
Silicon Valley Elite Discuss Journalists Having Too Much Power in Private App - minimaxir
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7w3zw/silicon-valley-elite-discuss-journalists-having-too-much-power-in-private-app
======
Barrin92
Plenty of things to talk about in that piece. For one the idea of this app
seems entirely bizzare. A membership only app on which extremely wealthy
people chat?

I had to seriously laugh seeing Horowitz invest millions after his "time to
build" piece. We wanted flying cars and we got 140 characters, and now we
wanted skyscrapers and spaceships and we get a digital nightclub for nerds.

Secondly I think it shows very clearly how much the superficially liberal,
tolerant, woke entrepeneurs of this generation resemble old business tycoons.
As soon as journalists shine a light on their behaviour, the masks come off.

I remember a piece I read last year on class dynamics[1]. The author
characterises today's class war not as the working class vs the rich, but as
the rich against the professional and managerial class. The 0.1% vs the top
10%. I think this was a pretty good observation and it's becoming more and
more apparent. Journalists, public representatives, Engineers with a sense of
ethics and so on are coming in increasing tension with the actual owners of
the companies they work for. It is on display at Facebook but also in this
article.

[1][https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-
wa...](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2019/11/the-real-class-war/)

~~~
NotSammyHagar
Very insightful. I too see it as today's vcs/robber barons self-justifying
blabbering about their greatness, and how no one should be allowed to question
them.

------
throughaweigh
The rich and powerful attack those who attack their interests, but now they
are more unified.

Notice that there is actually very little concrete criticism of the media,
instead you get abstract assertions ("hit piece", "fake news"), ad hominems
and so on. When pressed the elites say that the reporting isn't wrong but that
they should still be portrayed in a positive light. Obviously journalism can't
work if they got their way.

~~~
jlawson
>When pressed the elites say that the reporting isn't wrong but that they
should still be portrayed in a positive light.

God I would love to see what you'd come up with as an example of this.

Media does terrible things on a constant basis. They're smart about rarely
writing since sentences that are out-and-out lies, but their portrayal of
people, companies, and grand social narrative is highly motivated at every
level.

The reason is because every major journalistic organization is completely
dominated by activists, which means that all their reporting is motivated to
specific ends. Their goals isn't to tell the truth, their goal is to remake
the world according to their ideology. A perception of trustworthiness is just
a resource to them - to be built up in service and spent in betrayal. It's not
an end in itself.

This story is a great example, since it's so incredibly _motivated_ to do
damage to these people. Every quote is pulled out and placed in the most
damaging light possible. It's entirely a hit piece with a single purpose and
that purpose is not to give readers a rounded understanding of all sides of
the situation, but to gain power.

It's not a story. There is no news here. Nothing happened. It's a private
conversation between friends and the only content is thought. The story is an
accusation of thoughtcrime. The fact that we're hearing about it at all is an
indictment of the media.

~~~
throughaweigh
> God I would love to see what you'd come up with as an example of this.

@jason on Twitter said so explicitly in the last 24 hours, pg said so on
Twitter some time ago.

The rest of your comment just illustrates my initial point: abstract
statements, ad-hominems and proof-by-assertions.

That isn't to say that the media doesn't have biases or get stories wrong. The
problem is that the elites try to use those facts to discredit all accurate
reporting that is harmful to their interests. The honest and convincing way to
discredit an inaccurate story is to point out concretely how it is wrong,
doing anything else suggests that the story is accurate.

~~~
ericd
>That isn't to say that the media doesn't have biases or get stories wrong.

This understates the reality, dramatically. The biases are extreme, and the
bar for accuracy is generally extraordinarily low, especially in new media,
but increasingly in old media trying to adapt. Oftentimes there are a number
of lies of ommission/misleading statements/snippets taken out of extremely
important context in order to make the reality fit into the desired narrative.
Frequently they're actively trying to drum up outrage against someone or
something. It's becoming a more and more destructive force.

Just go look for the full quotes any time there's a blog shitstorm about
something someone famous says. Sometimes, the outrage is justified, but
frequently, the context completely changes the meaning of the snippet,
sometimes 180 degrees from the way it's being presented in the media.

I'm not at all surprised that the people you mention who've been in the media
a lot are annoyed by it, they're right to be.

Also, why are you on a throwaway account?

PS: This reminds me of the old GW Bush "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me...
you can't get fooled again". I don't know if this is true, but I've heard it
explained that he realized halfway through that he couldn't say "shame on me",
or it would be excerpted and used relentlessly against him.

~~~
throughaweigh
What are specific examples?

