Comment by chrononaut
5 months ago
> No, [journalists] know what they are doing ... Carefully calibrated, highly-selective use of (often, quite awkward) linguistic constructs does not happen unconsciously, it is a deliberate, knowing choice.
The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith. The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith, which makes me believe the arguments of the parent ("The journalists don't think they're writing these stories to amplify the police narrative") more so than the argument you're making here.
> The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith.
Maybe, maybe not. It is also true that the incredible vast majority of people in the world aren’t corporate journalists, also.
> The way you are framing this is that nearly all journalists are acting in bad faith
Nearly all American corporate media has a conscious, top-down policy starting with the owners and editorial board to favor certain institutions, which is enforced by hiring, firing, promotions, and assignments of staff. The specific beneficiaries of this vary somewhat between outlet and outlet and over time, but both American police broadly and State of Israel are common beneficiaries across most outlets.
Journalists either comply are they aren’t journalists in the corporate media covering the issues to which these biases are relevant for long. Corporate media journalists aren’t independent actors.
Chomksy to Marr:
"...I'm sure you believe everything you're saying, but ... if you believed something different, you wouldn't be sitting where you're sitting."
https://youtu.be/GjENnyQupow?t=597&feature=shared
>The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith.
this a very westerner perspective on society. Ask an Eastern European (like myself) how the vast majority of people are really acting.
Can you elaborate?
How well has that worked for East Europe?
Really well, thanks for asking
> The incredible vast majority of people in the world are acting in good faith.
We have fundamentally different priors.
Which areas or circumstances are you observing otherwise?
I see routine bad faith in:
- politicians of both parties (eg, speaking disingenously on issues of relevance to their corporate sponsors)
- corporations
- judges, including in the Supreme Court, who abandon espoused judicial philosophies the moment they conflict with political expediency
- government administrators, much more so with Trump's appointments
- media organizations (The self-censorship of coverage around Gaza has been eye-opening.)
The problem is that it is essentially impossible for a journalist to exist in the western world and not have heard of the criticism about how cops' actions get reported.
The term 'past exonerative tense' is dated to 1991.'"Mistakes were made" was popularized by Nixon.
To continue pulling this nonsense is wilful ignorance on the journalists' part, and effectively equivalent to bad faith.