
Silicon Valley and America’s Brazilification - Fins
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/silicon-valley-america-brazilification/
======
forkLding
Ironically, the comments in this thread will likely be as the writer of the
article posted and I quote:

"UPDATE.2: You know what would be a nice change of pace? If commenters would
refrain from saying, in effect, THIS IS WHY THE PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT LIKE ME ARE
BAD AND CRAZY! I’ve tried to make it clear in this post that this problem
belongs to all of us, and few if any of us have the right answers. If all you
have to offer is the usual griping about the Other Side, don’t post here."

How about more questions and solutions rather than finger-pointing, this isn't
caused by one side or the other as there have been both Liberal and
Conservative administrations and policies and people etc.

------
api
Ignoring some of the right wing cultural points this is like 2/3 an economic
liberal piece. I hear more economic liberalism from the right than from the
"progressive" left. That is a problem.

~~~
Fins
They tend to be far more religious than I would care for, but they often do
make a lot of sense, and tend to be quite highly rated for accuracy; more so
than pretty much any "progressive" media.

~~~
eesmith
Who does the rating? Which progressive media were on the list?

~~~
Fins
This: [http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/wp-
content/uploads...](http://www.allgeneralizationsarefalse.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/Media-Bias-Chart_Version-3.1_Watermark-min.jpg)

~~~
eesmith
Thanks!

You wrote "tend to be quite highly rated for accuracy; more so than pretty
much any "progressive" media."

If I read it correctly, that shows that "American Conservative" is at the same
level as MSNBC in terms of 'overall quality', and over half of the liberal
media is ranked as having higher quality.

That doesn't seem to be in accord with what you wrote.

It is one of the more accurate of the conservative side, but the liberal press
skews upward, and I've never heard of the 6 liberal publications in the red
box, while I've heard of 5+ of the conservative press in the red box, and some
of them have quite large readership/viewership.

My main progressive news source, Democracy Now, is ranked as having the
highest quality of the hyper-partisan groups. That affirms my decision to be a
monthly contributor.

~~~
Fins
You're welcome!

I would not really consider MSNBC and alike to be particularly progressive or
left-wing myself, that would be something that Sarah Palin would believe, with
her screams about "lamestream media". Among the clearly partisan publications
though (AmCon has it right in the name, after all) they are quite good.

The red box contains rags that are only good for making you scratch your head
and go "umm, cam people really be that dumb?". I would not consider those to
be news sources at all. But the orange box has some quite popular left (and
right)-wing sources like HuffPo that are involved in "unfair interpretation of
the news" \-- I'd think being there is already quite damning. At the same
time, I have heard of HuffPo and DailyKos; Haven't heard of Democracy Now!
will need to check it out.

I think you also need to make a distinction between primarily news and
primarily opinion publications. I would expect both AmCon and, say, Mother
Jones to apply their own interpretation to the news, but I would expect both
to be honest about news and in their reasoning (well, most of the time
anyway). I would not expect either to make up news to match their agenda,
which is something that pubs in red and orange boxes often do.

~~~
eesmith
I concur with your assessment of MSNBC, etc. I still think your original
statement wasn't quite right, but not enough to warrant argument.

I stopped even following HuffPo links many years ago. It felt like too many
opinions pieces dressed up as news, and with a business model based on getting
people to write for free. (Could have changed in the last 5 years.)

Democracy Now is viewer/listener funded. They use the phrase "corporate media"
instead of "{main,lame}stream media", and (in that respect) are aligned with
Zinn and Chomsky.

~~~
Fins
Maybe I did not word it well enough, too.

I am not sure if being viewer-funded by itself guarantees accuracy and
relative lack of bias -- people will support what they want to see, not
necessarily what is accurate, and the selection of news on DN front page
certainly skews in the left direction. Writing for newspieces that are there
however seems to be unbiased.

~~~
eesmith
It was in reference to your reference to Palin's "lamestream media". That is,
while some do argue that News-Corp/Fox provides news to challenge the
"{main,lame}stream media" of Disney/ABC, Time Warner/CNN, CBS, and Comcast/NBC
they collectively are all owned by large companies, so have a built-in bias
towards issues that favor large companies.

That there can be a corporate media bias certainly doesn't mean that those who
write for non-corporate media don't also have their own biases.

~~~
Fins
Yeah, exactly. Pretty much anything will have _some_ bias.

Not to say that I would take this, or any other, chart as the gospel (if
anything, I certainly wold not have put NYT as high), but it is interesting to
see that WSJ, as corporate a paper as they get, is rated in the upper
rectangle. Equally News-Corpsy Fox is way down.