~~~
ericd
Before I spend more effort on this, why are you on a newly registered
throwaway?

~~~
throughaweigh
I'm trying to quit posting here. I don't have any link to journalism if that's
what you are asking.

But there shouldn't be any effort involved if all of this is already as
obvious as claimed.

~~~
ericd
Fair enough.

An example, since PG was mentioned:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/wids.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/wids.html)

In this case, a word was edited out of even the context-free snippet.

Feel free to look up the articles surrounding it.

~~~
throughaweigh
To demonstrate an obvious pattern you need to give a set of important
examples. Of course you can find selective misquoting and distortions, but
that doesn't establish a pattern, much less a pattern for important cases.
(But even if that pattern was established each individual story would be true
or false on its own merits).

That said even the example you linked isn't that strong. The omission of the
word "these" in "these women" doesn't change the meaning of the paragraph
because it's qualified by "they haven't been hacking for 10 years". Obviously
the modified paragraph doesn't apply to women who _have_ been hacking for 10
years. The alteration only matters if many women have been hacking for 10
years relative to men. Therefore, the altered paragraph accurately conveys the
author's meaning.

The same for the ambiguity as to whether "we" refers to society or YC. Either
interpretation has very similar meaning ("Women aren't starting Facebook
because they don't have 10 years programming experience and neither YC nor
society can undo that without a time machine).

Then the author talks about how they misspoke. You can't blame that on a
journalist when they quote you.

Even if you don't agree the excerpts are clearly not obvious examples of
journalistic malpractice. And most claims of misquoting and distortion are
much weaker than even this, often completely baseless.

~~~
rayiner
That's an obvious example of journalistic malpractice. I wouldn't edit a quote
like that in a legal brief--and that is something that is supposed to be
slanted rather than objective.

~~~
throughaweigh
Legal documents have different standards, I explained why I thought the
meaning was the same. When there are concrete refutations we can actually
discuss them and each come to our own conclusion.

But even if we take this case as journalistic bad behavior (obviously there is
going to be some), I wouldn't conclude, based on this evidence, that there is
systemic journalistic malpractice against tech or elites, nor would I default
to taking a critical story on tech as false.

There are other areas like foreign policy where you can default to extreme
skepticism because people have done concrete analysis and demonstrated a
pattern. In tech on the other hand, cases seem to be hard to come by (everyone
just "knows" it's true) and people instead resort to name calling and vague
accusations. But even in foreign policy where I know the reporting to be
untrustworthy I don't discard an article out of hand, I'm just extremely
skeptical and search out disconfirming evidence and articles. I can't do that
with tech stories because nobody concretely describes why a story is false.
The "What I Didn't Say" article is an exception rather than the rule.

The most likely reason why nobody explains why something is false is because
it isn't. When the facts are on your side people pound the facts otherwise
they pound the table.

~~~
rayiner
> Legal documents have different standards

The standard for journalism should be stricter than for legal documents. In
legal documents, it’s okay to edit the quotes to emphasize the point you want,
or edit out throat clearing. But you must accurately represent the context.
That’s not what happened with the Paul Graham quote. The author edited a
reference to specific people (applicants to YC) and made it into a general
reference to women. You would not edit out an antecedent reference like that
in a legal document, because it changes the literal meaning. (It doesn’t
matter if you think the substance of the meaning remains the same. You don’t
get to make that call. If you want to argue that the more specific point is
logically equivalent to the more general point, you’re welcome to make that
argument.)

Just thinking off the top of my head, the media ran with a quote from Steve
Mnuchin that made it seem like he was saying that the $1,200 stimulus checks
should last people 10 weeks: [https://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchin-
criticized-seemingly...](https://www.businessinsider.com/mnuchin-criticized-
seemingly-suggesting-stimulus-checks-could-last-10-weeks-2020-4). If you
actually play the whole video, the parts everyone quoted were actually tens of
seconds apart. Mnuchin describes the $2 trillion package of reforms, including
many months of adding $600 per week to unemployment benefits. A reporter asked
“how long is $1,200 supposed to last people?” This was a deceptive question to
begin with: The $1,200 was a stimulus, not a replacement for lost income. It’s
not supposed to “last” any amount of time. That’s what the massively increased
unemployment benefits were for. So Mnuchin refocused the question on the whole
$2 trillion package. He spent several seconds doing that, which almost all the
mainstream media sources edited out. Then he finally said that the whole
package was supposed to last 10 weeks. Then the story blew up that he said the
$1,200 was supposed to last 10 weeks: [https://www.themarysue.com/steve-
mnuchin-wants-us-to-survive...](https://www.themarysue.com/steve-mnuchin-
wants-us-to-survive-on-1200-for-10-weeks-america-disagrees). AOC tweeted “how
much is your rent, $10?” Again—the $2,600 per month in extra unemployment
benefits was supposed to pay the rent. The $1,200 was stimulus.

