> On the contrary, there is a culture clash between mainstream media which is becoming increasingly progressive and tech which is also quite progressive, but moderated by the influence of libertarians and the Intellectual Dark Web.
> (Aren’t their worldviews essentially the same? No, see Freud’s Narcissism of Small Differences. What matters is proximity - both coexist within the bubble of educated professionals.)
Which set of over-educated, under-cautious, overly self-actualized, out-of-touch know-betters will lead the country to Truth (TM)? Choices choices.
The Media is dominated by labor unions. I suspect that is the key difference and the source of the conflict. Every unionized journalist has a financial conflict of interest in how they cover the news.
They would have no financial interest in empowering the political left.
Without the anti-capitalist ideology journalists popularize, with stories about 'Amazon the exploiter' for example, the laws that violate their employers' contract liberty, and consequently provide unionized journalists with above market wages and protection from competition from other workers, would not exist.
That’s the product not of financial interest, but geographic consolidation. As local media disappears, and the industry becomes consolidated in NYC and LA, it becomes increasingly comprised of people who are either from there, or the kind of people who are happy to leave their home towns in the rest of the country to move there. Regardless, that leads to the ideological uniformly you see. Economics is secondary here.
That kind of story predates journalist unions. The owner of the newspaper has a financial interest in selling papers, and more people are workers than owners.
Fast forward three years, a new anti-gig-economy law forces Vox to let go of hundreds of gig economy freelancers, thus reducing competition to the unionized journalists who agitated for the law:
Unions are simply a tool for collective leverage and act as a counterbalance to financial leverage, where ownership and labor are disjoint and have competing interests.
Unions under current laws can force employers to negotiate exclusively with them, and can strike without fear of being fired and replaced.
Collective bargaining in a free market, where the union and employer both freely choose to engage in it, is not exploitive. Under current laws, employers can be forced to engage in collective bargaining, thus limiting their options, and making it a tool for exploitation.
"They can freely choose to engage in it. Nobody forces them to rely on wage labor."
But that's not contract liberty. If you have contract liberty, you can choose to "rely on wage labor", as you put it, without entering into collective bargaining. The laws the unions rely on restrict contract liberty, i.e. freedom of association, and they're based on socialist constructs like "wage slavery".
"Competition goes both ways, not just top down. If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor) then you deal with the consequence that these workers use their leverage just as much as you use yours if they have to."
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say or what argument you think I'm making that this is relevant to. For example, I have no idea what this is referring to: "If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor)".
Could you 1. reiterate to me what you think my argument is, and 2. elaborate on and clarify your point so that I may better understand it?
"A company is not forced to use wage labor" does not mean "they can choose to employ workers under any kind of contract without push-back".
Competition goes both ways, not just top down. If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor) then you deal with the consequence that these workers use their leverage just as much as you use yours if they have to.
So the union members are the luddites in this scenario. Which means in the long run, they are fated to evolve like the blacksmith of yore. No longer the center of activity, they went on to become machinists and mechanics, important cogs but not as important as before.
The guilds only fell due to the incidental conditions in Europe. Perhaps under different conditions, like Europe coming under a single empire without the competitive and evolutionary pressures that in our timeline led to sovereign powers embracing trade and markets, guilds would have solidified their power.
I don't have an opinion whether sourcing information from multiple opposing sources gives best opinion. Maybe it is fine, my point is that the premise of "averaging opposing narratives gives the average correct result" is not right.
Let's consider a few (made up) scenarios:
A is right and B is right, but they show two different sides of the story - for example a description of hurdles of two different social groups from the insider perspective, and description of a conflict between them using that perspective. Reading both is clearly good, because your understanding of the issue is deeper than just following your bubble's narrative. So far so good.
A is wrong and B is wrong. For example A says, that if we let the tribe FOO win the election, it will cause the economical collapse, and B says that if we won't let the tribe FOO win the election, it will cause the economical collapse. Both (in this hypothetical scenario) are just putting a bogeymen to advance some narrative - you are not smarter from reading them, even more, you may truly believe either A or B and have your opinion altered by a cynical actor. Not so good, but still - you may think - since both say something completely opposite, then maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle; then you benefit from the fact, that there are two (not one) - just as you said in the parent comment.
