These policies are in place because companies have learned that journalists will happily take any comment, from any employee, from any context, and make it Crucial Evidence(TM) of impropriety...
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> journalists will happily take any comment, from any employee, from any context, and make it Crucial Evidence(TM) of impropriety...
I think that's more a problem of social media, where it seems true more often than not, and not professional media, which actually reviews evidence, corroborates, etc., and are subject to expensive lawsuits if they fail (e.g., Fox News has paid out something like a billion dollars over smearing the voting machine manufacturers).
It depends what you call 'professional', but I mean high-quality sources like NY Times, CBS News, etc. (Yes, you can find where they've been accused of failing, which of course will happen, and where they've actually failed - there's nothing perfect under the sun).
The targets of professional journalists' investigations will lie their asses off - until they are caught, and then they switch to a fall-back lie. They also use the tactic of attacking the messenger. They aren't under oath or required to answer questions.
For one thing, Professional Media is inextricably linked to Social Media (especially Twitter), and are leading participants in the salacious outrage bait economy there. For another, my criticism is not that journalists are making things up from whole cloth, but rather that they are more than willing to comb through discovery filings to find the most outlandish thing anyone has every said in order to paint a picture that may or may not be an representative of the broader case.
I don't think they do this because they are the "enemy of the people", but because it drives engagement.
I think it's a vast exaggeration. Every human activity and institution has flaws; we can't eliminate all of them. One solution is to have transparency - journalists are transparent because they have to provide evidence.
That sounds like "people love to demonize collective farms, but how else would you grow food?" The question begs the answer - other people who are not part of collective farms could do it very well and have been doing it for centuries. You don't have to be a part of billion-dollar corporation controlled by a billionaire and have a degree for which you owe your whole net worth and hope some politician will consider you worthy of bribing to pay it off - you don't need any of that to tell the truth. Especially not these days when literally anyone still can speak publicly easily, despite all the efforts from "real journalists" to put an end to it.
> I mean high-quality sources like NY Times, CBS News
ITYM "corporations that are constantly lying to us like"...
> where they've been accused of failing,
They are not "accused of", there are literally dozens if not hundreds only recent cases where we know they lied, we know why they lied, they know we caught them lying, and yet nothing happened and people like you keep calling them "high-quality sources".
> The targets of professional journalists' investigations will lie their asses off
Unfortunately, the professional journalists will lie their asses off as frequently, if not more. The good news are that we don't really need them anymore.
Just count how many "according to anonymous sources" stories you heard recently, and how much of the "evidence" anyone would independently verify. You'd be surprised (or not, if you've been awake for the last decade).
Contrast that with social media.
In addition, most of what SMAC members post has to be new to the public (not something others have posted) and significant to their community.
Then those bloggers would be journalists. But if they did, I wouldn't care if they worked for the NY Times or whatever, or if they called themselves journalists. But who else but journalists and scientific researchers matches those standards?
> You don't have to be a part of billion-dollar corporation controlled by a billionaire and have a degree for which you owe your whole net worth and hope some politician will consider you worthy of bribing to pay it off - you don't need any of that to tell the truth.
You setup that strawperson. It does take a lot of education, training, and work, including resources to do all that work. Could SMAC exists without funding and other resources?
> there are literally dozens if not hundreds only recent cases where we know they lied, we know why they lied, they know we caught them lying
If you can provide examples, that is great. Otherwise, who is making things up?
That's the difference between social media (including HN) and professional journalism. On social media people just write whatever. If they NY Times writes 'literally dozens', there are actually more than 24 or 36; when people on social media write it, it's kind of an expression of 'a lot' and we all know that the person writing is just performing an emotional play, and very possibly doesn't know.
Maybe it used to be so, but not anymore. Now the careers of journalists (I don't know how to define "serious" without going into true-scotsman weeds) depend much more on ideological conformity and willingness to serve partisan interests and push the narrative that needs to be pushed. The ones that are not willing to do that - regardless of political affiliations - find themselves outside of the "mainstream" media, usually on Substack or likewise stand-alone platforms.
> I don't know how to define "serious" without going into true-scotsman weeds
Yes, agreed. I'm just leaving it ambiguous.