Then there is a bigger issue of how journalists frame facts and what context
they leave out. When New York City was seeing 750 deaths per day, the media
was showing beach goers celebrating spring break in Florida. Now, they’re
showing “spikes in cases” in Florida and Texas, even though death rates in
Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey, etc., remain higher than in Florida and
Texas (which are bigger states). Quick: without looking it up, what’s the
ratio of COVID-19 deaths in New York to Texas? Florida?

To pick another example: news stories about healthcare routinely mention that
Western European countries have universal healthcare. Then they talk about
wealth taxes and taxes on the rich. Have you ever read a story in the NYT
talking about how European countries pay for universal healthcare? (Regressive
taxes like payroll taxes and VAT.) Isn’t it weird to talk about healthcare
systems and taxes, and reference Europe to talk about the benefits they offer,
but ignore Europe when talking about the taxes they levy to pay for those
benefits?

Along those same lines, journalists always reference Europe when it’s
favorable to a liberal narrative, but ignore comparisons to Europe when its
favorable to a conservative narrative. So Europe always comes up in the
context of healthcare and gun control. But it never comes up when talking
about say corporate tax cuts (countries like Sweden, Canada, France, the UK,
etc. have massively cut corporate taxes in the last 30 years). Reporters will
write an article where they talk about how Warren or Sanders want universal
healthcare, like Sweden has. Then they’ll talk about Warren’s wealth tax. But
now they’ve forgotten Sweden—which got rid of it’s wealth tax. I’ve read so
many articles that say “we should have universal healthcare, like every other
developed country” or “we should have gun control, like every other developed
country.” I have never seen “we should have a 20% VAT like every other
developed country.”

Journalists also mentioned Europe early in Trump’s presidency when talking
about how great it was that Germany, under CDU leadership, took so many
refugees in 2015. Did any US media report on the follow up, where the leader
of the dominant CDU, Merkel’s successor, said: “We have made it clear that we
will do everything we can to ensure that 2015 won’t ever be repeated. We must
make clear that we have learnt our lesson.”

Oh, another example. During COVID-19, the media made a big deal about how
Trump wouldn’t issue a national shutdown order. And they talked about
Germany’s testing. But they never mentioned that Germany never issued a
national shutdown order (just like us, Germany left those decisions to the
states).

The result of this is that Americans are completely without their bearings.
They have no idea of the context in which our political debates take place. I
had a Facebook friend recently say, while ranting about Trump, that Angela
Merkel was a “progressive.” Merkel leads the _Christian_ Democratic Union. She
has championed massive corporate tax cuts in Germany during her tenure. She
opposes gay marriage, and supports Germany’s restrictive abortion system
(where abortion is technically still illegal, though not prosecuted under 12
weeks, and the abortion rate is 70% lower than in the US). Her successor in
the CDU is anti-abortion period. Merkel is the most powerful woman in the
world, and doesn’t call herself a “feminist” because of the optics to her
conservative base. I wondered what could possibly have made him think Merkel
was a “progressive” but then I realized it was because the American media only
ever mentions Merkel as a foil to Trump. Merkel hates Trump, progressives hate
Trump, so Merkel must be a progressive.

Another example. We have seen a lot of stories recently about the tragic
black-white gap in maternal mortality rate. The maternal mortality rate among
black women is 2.5x as high as for white women:
[https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/u-s-finally-
has...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/u-s-finally-has-better-
maternal-mortality-data-black-mothers-n1125896)

Invariably, media coverage of the issue starts talking about universal
healthcare. But have you ever seen a US media report mention that the gap is
twice as big in the UK, which has universal healthcare?
[https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-47115305](https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-
england-47115305). There, black mothers are five times as likely to die in
childbirth. In reality, the black maternal mortality rate in the US is the
same or slightly lower than in the UK, despite the lack of universal
healthcare. In fact, by talking about universal healthcare without bothering
to check if universal healthcare actually reduces black maternal mortality,
journalists actively divert the reader away from thinking about real solutions
to the problem.