A is right and B is wrong. Say one group says, that FOO is good for you (and it is an opinion supported by some amount of evidence, and in our artifical example it is true that FOO is good for you), but B says that it is very very bad for you - be it ignorance or cynical narrative incited by Mordor-funded trolls :-) Clearly with one source of information (that is A) we are better of.
So please let me reiterate - I'm not saying that sourcing information from multiple outlets is good (or wrong), only that saying that "averaging" the information gives you a more correct opinion seems dubious to me.
I've emphasized a few times, that examples are made up (for a purpose of explaining different scenarios). I haven't included any actual opinion to make it even more apparent.
You should it read it like this:
_given_ [ A is right and B is wrong ]
this and that _may_ happen
with emphasis put on the word "given".
In real world are usually more than two actors and multiple mutually exclusive narratives; authors even when deliberately lying include some truth to make it more believable etc etc, my point of the previous post was that adding a new source with an agenda usually does increase the noise, but not _necessarily_ the signal.
The author assumes that "the media" are some homogenous lump that all thinks the same and pumps out the same content.
Each media company has a target audience, and it optimises for that audience continuously. Their viewers or readers like that "property" because it's views/biases/style reflects their own.
> "The media is becoming more progressive"
that's a broad sweep. The demographic is changing and the various properties are changing to reflect that. Granted, there is some leeway in a media organisation pushing it's audience to one side of a debate or other. However it needs the audience to go with it. However there is no evidence provided that this is the case.
I think the bigger issues is that people have realised that a small number of business are increasingly becoming arbiters of _everything_. Be that Tv shows, what opinions are penalised, who can trade where and for what price. (See the backlash from Facebook's fucking stupid PR spat against apple.)
In short, I don't think the author was able to fully express their claim without making broad unsupported statements. Finally I don't think a16z's media push is going to get overly far _unless_ they provide content that people want to consume at the correct price and place.
If you want to see what I mean, just look at what happened to the "let's disrupt hollywood" Effort, which amounted to nothing. (hollywood is disrupted, but by the pandemic, disney, amazon and netflix, not a startup)
>The author assumes that "the media" are some homogenous lump that all thinks the same and pumps out the same content.
Well in the eyes of the "advertiser" - the money - they are indeed a homogeneous lump that sell their advertising inventory to some DSP... while Facebook/Google have extremely valuable inventory due to the data granularity.
And you might say, "oh this has nothing to do with advertising!". Let me tell you that I've witnessed the inner workings of large old media protecting some advertisers, as well as pilling up to attack tech giants.
Media and Silicon Valley are at war since the share of media budgets accelerated towards tech giants, departing from "old" media. The media started to feel the urge to compete with user generated content when faced with this reality that reflected as lower CPMs for their inventory, and started to pump content (news/opinions/etc) - the "truth" became irrelevant as long as they are the first, or have the snappier header to grab clicks.
The media is as much to blame for the status quo as any other player.
Yes, maybe it was a mistake of mine mentioning it so lightly - you're absolutely right!
Specially on protecting advertisers, it's very rare (sometimes even if advertiser pulls a tantrum and strips off budget).
But on the subject of attacking tech giants, if find that to be recurrent - and in the "old media" defense most of it is well deserved. Still, they pile up with some enjoyment.
It's interesting that the author (And many Americans!) realize that the media is becoming more homogenized, and that that's a problem, but come to the wrong conclusion that it's getting more progressive, when these large media conglomerates are mostly very conservative.
Can you clarify? This seems plainly untrue under any conventional definition of "very conservative". Archetypal "very conservative" positions might be opposition to minimum wage increases or support for unrestricted gun ownership, and it's pretty hard to argue that e.g. CNN and the New York Times embrace those positions.
“Conservative” in the sense that they want to preserve existing power structures, not that they don’t want to jump on new trends. Look at the mainstream coverage of the GME fiasco, for example. That’s why they love “progressive” ideas that keep everything the same except for skin colour.
Without getting into GME, that's largely a fair assessment. I don't think that contradicts the author, though; when Americans say "progressive", they typically mean something like "aligned with the trends and preferences of people within the Democratic Party". Nobody would call e.g. Joe Biden "very conservative", despite his interest in preserving (and presence at the top of) existing power structures.
> that's a broad sweep. The demographic is changing and the various properties are changing to reflect that. Granted, there is some leeway in a media organisation pushing it's audience to one side of a debate or other. However it needs the audience to go with it. However there is no evidence provided that this is the case.
