This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Yeah, the media is constantly smashing the "damage Trump, hurt own credibility" button. They need to spend some years building up their political capital. The account so overdrawn they can't even damage Trump anymore, all they can do is further damage their own credibility.
I kind of agree here which is what makes this move so baffling. They know they’re not going to affect the outcome with this move, and they know that this kind of stupid reporting is only going to hurt their credibility. As it stands now, if the GOP candidate for 2028 were actually a Nazi, the credibility of the idea has been shot so badly that even if Candidate 2028 says “killing an entire ethnic group is actually a good idea,” who’s still listening? Very very people are still paying attention to the mainstream media as a source of information, and of those who are, it’s often as a sideline to looking for the same information from other sources less compromised by ideological capture. I don’t really pay attention to it. I don’t know of very many others who unironically believe anything coming out of a mainstream media outlet.
After all of the things done, and not even done well (I.e. the blatant edits of Kamala’s answers on 60 minutes), and in a biased way, I don’t see how any of these old journals can regain credibility. A “journalist” at this point is an ideological hack, unconcerned with accuracy, credibility, or neutrality. The mask is gone, and it’s almost impossible to restore the trust that they once enjoyed. For me, the only value in reading the NYT or watching mainstream news is to find out what the cathedral wants me to believe. Its value is in that area, but it’s no longer even directionally relevant or accurate.
I tend to think that analysis of why the media behaves the way that they do can't be separated from the Internet sucking all of the money out of advertising. The days of major news media sources paying generous salaries for skilled, intelligent investigators with deep knowledge of some beat and at least some sense of ethics are gone, maybe forever, with the drive to the bottom for advertising money.
The only thing that brings in enough money to keep the doors open is clickbait-level reporting and commentary catering to whatever the current audience wants to believe. Anyone not prepared to do that mostly gets driven out, since there's damn little money for anyone else. Even the ownership seems to be mostly people who primarily want to either protect themselves from too-harsh criticism or use them as a weapon to attack their enemies, and so is willing to accept losses or much lower profits than a disinterested investor would expect.
I think skill/intelligence/expertise and having at least some sense of ethics are somewhat different with respect to salary levels. Certainly, it's easier to be ethical if you're well compensated, but I don't think having at least some sense of ethics when doing journalism requires some generous salary that is beyond the capabilities of these companies to pay now, and plenty of not-very-well compensated journalists (and other workers in general) can be and have been known to behave with at least some sense of ethics. If the lower budget to pay salaries means compromising on skills, intelligence, expertise, and ethics, among other things, they could have decided compromise less on ethics at the cost of compromising on other things, so that their journalists would have at least some sense of ethics, even if they weren't up to the same level of skill, intelligence, or deep knowledge of some beat as the other options.
I do think this is likely the biggest factor. It's hard to say exactly what determines how ethical any given journalist or individual in general would behave, but I think the leadership and company culture likely has a lot of influence, moreso than the budgets available for salaries.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Do they? What's the evidence that they're aware of the fact that this kind of thing would hurt their credibility? I remember as far back as 2016 during Trump's first campaign, I was among a tiny minority of Democrats complaining that there are more than enough honest ways to criticize and denigrate Trump, and that constantly reaching for hyperbole or even just lies would only hurt our ability to make any criticisms of him and other politicians in the future. We were shut down for "tone policing" or just ignored, and, sure enough, over the following 4 years of his presidency and continuing for 4 years after that, we've seen the trust in media keep going down. And the explanation for this has always been adding more epicycles about disinformation, Russian propaganda, low-information voters, and the like, instead of just owning up to the fact that when you don't speak credibly, your credibility declines in the eyes of the audience. At some point, when someone just keeps making the same obvious mistake over and over again that harms them, one has to conclude that, somehow, that mistake isn't that obvious or even understood by the person.
I also have to wonder if there's an evaporative cooling going on, where journalists who could recognize the constant self-destructive behavior of self-inflicted injuries to credibility that much of mainstream media engages in quit and did their own thing, and thus the ones remaining are only the most deluded ones.
I think there's a phenomenon where, once an industry goes left, it goes all the way left. In the 1970s something like 40% of journalists were Republicans. Today it is like 4%.
Somewhere along the line, a tipping point got crossed where it becomes almost impossible to be right of center in a newsroom due to social pressure.
We've seen the same thing happen in academia and primary school teaching as well. A tipping point is reached, the institutions become explicit left-wing organs, and they lose public trust.
It's unclear how this process can reverse. We probably need to defund and replace the institutions. X is doing a great job of doing that for journalists.
Well, I know there's some sort of "law" some political commentator coined, that says that any organization that's not explicitly right wing eventually becomes left wing. There are certainly enough examples that calling it a "law" doesn't seem obviously ridiculous.
