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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   33226 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 10, 2022

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Chait's argument holds just as well for Chait, who makes no effort whatsoever at concealing his overwhelming bias. The people at the conference are The Enemy, and they must be Stopped At All Costs. He's nothing more than a Democrat operative with a byline, as they say.

Overwhelming? I'm not sure where you're seeing that.

It's true that Chait makes some serious missteps in his article, but they're small points that don't detract from what he's saying. For that matter, most of what he says is just summarizing and characterizing what was said at the conference.

Overwhelming? I'm not sure where you're seeing that.

It's not like Chait is hiding this perspective. But as an example from this case:

... whose official title is director of rapid response for the governor but whose role could be more accurately described as minister of propaganda, held forth at a panel on marginalizing independent media. The challenge, she explained ruefully, is that many older Americans, such as her parents, still give some credence to old-line outfits like the New York Times. This reputation, she believes, comes from the perception that they have access to both parties, so the correct response by Republicans is to freeze out the mainstream media.

This particular section is painful to read if you're familiar with Chait's techniques, but I think it's useful as an example more because it's the very same thing as it's trying to criticize. Does this look like a sober and honest description of Pushaw or her talk, or does it sounds like someone that thinks his job is to write the opposite of this? If I googled "independent media", do you think any examples on the front page would come across as any of the people or organizations that Pushaw mentioned in her talk? Do you think this is giving a good understanding of Pushaw's goals, or ability to predict the contents of her talk?

Chait argues that Pushaw wants to eliminate the idea of a journalist altogether - there will instead be "left journalists" and "right journalists". This is idiotic, because there are going to be people who synthesize the materials and present themselves as objective journalists. Both sides would do it and nothing changes. CNN will tell you what DeSantis told his favored journalist and continue on without pause.

I don't think this is a good understanding of the concerns or purposes specific here. Pushaw et all's position is that, by providing support to existing left journalists, conservatives (and other weirdos) are providing tools to those left-journalists to not only present themselves as objective journalists, but also specific weapons to attack with.

As an example case, take CBS's past and pretty aggressive slice-and-dices of DeSantis presentations. This is not an especially developed version of this particular approach -- more specialized version will do more to isolate their mark or prevent them from having evidence of manipulation, or provide (false) reassurance of honest intent -- but note that it had a very specific format: Alfonsi and video crew went to the press conference in a way that gave them the audio they needed to slice. Not (just) because that allowed them to manipulate the sound bites, or increase their perceived credibility, or because of the somewhat sloppy boundaries of fair reporting privilege in Florida; because it also means that they owned the video rights.

That's actually kinda important! I don't particularly buy the whole "pivot to video" concept, and indeed I'd argue to its opposite, but people are a lot less aware of the extent outright video manipulation can occur and be undetectable. There's a reason this class of reporter believes, even if incorrectly, that it's worth spending . And we've found even the most aggressive behavior is not meaningfully possible to contest or punish in courts from the position of a target, even one willing to suffer the Streisand effect.

There's some economic costs to other media sources if Fox News-likes are the only place in Florida with video of a Governor's Press Conference, but the bigger impact is that a CBS devolved to trimming words out of other newspapers is far less likely to persuade people when doing that.

Thank you, I don't follow Chait and this piece just happened to cross my path. I do agree that that piece you linked is fairly indicative of Chait's bias towards being a conflict theorist.

This particular section is painful to read if you're familiar with Chait's techniques, but I think it's useful as an example more because it's the very same thing as it's trying to criticize. Does this look like a sober and honest description of Pushaw or her talk, or does it sounds like someone that thinks his job is to write the opposite of this? If I googled "independent media", do you think any examples on the front page would come across as any of the people or organizations that Pushaw mentioned in her talk? Do you think this is giving a good understanding of Pushaw's goals, or ability to predict the contents of her talk?

I think this example is somewhat problematic as I can't even find the talk itself. It's not on the youtube channel for the NCC, and even searching for it yields nothing. But the prior link does cast some doubt on it.

I don't think this is a good understanding of the concerns or purposes specific here. Pushaw et all's position is that, by providing support to existing left journalists, conservatives (and other weirdos) are providing tools to those left-journalists to not only present themselves as objective journalists, but also specific weapons to attack with...There's some economic costs to other media sources if Fox News-likes are the only place in Florida with video of a Governor's Press Conference, but the bigger impact is that a CBS devolved to trimming words out of other newspapers is far less likely to persuade people when doing that.

Another round of strong links, but I don't think it's going to have the impact you're claiming. I'd posit we're not, and may never have been, in a position where people hinge their politics on the view that the news orgs they consume are "objective journalists". The only people you'd reach are those without a strong political belief system themselves, but also diligent enough to verify what is being said. I'm not sure how many of these people even exist.