This jumped out at me too. It's interesting that some of the reflection on the NYTimes internal changes, specifically, is credited to people coming from "tech companies".
> The insurrectionists, meanwhile, had often come from digital outlets or tech companies or advocacy groups and could imagine leaving the place at any time.
With respect to "mainstream" media, it has become demonstrably more homogenized. If nothing else, because of the media conglomerates that have become increasingly dominant.
By and large, they're also correct that mainstream media is moving to the left.
>The author assumes that "the media" are some homogenous lump that all thinks the same and pumps out the same content.
There are zillion examples of this becoming more and more true. Increasingly often, articles are written to support shared meta-narratives, regardless of what's happening in reality. From just last few days, here is NYT and CNN drawing completely idiotic parallels between r/wallstreetbets and MAGA:
I've posted before on the weird relationship between neoliberal Democrats and big tech (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25846361). To make things short, the biggest flaw in his take was that things were not always like this, there was a time when the Democratic establishment were absolutely having a blatant love affair with SV tech (Remember Obama's campaign and how liberal media applauded his "progressive" use of Facebook and data analysis?). You have to look at the reasons why that relationship changed, and then everything becomes incredibly straightforward.
Part of this is adopting a new narrative meant that they could write more stories, part of this is that some of the societal issues have become increasingly obvious, but I also believe that part of this tech's role in collapsing the media and inter-elite competition as well. So it's multi-faceted.
At this point, is HN just a place to play devil's advocate against obvious realities? Every thread is just a battle between common sense and people doing long-winded mental gymnastics, and the latter is clearly winning. This is turning into reddit with a higher word count.
A more nuanced take would have engaged more with the various segments of the media. On the other hand, there's a great sociological article by Kieran Healy called Fuck Nuance. As he writes:
"Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Although often demanded and superficially attractive, nuance inhibits the abstraction on which good theory depends. I describe three “nuance traps” common in sociology and show why they should be avoided on grounds of principle, aesthetics, and strategy. The argument is made without prejudice to the substantive heterogeneity of the discipline."
I believe that models at different levels of abstraction have value and that sometimes too high a resolution picture obscures useful patterns at a higher level. In this case, I think there are things that can be usefully be said about the mainstream media - in particular that there is something of a culture clash, that many journalists are struggling or went through a period of struggle to get where they are and that there is some level of jealousy towards overpaid programmers straight out of college.
> journalists barely scraping by, facing constant layoffs and a grim future as their audience slowly dies off and their authority is eroded.
After watching the hysterical, paranoid coverage of the Trump administration, and now the pathetic, fawning coverage of Biden, I can't help but feeling that they deserve it.
Yeah, its pretty awful when the objectively worst president ever, who is nosediving the whole country, is being justifiably criticized over it in a "paranoid" manner, and the man who has to come after him and clean up all the crap is being pointlessly "fawned" over.
The US seems to be nosediving at breakneck speed though, regardless of the change of president, due to the immense systemic issues it accumulated over the decades. Please try escaping out of your own liberal fantasy bubble and explore some other bubbles if you want to see how other people think about your country.
I don't see why you assume parent is living in a fantasy bubble. Their only big claim is that Trump is objectively the worst president ever, a claim which will probably be backed up by history based solely on the unprecedented scale of his attempt to undermine the 2020 election.
Even other republicans are calling him, and those who align with him, out for their antics. In what sense is this part of a "liberal fantasy bubble"?
I dislike Trump and I'm not American, but is he "objectively" worse than the president who started a multi-decade war motivated by lies and false intelligence that killed thousands of US troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians?
Of course he's not. But the liberal media elite have twisted his likeness into a demon, far as many Americans are concerned.
Whether it was because it was fashionable, a tantrum because he won in 2016, that he is just abrasive/obnoxious, or what remains to be seen. But it certainly wasn't because of a preponderance of fact and reason.
There's plenty of reason for people to criticize Trump, but the outsized hysteria is not likely something that history will look upon with affirmation.
He did end his presidency with spectacularly bad form, but even the degree to which he's blamed for some of the stuff that occurred is both hypocritical and irrational. (Again, largely fed by media and political narrative.)
