
General Motors declares bankruptcy - ksvs
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/jun/01/general-motors-bankruptcy-chapter-11
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swombat
From the guidelines:

 _Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic._

I think they may have covered this on TV. Just a little bit, you know.

I've got nothing against the nytimes article that takes a very specific angle
on this story and tells us about the kind of people they have in charge of all
this, but straight-up "GM is bankrupt" stories don't really fit the HN mould
imho.

~~~
pg
This is a momentous event. This sort of story is the reason that sentence
contains the word "probably."

Whereas the guidelines are very specific about not submitting comments of the
type you just did. And this page shows why. Now we have an entire thread of
boring metacommentary.

~~~
lucumo
To be honest, I find the metacommentary a bit more interesting than the
article.

The metacommentary is what shapes HN as a community. In that sense, at least,
it has some value.

The article on the other hand: I've already read it a lot of times. First
there were the articles that GM may declare bankruptcy, then there were the
articles how GM is more likely to declare bankruptcy, then there were the
articles how GM is one step closer to bankruptcy and now, finally, GM declares
bankruptcy. All these articles were the same, apart from the headline, every
one of those articles were published in a gazillion sources, none adding
interesting commentary, and then all of it repeated because some
European/local car maker depends on GM and needed to be sold. I've read one of
those articles and I've read them all.

I think in that sense the "if it was on TV, it shouldn't be here"-thing is
quite valid: You'll encounter it everywhere and there's no value in discussing
it here, because it has been discussed to death already.

Now, I don't really like the metacommentary either, even though I'm
participating in it, but I do think the article gets undue credit. It's not
really that valuable.

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randallsquared
Yes, this is momentous, but there's nothing new to be said about it, likely
(prove me wrong, someone!). However, metacomments are interesting all the
time, in the same way and for the same reason that people like talking about
themselves.

That's not exactly an endorsement, of course...

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gaius
On Channel 4 News they are referring to GM now as _Government Motors_.

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mahmud
Channel 4 is what broadcasting company exactly in your area? Here it's NBC4; I
very much doubt NBC is in the business of name calling wrt government
"expansion" as Fox would, not to mention that NBC is owned by GE who is in
strong business with .gov:

<http://www.cjr.org/resources/?c=ge>

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swombat
In the UK, there's a broadcasting company called "Channel 4". That's what he
was referring to.

<http://www.channel4.com/>

~~~
kragen
There are also Channel 4s in essentially every US city. It's unusual for the
British to be even more provincial than the Americans, but this is an example
of it.

~~~
swombat
No, this "Channel 4" is a huge broadcasting company, around the size of the
BBC. They have multiple actual channels:

\- Channel 4

\- Film 4

\- more4

\- e4

\- 4music

and video-on-demand.

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run4yourlives
Would be better discussed on newmogul.com. As such, flagged.

