David Quinn wrote:The biggest issue currently facing journalism is dwindling sales and resources, which makes proper investigative reporting too prohibitively expensive for most outlets. Unfortunately, we are living in an age where lazy, sensationalist, click-bait reporting is more lucrative than serious journalism. A story cobbled together in 5 minutes cut and pasted from other media outlets can provide more clicks and thus more revenue than an investigative article which has taken three months of painstaking work to put together. Through sheer economics, editors are being forced to focus almost exclusively on the click-bait stuff.
It is the main reason why I began subscribing to the New York Times back in December. I wanted to do my bit to financially support the kind of serious journalism that will put a handbrake on Trump's most destructive actions. If serious journalism is going to survive in the future, then digital subscription by civic-minded readers will probably be the way to go.
Actually, the biggest issue is what people want, viz. being pandered to with illusions and lies versus being informed. The NYT panders to an aging liberal readership because not many others read their paper. Even the aging liberals aren't being replaced by their millenial counterparts because the NYT smeared and insulted Bernie in order to elevate Hillary to the nomination.
Kevin Solway wrote:Serious journalism is supposed to report the truth. It's not meant to "put the brakes" on someone.
Putting the brakes on those who are deceptive and want to harm the community is part and parcel of reporting the truth. Serious journalism constitutes a vital part of the checks and balances in a democracy. A democracy cannot function without it.
No, the job of a reporter of truth is to report the truth. At best, his reports can aid those whose job it is to put the brakes on illegal activity.
Dan Rowden wrote:It seems to me that Trump's anti-establishment rhetoric, and cleverly developed persona around it, has seduced all sorts of people, including those you would imagine to be too wise to fall for it.
It seems to me that you and David are using your self-proclaimed credentials of sagacity to pass false judgements on Kevin, myself, Diebert and others who refuse to join you in a Trumphobic orgy. All the forum members you are accusing of loving Trump or falling prey to Breitbart far-right propaganda have shown you, both directly and indirectly, why your accusations are wrong. Yet you persist in doing so with casual abandon. You even descend so far as to appeal to sentimentality and old times, as if that even matters in the context of this forum - a context which you claim also governs your daily lives. And now, David is citing his "large amount of wisdom" (which is itself a nonsensical concept) to justify an unnecessary and uncalled for mental diagnosis of Trump.
Your claim that a single one-paragraph article about a phone call is "entirely indicative" of Breitbart's output is one more in a long list of stupid and baseless accusations. I wonder if this thread was intended to be a safe space for people who derive pleasure from insulting and degrading people they hate or disagree with. If it was, then let me join Kevin in notifying David and you that such safe spaces already exist aplenty.
@David, your statement about "almost everyone" being mentally ill is a red herring. Pathological liars are not "almost everyone".
Anyway, this is my last post on this thread. I've participated until now because I wanted to analyse David's accusation that Kevin is brainwashed by the Trump-Breitbart Axis of Evil in the light of Kevin's own words about Trump. Since Kevin has spoken for himself, I have no reason to continue posting.
I have seen nothing in Kevin's posts that is remotely indicative of right wing bias or sympathy. If anything he was complacent when dealing with, among other things, David's implication that he has been seduced by Milo Yiannopoulos who is, apparently, "such a pretty boy". Truly a touching (without consent) piece of Zennish insight, which made me cringe with the joy of knowing Truth.
I've suspected from the beginning of this thread that the real motivation behind D'n'D's attacks on Kevin is not at all what they keep saying it is, i.e. distancing themselves from Kevin's conservofascist views and other such nonsense. I've come to the conclusion, especially after reading their reactions to Kevin's recent posts, that the motivation is personal and sentimental. In my opinion, they interpret any action or view of Kevin's (and supposedly also of forum members who agree with Kevin to any extent) which seems to them to be radically different from their own as betrayal or "selling out". Such reactions may derive or extend from real life tensions, or from ingrained emotions of friendship and nostalgia, but investigating their causes isn't my place or concern. Nevertheless, that is the only motivation I can think of as being the likely cause of all the absurd accusations.