That the Left emerges to think that they are somehow superior is laughable. They're sick and twisted, too. But they won't know that because of what their constantly fed.
Ironically, my wife—who is as progressive as they come—feels similarly. There is a massive disease in America right now—both sides included—and the actions of the last few years probably won't be looked upon fondly by history.
I read your HN comment, and largely agree with the categorizations therein, but I fail to see what that has to do with the claimed "liberal fantasy bubble" in regards to the parent.
worse than the many presidents that allowed slavery to continue long after most developed nations banned it? Worse than the presidents that presided over the native genocide? Worse than the president that allowed the civil war to happen? Worse than the presidents that allowed Vietnam to happen? Or Afghanistan +Iraq?
> What a bad take. Hysterical and paranoid stormed the capitol. That wasn't "the media".
Trump may well not have had the credibility to do that had there not been hysterical and paranoid coverage of the Russia investigation (only like 10-15% of which actually panned out). Go review Rachel Maddow's episodes from then (transcripts are online: https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2017-01...) and tell me how accurate it was.
Credibility is built up over time and destroyed over time. Running with every ultimately debunked conspiracy theory in the Russia investigation cost the media and the country’s institutions credibility. Lying to folks about the violence going in their cities before their eyes cost credibility. It all created an environment that allowed Trump to peddle outrageous lies and the media lacked the credibility to stand up to him.
I used to watch her program all the time, and not that long ago. I considered it a good source of news and opinion even as someone who had a mix of left and right views.
Yeah, Hannity is worse than Maddow, for sure. But Hannity is a punchline. Maddow didn’t used to be.
War for who gets to choose which stories are important and which points of view are respectable.
I'd like that war to be won by the public, not media or SV. Society's means of communication and coordination should be equally open to all, under rules decided by all.
There is a "The Media," as an entity, and it is a social class with membership based on internal codes of recognition. To be "media" means you are aligned to dominant power, and that you are a medium of that power. Ask editors and reporters whether a given writer or blogger counts as "media" or not, and you will see this is the difference.
Similarly, just because you write code and live in the greater Bay Area doesn't make you part of the "Valley," either. It usually means having wealth from investments in seed and early stage tech companies.
For a16z to create a public relations arm just means they're diverging, and the old east coast elite monopoly on granting media status is just one of the few slow moving dinosaur taboos ripe for disruption.
I have a hypothesis. This was inevitable. Media has always been a mix of 3 types of people: Journalists, activists and glory hunters. The shift in the revenue model since the advent of social means has banished Journalists. The only ones who can bear to stay in this dying industry is those who are in it for more than money or profession. Enter activists and glory hunters.
A similar thing happened in liberal-arts academia ( and tangentially K-12 education). The slog to tenure is so horrible, that anyone who pursued critical analysis and scholarship has fled/pivoted to more rewarding industry positions. The only ones remaining are ones who care too much for the labels (Professor) or those for whom activism is a primary motivator.
Thus, institutions that cater to someone of a certain education level are quickly diverging from the expectations the said consumer has from these institutions. The activists at the institutions want to impose their dogma which is exactly what a large portion of the deserters were fleeing in the first place.
These people have been loosely referred to as 'The Grey tribe'. SSC figured this out a decade before and put in better words than I can. However, I recon there is far greater mutual resentment between the industry workers and institutional activists than is acknowledged by the media. Institutional activists hate tech, not due to moral reasons, but existential reasons. They know, that the power they wield is fickle. It is build on moral high-ground, virtue signalling and reputation. On the other hand, tech wields real power; power lend to them by money.
Why won't they fight the war in the open ? Because media is fundamentally intertwined with politics. The Democrats and Republicans have mutually alienated each other in a manner that reconciliation isn't on the horizon. Republicans win on voter turnout. Democrats rely on receiving both the captive voter (blue tribe) and most of Grey-tribe, who hate Democrats less than Republicans. An out and out moral war leaves room for Republicans to pivot towards grey-tribe favored moderation. (Unlikely, but stranger things have happened). At the end of the day, the 'prestige' media still relies on the 'prestigious'(D.C. royalty) to bestow that prestige on them. They cannot run afoul of them entirely.
