"Six government employees, plus two contractors including Edward Snowden, have been subjects of felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act, accused of leaking classified information to the press—compared with a total of three such prosecutions in all previous U.S. administrations"
not being an apologist, but i'm curious as to what the alternative would be.
if i believed that more open information was the solution to factual journalism, then i'd have more sympathy for this report.
the truth, however, is that journalists spin context of information (with graphs, info charts, interactive elements, and polls) to sell ads and get more eyeballs.
while i agree that obama has been extremely heavy-handed with retaliation on whistleblowers, the report ignores the bias that also exists within media outlets to add their own context to sell more, rile up a base, or attract more advertising investment.
So transparency is bad because the media can spin the info, and therefore governments should keep that info secret, instead of actually providing the facts?
It's an accurate observation that (a) everyone who knows anything about US politics already knows, but (b) this is a very international community in which as much as 50% of the viewers of this thread might not be in the (a) group. So I'm not really sure why you think it's not a valid observation to post here. If you don't think this article is appropriate for HN, that's fine (and I'm with you on that). Once it is here and once you click through to read the comments, it's not really fair to ding someone for commenting on it IMO.
What 'debate' on HN do you expect about such an article?
Any thread about environmental topics becomes a space to debate environmental politics, just like any thread about the US government becomes a space for leftists and right-libertarians to take pot shots at each other (I don't encounter many supporters of the traditional GOP faction here).
This might not be a good thing, but it surely isn't unexpected.
The actual socialist/anarchist crowd are going ape shit over it. (For example, Democracy Now! and NSFWCorp, two superb news organizations, are incredibly critical of the Obama administration over this, and many other issues that Obama has been far-right on)
"Weird twitter" is the closest thing I know to "hipster socialist"s, and most that I follow are very critical of the president.
Can you name a "hipster socialist" group that isn't critical of Obama? There are hundreds of Democratic-party affiliated organizations that haven't said a peep about this, but that's because they toe the party line.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 70.6 ms ] threadCorrelation not equal cause.
if i believed that more open information was the solution to factual journalism, then i'd have more sympathy for this report.
the truth, however, is that journalists spin context of information (with graphs, info charts, interactive elements, and polls) to sell ads and get more eyeballs.
while i agree that obama has been extremely heavy-handed with retaliation on whistleblowers, the report ignores the bias that also exists within media outlets to add their own context to sell more, rile up a base, or attract more advertising investment.
Translation from Newspeak: access to the facts would prevent their dissemination.
What 'debate' on HN do you expect about such an article?
Something better than "the hipster socialist crowd", which adds nothing to the discussion but makes it harder for that discussion to be useful.
This might not be a good thing, but it surely isn't unexpected.
"Weird twitter" is the closest thing I know to "hipster socialist"s, and most that I follow are very critical of the president.
Can you name a "hipster socialist" group that isn't critical of Obama? There are hundreds of Democratic-party affiliated organizations that haven't said a peep about this, but that's because they toe the party line.
There were stories on HN....
they were about tech.
-haiku
I honor the memory.
I remember when.
-haiku
technologists wearing
rose colored glasses
- bad haiku
Except for Ron Paul ;)
Actually he's retired now so the statement stands without exception.