reach Britain in 45 minutes."