IMO, the war is raging fiercer than ever. It is like two dogs who are leashed, stretching the limits of their freedom. The only reason blood hasn't been drawn, is because there are bigger masters holding the reigns (Tech - Profit motive and regulation threat. Media- Politicians and the appearance of fairness)
The media is critical of tech because tech has impaired journalists’ job security and careers. Nothing more than sour grapes, no conspiracy needed.
That also avoids them having to introspect and see how much their deference and connivence with the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies cost them in credibility. If you are going to get crap fake journalism, you might as well get the free one served by Google et al rather than pay for it.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 126 ms ] thread> (Aren’t their worldviews essentially the same? No, see Freud’s Narcissism of Small Differences. What matters is proximity - both coexist within the bubble of educated professionals.)
Which set of over-educated, under-cautious, overly self-actualized, out-of-touch know-betters will lead the country to Truth (TM)? Choices choices.
Without the anti-capitalist ideology journalists popularize, with stories about 'Amazon the exploiter' for example, the laws that violate their employers' contract liberty, and consequently provide unionized journalists with above market wages and protection from competition from other workers, would not exist.
Case example, for years Vox writers published articles arguing for laws limiting the gig economy, like this one:
https://www.vox.com/2016/10/26/13349498/gig-economy-profits-...
Fast forward three years, a new anti-gig-economy law forces Vox to let go of hundreds of gig economy freelancers, thus reducing competition to the unionized journalists who agitated for the law:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/16/vox-media-to-cut-hundreds-of...
Collective bargaining in a free market, where the union and employer both freely choose to engage in it, is not exploitive. Under current laws, employers can be forced to engage in collective bargaining, thus limiting their options, and making it a tool for exploitation.
"They can freely choose to engage in it. Nobody forces them to rely on wage labor."
But that's not contract liberty. If you have contract liberty, you can choose to "rely on wage labor", as you put it, without entering into collective bargaining. The laws the unions rely on restrict contract liberty, i.e. freedom of association, and they're based on socialist constructs like "wage slavery".
"Competition goes both ways, not just top down. If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor) then you deal with the consequence that these workers use their leverage just as much as you use yours if they have to."
I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say or what argument you think I'm making that this is relevant to. For example, I have no idea what this is referring to: "If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor)".
Could you 1. reiterate to me what you think my argument is, and 2. elaborate on and clarify your point so that I may better understand it?
You're misunderstanding what I'm saying.
"A company is not forced to use wage labor" does not mean "they can choose to employ workers under any kind of contract without push-back".
Competition goes both ways, not just top down. If you choose to compete with your workers on company resources (AKA wage labor) then you deal with the consequence that these workers use their leverage just as much as you use yours if they have to.
The fall of unions may not be inevitable.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
In other words, if I and my "adversary" are wrong, it will all sum up to being right. Right?
Let's consider a few (made up) scenarios:
A is right and B is right, but they show two different sides of the story - for example a description of hurdles of two different social groups from the insider perspective, and description of a conflict between them using that perspective. Reading both is clearly good, because your understanding of the issue is deeper than just following your bubble's narrative. So far so good.
A is wrong and B is wrong. For example A says, that if we let the tribe FOO win the election, it will cause the economical collapse, and B says that if we won't let the tribe FOO win the election, it will cause the economical collapse. Both (in this hypothetical scenario) are just putting a bogeymen to advance some narrative - you are not smarter from reading them, even more, you may truly believe either A or B and have your opinion altered by a cynical actor. Not so good, but still - you may think - since both say something completely opposite, then maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle; then you benefit from the fact, that there are two (not one) - just as you said in the parent comment.
A is right and B is wrong. Say one group says, that FOO is good for you (and it is an opinion supported by some amount of evidence, and in our artifical example it is true that FOO is good for you), but B says that it is very very bad for you - be it ignorance or cynical narrative incited by Mordor-funded trolls :-) Clearly with one source of information (that is A) we are better of.
So please let me reiterate - I'm not saying that sourcing information from multiple outlets is good (or wrong), only that saying that "averaging" the information gives you a more correct opinion seems dubious to me.
How will I get a chance to figure that out too, unless both sides are presented? Surely, I'm not just supposed to trust you, right?
You should it read it like this:
_given_ [ A is right and B is wrong ] this and that _may_ happen
with emphasis put on the word "given".
In real world are usually more than two actors and multiple mutually exclusive narratives; authors even when deliberately lying include some truth to make it more believable etc etc, my point of the previous post was that adding a new source with an agenda usually does increase the noise, but not _necessarily_ the signal.