We have made it clear that we will do everything we can to ensure that 2015
[when nearly 1 million refugees entered Germany] won’t ever be repeated,” Ms
Kramp-Karrenbauer said on Monday. “We must make clear that we have learnt our
lesson It’s not that the media doesn’t sprinkle in facts for context. They do,
when it’s to contradict a conservative viewpoint. They will never do that
extra research to contradict a liberal viewpoint. So you never see a reporter
confront someone who says “we need to spend more on education” with the fact
that we spend more on education than almost every country in the OECD.

People who read the NYT like to think they have “the facts” on their side. You
don’t know all the facts, because the NYT doesn’t tell you.

~~~
tptacek
_Quick: without looking it up, what’s the ratio of COVID-19 deaths in New York
to Texas? Florida?_

It's about 2:1 Florida to New York. 2:1 Florida to Illinois, too.

What strikes me about your comment --- besides the fact that it looks like you
somehow have the rates flipped between the lockdown states and the southern
states --- is that almost nothing you're commenting here is really the subject
of much reporting at all. It reads as if you're summarizing the bad takes of
opinion writers, not of reporters. If you want to build a case against the
Take Factory, I'm right there with you. But, in reality, very little of
newsroom journalism involves evaluating how progressive Angela Merkel is.

------
fossuser
This article is missing some of the critical context that lead to this from
Twitter.

Summarized here: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-
bet...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-July-2020-Twitter-spat-between-
Taylor-Lorenz-and-Balaji-S-Srinivasan-really-about)

I think Taylor comes across extremely negatively here and the spin in this
Vice article just makes it worse.

Basically Taylor puts up a mean tweet about the Away CEO’s comments on the
media (without actually engaging in the content of those comments).

Balaji responds to the tweet with the same wording Taylor used, but directed
at Taylor herself (to point out the meanness).

Taylor tweets a cropped response image of only Balaji’s response and plays
victim, rallying media people behind her (things escalate) - eventually they
surreptitiously record this clubhouse conversation and write a hit piece
without taking any responsibility for anything.

It’s all very high school and the journalists come across extremely negatively
to me. If anything this proves Balaji’s point.

I should spend less time on Twitter.

~~~
crocodiletears
This whole whole affair seems as exhausting as it is childish and typical.

Irrespective of these circumstances, journalists need to get off Twitter. Not
even stop reading it, that's fine. They just need to stop tweeting if they're
so constitutionally incapable of not getting into moralistic pissing matches
and turning themselves into stories like they're trying to get on worldstar.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
The VCs come across as extremely thin skinned people who think no one has a
right to criticize them and any complaints about their companies are unfair
slander. Those arguments are basically the clear justification why journalism
is important and exists. There might be some 'unfair and mean' journalists,
but writing about the problems of google or whatever is important. Those
people complaining are the embodiment of rich people who can't take any
criticism without going out and hiring lawyers to try to squelch it.

~~~
tossmeout
This is ironic, because it's exactly the journalists who are doing what you
accuse the VCs of doing. The second they get any criticism whatsoever --
whether it's on Twitter or on Clubhouse -- they immediately play the victim
and write pieces like this one that question the nerve of anyone who dares to
criticize the media industry. As if they're above it all. Journalism is a for-
profit industry just like any other, so why shouldn't they be open to
criticism, too?

According to VICE, the "audio chat had spiraled wildly out of control" because
what, it was critical of journalists?

Also, notice that none of the tech people in any of these conversations said
that tech should be above criticism. They've literally simply said that the
media should be accountable, too. Do you disagree?

For decades the media has NOT been accountable. They were the only
organizations able to reach the masses directly. Now other people can to, and
those people can criticize media coverage without having to go through the
media itself, and so you get whiny pieces like this one that hypocritically
try to argue that others should be open to criticism but they're assholes for
criticizing the media.

------
zozbot234
Some further tidbits in this Quora Q&A: [https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-
July-2020-Twitter-spat-bet...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-
July-2020-Twitter-spat-between-Taylor-Lorenz-and-Balaji-S-Srinivasan-really-
about)

It looks to me like we might be about to see a pretty big kerfuffle between
"tech" and traditional elite journalism, with non-trivial political overtones
as well. This is kinda impressive to me since everyone kinda expects them to
be politically aligned, but these sorts of alliances can also shift quite
suddenly and unexpectedly. Both sides might then try to appeal to their more
"grassroots" audiences, claiming that the other party is insincere and lacking
in ethics. It won't be an outright call for "canceling", but the subtext will
be similar.

------
MiroF
> He proposed that the approaches to truth and accountability offered by
> GitHub, venture capital funding, and cryptocurrency all offer better models
> for journalism than "the East Coast model of 'Respect my authori-tay.'"

When people talk about tech/engineer hubris, this is it.

The idea that a "Github" model for journalism could offer the same level of a.
resistance to external pressure and b. in-depth investigation as more
institutional models is entirely without basis.

