
Journalists cheered Assange's abuse. Now they've paved his path to a US gulag - k1m
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-09-02/media-assange-persecution/
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renewiltord
Mainstream journalists are not a good source of information. The WSJ and FT
are a great source for business news (for which they have to be good) but
that's about it.

Journalists are on the cusp of losing their jobs and it's the greatest thing
that could happen. For decades, perhaps centuries, they are propaganda arms
but now every man with a camera is a better cameraman and every man with a
blog is a better writer.

Newspapers are doomed. Not because they transformed into liars but because
what they can give us can now be given to us by others much better and we
don't really need the lies anymore. In their effort to stay relevant they have
tried to be more opinionated, but if I just want you to give me your opinion I
could get that from smarter people on Twitter rather than some guy who barely
knows how to read and write sleep-deprivedly rewriting an AP/Reuters text -
which in itself is about 95% bullshit anyway.

Perhaps only sports journalists need professionally exist.

There are still people who fall for the broken media, though. And fortunately,
that is a good thing for the rest of us. While HN celebrated the "discovery"
of SuperMicro's "spying", I loaded up on cheap SMCI. Keep doing what you're
doing. Making money is all the sweeter this way because someone else is losing
it to me.

~~~
antiterra
I believe you are very wrong.

The situation you described befits mass produced clickbait over well
researched articles of high journalistic integrity. Local news is dead and
along with it, local perspective.

News photographers are significantly better photographers than the everyday
person with a phone, but the coverage of amateur images and video is game
changing. That said, much of news photography is being in the right place at
the right situation and many of that profession are particularly brave, clever
and devoted.

~~~
renewiltord
News photogs had one advantage: good equipment. Now people want authenticity
and everyone has equipment.

No one really cares all that much about the one carefully posed photo some
news photog decided to take because his boss told him to represent some view.

You may get a million views and your NatGeo / J.D.Power Asia-Pacific Best
Photo of the Week or whatever nonsense but the next kid using his iPhone to
record with image stabilization is going to get two million.

Because he has something you don't: he's there and he's authentic.

"High journalistic integrity" was a fiction we all collectively believed
because ultimately we wanted the dopamine hit of "knowing" stuff. But it's
over: journalism is now democratized.

No more controlled lies. Now everyone can lie as powerfully. And that is a
good thing for information.

~~~
antiterra
I agree with you to the extent that so-called ‘photo-journalism’ is far more
editorial and subjective than widely thought.

However, journalists absolutely believe in a number of values and, as a whole,
hold themselves to them. There exist a number of articles which stand as
culturally important works of nonfiction. We are going to have significantly
less of those, and a lot more blunders like the Bloomberg chip thing because
the structures are gone.

Fundamentally, I sense you just have something against the idea of expertise
and ordained authority. I get that. It’s ridiculous that the Academy Awards
are seen as an authoritative measurement of how good films are. But that
doesn’t eliminate the wide spectrum of sophistication and depth that is much
more than a TED Talk dopamine hit.

The incentives and security required for in-depth, long-term reporting are
gone. That’s bad.

~~~
renewiltord
The difference between the culturally significant works of non-fiction and
Bloomberg News and the NYT¹ is that we can't verify the lies of the former
because they are temporally distant.

Haha, I think you're right about the idea of ordained authority. The
difference between the academy awards and news is that you don't want
sophistication in the latter. Sophistication is where truth goes to die. You
want a sort of dullness to the guy: he shouldn't be too smart or too powerful
so he doesn't get one over you.

I've obviously got no problem with the Academy Awards or the Pulitzer or
whatever. But truth and artistic quality are different things. The J.D.Power
thing is just a reference to the fact that sometimes you see an award for a
product and you know it is a shit product. It's sort of like a five star
review on Amazon that says "In exchange for my honest and unbiased review I
received this product for free". Yup, that means the product is crap. You know
it, I know it. That's how you know that Chevys are shit: JD Power award. It's
like if you have an MSCE: probably a shit engineer.