On some stories the tech sceptical media will present the more persuasive take on other stories the tech optimists will have it.
The author assumes that "the media" are some homogenous lump that all thinks the same and pumps out the same content.
Each media company has a target audience, and it optimises for that audience continuously. Their viewers or readers like that "property" because it's views/biases/style reflects their own.
> "The media is becoming more progressive"
that's a broad sweep. The demographic is changing and the various properties are changing to reflect that. Granted, there is some leeway in a media organisation pushing it's audience to one side of a debate or other. However it needs the audience to go with it. However there is no evidence provided that this is the case.
I think the bigger issues is that people have realised that a small number of business are increasingly becoming arbiters of _everything_. Be that Tv shows, what opinions are penalised, who can trade where and for what price. (See the backlash from Facebook's fucking stupid PR spat against apple.)
In short, I don't think the author was able to fully express their claim without making broad unsupported statements. Finally I don't think a16z's media push is going to get overly far _unless_ they provide content that people want to consume at the correct price and place.
If you want to see what I mean, just look at what happened to the "let's disrupt hollywood" Effort, which amounted to nothing. (hollywood is disrupted, but by the pandemic, disney, amazon and netflix, not a startup)
By and large it is https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_of_media_owner...
Well in the eyes of the "advertiser" - the money - they are indeed a homogeneous lump that sell their advertising inventory to some DSP... while Facebook/Google have extremely valuable inventory due to the data granularity.
And you might say, "oh this has nothing to do with advertising!". Let me tell you that I've witnessed the inner workings of large old media protecting some advertisers, as well as pilling up to attack tech giants.
Media and Silicon Valley are at war since the share of media budgets accelerated towards tech giants, departing from "old" media. The media started to feel the urge to compete with user generated content when faced with this reality that reflected as lower CPMs for their inventory, and started to pump content (news/opinions/etc) - the "truth" became irrelevant as long as they are the first, or have the snappier header to grab clicks.
The media is as much to blame for the status quo as any other player.
I have too, but I'll say it's very rare and built-in mechanisms of good journalistic institutions tend to prevent it.
Specially on protecting advertisers, it's very rare (sometimes even if advertiser pulls a tantrum and strips off budget).
But on the subject of attacking tech giants, if find that to be recurrent - and in the "old media" defense most of it is well deserved. Still, they pile up with some enjoyment.
But they're happy to push whatever cultural changes boost the bottom line, regardless of whether or not they're conservative.
What "demographic?"
This jumped out at me too. It's interesting that some of the reflection on the NYTimes internal changes, specifically, is credited to people coming from "tech companies".
> The insurrectionists, meanwhile, had often come from digital outlets or tech companies or advocacy groups and could imagine leaving the place at any time.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/11/inside-the-new-york-...
By and large, they're also correct that mainstream media is moving to the left.
This is clear, if you follow media bias analyses from non-partisan sites like: https://www.allsides.com/unbiased-balanced-news
There are zillion examples of this becoming more and more true. Increasingly often, articles are written to support shared meta-narratives, regardless of what's happening in reality. From just last few days, here is NYT and CNN drawing completely idiotic parallels between r/wallstreetbets and MAGA:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/style/gamestop-wallstreet...
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/gamestop-...
This is borderline self-parody. The fact that several major outlets wrote something of this sort should raise red flags for anyone paying attention.
If only you knew how bad things really are.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JournoList
A more nuanced take would have engaged more with the various segments of the media. On the other hand, there's a great sociological article by Kieran Healy called Fuck Nuance. As he writes:
"Nuance is not a virtue of good sociological theory. Although often demanded and superficially attractive, nuance inhibits the abstraction on which good theory depends. I describe three “nuance traps” common in sociology and show why they should be avoided on grounds of principle, aesthetics, and strategy. The argument is made without prejudice to the substantive heterogeneity of the discipline."
I believe that models at different levels of abstraction have value and that sometimes too high a resolution picture obscures useful patterns at a higher level. In this case, I think there are things that can be usefully be said about the mainstream media - in particular that there is something of a culture clash, that many journalists are struggling or went through a period of struggle to get where they are and that there is some level of jealousy towards overpaid programmers straight out of college.
