Comment by benzible

6 days ago

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.

10 comments

benzible

Reply
davesque  6 days ago

> 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.

  • benzible  6 days ago

    > 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...

    • teolandon  6 days ago

      Every article is inherently biased due to the fact that there are inclusions and omissions. This is just a fact.

      You're injecting your own personal view into GP's statement by adding a lot of weight into the distinction between the words "critical" and "incendiary" and "neutral", when GP made a very neutral and not as charged statement.