¹ Amusingly, the reason I knew they were bullshitters is I verified a
completely unrelated news article years ago where I was a relative authority,
sent them the correction, and waited. I've done this for a couple of
newspapers - so I have a personal reckoning of who is a bullshitter on what.
And if you haven't done that, how do you know? It's so easy to do!

~~~
antiterra
No, I want this [https://www.esquire.com/news-
politics/a25677/ak-47-history-1...](https://www.esquire.com/news-
politics/a25677/ak-47-history-1110/)

Particularly over some QAnon believer’s tweet roll.

If you’re an expert or in a position of particular insight, a great deal of
articles are going to have annoying errors or miss context. It’s like Neil
Degrasse Tyson getting angry that we say the sun sets when it’s actually the
earth rotating. This hasn’t gotten any better with amateur journalism and less
sophistication.

Having left at least one environment where I considered my insider information
to give me a superior perspective, I realized my insider position itself
created bias. We’re all subject to Rashomon, and should be in conversation
with each other to hone working models.

NB I know people with A+ or MCSE certs that obtained them as part of the non-
collegiate path into tech and who are genuinely great engineers.

~~~
renewiltord
Sure, but they literally read the wrong numbers. They read operating cost as
net revenue or growth as total revenue or some such nonsense. Haha! Some
dumbass out there reading Bloomberg probably believed it too. Sucker. Not only
did I have insider info, I also knew the public source from where they got it
and how they misread it.

And yeah, I'm also sure there's at least one car out there with a J D Power
award that isn't crap. Maybe not two, but maybe one.

I actually enjoyed the linked article - though I don't know how true it is.
Just finished it. To butcher a famous quotation: "God made America a
superpower and Vietnam a small jungle state. Sam Colt made them equal".

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TheJoeMan
Dang did anyone watch that video embedded from the helicopter firefight? After
taking out the main bad guys about 10 mins in the gunner slips the trigger
finger and lets off like 3 rounds into a house and apparently hit a kid.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Where?

~~~
snypher
[https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk](https://youtu.be/zYTxuW2vmzk)

Embedded in the article.

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raxxorrax
The headline exaggerates tremendously, but there is hint of truth.

Contemporary journalism failed to be critical, perhaps as a reactionary
compensation to really borderline insane theories sometimes spread through the
net, but it was not the first time they supported questionable decisions
through biased reporting.

But everyone reiterating the Russia collusion and framed Assange as a Russian
asset should be ashamed of themselves and other journalists should be ashamed
to share the same profession. There was little reporting and a lot of hit
jobs.

Yes, there are even worse cases like governments poisoning critics like
Nawalny. It doesn't even take much to notice that a redirection is also an
admission of guilt.

Perhaps journalism deserves the precarious position they find themselves in,
but an open and honest press is something bitterly needed. There are some good
outlets which suffer immensely under the pressure of the attention economy,
but a lot of mainstream news media has degraded to entertainment to satisfy
emotional needs of their readers.

------
anm89
What a tragedy. Assange is a hero if an imperfect one.

------
Barrin92
While the points about Assad's treatment are essentially true I'm not sure the
author does himself a favour by engaging in relativism concerning the dubious
practises of Wikileaks, Assange, and the probable connections or at least
sympathy with the Russian government.

For example, concerning leaked internal Democratic emails _" An even more
important point, however, is that a transparency organisation like Wikileaks
had no choice, after it was handed those documents, but to expose abuses by
the Democratic party – whoever was the source."_

I'm pretty sure Wikileaks is the sole authority when it comes to what they
publish so they have that choice, and I'll never consider it ethical to leak
internal documents of a political organisation, likely by a foreign party, to
influence domestic politics.

I lost virtually all respect for Assange after reading Daniel Domscheit-Berg's
book on Wikileaks and Assange's conduct. Domscheit-Berg was second-in-command
at Wikileaks, so it's hard to pretend that all of this is conjured up by the
US government.

~~~
brudgers
_likely by a foreign party, to influence domestic politics._

Assange didn't influence domestic politics and every thing he does is by a
foreign party. He's Australian, mate. He had a rather legitimate interest in
Clinton's candidacy because she had implied support for his assassination
while serving as Secretary of State.

~~~
matthewdgreen
I agree. Assange made a set of choices that had a political outcome, and he
did it on purpose in the hopes that it would have such an outcome. One can
argue all day about whether this interventionism was "ethical" or whether what
Assange practiced was "journalism", but it doesn't really matter. The people
who are deciding Assange's future -- the ones who Assange hoped to put into
office -- don't give a crap about any of those questions.

~~~
mc32
Couldn’t you apply this to all political scoops during a political campaign,
when the reporter is on the opposing side —so all opposition reporters would
not be journalists in this take.

~~~
hallihax
Well exactly - this is the problem. When reporting documented, verifiable
evidence is treated as 'political activism by journalists', everyone should be
worried.