~~~
manigandham
It’s not hubris to think about better models. Questioning the status quo is
how many revolutionary things got started.

The institutional model clearly has major issues and there are countless
examples of journalists afflicted with bad incentives and a clear narrative.
Also the rise of social media has eroded the whole point of institutional
organization since they just spend all day dueling on Twitter and writing
about whatever unsourced hot take is found there.

~~~
MiroF
Journalists do in-depth investigative reporting, they submit FOIA requests,
they cultivate connections with other institutions in order to get stories of
public interest to the public. I have _never_ seen a "Github" non-professional
style of journalism approach doing the same thing.

> they just spend all day dueling on Twitter and writing about whatever
> unsourced hot take is found there.

This is the hubris. Thinking that everyone else's job is way easier than what
an engineer does - and journalists just spend all day on twitter without doing
anything else.

> Questioning the status quo is how many revolutionary things got started

You can question the status quo and it's not hubris. You can also have
instances where you question the status quo and it is hubris. I would say this
is an instance of the latter.

~~~
catalogia
> _Journalists do in-depth investigative reporting, they submit FOIA requests,
> they cultivate connections with other institutions in order to get stories
> of public interest to the public._

Some do. Others maliciously crop social media comments and provoke twitter
flamewars to create content.

I think the biggest problem with the tech industry is that it's insufficiently
self-critical. But I think journalism has the same problem; I rarely see
journalists writing articles about other journalists behaving badly. They have
a tendency to protect their own, which mirrors my observations of how people
in the tech industry generally respond to criticism of the tech industry.

~~~
MiroF
Do you think the fact that some journalists maliciously crop social media
posts means that we should replace the institutional model with a "Github"
model of professional journalists?

I'm sorry, but I fail to see this as a crisis of the profession in the same
way that the GP does.

~~~
catalogia
> _Do you think the fact that some journalists maliciously crop social media
> posts means that we should replace the institutional model with a "Github"
> model of professional journalists?_

No, I definitely don't.

I think techies who think they've got all the answers for how to fix
journalism are hubristic, but I also think journalists who think all is well
with their industry need to get off their high horse and do some introspection
too. I think both industries are in a crisis, and it happens that the two
crises have nontrivial overlap; the tools the tech industry has been creating
over the past 15 or so years have been exacerbating the problems in
journalism. So no, I _definitely_ don't think the tech industry is situated to
solve the problems with journalism; judging by past performance the tech
industry has a deleterious effect on journalism and I don't foresee this
changing soon.

I don't know how to fix journalism, nor do I know how to fix the tech
industry.

~~~
6510
I don't know either but I do know it starts with figuring out what journalism
is or is suppose to be. _You know it when you see it_ is not a good position
to progress from. I'm not thinking of a single answer or a definition of what
it is not.(or not suppose to be) I also have no idea who should make the
decisions here :-) Perhaps we should all make up our mind indevidually.

------
untog
Eye opening but certainly not surprising.

It’s kind of incredible to think of these people, with all the power, fortune
and access they have, spending their time attacking journalists. It feels like
there’s a limitless number of more productive things to do. But the reality is
that their press coverage is one of very few things they don’t have total
control over and it drives them _nuts_.

------
tpmx
Who cares about what any of these self-important pricks think of themselves?
(I'm thinking about both parts of the elite that's a part of this story - both
the VCs and the hacks.)

------
Simulacra
This is an extremely one sided article, and it seems to be missing a lot of
critical information. That said, does anyone still trust the media?

------
MiroF
I'll be honest, I would prefer to read pretty much any major news
organizations reporting on this conversation other than Vice.

------
ardy42
> Some in the Silicon Valley set turned their sights on the Times after Scott
> Alexander, a psychiatrist who ran the philosophy blog SlateStarCodex,
> deleted the entire blog because he said the Times was going to "dox" him by
> publishing his real name in an upcoming story. (It is worth noting that
> Alexander has republished SlateStarCodex blogs in books using his full
> name.) This event resurfaced an ongoing and tedious discussion among venture
> capitalist types about journalism ethics, business models, and publishing
> incentives.

I didn't know that. Is it true? What's the name of Alexander's book?