-Sir Humphrey Appleby, 1986
Technology might have advanced a zillion times in the past 35 years. Media and the Press have remained largely the same.
After watching the hysterical, paranoid coverage of the Trump administration, and now the pathetic, fawning coverage of Biden, I can't help but feeling that they deserve it.
I want to live in the fantasy world you live in.
Even other republicans are calling him, and those who align with him, out for their antics. In what sense is this part of a "liberal fantasy bubble"?
Whether it was because it was fashionable, a tantrum because he won in 2016, that he is just abrasive/obnoxious, or what remains to be seen. But it certainly wasn't because of a preponderance of fact and reason.
There's plenty of reason for people to criticize Trump, but the outsized hysteria is not likely something that history will look upon with affirmation.
He did end his presidency with spectacularly bad form, but even the degree to which he's blamed for some of the stuff that occurred is both hypocritical and irrational. (Again, largely fed by media and political narrative.)
That the Left emerges to think that they are somehow superior is laughable. They're sick and twisted, too. But they won't know that because of what their constantly fed.
Ironically, my wife—who is as progressive as they come—feels similarly. There is a massive disease in America right now—both sides included—and the actions of the last few years probably won't be looked upon fondly by history.
As well as this Reddit post (https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/kueyj1/mone...), which I've posted weirdly enough on /r/wsb, but even people there seemed to be quite interested in this stuff.
Trump may well not have had the credibility to do that had there not been hysterical and paranoid coverage of the Russia investigation (only like 10-15% of which actually panned out). Go review Rachel Maddow's episodes from then (transcripts are online: https://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/rachel-maddow-show/2017-01...) and tell me how accurate it was.
Let's put her transcripts up against Hannity's and see who is more hysterical (and inaccurate).
Yeah, Hannity is worse than Maddow, for sure. But Hannity is a punchline. Maddow didn’t used to be.
I'd like that war to be won by the public, not media or SV. Society's means of communication and coordination should be equally open to all, under rules decided by all.
I'm not seeing how this makes sense at all.
Similarly, just because you write code and live in the greater Bay Area doesn't make you part of the "Valley," either. It usually means having wealth from investments in seed and early stage tech companies.
For a16z to create a public relations arm just means they're diverging, and the old east coast elite monopoly on granting media status is just one of the few slow moving dinosaur taboos ripe for disruption.
A similar thing happened in liberal-arts academia ( and tangentially K-12 education). The slog to tenure is so horrible, that anyone who pursued critical analysis and scholarship has fled/pivoted to more rewarding industry positions. The only ones remaining are ones who care too much for the labels (Professor) or those for whom activism is a primary motivator.
Thus, institutions that cater to someone of a certain education level are quickly diverging from the expectations the said consumer has from these institutions. The activists at the institutions want to impose their dogma which is exactly what a large portion of the deserters were fleeing in the first place.
These people have been loosely referred to as 'The Grey tribe'. SSC figured this out a decade before and put in better words than I can. However, I recon there is far greater mutual resentment between the industry workers and institutional activists than is acknowledged by the media. Institutional activists hate tech, not due to moral reasons, but existential reasons. They know, that the power they wield is fickle. It is build on moral high-ground, virtue signalling and reputation. On the other hand, tech wields real power; power lend to them by money.
Why won't they fight the war in the open ? Because media is fundamentally intertwined with politics. The Democrats and Republicans have mutually alienated each other in a manner that reconciliation isn't on the horizon. Republicans win on voter turnout. Democrats rely on receiving both the captive voter (blue tribe) and most of Grey-tribe, who hate Democrats less than Republicans. An out and out moral war leaves room for Republicans to pivot towards grey-tribe favored moderation. (Unlikely, but stranger things have happened). At the end of the day, the 'prestige' media still relies on the 'prestigious'(D.C. royalty) to bestow that prestige on them. They cannot run afoul of them entirely.
IMO, the war is raging fiercer than ever. It is like two dogs who are leashed, stretching the limits of their freedom. The only reason blood hasn't been drawn, is because there are bigger masters holding the reigns (Tech - Profit motive and regulation threat. Media- Politicians and the appearance of fairness)
That also avoids them having to introspect and see how much their deference and connivence with the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies cost them in credibility. If you are going to get crap fake journalism, you might as well get the free one served by Google et al rather than pay for it.