Comment by davesque
6 days ago
Right, but the picture those statements painted collectively was not flattering. And that was certainly intended by the authors. Thus, critical, but not at all "incendiary."
Update: To clarify, my personal stance is that the critical tone was both intended by the authors and, in my opinion, appropriate given how much power Mr. Altman holds. If he has a history of behaving inconsistently, that deserves daylight.
Are you arguing that because the authors knew the pattern they were documenting was unflattering, the piece is somehow compromised? That they clearly had an agenda? That's called reporting. They called a hundred-plus named sources and the picture those sources independently painted was damning. Altman has a history of telling repeated, easily-checked lies, followed by fresh lies when caught in the first ones.
Are you suggesting that they should have "both sides"-ed by reporting company PR and Sam-friendly sources and giving them equal weight? Sometimes the facts point in one direction.
> Are you arguing that because the authors knew the pattern they were documenting was unflattering, the piece is somehow compromised?
Uh, no? Lol, I'm on your side, bud. Put away the pitchfork. I thought it was a really good and fair article. I am not the adversary you're looking for.
> my personal stance is that the critical tone was both intended by the authors
You may think we are on the same side. You don't understand what side I'm on. "Lol".
Your "personal stance" is that you can get inside the heads of the reporters? Obviously not. So you're going by the idea that an article that leads to critical conclusions is inherently slanted. This is an insidious and damaging idea. It has led to the belief by journalists and editors that they need to twist themselves into pretzels to present "both sides", which is easily exploited by people of bad faith to launder outright lies. There's a direct line between this and authoritarianism. I'm quite serious about this. The fact that you agree with the authors in this case is completely orthogonal.
Jay Rosen has written a lot about this, well worth reading: https://pressthink.org/2010/11/the-view-from-nowhere-questio...
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