I've seen how people spread new news sites to others for "learning what happened", and it's often just a reflection of the person's own political views.

That said, I don't see how video rights necessarily come into it. The tactics are done in service of the politics, not vice versa. If they can't selectively edit their own videos, they'll do the same to other videos, and I'm pretty sure that you'd be allowed to do this in the first place under fair use.

I'd posit we're not, and may never have been, in a position where people hinge their politics on the view that the news orgs they consume are "objective journalists". The only people you'd reach are those without a strong political belief system themselves, but also diligent enough to verify what is being said. I'm not sure how many of these people even exist.

I'm not sure you need people to be directly diligent enough to catch this stuff: few, if any, would have been able to catch the 60 Minutes trick for sheer mechanical reasons. But once one did, you didn't have to be diligent. Uou had to hear from either right-leaning media or even some mainstream media that covered the resulting scandal.

So you're less asking about those without a strong political belief system, but also diligent enough to verify; instead, you're looking for those without a strong political belief system and also who see anything from non-manipulative media. Which, to be fair, is still not a huge set! But one of the awkward secrets of modern coalition politics and general democratic politics is that you aren't trying to persuade a majority of people or even a majority of voters: you're working the margins of a fairly small set of a squishy middle voters who could be persuaded, or marginal voters who are flexable on whether they want to vote at all. And a lot of these gimmicks -- both the abusive manipulation of video, and the Look At This Bad Actor -- are designed pretty clearly to inflame the interests of those groups.

Individually, I don't think any one of these changes all but the most marginal of elections... but they're not individual things. Overt and uncontroversial examples that get caught are maybe once a news cycle. But the people doing this doesn't exactly stop with overt and uncontroversial examples.

That said, I don't see how video rights necessarily come into it. The tactics are done in service of the politics, not vice versa. If they can't selectively edit their own videos, they'll do the same to other videos, and I'm pretty sure that you'd be allowed to do this in the first place under fair use.

The extent a piece can be changed can sometimes be complicated, but even where not fair use, editing's usually a pretty cheap usage right, and just using the video seldom falls under fair use in this context -- that's why reporters begging for use permissions is such a common gimmick.

There's workarounds -- ambush journalism is a thing, albeit with a well-deserved reputation, certain types of public feed or event are effectively uncontrollable, a lot of places will (and already do) slice-and-dice text form. I'd expect that rather than a simple sorting of left- and right-media, you instead end up with a complex balkanization where individual politicians at certain levels of power have differing (and changing) sets of media that they'll meet with, not just based on those reporter's actions but even on the actions of those that the reporter's work with. I'm certainly not claiming that this is good as a policy, or legitimate as a constitutional matter.

But it's pretty obvious that it's at least a significant part of Pushaw and DeSantis' policies, and that Chait has been following them long enough that he should recognize this, and it's noticeable that this isn't something that Chait wants to present, not just here, but as far as I can tell ever, when he instead provides explanations that seem to be little less than 'eviiiiiiiil'.

How to Make a Semi-Fascist Party.

The Enemy.

a notable break for a movement that, in the pre-Trump days, had at least pretended to stand against “big government.”

Assumption of bad faith.

Christina Pushaw, whose official title is director of rapid response for the governor but whose role could be more accurately described as minister of propaganda,

Seriously? Pushaw is certainly a PR/press contact person for a politician, similar to the White House Press Secretary. I'd like an example of Chait evenhandedly referring to, say, Jen Psaki as Biden's "minister of propaganda."

Why yes, overwhelming bias sounds exactly on point. And given that obvious bias, an intelligent reader should not take his "summarizing and characterizing what was said at the conference" at face value, which undermines everything else in the article. These aren't "small points;" from the headline on down, it's his entire framing of the conference!

Why yes, overwhelming bias sounds exactly on point. And given that obvious bias, an intelligent reader should not take his "summarizing and characterizing what was said at the conference" at face value, which undermines everything else in the article. These aren't "small points;" from the headline on down, it's his entire framing of the conference!

So, upon reading gattsuru's response, I do agree with you that he's being fairly biased.

However, I'm not convinced that what's being reported in necessarily affected by his bias because it sounds like what has been reported by others regarding the strengthening of the conservative populist movement in the first place. The general points about identifying left-leaning journalists, seemingly-woke corporations, and making the perceived 2020 election theft as the important narrative thrusts seem like the kind of thing we were already hearing before Chait's article.

So I think it's necessary to separate what his bias is (his title about the fascist slide or his description of Pushaw as a propaganda minister) from what he's reporting about. It's certainly possible that even that isn't accurate, but I'm not convinced of that yet.

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