The part I don't understand quite so well is why it happens to such an extreme extent like that 40% - 4% shift you say happened in journalism. From a purely cynical, selfish perspective, knowing the opposition better allows one to defeat them better - there's even a cliche saying, "Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer," that alludes to this. So if I'm cynically running a left-wing organization in order to crush the right-wing, then I'm going to want to populate it with at least enough right-wingers that we can learn from. From a good faith perspective of wanting to make the world a better place through leftist values and policies, it's obvious that blind spots develop when you're surrounded by people with similar values and beliefs. So if I'm a bright-eyed idealist running a left-wing organization in order to improve the world, then I'm going to want to populate it with at least enough right-wingers to provide real, substantive criticism of the weaknesses and pitfalls of our values that I and people who agree with me can't recognize.
Which leads me to conclude that there are no real adults in the room, and everyone's just cynically aiming for the betterment of their own careers and status among peers, and if that results in their organization becoming ineffective or evil, then, well, hopefully that'll be after they've retired and the younger generations can deal with that.
This is the thought I had from seeing a related phenomenon in the field of entertainment, where over the past couple years, we've seen companies burn 8-10 figures in producing works like the films Indiana Jones 5 or The Marvels, TV shows Rings of Power or The Acolyte, video games Concord, Star Wars: Outlaws, or Unknown 9: Awakening. I would have expected that the cynical selfish greedy decisionmakers at the top would have put a stop to it before all that money was sunk. But, well, it's not like it's their money - it's their investors' money - and even if they were to get fired, they at least gained status among their peers by greenlighting such things. That's the best I've come up with.
Conquest's Law(s): https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/conquests-laws-john-derbyshire/
More options
Context Copy link
Sure, but there's two things working against you. First is the reason that many people who genuinely want to be thin are nevertheless fat: lack of will power to not do what feels good in the moment. You may recognize fully that you need some conservatives on staff, and go out and recruit them, and nonetheless find that you simply don't have the will power to stand up for them when they (and you by proxy) are attacked by your allies, or even to grant them with a similar level of respect and authority that you would give to your allies. So, they end up leaving for less hostile environments, as would be totally expected.
The other is the principal-agent problem. You may want conservative on your staff, you may even be a conservative yourself, but if enough of your staff are willing to actually torpedo your organization and are credibly able to do so, you may find that your hand is forced and that your only options are a completely left organization or none at all. In this sense, the left engages in some union-adjacent workplace activity to effectively force a closed shop. Once you're in this situation, it's going to be very difficult to get out without replacing almost your entire staff and also countering their efforts at sabotage in the process, a difficult task even before we consider the effects of solidarity from other left media institutions.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If it doesn't make sense, and they keep doing it, and the disastrous results keep not happening, then perhaps your model is wrong. I think the part you've got wrong is thinking that their stupid reporting will hurt their credibility. Their credibility does not derive from them telling the truth. It derives from being credible institutions endorsed by credible institutions. Since the people behind them in fact control all the credible institutions, as long as they keep toeing the party line they will not lose credibility.
But it’s not exactly right. If you’re in a fact-selling business, being right is at least a small part of credibility. Which is why they’re failing as the source of information for the rabble who no longer believe what’s on 60 minutes and in the NYT or the mainstream press. And where that ends up is these “credible sources” can no longer see their purpose and therefore are abandoned. How can they be trusted enough to indoctrinate the masses when the masses are choosing alternatives and not taking American Pravda seriously? Samsdat is accurate at least, and that accuracy isn’t fake. It’s like the loudspeakers in North Korea. They were giving accurate forecasts of the weather, so people listened to them over the government news.
Then they're not in a fact-selling business, because it isn't. Even if they were, their readers will never check the facts.
No. Where that ends is pretty much here, where a majority still believe the NYT and 60 minutes and such, and some minority believes instead in Fox News and the Daily Caller. Eventually the majority group will take over Fox and bring some subset of the minority back into the fold.
Why are average people reading news then? I mean I can sort of get why aperachniks are reading American Pravda rags, but again, as a useful activity, a person reading the news would be looking for accuracy on things that matter to them. As it becomes more obvious to average people that a given source isn’t accurate, then it’s really only useful to the choir as the point of them reading and watching news is to know what to say in dinner parties or business talk or whatever. NYT might be useful for that, but if most people now see a NYT article as simply skimping for wokeness and global order and so on, it’s not going to convince them of anything. In fact, it would probably do the opposite— if NYT starts telling me about civilian deaths in Gaza, my first thought is “Israel must have gotten an important target.” Beyond a certain point, obvious propaganda starts pushing people in the wrong direction from the POV of the writers.
Because it makes them feel informed. And aligns them with their friends, co-workers, and acquaintances who also want to feel informed.
The average people are the choir. People who care about the ground truth rather than the pravda are the weirdos, dissidents, and heretics. If the NYT starts telling them that IDF soldiers are headshotting kids in Israel, they start believing worse things about Israel. Even if they wanted to check, they can't, and they don't want to.
Totally off topic, but I am seeing this comment as 1d old and the comment it is replying to as 12h old, some sort of bug?
To me it looks like the follow-up came 22 minutes after the previous comment. Must be a space-time anomaly on your end.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link